“Wake up, slave.”
The voice was a whetstone to Rainbow Dash’s ears as she slowly opened her eyes, greeted by the sensation of mild pain. That was nothing new; everyday was pain.
The first sensation she became aware of was the ropes stretched taut across her mouth. From there her senses were assaulted by aches exploding all at once over her naked body, the surprise of it causing her to struggle and add to her discomfort.
Rainbow Dash could not move. Her hands were in front of her, wrists bound together with several tan cords, while her arms were bent at the elbow. She turned her head only to feel her rainbow mane pulled on by more ropes behind her. She was being forced to kneel, her legs folded and tightly wrapped from thigh to calf, keeping her from standing or stretching her legs straight. The pose forced her bare ass up to be presented to whoever was speaking to her. Whoever he was, had also seen fit to tie ropes to her tail, immobilizing it. It did not explain the pain inside of her ass though.
She growled, biting wildly on the ropes in her mouth, just as her bottom unconsciously clenched at the foreign object inside it. Not the thickest plug she had been forced to take, at least.
A harsh pull of her wrists made her aware of even sharper pain on her chest. Her sudden movements were making weighted clamps swing from rings piercing her nipples, pulling on her small breasts.
Dash had only the freedom to yell against the ropes gagging her, already feeling her own drool run down her chin.
“Do you like pain?” the unseen speaker had asked.
The rough voice identified the race of the speaker, making Dash’s already fast-paced heart speed up more. It was always different when it was a stallion lording his dominance over her, using her as his cum dump. The male traitors of Equestria would never get the best of her.
The caribou invaders though, required extra effort.
The question had taken Rainbow Dash’s attention away from her bondage to notice the room she was in. It was hot, no doubt thanks to the huge stone furnace she was facing. Bright coals were hot enough to make the air around it shimmer slightly, casting the only light in the room, allowing Dash to see a variety of tools and weapons hanging on the walls. It was a metal shop, nothing at all like the brightly colored ‘exercise’ rooms of the Wonderbolt Academy, with their instruments of sexual training and caribou propaganda posters on the walls.
“There is enough slack in those ropes to allow you to nod or shake your head. So I will ask again, do you like pain?”
The voice came from behind her, Dash could hear, but her attention was still drawn in front of her, to the great furnace, and the one skinny metal object sticking out of those orange coals.
Rather than nod or shake her head, Rainbow Dash screamed a muffled “Fuck you!”
The response she was met with was the sudden, loud, and surprising sting of a whip across her backside. Her entire body strained against the yards of rope binding her in place, but she did not move so much as an inch.
“You are vexing,” the voice sounded tired to her, almost bored. It was certainly not the average caribou speaking to her. With the memory of the whip strike just barely beginning to fade, Rainbow Dash tried to recall the last thing she remembered, of being in a cage with other black collar slaves in the Academy slave pens, her collar leashed to the wall, her hands shackled behind her back. A typical Monday evening.
“Most animals can be conditioned by pain,” the voice continued, and another strike of a whip slapped against the other side of Rainbow Dash’s vulnerable ass. She screamed again despite herself. This was not a riding crop, or a belt, and certainly not a paddle. The whip felt like something used by her one-time hero Daring Do, something much more punishing than other instruments she was often subjected to.
“But some, like yourself, never seem to learn their lessons. Pain is guidance, meant to direct you. A common beast understands that. Can you understand that?”
Still recovering from the second whip smack, Dash chewed slowly on the ropes. In a way, they were a welcome to her, more than a rubber ball or the hooks of a spider gag. Her forehead began to sweat, her angry eyes returning to the furnace, and the object inside it.
Breathing faster than normal, Dash begrudgingly shook her head.
“Hmm, I suppose you cannot. If you could, you would not need my attention.”
Shit… was Dash’s only thought. She chewed more on the ropes in her mouth, bracing herself for a world of pain. Let the caribou do his worst, his wouldn’t be the first dick to stretch her ass or punish her pussy. The monsters would not get the best of her.
The speaker was silent. Seconds ticking away, each prolonged and strenuous as she kept her eyes on the ropes binding her wrists together. She couldn’t see the knots, couldn’t guess how to even undo a single knot if her fingers could reach one.
The third whip smack caught her off guard, but the pain wasn’t as bad. Again her body jerked, spreading more pain over her tightly wrapped body. She might not have been able to see the strikes coming, but she was developing a taste for the pain, and it would be easier to take the fourth and fifth strikes, whenever they came.
“It speaks poorly of your master, or the whole race of stallions in this absurd land, I should say. I’ve yet to meet one who knows how to properly keep slaves.”
The statement caught Dash’s attention. She couldn’t recall the last time she heard a man speak poorly about another man, let alone to the slave he owned. But that in itself prompted her to try and speak, “I’m not a slave”, though the ropes in her mouth mumbled that declaration. The meaning was not lost to the caribou staying behind her.
“If you were not a slave, I would not have addressed you as such. For all your cocky behavior, you lack the actual cock with which your actions would be deemed admirable. Ah, but perhaps it is the very lack of cock that does not tame your wild spirit?”
Rainbow Dash responded with a fierce shake of her head, ignoring the pain of how she pulled on her own mane. She gave another futile pull of her bound wrists, then tried to raise her body, her sheathed wings flapping from muscle memory, adding to the already taxing pain of her bent form.
“Do you think you could actually get free?” the voice asked calmly. “There are exactly one hundred and thirty four knots over three hundred feet of rope keeping you bent forward on your knees with your head down. The proper pose for a slave. The movements you have made so far are only because they are allowed, by me.”
The contempt in the speaker’s voice made Rainbow Dash growl, refusing to stop testing the ropes. She had not stopped chewing on the ropes in her mouth.
“Is it that you do not understand your position, or that you utterly refuse to accept the truth of your situation?”
An angry “Go to hell” was muffled by those wet ropes in Dash’s mouth, the only response she felt she owed the unseen buck. She also knew that he had yet to strike her with the whip, and knew that would have to be coming any second. She was braced for it, determined to not scream this time.
What she felt instead was the object in her ass being pulled, lifting her lower half slightly from the platform she was tied to. The instant pain made her scream, and there was no way she could have stopped it. It wasn’t just a plug in her ass like she assumed, but an anal hook.
“So you do like pain,” the caribou spoke as softly and as calm as he had since making his presence known. “However, taking all the pain in the world will not forgive the fact that you are a slave.”
Rainbow Dash tried to shout through the ropes in her mouth. The buck had struck a nerve, and though he continued to hold on the hook inside her, she fought through the pain. She let it fuel her to keep struggling, to not stop trying.
The caribou waited before finally letting go of the rope attached to the hook. There was no denying the visible relief that washed over Dash’s already stressed body, which was already evident by her laborious breathing.
“You would have made a fine male, I should say. It is always interesting, coming across rare females like yourself that seem to me as a cruel trick of nature. All those admirable qualities, just being wasted on the weaker sex. A shame, truly. We cannot change what you are, we can only help you understand what your place is in this new, glorious world.”
As the caribou spoke, Dash felt his big hand encompass her flank. She flinched, much to her shame, prepared for another cowardly strike on her bound body. But instead, the buck’s hand was gentle, taking time to feel the muscle under her damp fur, to graze his thick fingers over her cutiemark.
It was a different way of being touched by a caribou. The normally loud, brutish creatures were often anything but gentle. Certainly not as calm speaking as the buck. It made Rainbow Dash somehow hate the unseen male even more. Her head lowered, as if to get away from the sound of the buck’s voice, and found to her surprises that her bound hands could reach the ropes on her mouth, her fingers having just enough reach to hook on them and pull them down.
“Your place, is that of a slave,” the caribou spoke slowly, as if wanting to be sure that Rainbow Dash would understand him. She suppressed a squeal as she felt the buck’s fingers roam down her cutiemark to between her spread legs, over her unprotected slit.
“You obey. It’s quite simple, though perhaps you need to know the reason why you obey. A reason that some of your kind have already grasped and accepted. I understand you had five friends, of which all are wearing red collars now. They understood why they had to obey. All you females eventually do.”
Another grumped “Fuck you” came from Dash’s mouth, but at hearing how weak it sounded, she took that time to reach at the ropes over her mouth and pull. To her shock, they wouldn’t budge.
Behind her, the caribou chuckled at her actions.
“You really do not understand your situation at all. From the moment you were collared, we have had total control over you.”
Ignoring the buck, Dash kept trying to pull at the ropes, to at least tell him off clearly, to refute every twisted word he spoke to her. The ropes would not budge.
“It would not be overly hard to wreck your mind and swap your collar for a purple one,” Dash could almost hear the smile in the buck’s voice. “Your hero, the mare you looked up to, I understand, is currently a purple slut. Daring Do, I believe her name was.”
Dash shut her eyes. Why wouldn’t the ropes on her mouth be pulled down?!
“You could be, and in my opinion should be, on a drug regimen. The king’s sunslut slave is drugged often enough. It’s helped her learn and understand her role too. And she was the best of your sex.”
Frustration boiled over, and Dash, still gagged, screamed at the caribou. This was not the usual rape routine she was use to. All the caribou had done was pet her pussy and talk non-stop to her. She knew the rape was coming, it always did, but to have the caribou take his time with it, choosing instead to taunt her, was becoming too much. She shouted a rambling string of muffled profanities at the buck, straining her body against her ropes until she could feel them cut a little into her skin.
It didn’t matter if she bled. She had to get free, had to knock the teeth out of the caribou scum toying with her, trying to get in her head. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the ropes she could reach. If there was even a little bit of a chance she could do anything about her situation, she had to not stop trying.
When the next slap came, it was not from a whip, but from the caribou’s meaty hand, slapping her pussy repeatedly, swift and sharply. Rainbow Dash’s body tensed, her eyes shutting tight enough to almost squeeze tears as her ears rang from each slap. Her nipples burned with pain at the weights swinging wildly from them as she trembled and shuddered in place.
The buck only chuckled at her pain once his hand stopped. She was vaguely aware of hearing a small slurp as the caribou tasted his fingers.
“The women you would see as heroes have submitted. All of them. They submitted because we took what did not rightfully belong to them in the first place. They could not stop us, though some foolishly tried. And up to this point, we have not done that to you yet, slave.” As he spoke, Rainbow Dash felt his hands, ever so gently, trace over the terrible black sheaths binding her plucked wings. Just gentle enough not to put too much pressure on the numerous spines that often bit into her. It was enough to finally stop Dash’s struggles, and put the first real sensation of fear inside her.
“When it comes to proud females like yourself, there is always more to take.”
Rainbow Dash was just proud enough not to whimper, even though the urge was great. Her mind raced with gruesome ideas of just what the caribou meant by his statement. Though she refused to give in, there was still fear worming in her heart at the idea that maybe now the caribou would have her blanked, or fucked so hard she would become a mindless animal wearing a purple collar. If half of what she heard about Daring Do was true, it would be a fate worse than death.
“I know just what to take from you, to help you understand the finality of your situation in this new world order.”
Rainbow watched without continuing her attempt to free herself as the caribou finally stepped into view, passing her, approaching the intensely hot furnace in front of her.
Her sharp eyes immediately picked up on the difference of this caribou male compared to the others she had seen before, most of which would always thrust their meaty cocks in her face. This caribou still wore pants, which struck Dash as odd. She was expecting rape, but it seemed the caribou was not dressed for it. Along with the pants he wore a long black apron smeared with grease, leaving his chest and arms bare under it. Over one of his hands he wore a thick black glove, which reminded Dash of an oven mitten with fingers.
He was dressed very much like a blacksmith, even with a pair of darkened goggles resting on his forehead. He certainly did not look interested in raping her; she instead saw his interest focused solely on the item that had been inside the furnace since she first awoken. As he pulled it out, it confirmed her suspicions.
The caribou was holding a branding iron.
With a burst of adrenaline, Rainbow Dash struggled to get free. She pulled so hard on the ropes binding her wrists that she felt the cords cut into her skin. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was not letting the caribou get anywhere near her with that thing in his hands.
“When it was decided to brand the sunslut, it was a purely symbolic gesture,” the caribou said, looking over the branding iron as his antlers took on a sickly green glow, “Collars can be removed, feathers grow back. Horns… who’s to say? But a brand, that lasts until your body returns to the earth. A brand over the cutiemark, the symbol of your special talent that makes you unique, never goes away, and will never be removed. Just as your status in this world will never go away.”
Rainbow Dash ignored the caribou’s calmly spoken words as she kept fighting against the ropes that kept her bound. Sweat was getting into her eyes, and she chewed on the ropes in her mouth like a carnivore. She missed how the caribou’s magic was starting to activate runes etched into the body of the brand, matching the glow of his magic.
“Your collar, and your sheaths, do not make you a slave. They only state the obvious. Your sex makes you a slave. Losing those two items, though it would be impossible for you alone to achieve, would not change what you are in this new, better Equestria.”
Still, Rainbow Dash did not respond. Fight or flight had taken over her mind, and the caribou’s seeming words of wisdom fell on deaf ears. She was completely taken off guard when he suddenly cupped her chin in his ungloved hand, forcing her to look up at him and give him her full attention.
“I tell you all this because I tire of seeing your resistance. My brothers may find it amusing, some even attractive. It is ultimately distracting. Since conquering these lands, much time and energy have been wasted in retaining rebellious black collar slaves, rather than converting them into proper slaves. There was no such thing as a black collar slave in my homeland. You are all unproductive, wasteful distractions to my brethren, and it is time I took matters into my own hands and quashed your stubborn nature.”
Rainbow Dash tried, and failed, to hold back the fear in her eyes. The caribou’s face was calm as his voice, and it dawned on her that he never once spoke in anger or resentment. If anything, he spoke to her as if she were an intelligent person, so unlike the way nearly every other caribou before him had done. It somehow made her more afraid of him than of the prospect of getting raped by him, which he still seemed uninterested in doing.
With how close he was to her now, she could smell the branding iron.
I… I can’t stop this, Dash admitted to herself, feeling the heavy weight of defeat and failure to sink inside the pit of her stomach. It was like having her feathers plucked all over again.
“I have deduced that your misguided nature stems from your cutiemark. What better way to show you the finality of your enslavement than to brand chains on the very symbol of your unique individualism? But not just a normal brand though, one enchanted by my masterful rune magic that, once applied, will forever seal away the magics of that mark. Do you understand what that means, slave?”
With her chin still held firm, Dash could not shake or nod her head. The answer the caribou seeked seem evident her wide open eyes.
“This is the equivalent of erasing your cutiemark,” the caribou said, allowing himself a small smile. He stood back up, tall and imposing, the branding iron in his gloved hand and glowing from several etched runes. “Different from being blanked. Such a tactic is wasted on a mare, because there is no mare in Equestria too difficult to be broken and reshaped. And how could you be expected to learn your place, if we took away your ability to think?”
Rainbow Dash felt fear about to swallow her whole. She trembled in her bindings, tears ready to spill down her cheeks as the void of hopelessness beckoned to her. She had been helpless to save her her friends, helpless to stop the caribou from plucking her wings, and now she was helpless to stop the buck from branding her like an animal. She couldn’t win, and the only option left was to give up.
The caribou saw this in Dash’s body language. His truth had finally gotten through to her, as he knew it had to.
“Slave, it is time.”
Rainbow Dash felt the tears ready to come.
“I understand, master.”
The voice of the second, unseen speaker struck Rainbow Dash like a bolt of lightning. She tried turning her head to see, but there was no need, as Twilight Sparkle was already eagerly approaching the caribou, free of clothing and any kind of bondage, save for the blood red collar and wing sheaths. The smile on Twilight’s face was beaming.
“Thank you for the honor of serving you, master.” Twilight spoke sweetly, having not once looked at her bound and terrified friend.
All at once, Rainbow Dash was pulled back from the brink. Surrender was no longer an option. The rage in her heart would have melted iron as she glared at her one time best friend, having been in the room with her the entire time.
Rainbow Dash did her best to scream exactly what she thought of Twilight and her happiness to serve the caribou’s twisted wishes, “Traitor!”
The caribou runemaster patted Twilight on the head, much in the same way pet owner would do for his dog. Neither he nor Twilight paid any heed to Rainbow Dash’s outrage.
“Slave, help your friend learn her place.”
Twilight gasped, both her and Dash’s eyes open wide as the caribou’s magic held the branding iron out for the alicorn slave to take. She didn’t even hesitate.
Dash tried to yell out Twilight’s name. The sweat seemed to pour from her forehead as she watched Twilight, the mare who had been her bestest friend, approach her with a white hot branding iron.
“Rainbow Dash, you don’t know how happy this makes me,” Twilight said, grinning big, much to Dash’s horror. The statement had left her dumbstruck, scared senseless that she even stopped moving. “I’m going to help you. You’re going to learn your place, and we’ll all be so much better for it.”
Twilight aimed the branding iron, and Rainbow Dash, for the first time since her capture, begged for mercy.
She could not turn her head all the way to see Twilight do the deed. Twilight herself gave no warning that it was coming. Dash felt the heat of the iron before it pressed on.
Even as she screamed, she still clearly heard her skin burning.
An eternity of pain contained in a single second. Tears flowed free like river streams. The scream Dash made ripped its way from her gut, her gag of ropes barely hindering the full force of her agony. Still, the searing of her flesh was louder. The smell of it was stronger than the smell of her piss pooling under her. Her body shook with pain she never thought possible, shook from magic seared into her very being.
She wasn’t even aware that Twilight had pulled the iron away, and was already on the opposite side Dash.
Through blurry vision, she saw the impassive glare of the caribou in front of her. His thick arms folded over his chest. He still looked bored.
When the brand touched her again, Dash couldn’t last the full second this time. The pain of the iron and the rune magic pushed her past her limits.
“She’s blacked out, master.”
Skjaldsla didn’t need to hear that, he could clearly see that was the case. The smell of burned flesh did not bother him; the reserve was in fact true. He was much too pleased to be bothered by the smell as he saw the lingering magic, his magic, in the blackened chain marks crossing over the cloud and lightning bolt of Rainbow Dash’s ruined cutiemark.
She would be his first experiment on the complicated magic that made up a cutiemark. Even if his understanding of their magical nature proved wrong, and his runes sealed nothing, the physical and visual effect would suffice.
“She’ll learn now,” Skjaldsla said to himself, before turning his attention back to Twilight. The alicorn slave did not seem as indifferent to the smell in his workshop as he was.
“Place the brand in the water bucket, and then prepare the transfer papers. We’ll give the captain of the Wonderbolts a new and improved Rainbow Dash, after she’s had time to work in the diamond dog mines. Six months will be enough.”
Twilight hesitated a second, then bowed. “You know best, master. It’s just…”
Skjaldsla raised an eyebrow at Twilight. She had not yet moved from Dash’s side. Her hands trembled as she held the branding iron. Her body language spoke clearer than her stumbling tongue.
“Speak,” he commanded.
“M-master… please forgive me. It’s just… after she healed, I thought I may… aid in her training as a proper pleasure slave.”
“You thought?” Skjaldsla asked, amused by the very statement, though he sounded just as bored as earlier. It seemed Twilight Sparkle was not so well trained as he was led to believe. “You do not think for yourself. You think what your masters tell you. You think of how to serve our pleasure, and our will. Our pleasure is your pleasure. Our will is your will. You understand…”
Twilight shivered, and nodded quickly. She was still clutching the branding iron. The smell looked to be making her sick.
“Say it,” Skjaldsla commanded.
“My pleasure is your pleasure. My will is your will. I understand,” Twilight spoke solemnly, calming herself to the best of her ability, and bowing deeply. “I understand.”
It was good enough.
“Place the brand in the water bucket, and then prepare the transfer papers. Once that is done… you are to wait at the door of lord Ivangir’s quarters. You will service his pleasure for the night, and then return to me in the morning.”
Twilight could not hide the split second of dread in her eyes, despite how much deeper she bowed to the runemaster. A smile forced itself on her face of its own volition. She would be rewarded with a thorough, proper fucking tonight.
“It will be my pleasure, master. Thank you for this generous reward, master,” Twilight said as she moved to carry out the caribou’s will.
There is always more to take, Skjaldsla thought to himself, turning his attention from Twilight Sparkle to the last stubborn member of the former Elements of Harmony. And so much work left to do.
