Dominant Creed

by Troposphere

Rating: mature
Tags: Romance, Original Character, Porn, Sex, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 51986

A young pony joins a secret BDSM society, but struggles to find his place in it.

He knew he was different since he was a colt, and he thought his strange kinks were doomed to remain daydreams forever. Then he found out that not only was there a secret society dedicated to making them real, but they wanted him to join! Getting in was the easy part, though. Finding his special somepony there proved much more difficult.

A fluffy little BDSM romance, mostly M/f, featuring slave play, bondage, spanking, public use, a gangbang or two, and more consent than you can shake a whip at. Readers assure me it's even cute.

Edited by, variously, KobraNerd, Snowliasion, Seraphem, Javarod, and Axôlú. Thanks to Manifest Harmony for artwork, and for letting me play around in her Clocktower Society universe. (She writes stories of her own in it, but this one can be read independently of those).

No relation at all to a certain video game series. Yes, Manifest chose to spoof its logo for the cover art, based on the similar names. Don't let that confuse you.

Published 2016-11-27 21:30:02 UTC
Last updated 2022-03-19 00:04:16 UTC

1. Spectator

At first it was Daring Do.

Sip got his first Daring Do book for his twelfth birthday, and he was hooked immediately. Over the next several months he plowed through the whole series – most of it borrowed from the library – and his every waking thought was of Daring exploring forbidden temples, Daring saving the day, Daring discovering age-old secrets, Daring being captured by the bad guys and tied up . . . Especially Daring being tied up. He found that endlessly fascinating, but didn’t fully understand why.

When Sip was thirteen, his language arts teacher assigned Daring Do and the Rites of the Zebric Sisterhood as class reading, an example of genre fiction. The teacher explained to the class that the reason Daring Do’s wings were bound or bandaged for most of the story was so that earth or unicorn readers could better immerse themselves in it. The point was to remove her wings from consideration.

Sip knew in his bones this was bunk. He was only an earth pony, but he could vividly imagine how it must be to have wings, to fly – and how dreadful it was for Daring to lose that freedom, to function without a capability she was used to taking for granted. It would be as if he was forced to go through an adventure with his hind legs tied. Remove the wings from consideration? No and no! Daring losing her wings was the most important thing about the story.

He didn’t say any of this aloud because the teacher, a pegasus fresh out of the academy, was firmly convinced that because she was the teacher, nothing a mere student said could possibly have value against her. Sip already knew she brooked no corrections or contradictions.

New Daring Do books came out at unbearably long intervals, so Sip expanded his literary horizon towards other books – preferably ones with a plucky heroine who would be captured by henchponies and struggle vainly against her bonds while the villain explained how the rest of her days would be spent in helpless servitude. Sip was getting old enough to recognize innuendo and know that ‘helpless servitude’ would involve a range of things that were not said explicitly on the book’s pages. That didn’t stop him from imagining them.

When Sip was fifteen, an excited rumor among the colts at his school told of a bookstore in a different part of Baltimare that would sell porn to minors. Sip went there together with a gaggle of his friends and found that the rumors were right. They pooled the bits they had and bought three issues of a magazine with pictures of mares baring their behinds to the camera, mares being covered by stallions, and mares doing implausibly obscene things with their mouths and a stallion’s appendage.

The bookstore also had half a shelf with magazines that promised mares who were tied up, some of them wearing blindfolds or bridles. Sip followed his friends in denouncing those as gross, and sick, and abusive – but he made a note of what they cost, and as soon as he had saved up enough from his allowance he was back there, alone, to buy an issue. He told himself it was really not abusive; the mares in the pictures would be models who were paid to appear and set free as soon as the picture was taken. And just because the stories those pictures told were not real didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy them.

He held on to that one for several weeks, until the risk that his parents would find it became unbearable, and he discreetly disposed of it.

When Sip was almost seventeen, he got a part-time job at The Hayburger. Earning his own bits meant he could afford fresh porn more often, though he still couldn’t risk to have it lying around at home. But he also found that work carried its own reward – building burgers might not be the most glamorous of devotions, but it was something he could do with his hooves that brought immediate satisfaction to the ‘guests’, as management insisted on calling the customers. It was an infinitely better way to spend his time than smashing his brain into the brick walls of Algebra or Geography or Communicative Skills. And his bosses liked him; after he graduated from school they happily let him go full time.

His father began dropping unsubtle hints that he ought to start laying some concrete plans for his life, or else move out. He stared at the numbers for some time and concluded he could just about afford a room of his own, in an apartment block not too far from work, and have some bits left over for himself. That was not quite the response his parents had hoped for, but fair’s fair, and they helped him move and assured him that he would always be welcome for dinner if cooking for himself became too bland or too expensive.

Finally going to bed in a household of his own was exciting, a bit scary, and lonelier than he had expected. But the next day he went to the porn shop and bought an issue of Rope Review to keep, the first item in a real stash.

By the time he turned eighteen, that stash had already grown to a respectable size.

* * *

“Sip, can I talk to you for a moment?”

Sip didn’t like the sound of that. He had just worked through a slow morning shift with Beating Heart, and anything she wanted to bring up with him that she couldn’t have said while waiting for customers must mean he was in trouble. She rarely pulled rank with him, but she was the shift supervisor after all.

“I just clocked out,” he said, stalling.

“It’s not for work. Just wait a moment while I finish up, alright?”

He waited while she hung up her uniform and filed their balancing slip. With most of the fillies he worked with, getting invited to a not-for-work talk might have gotten his hopes up, but Beating was openly dating an ever-shifting constellation of marefriends and seemed to be entirely uninterested in stallions. Perhaps that was why he felt so comfortable with her; he had nothing to mess up, nothing to fail at.

He followed her out the back door, and she turned left, along the path by the river. There were not many ponies around at this time of the day.

“So, um, Sip . . .” she started, not at all acting like the brash, confident unicorn he used to joke around with on the job. “You know I’m a fillyfooler, right?”

“It’s hard to miss,” he agreed cautiously.

“So what I’m going to tell you now is definitely not me coming on to you, okay?”

Curiouser and curiouser. “Okay.”

“Okay. Do the letters B, D, S, M mean anything to you?”

He knew BDSM was the general heading of the kind of porn he liked, but surely that wouldn’t be the meaning Beating Heart was talking about. “Not in particular,” he lied.

She sighed. “Well, that would have been easier.” She picked a piece of paper out of her bag and held it out towards him. “What do you get out of this picture?”

He took it. It was a glossy photograph of an earth mare lying on a stone floor, trussed up with rope and looking fearfully at the camera with the one of her eyes that wasn’t half-closed and bruised. It was clear from the welts and scratches on her face and forebody that she had taken quite a beating. The picture wasn’t explicit in the way his porn was, but he could see from the way the mare lay that anyone who looked at her from a few steps further to the right would be getting quite an eyeful.

“Umm . . . it’s a m–, a pony who has been assaulted somehow. Where are you going with that?”

“Right,” said Beating with a teasing smile. “And I suppose it’s a total coincidence that you suddenly need to go pee?”

Of course that picture had made his wang come out. Damn damn damn. Beating Heart usually had tact enough not to call out such a mishap; it happened to all stallions from time to time. What was with her? “Now listen –”

“This is Fluffy, one of my marefriends,” she said, pointing to the picture.

He fought between excitement that the mare in the picture was somepony he almost knew in reality, and horror that something like that had happened to somepony he almost knew. “Who did that to her?” he croaked.

“I did,” she said plainly. “Don’t worry, she likes it that way. Said after this session it was the best sex she’d had in moons.” She took the photo back from him, sliding it into her saddlebag.

He could only stand there, gaping like a guppy.

“The thing is, we have this kind of club, dedicated to doing that kind of things. Not just clobbering, of course, but also plain old bondage, spanking, slave training, anything you can imagine. But always, and strictly, only to ponies who want to have it done to them. We’re very big on that.

“And now I’m kinda supposed to invite you to join . . .”

“Me?” His head swam. “Why do you think I’d be interested in that?”

She pointed silently at a point beneath his barrel, where the hardest boner he had ever sported in public had grown during her explanation.

“Yes, but – I mean, I probably can’t really deny it sounds kinda hot, but how did you already know I was, you know –”

“Magic,” she said, with finality. “And that’s all you’re gonna get. That’s all they tell me.”

She often teased him about how, being an earth pony, he would never understand the real workings of the world. But somehow it didn’t sound like she was teasing now.

“So, are you in? I can set you up with a visitor’s tour whenever you’d like.”

“Well, I dunno,” he said, scraping uneasily at the dirt with a forehoof. It did sound somewhat exciting, alright. But it also sounded fundamentally unbelievable. And even if it was right, if he joined would he be expected to do to somepony what Beating said she had done to the mare in her picture? Or – even worse – would they expect him to have it done to him? “It sounds a bit overwhelming, you know. Can I think about it?”

She let out a small sigh. “Of course. If you decide you want in, just tell me. But I sure as sunrise ain’t gonna bring this up with you again if you don’t, because it turns out I feel a lot less comfortable talking about this here than I am when I’m at the Society and wearing a mask. Okay?”

“Okay,” he repeated.

“I also have to tell you, then, that if you don’t choose to join now, the Society will never bother you again. But if you change your mind later and want to contact us, there’s a way to do that. But you get only this one chance to memorize it, so listen carefully. You know Love Song, the author, right?”

He nodded, recognizing Love Song as a prolific author of steamy, if a bit repetitive, BDSM romances.

“Buy any one of her books, cut page 69 out from it with scissors, and burn that page, but only that page. That sends some kind of magical signal, and then somepony will be sent out to contact you. Got that?”

“Think so. Page 69, huh?”

She shrugged. “Not my idea. But at least it’s memorable, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

“Good. Now, I’ll give you some time to think.” She started walking away, the way they had come, but after a few steps she turned halfway back for a few last words. “Oh, and sorry for the picture trick. It seemed like a cool idea when I planned it.”

She turned around again and went away.

* * *

Sip thought about that for a day, and then for another day and a week and more weeks. Eventually he wasn’t even sure if the conversation had actually taken place or he had imagined it all.

True to her word, Beating Heart never brought up the subject again. They stayed friendly and professional, with just a slight tinge of awkwardness to their banter on slow mornings, which was probably all in his head anyway. Sometimes when Beating was met by one of her marefriends at the end of her shift, touching muzzles and hugging, he wondered whether they were going somewhere where the marefriend would be tied up and beaten and it would be the best sex she had in moons.

When spring came, Beating quit her job at Hayburger and moved to Manehattan to work as a photographer’s assistant. Sip got a new supervisor, and got a lot of masturbation done to the idea that there was a secret club of ponies doing BDSM things in real life, one he could have joined if he had wanted to. He sold burgers. He turned nineteen.

One day when he was just finishing a forgettable Love Song novel, he remembered the weird ritual Beating had told him about. It couldn’t hurt to try, could it?

He got out a pair of scissors and carefully cut out page 69 of the book, crumbled it into a ball and set it on fire on a dinner plate. When it had burned into little black flakes, he felt slightly silly about ruining the book for this strange daydream.

But the thought that it just might work kept him occupied for most of the night. After all, magic was real.

Two days later, a middle-aged unicorn stallion knocked on his door.

“Are you Silent Pride?” the stranger asked.

“Um, yes.” It had been years since anypony had called Sip by his full name. That was for tax forms and other paperwork. Come to think of it, this pony did look a bit like Sip’s idea of a tax accountant, down to wearing a little grey mustache and a knitted vest with a cream and maroon diamond pattern.

“Glad to meet you; my name is Pencil Note. I understand you may wish to join the Clocktower Society?”

“Join the what?”

Pencil Note raised his eyebrows. “Am I in the wrong place? You have recently, hmm, defaced a Love Song book, haven’t you?”

“Um – y-you’re real?” Sip stammered. He had fantasized about Beating Heart’s BDSM club being real, but never in the form of a pony like this. “Better come inside.” He could not talk about this out in the hallway where anypony might come across them.

“Of course we are,” chuckled the visitor as Sip showed him in.

“And this society, I was told it’s for . . .?”

“For the promotion and protection of sexual dominance, discipline, punishment, and devotion, as practiced strictly between mutually consenting adults,” said the older pony, as if he was laying out a plan for maintaining the city’s water supply.

“Wow.” Sip sat down on his bed. “I’m sorry, I kinda assumed it was just a joke.”

“That’s not uncommon.” Pencil Note smiled knowingly. “We are a secret society after all. But given that we’re real, do you still want to pursue membership?”

He wanted to ask for time to think about it, but that was what he’d told Beating Heart, and now he was supposed to have thought about it already. “Uh . . . what exactly would I be agreeing to?”

“At first, just to come on a tour of the society. All, or most, of your questions can hopefully be answered there. But it will be easier after you see a bit for yourself.”

“And, um, during this tour, am I supposed to –”

“You can’t participate in anything during the tour – you don’t know the safety rules yet. There will be breaks for taking care of personal matters, though, if you need them.” The accountantish pony winked. “Many do.”

Sip sighed. “Okay. What do I do?”

Pencil Note pulled out a piece of paper. “First of all, you need to sign this non-disclosure agreement. It’s legally binding, of course, but we’ll give you better reasons to keep secrecy later.”

The tour was all a blur to him. Pencil Note met him at Civic Square and led him down a side street and through an unmarked door, behind which a magic portal – or so he claimed – transported them to the Society’s main facility at an undisclosed place in Equestria. Certainly the forest clearing where they emerged could not be anywhere near Baltimare; there were mountains rising behind the trees. The big mansion-like building at the other side of the clearing was guarded by bouncers dressed up as Royal Guards, who let them through after Pencil Note flashed an access badge.

Inside, Sip joined a small group of other inductees on a guided tour. The mansion, it turned out, was just the entrance to a vast underground complex of play rooms, lounges, meeting halls, workshops, plazas, boulevards . . . more of a not-so-small city than a mere ‘society’ or ‘club’, Sip thought. The sheer scale of the place was overwhelming, and seemingly everywhere there were mares in cages, mares in chains, mares wearing gags, blindfolds, tack, prostrating themselves before stallions or other mares, being flogged, spanked, fucked forwards and backwards, or just paraded about –

“Why are they all mares?” asked one of Sip’s fellow inductees sharply, a pegasus mare from Whinnyapolis with a severe straight manestyle and a perpetual scowl.

“The Society’s main sites are split by submissive gender,” explained their guide. “Here in Clocktower Equestria East we have all the mare subs. If you want a stallion underhoof, you’ll find plenty of those at Clocktower Equestria West in San Fransiscolt.”

“Hmm. It’s tempting,” said the mare drily, staring the guide down. “But I think I’ll pass.”

Sip tried to keep himself in the other end of the group from her for the rest of the tour.

Afterwards they ended up in a businesslike meeting room back in the mansion, and a couple they had previously observed in a ‘slave training scene’ arrived to take questions. The mare, who half an hour earlier had been begging tearfully (and in vain) for mercy, was now relaxed, smiling, and outspoken.

“Yes, in some ways it is all make-believe,” she explained. “But at the same time it’s also very real. The toys are real, our bodies are real, and the pain doesn’t suddenly disappear just because we end the scene and turn on the lights – you’ll notice that I’m not sitting down.”

Awkward chuckles from Sip and his fellow candidates.

“But the point is, I let him do all that because I want to. I could stop him at any point just by using a safeword, but I choose not to. Some of my fellow subs consider that a necessary evil and try not to think too much about it – and if you think it’ll be like that for you, that’s completely okay; you can still have a quite wonderful time, far as I can see. But I like having that choice and not taking it. That’s how you keep giving yourself up, every second. What love is really about, I think.” She looked over at her partner, who blushed and smiled back at her.

A stallion in the back of the room raised his hoof for a question. “So, if you sign up, do you have to, like, start out as a submissive and work your way up from there?”

“Good heavens, no! You’re not allowed to sub unless it’s because you want to. You can choose to join either as a submissive or as a dominant, and then you get placed into the right kind of welcome class based on that. If you want to try the other side later on, it’s just a matter of taking a few more safety classes.”

At the end, they passed around membership applications. Sip felt dizzy from discovering that so many ponies apparently shared the forbidden desires he had thought were his alone, but was pretty sure he was sold already. He filled out the form and turned it in then and there, having chosen Dominant for himself with not a moment’s hesitation.

Actually joining the society took three weeks of night classes, mostly in the upper part of the mansion but with occasional chaperoned visits down to the underground dungeon levels. Sip learned about the society’s standard safewords, how to read its color-coded collars and straps, a safeword refresher, common social conventions in the Clocktower, reproductive anatomy (‘because you were too busy giggling when they taught you this in school’), a safeword pop quiz, . . .

By the time they reached weird subjects like The Physiology of Pain or Slaveholding Economics, Sip had figured out that the topics were not actually important. They were just there to keep his attention occupied until the instructor sort of off-hoof slipped one of the safewords into the presentation, at which point the entire class would jump to their feet and chant, “Stop, drop, unknot, and comfort!” – or whatever the meaning of that safeword was – in unison.

The physiology-of-pain lecturer happily admitted as much when he confronted her with this epiphany after her talk. “You need the practice,” she said. “But we do make it as entertaining as we can along the way. Once you do get a safeword sprung on you for reals, you’ll probably be focusing on something entirely different, too.”

Sip had to agree with that. He decided to lean back and enjoy the ride – and do his best to be first on his feet when one of the surprise safewords popped up.

* * *

And finally the day came when he could take his attendance records to the Membership Services desk, pay his first dues, and be issued a full-member badge and his very own dominant mask. He had expected more ceremony, but he would have to make that for himself.

He did manage to feel solemn and expectant as he put on his mask and strode down the grand staircase (slower pace!) for his first unsupervised romp through the dungeons.

The first place he went was a block of slave-training rooms, just to make sure he knew where to find them. He didn’t have any submissive to bring there yet, but he marked one of the rooms as occupied, locked the door and spent some time taking possession of the room, familiarizing himself with the racks and other furniture and the tools in the supply closets.

He did the same in an aftercare and safeword room, before he realized that he was just dithering. He took a deep breath and made his way towards the slave markets.

The slave pits were a big cavernous hall, lit by torches hung from rough-hewn pillars that stretched into the darkness above. According to his introduction course, it was the Clocktower’s principal matchmaking institution, full of stalls where caged and chained mares waited to be picked up by doms who could give them what they craved. Some could be bought for the Society’s play money, others could just be claimed and dragged away by anypony, unless they found the claimant so objectionable that they sprung a safeword. Sip was still a bit unsure how that worked, and decided to start out slow. Today he would just be window shopping.

One mare whose cage he passed didn’t agree with that. “Please claim this slave, kind master,” she called out to him. “Make me your cocksleeve, your cleaning rag, your hoofrest –”

“No, take me,” cried her neighbor. “I’ll be the best little slut you ever had, just make me yours!” She hugged the bars of her cage, grinding against them obscenely.

Sip backed slowly away from both mares, uncertain what their deal was. Were they that desperate to get out of the cages? No, that couldn’t be it – the way things were set up here, freedom would only be a safeword away for them. They must want something from him, and he didn’t know what it was. But he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to give it to them.

He turned and fled towards the posher parts of the slave market.

Several hours later he thought he had seen most of what there was to see, and he set off home to process his impressions and lay a plan for actually engaging with one of those subs.

Halfway from the slave pits to the exit stairs, there was a commotion out in the main thoroughfare, a cluster of ponies cheering and hooting. Sip walked closer to see what it was, inching his way through the crowd towards the performance in the middle. It was two ponies mating. Just as Sip reached the open space around them, the stallion was climbing down off the mare’s back.

“Okay, next!” shouted somepony. A different stallion came out from the crowd and reared up to mount the mare.

Sip saw she was wearing a gimp hood. At the top of her head it was latched to a wooden beam that had been fastened between two of the dungeon’s supporting columns, keeping her head firmly raised and in place. She wore a Society slave collar too, of course, and Sip put his recent training classes to use and decoded its colors – this sub is in a relationship, into objectification and abuse, homosexual. Wait a moment, homosexual? Sip looked in confusion between the collar and the stallion pounding away on top of her.

The stallion’s determined expression gave way to a goofy smile, and his rutting became a bit slower. Sip guessed he must be ejaculating. She raised her tail beside him and gave a single piercing ding with the small bell tied to its end. The safety bell was standard equipment for subs who were not able to say the safewords out loud, but a single ding didn’t count for a safeword.

At the ring of the bell, a unicorn mare stepped up to the sub’s head and unzipped the mouth opening on the gimp hood. She was wearing a dom mask in the same colors as the sub’s collar; they must be the real couple here.

The sub, now free to open her mouth, drew breath eagerly. “Twenty. Six,” she gasped hoarsely. Her dom patted her withers tenderly and allowed her a few more breaths before zipping her mouth back shut.

By now the stallion had finished his business and was backing off the mare, but none of the spectators were coming forward to replace him.

“Next!” shouted the dom again. “Anyone? Come on, ponies, this bitch ain’t gonna fuck herself. How about you, sir?” She held out a hoof, pointing straight at Sip.

Sip hadn’t thought of himself as more than a spectator, but suddenly everypony’s eyes were upon him. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be part of the show – but he was even less sure how he could get out of it with with his honor intact. At least he was physically ready; what he had seen already had given him a hard erection even before the dom had pointed at him.

With a feeling of having no choice he hurried over to the the hind end of the sub and put his forehooves up on her rump. He could feel her shifting around under them, moving her legs a bit apart and swishing her tail out to the side. So this was it, no way back. He raised up his body until he thought the flare of his penis must be about level with her opening, and pushed in.

He was afraid he wouldn’t even be able to hit, and it did briefly feel like he was hitting against something that wasn’t a hole. But somehow that fixed itself before he had time to think of pulling back and trying again (had she moved to catch him?) and then he found himself sliding into her: warm, smooth, living flesh enveloping his dick. He lost himself in that feeling – wondrous, consuming, indescribable – and the jeering crowd faded to a remote whisper in his mind as he wiggled back and forth to savor the experience, make it keep feeling that way, stretch the moment –

And then his body took over for him. It started pumping inside him, and it felt like a firehose of cum erupting from him into the mare. He lost his footing on her back and flumped down on his belly on top of her while he pumped and pumped.

Her bell rang again, out to the side, making the outside world rush back to him. He found he had forgotten to breathe, and felt a touch of solidarity with the mare as she had her mouth unzipped and they gasped for breath in synchrony.

“Twen . . . ty. Seven”.

Hearing the count reminded him that he was just one number in a whole parade of . . . somethings . . . and that he had better make space for the next one. Somehow he got himself maneuvered down from the mare, and the crowd parted to let him through as he walked away in a daze.

“We’re at twenty-seven, fillies and gentlecolts,” brayed the dom behind him. “Remember, we have a loaner strap-on ready if any of you ladies want a turn. Don’t fall over yourselves; there’s a long way to a hundred . . .”

Sip climbed the stairs up to the lobby level slowly, trying to collect his thoughts. The more he calmed down from the excitement of the moment, the more he began thinking this had been a terrible way to lose his virginity. He didn’t even know the hooded mare’s name. But what could he do? It wasn’t as if he could have told anypony here that he had a virginity to lose in the first place.

Back below him, the mare’s safety bell sounded three times in quick succession – the ‘slower pace’ signal. Perhaps she had finally run out of air.

Sip went home and dreamt confused dreams.

2. Rookie

It was several days until Sip went to the Clocktower again. He had been told during orientation that the Society frowned slightly on getting too ‘addicted’ to its activities, so he reckoned a few times a week might be a good frequency. And he had plenty to think about, figuring out what exactly he would do the next time he entered the slave pits, when he would not just be window shopping.

Eventually he realized he couldn’t put it off any longer, and went.

He had been given a starter amount of the internal Clocktower Society play-money – enough to buy one of the cheaper slaves on sale (for a limited-time contract after which she would revert to Society ownership), but not enough to bid seriously at one of the auctions he had watched.

That wasn’t so bad. There were several cute fillies among the wares he could afford, and he spent quite some time surveying the offerings. Making the right choice would be important – what if he blew his entire fortune on one of them and then she didn’t want him? Any of them could safeword out as soon as he bought them, and then he’d be back to square one, only with no money to play again for. Or even worse, they might go along with him but still not enjoy what he could think of doing to them. The doms he had met during the welcome course had seemed infinitely competent and imaginative; how could he hope to live up to that?

Perhaps it would be less risky to go for one of the free-to-claim subs? A few of them still scared him, with their open pleas to be taken and degraded, but there were others that caught his attention in a good way. Still, if he could get them without giving up anything himself, didn’t he owe them to make extra sure he could provide what they wanted before he bothered them? And how would he even know what that was? He had been drilled in the Society’s elaborate system of color-coded collars and badges that would supposedly show which kinks each sub was interested in, but in practice he didn’t feel it really worked for learning who wanted something he could do.

At last he did convince himself to make a move on a particularly cute freebie mare, gazing shyly at him through the bars of her cage – but by the time made that decision and went back to her, she was already being tied up and loaded onto a flat cart by two doms in masks, a mare and a stallion. Sip caught a glimpse of her expression when her new owners weren’t looking, excited and apprehensive. He watched them wheel her away, cursing his luck.

Evidently, joining a BDSM club had not come with a magical ability to talk to the opposite sex. Time for plan B, then. With a sigh he left the slave market and made his way to the main dom lounge, looking for the volunteer desk.

The volunteer coordinator turned out to be Pencil Note, the same pony who had taken Sip to his first tour of the Society. He resided in an office that wouldn’t look out of place in any government building in Equestria, at least until you started noticing what the PSA posters on the walls said. By now Sip was getting used to the way the Society alternated between dimly lit nightmare dungeons and pretending to be a world where BDSM was normal and community bulletin boards routinely reminded you of FIVE SIGNS YOUR SLAVE MAY BE DEVELOPING SAFEWORD AVOIDANCE.

“Ah, young Silent,” said Pencil with a smile. “So you decided to join after all. What can I do for you here?”

“Erm, is this where you sign up for, uh, doing chores for the Society?”

“We hope most of them are not that bad,” said Pencil with another avuncular smile. “Do you have anything particular in mind?”

“Oh, whatever you need to have done. Just thought I ought to give back a bit, you know?” This was only half a lie – well, make that three quarters. Or nine tenths. One of his intro lecturers had recommended volunteering as the best way to make connections and get acquainted with much of the Society, but Sip couldn’t quite bring himself to admit he needed that already.

“I see. Very commendable,” Pencil muttered, pulling out a big calendar from his desk. “Let’s see what we’ve got here . . . When can you start?”

Sip spent most of his next several nights as a slave supervisor in the pits, circulating on the main sales floor with a riding crop and whacking slaves that were out of line – looking too resentful, for example, or just not smiling at the customers. The chief slaver who introduced him to the task told him to use his own judgment to set the standard he would enforce. “Don’t worry too much about being fair,” he continued when Sip looked doubtful at that. “A bit of capriciousness is good for the experience. They like it when they can hope to end up with a kinder master.”

Sip thought that made perfect sense, and he allowed himself to feel a bit important as he strutted around in his yellow staff mask, keeping order with the crop. He told himself he was learning – how much force to put behind the whack when he wanted this reaction or that – parts of the mare that were particularly sensitive – how to use the crop not to beat a mare, but to gently caress her with the flap, lifting her tail or chin until she realized who he was with a start.

He learned about himself too: which reactions from a sub he liked. The feisty ones, ever popular with customers, didn’t do much for him, taking every light hit with the crop as an invitation to challenge his authority. Then there were the ones who openly enjoyed being punished but at least made an effort to behave afterwards. He liked best those who acted scared and miserable (at least he very much hoped it was an act; they all knew their safewords, didn’t they?). And the completely apathetic and dispirited ones he simply didn’t understand. He could understand that would be a realistic reaction for somepony who were actually being sold into slavery, but why bother to play-act that? He didn’t get it.

One day Pencil Note reassigned him to the cafe in the doms’ lounge, which was strictly off-limits for subs and so had to be staffed by dom volunteers. Pencil was very apologetic about it: several of the usual cafe staff had called in sick, and Sip was the only volunteer available who already had food safety training from his outside job at The Hayburger. He didn’t really mind; it was interesting to hear what the other doms talked about when their facades were down. Afterwards he would sometimes go to the cafe and order a hot chocolate, just to take in the atmosphere.

Another day he was a supervisor in an eatery off the main thoroughfare in the dungeons where the waitresses were all sub volunteers. He swung his trusty crop there too – though now more against laziness than petulance – and was also responsible for punishing staff that guests complained about, with strokes of a long, flexible cane. The customer’s word was law here, at least when the customer wore a dom’s mask. Once a waitress flat out denied having been rude to a guest, and then he had to punish her both for her rudeness and for calling the guest a liar, tearing into her raised behind while she knelt in front of the customer and stammered apologies between the strokes.

As time went by, he was sometimes given more responsible tasks at his main job at the slave market, such as processing returns or trade-ins. This involved taking the mare in question out to the sales floor and setting her up either in a cage or otherwise on display. Sometimes the sub’s former owner would come along with him, and then she would invariably start begging to be taken back – which was usually successful, though not before Sip had finished setting her up. He tried not to resent his efforts being pointless; he knew he was just an extra in the story they were acting out together.

The job he liked best was being a clerk at Honest Bram’s, a specialty slave dealership in a corner of the slave pits where subs would come to be ‘bought’ by a dom they had already agreed to do a scene with. Sip would receive the sub at a back entrance and find out who she was going to be sold to and how she would be displayed – sometimes her dom would have left instructions in advance, sometimes she would have ideas herself. After the merchandise had been set up accordingly, Sip would show customers around and make sure each slave was sold only to the dom she intended.

The subs at Honest Bram’s were Sip’s favorites among the mares he worked with. He felt he got to know them better than the masses of slaves on the main floor, and in turn they treated him more like a trusted professional or a co-conspirator than like a nameless face of authority. Even when their chosen partner arrived to take them away, Sip could still feel a kind of bond with the mare when she made eye contact with him and nodded almost imperceptibly to signal, this is the right buyer.

It also helped that these mares would often be displayed in rather imaginative ways. Sip got some experience with inserting things into openings he had never imagined he would even get close to without dating the pony with the openings.

Of course, in the nature of things the mares at Bram’s were also, without exception, already taken.

Each night after his volunteer shift, Sip would wander the dungeons for an hour or two, hoping for a sudden miracle that would connect him with a mare who could be his own. The society paid him in play-money for volunteering, and before long he had enough of it that buying a cheap slave wouldn’t ruin him even if it didn’t work out – but somehow that didn’t seem to make it any easier. No matter how much he told himself this was how it was done here, the idea of buying love kept making him queasy. (Would it be love he bought? Should he even think in terms of ‘love’ in this circus? He was as confused as ever.)

When he became fed up enough with himself for being such a loser, even though everything was handed to him, he would go and relieve himself in the ‘cum dumps’ – the deliberately profane (so he assumed) name for a white-tiled hall full of mares strapped into racks and plinths, waiting to be fucked quickly, anonymously, and with a minimum of fuss. That, at least, he could deliver, though he understood these mares even less than he did the slave subs. But it sated his bodily needs, and did it better than the mare he had lost his innocence to that first night – here he could at least take his time finishing.

Still, he made sure to choose ones who were either blindfolded or locked into glory-hole boxes. Looking them in the eye would have been too much.

And then he’d go back home to Baltimare with an empty feeling, until the next time he had a shift staked out in Pencil Note’s big calendar.

* * *

One day when Sip came back to the volunteer desk to clock out after a shift at the slave market, Pencil Note seemed to be in a chatty mood.

“So, had a productive day?” he asked Sip.

“Um, yes,” said Sip.

“Actually I was thinking of calling it a day myself. Care to join me for a bowl of carrot soup in the cafe?”

“Carrot soup?”

“Yes – you haven’t tried it yet? It’s almost criminally good. Come, we have to fix that – unless you have other plans?”

“I guess,” said Sip. The only plans he had were another lonely trek through the dungeons. He wasn’t even sure why he bothered anymore. So that miracle could happen, perhaps.

“Excellent!” exclaimed Pencil. “Hey, Swish, mind the shop for a bit, will you?”

“Sure,” answered a voice from a back office behind Pencil’s desk.

The soup really was good, but it was obvious that it wasn’t all Pencil had on his mind. Halfway through his bowl he put it down, and looked at Sip significantly.

“Silent, you’ve been putting in an awful lot of volunteer hours since you joined. The Society appreciates that, of course, but you never really seem to be satisfied when you clock out. You’re not forgetting to take time to have some fun yourself, are you?”

“Well . . .” Sip shrugged awkwardly. That was just the point, wasn’t it: figuring out how to have ‘fun’ on his own. But that wasn’t really an explanation he could use. “I guess I like the work. It’s interesting . . . and easy to figure out, just following the instructions.”

Pencil looked thoughtful. “So you like being told what to do? Are you sure you don’t belong out west instead?”

Sip’s heart sank. That was the thing he had been dreading to hear for months – that he was not good enough as a dom, that it would be either the collar for him or leave the Society as a failure.

Pencil must have seen his reaction. “There’s nothing wrong with that at all, you know. The Society wants all its members to be happy with what they do; it’s a terrible thing for somepony to be unhappy trying to be something they’re not.”

“No, that’s not – I mean, I’m sure I want to be a dom. I just need some time to figure it out, okay? Please?”

“Relax, son, it’s not as if I can decide what you should be. But – if you can forgive me for prying a bit – what is it really you want out of domming?”

Sip struggled to express it, thoughts he had never really put in order even to himself, and certainly not said out loud to another pony. But if he was going to fail and be demoted to sub, at least he could try to go out in a blaze of glory. “It’s – well, there are stories, you know? I read a lot of them before I heard of the Society. About mares being dominated – tied up, beaten, humiliated, forced – and liking it, completely loving it, you know?”

Pencil nodded encouragingly. “Go on.”

“I always thought it was just porn; you can’t really trust that. But here, in the Society, it’s full of mares who’re actually like that. And now, when I remember one of those stories, all I can think of is how I want to make a mare feel that way. I want to take her and be the pony who makes her feel that way. Do I make sense at all?”

“Perfectly.” Pencil smiled. “And it sounds like you’re in the right place after all. But what prevents you from going out and doing that?”

Sip fiddled with his soup bowl. “I’m not sure I can,” he admitted.

Pencil raised his eyebrows. “Have you tried?”

“W-well, not in so many words . . . kinda still looking for somepony to practice with.”

Pencil made a show of looking around the lounge. “Silent, that doesn’t make any sense. This is the Clocktower; it’s positively crawling with mares who’d like nothing better than being practiced on. As you noted yourself just before. Just go out and grab one of them. You know the color coding, right? Red collars are okay with short-time use.”

Of course he wouldn’t understand. Sip made a last attempt to explain himself. “Yes, but . . . it’s also crawling with doms who actually know what they’re doing. I suppose there are mares who’d be okay with getting me instead of one of them . . . but I don’t know how to recognize them.”

“You could always ask.”

“Just go around the pens and ask everyone if they can spare some time to endure a rookie?” Sip rolled his eyes, feeling bitter.

“Hmm, no, that doesn’t sound very dommish, does it?” Pencil sighed. “Look, I’ve known a lot of our subs, and I think very few of them would be too cold-hearted to give a new guy a hoof up – or so full of themselves that they expect every dom they get to be perfect. Certainly not the ones you’ll find on the pit floor; it’s part of the fun for them that they never quite know what they’ll get. Seriously, just pick somepony and drag her off. She’ll tap out if she really doesn’t want to be with you, you know.”

“I suppose so,” said Sip, not convinced, but out of arguments. “I’ll try that.”

He really did try to make himself do that. It was just easier said than done.

* * *

About a week later, when he was humping away in the cum dumps, the safety bell in its holder beside him suddenly went off.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Three bells were the non-spoken form of the ‘staircase’ safeword. Slow down. Sip realized he had been rutting the nameless, faceless pony in the box below him pretty brutally, taking out all of his frustration with himself for not having been able to approach anypony yet.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he exclaimed, pulling out. “Really, sorry. Are you all right?” He didn’t even know if the mare inside could hear him. If she could, she didn’t answer him. He knelt down by the side of the box, searching for some kind of latch or opening.

Finally he found a small knob that let the entire side of the box slide off. Inside was a pale blue pegasus mare – he knew her color already of course, from her rump and legs sticking out of the hind end of the box – strapped securely to upholstered supports for her barrel, head and forelegs.

“Really sorry for that, ma’am,” he repeated. “You all right?”

“Sshawhrr. Aesh.” He noticed that her mouth was being kept open and fixed just inside the glory hole in the front wall of the stand by an arrangement of struts and braces.

“If you’re okay, please –”

Ding ding ding ding ding! The mare let out something that sounded like a sigh, staring at him out the corner of her eyes. Five bells for ‘clockface’: Pause the session, communicate, renegotiate.

This made it Sip’s duty to get the mare’s mouth free so she could communicate. But he didn’t quite know how; the struts looked complicated and he didn’t want to do something wrong that might hurt her. The he noticed the big red button below her head marked GAG UNIT QUICK-RELEASE.

“Uh!” gasped the mare as the collection of hardware around her muzzle suddenly pulled away and folded itself into some mechanical pocket dimension. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that you had to –”

“No, I’m sorry –”

“Hey, you two. Not to interrupt that tender little scene, but shouldn’t you ought ta get a room instead?” growled the stallion using the neighboring stall. “There are some safeword rooms out by the entrance.”

“Right. Sure,” mumbled Sip in embarrassment.

By now, one of the maid attendants had been summoned by the sound of the safety bell, which was a good thing because she got the mare free of the stand about ten times faster than Sip would have figured it out by himself. He stood by and watched, feeling useless.

“Let’s go,” said the mare tonelessly after thanking the attendant. Without really waiting for Sip she trudged slowly out towards the safeword rooms, looking miserable. Sip followed her, not in a much better mood himself.

“So,” he said, closing the door to the safeword room behind him. “I’m really sorry about that.”

“No, it’s my fault,” said the mare and dropped herself down in the couch in the middle of the room. “It’s just – it’s the first time I’m doing this, and it began to hurt just a little bit, and I thought –”

“Yes, sorry,” repeated Sip. “I wasn’t being careful. Sorry.” He sat down in an armchair facing the couch. There was a coffee table between them, and a magical fire crackling down to the side, all giving the room an impossibly homely and respectable air. Sip supposed that was the point, creating a clear contrast to the dungeons outside.

“I’m Silent Pride,” he said. She would probably need his full name if she wanted to file a complaint about him.

“Society Slave C-557,” the mare said, pointing to her red collar that showed she didn’t have a personal owner. “At your service, I suppose.”

Sip stared into the fire, not knowing where to go from here.

“Is it always that big a deal to use the safeword?” asked C-557. “I thought I was just asking you to go a bit slower.”

Sip shrugged. “Don’t know. Never happened to me before.” But he realized she was right. She had only used the ‘slow down’ safeword at first, and he had been an idiot –

“Shit,” he said. “I’m sorry. I panicked and kinda overreacted.”

“Don’t. It’s better than not reacting, I think.”

“Sorry.”

It occurred to Sip that this was the first time he was actually talking to one of the subs, pony to pony, rather than just playing out his assigned role. He couldn’t let the chance to figure things out better go to waste.

“So, what do you do when you’re not doing the dumps?” he asked casually.

She looked uncomfortable, fidgeting with her hooves. “I’ve done an awful lot of sitting around in a cage in the slave pits,” she said, “waiting. But I don’t really have the bands and badges that make stallions interested, it seems.”

Sip tried to remember if he had seen her there. Looking over at her, he wasn’t sure he would even have noticed her if he had, with her white and pale blue mane that didn’t stand much out from her coat color, and a build that was just slightly taller than ‘cute’. She was on the younger side, though, only a few years older than him, he thought.

“Once I tried signing myself up for an auction,” she continued. “I didn’t even make the reserve price.” She looked down.

Sip wished he had sat down in the couch with her rather than the armchair. She looked like she could use a hug, but moving over to her would probably be too forward, considering she had just tapped out on him.

“That sucks,” he said instead. “I’m sorry you’re having such trouble. Haven’t you been picked up by anypony?”

She shook her head. “That’s why I went to the cum dumps today. They say it’s easier to get something here.”

“That worked better?”

“Mmhm,” She nodded, but without much enthusiasm. “You’re my fifth today. My fifth ever, that is. Unless one of them went twice. It’s hard to tell.”

Sip tried to process that information.

“Can I ask you something?” she said suddenly. “What do doms look for when you’re shopping for slaves? Is it really all in the badges?”

He almost just made something up, to protect his image, but then he remembered that she had just told him of her failures. She deserved better than being lied to. “Honestly?” he said. “With me it’s mostly whether they look like they want to be owned by a bucking noob.”

“How can you see that?” she asked, confused.

He sighed and leaned back, shutting his eyes. “You tell me. Why do you think I went to the cum dumps?”

Suddenly she was laughing. “Dear Luna, we really are bucking noobs, both of us, aren’t we?”

He laughed too – laughed and laughed. It wasn’t really all that funny, but it felt good just to let go and laugh it all away. With someone who couldn’t figure things out either.

When they had no laughs left, she stood up from the couch. “Thanks for listening to me,” she said quietly.

He stood too. “Sorry for breaking your run.”

“Don’t you start again!” she hissed. “See you around, then?”

It was now or never. “Would you like to, um, do a scene?” he asked, as nonchalantly as he could, bracing himself for rejection.

She stopped, thought about it seriously. Then a small smile conquered her face. “I think I would like that. On one condition.”

“Yes?” was all he could say.

“If I need to safeword out again, don’t apologize. Seriously, that makes it completely terrifying to use it, and I don’t think that’s how it’s meant to work.”

She had a point. “By my sacred honor, milady, I do vow to be utterly unrepentant whatever may happen,” he said with a small bow – and then kicked himself mentally for slipping into gallantry in a place and situation like this.

But she just giggled and held the door for him so he could walk out first.

There was a blue supply closet by the entrance to the safeword block, kept stocked with a small selection of essential tools and toys by the maid service. Sip picked out a plain leash, and C-557 lifted her head and blushed becomingly as he clipped it to her collar.

He led her out into the bustle of the main concourse of the dungeons, feeling six feet tall. Here he was, not just doing his job, but leading a mare that was his – perhaps only for a short time, but still a mare who had smiled and blushed and given herself to him.

For the first time in years, Silent Pride felt he matched his name.

This is my slave. There are many like her, but this one is mine. My slave is my life. She is part of me and I of her. I must master her and guide her and comfort and command her. I will learn her weaknesses, her strength, her dreams, her fears, and her limits. I will not fail her. I will hold her and spank her and fuck her and squeeze her, and perhaps – just perhaps! – call her George.

3. Owner

At first Sip led the mare through the crowds without any particular goal in mind. She followed him willingly – he didn’t even have to pull on the leash – and when he looked back he could see a funny little smile play on her muzzle. He remembered her saying she hadn’t found any dom to claim her yet. Perhaps she was as proud to be led as he was to lead?

As he neared the back end of the main street of the dungeons, he began worrying that he wasn’t actually doing a lot. Even though he felt he could keep walking around with the slave in tow for hours, he would soon have to double back towards places they’ve already been. And then she would know that he didn’t really have a destination, and was just parading her about for no reason. He couldn’t let that happen.

Up ahead were the master stairs leading down to the lower levels of the dungeons. Sip was not allowed there yet – he would need more experience and then pass some kind of test; he wasn’t sure yet how it worked. But he remembered there was group of training rooms right by the top of the stairs. He could pretend they had been his goal all the time.

Fortunately one of those rooms was vacant. He told the mare to stand in the middle of the floor while he grabbed some tools from one of the hardware closets.

Like most subs in the Clocktower, she wore padded cuffs around each of her fetlocks, color-coordinated with her slave collar. He clipped a snap hook into each of the cuffs and stuck its flat outer end into the gap between the floorboards, where it latched onto a restraining grid below. It took him only seconds to strap each of her hooves down to the floor.

The other thing he had gotten from the closet was a blindfold. He pulled it around her head, covering up the upper half of her small expectant smile with it. He desperately hoped he would be able to live up to that smile.

This was about as far as he had planned what to do if he ever managed to get a sub into a training room. He stepped back a bit and looked her over. What next?

Her wings, of course. She wasn’t going to fly anywhere with her hooves tied to the floor, but Daring Do had taught him how important wings were to a pegasus’s sense of freedom. She wouldn’t feel properly trapped unless he did something about the wings.

He wasn’t sure exactly what that would be, though. He had never looked very carefully at the wings of a pegasus – they had them, he didn’t, end of story. But now that he did, he thought they looked impossibly fragile for something that could supposedly carry her weight in flight. There were big feathers and little feathers arranged in a precise, confusing order, and if she spread out the wings, the feathers would be attached to strangely articulated body parts that he didn’t even have words for. He couldn’t possibly attempt to tie that up with rope, like Ahuizotl’s minions would routinely do without spending even half a paragraph on how. She would just end with a broken something.

He would have to read the instructions. Somewhere in the Society’s sprawling organization diagram was a committee that decided which toys and equipment a standard training room would be stocked with. And this committee also edited a loose-leaf manual where all that was documented, indexed and cross-referenced. There was a copy of it standing on a work table, leaning casually against the side of the linen closet, as if any self-respecting dom would be ill-prepared enough to need to refer to it in the middle of a session.

At least the index was easy to use. He quickly found a page dedicated to options for wing restraints and scanned the names for something where the symbols promised it could be applied without prior practice and would have the right severity – restrictive without being uncomfortable in itself. He selected a ‘strait-cover’ originally designed for asylum play.

On the way over to the right closet, he looked over at the mare, worried that she’d be bored with the wait. She was leaning over slightly, trying in vain to pull her right hooves off the ground, breathing heavily.

The strait-cover was a small maze of white fabric and pockets and triple-stitched straps. Fortunately the step-by-step illustrations in the manual were pretty good. The mare became calmer when he began working on her, and meekly let him lift up her wings to to get them around and into the garment.

She finally spoke up while he was tightening the buckle on the last of the straps that went around her barrel. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, her voice a bit unsteady. It was the first thing she had said since she he put the leash on her.

He almost answered that it was part of the scene, she had agreed to it herself, they were only roleplaying. Fortunately he was using his mouth to pull the strap taut when she asked, so he had time to realize that would be stupid. What she was really saying was that she wanted a story to be part of, not just have things done to her.

That was fair. If only he had a story ready to give her.

“Do you really not know what you’ve done wrong?” he asked, stalling for time while he came up with something. Meanwhile he slid a hoof up along her tail and shook its end gently, hoping this would remind her of the safety bell tied to it in case she wasn’t just after a story. The bell didn’t make a noise; a routine enchantment kept it from ringing until its wearer willed it to.

“No . . . please,” she answered.

“Well . . . perhaps your only error was to be acquired by me. But don’t worry: By the time I’m done with you –” then what? He wasn’t sure what to promise her. That she would beg him to be taken? No, too cliché. He let his mouth freewheel on. “– you won’t even remember what it’s like to be your own creature.” Not bad.

“What are you going to do to me?”

“Why, I’m going to make you mine. Your body already belongs to me,” – her tail still raised, he put a hoof against her marehood and ground a little, amazing himself by how brash that felt – “but if I’m not mistaken, you think your mind is still your own, don’t you?”

“I –” She stopped herself, pausing for what felt like a long time. “I know my place, sir,” she muttered at last. It wasn’t much of an answer, but he didn’t press the matter because he wasn’t sure where he had been going with that question.

Here she was, then, helpless before him by her own choice, a canvas for him to paint an experience on. But he couldn’t think of what to paint. He had imagined this moment so often, but now that he found himself in the middle of it, nothing of what he remembered thinking felt like he could actually start doing it.

He held up his forehoof before him, looking at the sticky spot on the frog where he had pressed it against her marehood. In porn this would be where she was forced to lick it clean, but he wasn’t sure that was how it worked in reality, and didn’t want to risk grossing her out. He sighed and put the hoof down again.

Come on, at least doodle some, he told himself. Making little damp marks on the floor, he walked over to the tool wall and picked down a plain riding crop from its place among the neatly arranged whips and paddles. He knew how to use that one from his volunteer jobs.

She gave a startled yelp when he hit her one shoulder with the crop.

“That got your attention, my pretty?” he asked, moving along and hitting her flank.

“Ow!”

“Better get used to it. I can do that whenever I want, you know.” He stuck the crop in behind her tail to tickle the folds where he had touched her. It would all end there, inevitably. In fact he could rear up and take her right now if he wanted to, and she wouldn’t be able to resist, wouldn’t even use a safeword to stop him, he was almost sure. The thought made his member drop down, but he brushed the idea away for now. That would be too much like the cum dumps, and she hadn’t sounded very enthusiastic about those when they talked about them earlier. He wanted to, if not own, then at least touch her mind before he got there.

Walking around her hind end, he continued talking. “But I will do it less if you’re a good filly. Understand?” He whacked her other flank, so low that the flap of the crop bent under her belly when it hit.

“Ah! Yes,” she gasped.

“Good.” He put his muzzle to her chest and drew a bold, broad line up the side of her neck with his lips. Her fur was soft and smelled of something nice that he had no name for. But near the end of his stroke she twisted her head to the side, away from him.

“Keep still, my pretty,” he chided gently, and she steeled her jaws and slowly turned her head straight ahead again.

He wondered if he should have cropped her for shying away. But it was only fair to give her a chance to obey first. They like it when they can hope for a kinder master, the chief slaver had told him. That was him now.

He moved his head up and blew softly into one of her ears for one long slow exhalation. The ear twitched a couple of times, but she did not budge. A quick learner.

He stuck out his tongue and licked the inside of the ear. He had worried a bit about the taste of ear, but the cute little yip the gave made him forget all about taste. It wasn’t that bad anyway. He bit down on the ear very carefully, coming up warm and rubbery between his front teeth. Then he pulled, twisting her neck and head around.

“You – you won’t get away with this!” she gasped, suddenly defiant.

Ah, but I already have, he thought. Not out loud, of course. But – very well, she wanted him to be a villain? He could work with that. “I won’t?” he purred, letting go of the ear. “Tell me, who’s going to stop me?”

“I . . . somepony –”

“Do you think the Royal Guard is going to show up out of nowhere and save you?”

“No –”

“Or perhaps somepony else?” He swung the crop suddenly, hitting her cheek with a slap. “Who do you work for?”

“What? I don’t –” She sounded confused, but he forged on.

“You don’t intend to tell me you’ve come all the way out here all by yourself, do you?” Shifting sides, he hit her other cheek to. He hoped she could think of something ‘out here’ could mean; he couldn’t just pause everything to explain what he imagined had gone before the scene. He didn’t really know himself anyway.

“I did! I came alone!” the mare insisted.

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “Didn’t your mother teach you not to lie?” He went back to the wall he had gotten the crop from and picked down a slim cane of the kind he had used on uppity waitresses in his volunteer job. “Do you know what happens to fillies who lie? They get punished.”

The mare didn’t answer him. She was breathing out and in noisily while he walked slowly towards her hind end. “Lift up your tail!” he commanded.

Slowly and a bit jerkily she pulled her tail away and to the side. He took aim and swung the cane so it hit her buttocks with a loud crack.

The mare screamed.

It wasn’t a shrill scream, or a long one, or even particularly loud, but a scream it was all the same. Sip suddenly realized that in all his time in the Clocktower he had never heard a pony scream close by. Sometimes muffled screams wafted out from closed doors or around corners, but those were ones of ecstasy or surprise. This was unmistakably a scream of pain.

The waitresses he caned had not screamed, at most whimpered quietly under their breath. He didn’t think he had used more force now – but perhaps this mare had less experience than those waitresses. She had even told him she was a beginner.

He put the cane down and tried to figure out what to do now. Had he gone too far? Should he stop everything and try again another time, when he was more in control of himself? Or, on the other hoof, was he supposed to continue from here, unyielding?

The mare’s quick heavy breathing was the loudest sound in the room. Presently it slowed down slightly. “St-staircase,” she whispered.

That settled it. He had promised her not to apologize if she used a safeword. It told him what to do, too: Slow down. Not stop.

He moved close to her and put his muzzle up close to her ear. “Had enough already?” he sneered softly.

She shied away from his voice, and he let her. “I got a map,” she said quietly between breaths, “from . . . Professor, um, Kleinpferd.”

“Kleinpferd is a fool!” he shouted. It should have been a dismissive growl, but he had to raise his voice to hide his relief that not only was she still in the game, she was building onto the story by herself. “She’s no match for me, and she knows it. We won’t see any of her here.”

The mare kept her head turned away from him. He walked around towards her other side.

“For a moment I actually thought you might be a threat. Perhaps I ought to punish you again, just for trusting the likes of ‘Professor’ Kleinpferd . . .”

She shivered. “No – please . . .”

He ran a hoof up along her neck, raising her head. “Do I own you?”

With only a moment’s hesitation, she nodded against his hoof.

“It’s time you started showing it, don’t you think?”

It looked like she was frowning beneath the blindfold. “What do you want me to do?” She pulled on her ties with a hind leg, as if to show there was not much she could to.

He moved up to her ear again, and whispered into it: “I want you to beg.”

She nodded slowly and lowered her head a bit. “Um. Please don’t –”

“Stop!” he barked. “When I tell you to beg, it goes ‘please do’.”

She tossed her head and tried again. “Please . . . let me go?”

He picked up the crop he had left on the floor and bapped her on the flank. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Please . . . uh, please take me?”

“Better,” he said, though he wasn’t quite sure he could follow through on that. The boner he was sure he’d had earlier had gone, lost in the stress of coming up with a story for her on the spot. “Be specific,” he ordered. If worst came to worst, he would have to call her something nasty, claim she wasn’t worthy of his cock. He didn’t much like that.

“Stick – put your throbbing stallion-rod into me and fuck me like the cheap slut I am!”

It took all his strength not to burst out laughing. Fortunately she couldn’t see his desperate grimaces. He flailed in her general direction with the crop, hitting her somewhere.

“Good,” he finally managed to say. He put both a foreleg and his neck around her withers, resting his head against her neck. “And now with feeling.”

“Please, please fuck me, sir. Just once. Or many times, if you want.”

“Really?” he teased. She was warm and soft under him; he could feel her barrel expanding and contracting while she breathed. He nibbled lazily at the skin of her neck, felt his penis drop down again.

“Yes, really. Please, I need it. Show this slave her place.”

The erection growing under him hit something unfamiliar, which he realized was her side. Her fur tickled a bit, spurring it to grow faster and larger. For a moment all he wanted was to stay where he was, feeling her warmth and breathing, hearing her plead. But it would be cruel to make her keep coming up with things to say. He stifled a sigh and let go of her, putting both forelegs back on the ground.

He put a hoof back onto her marehood. It was wetter than it had been before. On impulse, he turned the hoof around so its tip pressed in between the folds, slid it up and down. “Hard?” he asked.

“Yes, hard. Please?”

He had gotten himself maneuvered around her, so he could put his forehooves up on her rump and point his now throbbing stallion-rod at her slit. After weeks of practice in the cum dumps, aiming was not a problem for him. With the head a hoofwidth inside her, he forced himself to pause for a moment. “Now count,” he said.

“Um, one?” she said uncertainly as he slowly pushed all the way in.

“Good.” He pulled out again and suddenly thrust back in.

“Two.”

He tried to listen for clues in her tone for whether she was enjoying what he did or only playing along, to get it over with. But it was difficult; he had no good idea what to expect.

“Three.”

Her voice was quavering a bit. Was that excitement? It was too late to worry about now. He tried to allow himself just to enjoy the act.

“. . . five . . . six . . . seven . . .”

He closed his eyes and let the sound of her counting fill his mind.

“. . . nine . . . ten, eleven, twelve, thirteeenfourteenfifteensixteen–”

His body took over, and when it was done he let himself flump down on her back, hugging her like a blanket while the afterglow wore off. “Now you’re mine,” he whispered. Part of him worried she would notice how often he kept coming back to that. But he couldn’t help it – it was what his mind was full of, a real mare that kept being his. That could end soon enough; he had to savor it while it was true.

Was that it? He was fairly sure he could declare the scene to be done now without being a failure. But he didn’t really want to – he wanted to keep doing things to the mare, to go on being important to her.

He got another idea. He went to the supplies closet again and got out two more items. The first was a dock ring that he clamped to the small of her tail and tied to up to the strait-cover so she couldn’t let the tail hang straight down, but had to keep it either raised or out to one side.

Next was a bridle with an integrated ball gag for a bit. “Test your bell, slave,” he commanded. She froze for a second and slowly swallowed before she flicked her tail to the side and her safety bell filled the room with a single brilliant ding.

When the instructors first taught Sip about the bell rules – never, ever, block a pony’s mouth without first hearing that their bell still works! – he had worried that it would a horrible distraction to interrupt a scene with such safety instructions. But now the ritual actually felt oddly comforting. Not only did he know she was safe – he knew she still knew she was here of her own free will and could stop him at any time. Her silence alone would tell him she was still okay with what he was doing.

“Say ah.” He pulled the bridle over her head, making sure the gag settled right in her mouth, and began tightening the various straps. They would go on top of the blindfold she was still wearing, but that was alright.

“What I’m going to do now,” he explained while he worked, “is let your hooves free, and then we’re going for a walk. I want everypony to see that you belong to me, from your muzzle to your pretty little snatch. Do you understand that?”

She nodded slowly, and he kissed her forehead before he bent down to release the hooks he had tied her hooves down with.

At first it was slow going. She followed him only hesitantly, not being able to see where she stepped. It helped a bit after he got the idea to clip the leash to one of the bit rings on the bridle instead of her collar; then he could show her more precisely which way to go. But it still took half the length of the dungeons before she began trusting him to warn her of sudden steps and curbs, and stopped walking like she expected to drop into a hole with every step.

He noticed it was getting late. There were fewer ponies milling about than there had been when he first led her to the training room. He took her on a circuit through the slave pits before doubling back along the main corridor, and there too several of the booths were closing down for the night. Reluctantly he decided he couldn’t keep her much longer, not when he didn’t know when she had intended to leave.

There was a cluster of aftercare rooms by the entrance to the slave market. He guided her into one of them and began freeing her of the bondage gear. Dock ring, strait-cover, bridle, and finally the blindfold all were dumped into the toy hopper by the door. Later the maid staff would wheel them away to be steam cleaned before they went back into circulation.

“Well, that’s all,” he said to her, afraid that the awkward would come back now.

She shook her head to get her mane back into shape. “Thanks for owning me,” she said with a small blush.

“No problem.” His mind felt blank for a moment. “What now?”

“If that was a scene, I think we’re supposed to do aftercare.”

“Right. Well, this is an aftercare room.” Immediately he felt stupid for stating the obvious, but she looked around the room with a new interest. Perhaps it was the first time she had seen one? It looked a bit like the the safeword room they had been in earlier in the evening, but was not quite as brightly lit and had a bed in addition to the armchairs. In the back of the room, a doorway led off to a shower.

Sip’s intro course had had a lot to say about aftercare, but he still wasn’t sure exactly what to do. Hug her, comfort her, make sure she feels safe and loved and valued, yes. But the last part was also what the established subs who presented had said they got out of a good scene itself. Should he ask her what she needed? Would she know?

She was still looking around, smiling, but she also seemed nervous or bothered by something, making little steps in place. “Are you alright?” he asked.

She snapped her attention back to him. “What? Yes.” She blushed again. “It’s just, that part at the end? Where I couldn’t see and you dragged me around everywhere? That was really hot.”

“It was?” He felt suddenly buoyant at the thought that he had done something right, at least.

“Yes. And it’s not because I don’t want – but I also really want just to go home and, you know –” She blushed even harder than before and turned her face away, breathing heavily.

Sip wasn’t sure he knew. If he were to run home now, it would be to whack off, but surely that couldn’t be what she was talking about. He wasn’t even fully sure how that worked for mares.

“D-do you want to watch?” she asked suddenly, a bit louder than she had been talking so far. She had stopped fidgeting and stood looking at him with a nervous grin, eyes shining.

Sip had no idea what was going on. “Yeah, sure.”

“Okay.” She walked unsteadily over to the bed and slowly lay down on her side with her hind end towards him, shaking visibly. Sip almost stopped her – she didn’t have to do whatever she was about to – but then he saw the look on her face and concluded she was shaking with excitement rather than fear or discomfort.

She lay still for a moment, and then, glancing quickly at Sip to make sure he was watching, stuck a forehoof in between her hind legs and began grinding it against her marehood.

In a way this wasn’t much different from what the desperate freebie mares in the slave pits had done – but they didn’t count, he was only a passer-by to them. And he had done his best not to look at them; that would just have encouraged them. This mare, though, he wanted to encourage. But he didn’t know how, so he just stared.

He stole a peek at her face, but she had shut her eyes and was turning her head from side to side, silently mouthing something.

Looking back to the main show, he noticed the was concentrating her efforts on a point at the bottom end of her slit. Oh, right, he realized, clitoris. He knew that, of course, but it was one thing to have it pointed out in an anatomy lecture, another thing entirely to to have it happen right in front of him. He kept watching, mesmerized –

“You can help,” she suddenly said. She had stopped working her hoof, and when he looked up he saw her looking right at him. “With your, uh, throbbing stallion-rod.” She grinned puckishly.

Throbbing indeed – he didn’t think he had been that hard all night. He had not ordered her to invite him in, this time. He couldn’t even tell her what to do at all, now that the scene was over. But there she was, asking him to cover her, him in particular. He walked towards her, trying to recall whether ‘mare lying on her side, stallion upright’ was an official authorized position, but finding he couldn’t remember and didn’t care.

She emitted a long content hum when he pushed into her, unfolding her wing and wrapping it around him. He let her drag him down to her body, surrounded by her on all sides, warm body around his cock, wing around the rest of him. He stretched his forelegs out in an attempt to do the same to her, weaving them in between hers and pulling on her chest.

He was surprised by how soft the underside of her wing was. It had a curious smell too, dusty and slightly sour and yet somehow intoxicating. He squirmed around a bit to tease out more of whatever it was, jiggling his cock around inside her as he did so. The position didn’t allow him to make the bold forceful thrusts porn had taught him stallions were supposed to do, but the jiggles must have worked anyway; she was whimpering first quietly but then louder, and her wing started twitching erratically above him, and all he wanted was for her to keep doing that.

But then something happened with her body, clamping down firmly on his cock, and he came like he’d never come before, a great wave of warmth and bliss that seemed to start everywhere in his body at once and radiated out towards the end of his legs, his tail, his ears . . . She was whinnying wordlessly, and he discovered he was too, clutched tightly beneath her wing, not entirely sure where he ended and she began.

Afterwards he lay on top of her, still hugging with his forelegs, trying to contain what had happened.

“That was a good ending,” she whispered at last.

He nodded silently against her neck, nibbling gently at her skin to punctuate his agreement. His member had retracted back into himself, so he rolled off her, out from under the wing, to get a better look at her face.

She was smiling. “I liked the Caballeron act too,” she said.

“The what act?”

“Sorry – Doctor Caballeron is a character in the Daring Do books. I always –”

“You read Daring Do?” At once he felt wide awake.

She nodded. “It’s kind of why I’m here, in a way.”

“Which one is your favorite?” he couldn’t help ask.

“Hmmm. I think, Daring Do, Mystery Mare.”

“Oh, that one.” Sip remembered that book – the only way for Daring to reach the Lost Quarter of Camelistan without attracting troublesome attention had been to be captured by slave traders who marched her there, chained to a column of other unfortunates. There had been about a hundred pages of whips and cages and clinking manacles, and Sip had never dared check it out of the library a second time, afraid that it would reveal he was interested in that kind of things.

“And what is yours?” asked the mare.

“Uh. Daring Do in the Mines of Mareia, perhaps?” He didn’t really have a single favorite, but Mareia was usually a safe choice.

“Oh, that’s not bad either,” she said –

An hour passed. Or more; Sip wasn’t sure. It was a long time since he had talked to anypony about Daring Do, and he almost forgot to feel awkward because it was a mare he was talking to, one he had just been intimate with. It was nice to recall his favorite scenes together with someone who liked them for the same reasons he did.

When they ran out of Daring Do memories to share, they shared some silence instead, and the silence felt meaningful and close and relaxed. Sip watched the mare’s face. She was smiling faintly, looking comfortable and safe and valued. It must have worked while he wasn’t thinking about it, though he had never imagined aftercare would be like that.

She sat up halfway, pulling them back to the present. “I’m sorry I staircased on you again,” she said.

“It’s all right,” he said, holding out a hoof to touch her shoulder. “Actually, I was glad you did,” he added after some time.

“You were?”

“Yes. It made me sure that . . . you were still there, you know? That you could stop me if I went wrong. Bucking noob.”

She laughed softly. “I think we did alright.”

“Yeah.”

“But . . .” She looked away from him for a moment. “Next time, I think I can take that. If you just give me some time to prepare.”

“Next time?” He hadn’t dared think about whether there would be one.

She turned back to him with a suddenly vulnerable expression. “If you want to meet again, that is.”

“Yes! When?” He probably ought to play it cooler, but he couldn’t find it in himself. And the way she brightened up was worth it anyway.

“How about next Tuesday? At seven, perhaps?”

He nodded. Tuesday was a whole week away, but of course she’d want some time to try other doms too. It was her right, anyway – he couldn’t expect to get her for himself after just one scene.

“Suppose I’ll be for sale at Honest Bram’s – you know where that is?”

He nodded again. “Deal!”

She stood up from the bed. “It’s been nice, but I think I need to get home now. See you Tuesday?”

“See you.” He sat up. “Wait – I don’t think I got your name?”

She turned back towards him, halfway to the door. “I’m Society Slave C-557,” she said carefully and sighed. “Look, it’s nothing personal, but I promised myself not to give out my details to the first dom I fall in with. I mean, I think you’re all right, but . . . I’d hate myself if I couldn’t even stick to that.” She looked worriedly back at him.

“Sounds fair,” he said. “Then I’ll just call you George.”

She looked confused, but then smiled and shook her head. And left.

Sip was only an earth pony. But walking home from Civic Square that night he felt like he might be flying all the same.

4. Trainer

Sip wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that he didn’t run into C-557 during his next volunteer shift in the slave market.

No, that wasn’t true. Being honest with himself, he was pretty sure he should be glad she wasn’t there. Seeing her leave with another dom would just have been miserable. In fact he shouldn’t even be looking for her. But it was hard not to. Twice or thrice he did double-takes when a pale blue mare appeared in his peripheral vision, but it was never her.

He had hoped that the relative success he had had on his previous visit would make it easier for him to pick up another sub for himself as he wandered the dungeons after his shift. But somehow it didn’t seem to work that way. If anything, it felt even harder than before to decide to make a move on any of the subs.

When he had been through the slave pits once without being able to pick anypony, he suddenly realized that he had been comparing them all to her in his thoughts and found them less approachable, more risky, less attractive. That wouldn’t do, of course. Even if he managed to pick a mare, it wouldn’t be fair to put her through a scene where he was constantly comparing her to somepony else.

With only a small pang of regret he gave up on new mares for today and instead trudged up to the library in the dominants’ lounge. There were still useful things he could do with his time: planning out the tryst he had scheduled with C-557 next Tuesday. He owed her better than just winging it, now that he had time to prepare.

He leafed through a few of the dom manuals they had used in his introduction course. There were parts of them that made better sense now that he had tried running a scene on his own. Make a note of things your sub reacts well to, for example, so you can reward her with them later. When he had first read that, it hadn’t sounded particularly helpful, just a truism – but now he got out a stack of index cards and began making those notes.

What had she liked from that session? She had said afterwards that leading her blindfolded around the dungeon had been hot. He wrote that down on a card, but added in smaller letters, Not as last part, though? Must release tension after.

She had practically asked him to try caning her once more, too. That made another card.

Then there was the ‘Caballeron act’. He wrote a card for that, a bit reluctantly. It had been fun to improvise the villain role, but for a planned scene she would expect something with fewer plotholes in it. He wasn’t sure he would be up to that.

Was that all? Ah, no! He grabbed one last card and wrote down, Masturbation (Her!), remembering how excited she had been at doing that in front of him. He gave himself a pat on the back for having noticed something himself, not just waiting for her to tell him what she liked.

So this was what he had to work with. Four hits from one night; that didn’t sound all bad. Of course he would have to find something new to do too; he was only all too aware of how small a corner of the vast landscape of kinks he had explored yet.

That was what the library was for. He grabbed a few recent issue of Spank!, a doms-only inspiration newsletter that could not be taken out of the lounge, and began reading carefully, looking for ideas that that would combine with his cards.

* * *

Finally Tuesday came.

It must be a slow day at Honest Bram’s because the salesclerk started by showing Sip three or four completely wrong slaves. Sip knew that ritual: give the buyer a bit of a runaround to keep the place looking active and help make it interesting for the waiting subs. But he hadn’t really thought of it from the customer’s perspective, and he found himself growing impatient even as he did his best to play his role.

“Then how about this one, sir?” With a loud rattle, the salespony opened the door to one of the large holding cages, motioning Sip towards the solitary pony lying on the floor at the far end of the cage. It was her! She lifted her head at the noise, eyes widening as she recognized Sip, but didn’t say anything. She was tied up with many windings of rope around her forecannons and hind cannons, and had bright red clamps on her wings that allowed her to wiggle them somewhat but not unfold them.

“Twenty-three years old, only one owner, never bred,” the salespony recited. “Excellent choice either as a first plaything, or for rounding out a collection. Very eager to please, too.” He held a hoof up in front of C-557’s head, and she licked it sloppily, looking attentively up at him while sneaking short glances at Sip.

Sip wasn’t sure what he felt about that. He went slowly around her, trying to look thoughtful and critical as he surveyed her. He put a foreleg in between her legs and groped her teats appraisingly. She gave a very small gasp but still didn’t say anything.

“Open wide, sweetie. Yes, good girl.” The clerk pried the mare’s jaws apart with one hoof while pointing her at Sip with another. “These are some absolute quality chompers.”

Sip had little idea how to see from a slave’s teeth how much she ought to be worth, but he made a show of inspecting her mouth anyway. “Hmm – this might do,” he allowed cautiously.

The salespony let go of her head, fixing Sip with a charismatic smile. “And she’ll be yours for the entirely ridiculous sum of ten brands.”

Sip watched her carefully for a reaction to the figure. When he joined the society he had been given five brands – the largest denomination of play money – to start with, but he had made a lot of income from volunteering since then and had instructed his colleagues at Bram’s to set the asking price high when he left instructions for how she would be presented for sale earlier in the day. To his disappointment, however, she did not seem to be aware that she was on sale for a much larger sum than most beginning doms would be able to raise.

“A bit steep,” he said, frowning. “Is there any kind of deal you can offer on that?”

The other stallion raised his eyebrows silently.

“I can also just go elsewhere, you know,” said Sip, forcing himself to shrug nonchalantly. Even though he knew it was all an act, and it was certain he would be leaving with this mare, it was hard to pretend he might walk away.

The salespony sighed. “I have some latitude,” he said smoothly. “How’s nine brands sound?”

Sip walked slowly around her, pretending to be deliberating intensely while kicking idly at her gaskins and buttocks like he had seen other buyers do when he was the clerk. “I was thinking more,” he countered eventually, “of something like seven and two.”

“Eight.”

“Throw in the wing restraints, and you’ve got a deal.”

“Deal!”

The salespony tied a yellow ‘SOLD’ ribbon to one of the mare’s wing clamps and went out in back to prepare the sales paperwork. Meanwhile Sip fetched the flatbed wagon he had parked in the alley behind Bram’s.

Two of the volunteer clerks helped him lift the still bound mare onto the wagon and secure her to it with neon green cargo straps such that she wouldn’t slide around during transport. Well, perhaps he used a few more straps than strictly necessary for safety. He could have left her free to move her head a bit during transport. But he was buying her fair and square, and if he indulged himself a bit in tying her down tighter than he needed to, who were there to complain? (She could, of course. But she didn’t.)

Sip paid his eight brands to the treasury mare on duty and signed the sales contract without bothering to read through it. He knew it was just a standard form, carefully worded to sound hot but actually place as few constraints as possible on the kinds of play it could be used for. Its main purpose was to remind him that the sale did not override the need for consent from both parties and the sub could bow out at any time. But he already knew that.

He went back to the wagon and started pulling it through the market with a spring in his step.

The training room he had reserved for the night was about halfway across the upper dungeons. Sip had traded away his afternoon shift at The Hayburger and been there hours in advance, making sure everything was ready and going over the plan in his head several last times. It was full of contingencies and options for how to get back on track if something unexpected happened. She might surprise him with something completely out of left field that he hadn’t planned for, but then he would just have to wing it the rest of the night. It hadn’t been a complete catastrophe last time, and hopefully the rest of the plan could be reused later.

This class of training room was large enough that he could drive the wagon right into it. He shrugged out of the pulling harness and went back to lock the door after him. Then he turned around to inspect his purchase. She was looking up at him silently.

“What is your name, slave?” he asked.

She thought for a bit. “Whatever my master wishes it to be.” At the end of the sentence she briefly broke into a grin, but quickly caught herself and got her face back to earnest attention.

He felt his pulse quicken hearing her voice, just as he remembered it. “You are now George,” he said, reaching out a hoof and touching her forehead.

“Yes, master.”

So far, so good; now for the next step. He felt his cock slide out of its sheath, beginning to swell in anticipation. He waited for a few seconds, letting it grow while he thought about what he was going to do.

“Test your bell, George.”

Ding.

He put his forelegs up on the wagon on both sides of her head, positioning his penis right in front of her muzzle. “Suck,” he commanded.

To his surprise, she did!

He had thought he would have to force her, that she would try to pull away like he surely would if somepony shoved an instrument of urination into his face. In fact that was supposed to be the point of it, showing her who was boss before he would begin being kind and caring later on. But rather than that it felt like she reached out with her lips to guide his dick in between them.

He carefully pushed forward about half a hoofwidth – one of his lecturers had been rather insistent about the choking hazards of face-fucking an immobilized pony too deeply – and got his second surprise. He had vaguely expected a pony’s mouth would be a kind of ill-fitting imperfect approximation of a marehood, but he hadn’t accounted for her tongue. It darted and danced around the tip of his shaft, up and down the modest length of cock he dared to stick into her mouth. At times it felt like there was more than one of it, splitting into an array of sensual tentacles caressing his cock from all sides. He would have pulled out in horrified surprise if it hadn’t also felt so good – –

He felt the front of his dick hit something, and realized with alarm he had begun sliding further in and gone far beyond the point he had intended to. Below him, he could see the mare’s muscles suddenly tense up against the straps, and her tail twisted jerkily from side to side, as if she was preparing to ring her safety bell.

Oops! He pushed off with his forelegs and pulled out, out, out into the cool air of the training room. The mare inhaled noisily and started coughing and sputtering under him. Don’t apologize! flashed through his mind. He couldn’t just stop now, but why hadn’t she rung her bell? Had it failed? He couldn’t continue either, not without being sure he hadn’t ruined her voice.

He waited until her gasps subsided, and then asked her coolly, “Are you quite finished?”

“Yes, master. Sorry, master.”

“Good. Continue.” He put the cock up to her muzzle again, and she resumed sucking, a little more careful now, but still eager and active.

Sip’s mind reeled. His plan was either failing horribly already or succeeding beyond his wildest dreams. She was supposed to feel revolted and degraded, a helpless, powerless victim of his whims – but instead she was humming contently around his dick. Her bound wings fluttered erratically up and down, and he could see her leg muscles not so much fight her bonds as stretch happily against them. And through all of it she was licking and squeezing his dick like a particularly delicious piece of candy, sending jabs of ecstasy back through the shaft into his loins. He couldn’t tell himself this was wrong.

He put a hoof down and began rubbing the back of his shaft, the part he didn’t dare push all the way in. She opened up her mouth and drew breath in around his dick, the inrush of air suddenly cooling the saliva-covered front end. Before he could react she closed it and resumed sucking, warm and moist and welcome. He rubbed along the base of his shaft, faster and faster as he felt the tight knot of tension building in his groin. The head of his cock flared out, and he felt her slow down just a little as it filled her mouth, but not stopping. Sliding his hoof further down, he wrapped it under his shaft, stroking as much of his length as he could without hitting her in the face. It took only seconds to push him over the edge. He clenched his teeth to stop himself from crying out as the first thick shot of seed erupted in his slave’s mouth. His hips jerked back and forth in time with the eruptions of jizz, no longer holding back, but somehow she kept her lips closed around him, squealing with excitement as she milked out as much cum as possible.

When he crawled back down off her, she lay there with bulging cheeks.

“Good slaves swallow,” he said softly.

Her irises went small at the implied command, but he saw her jaw and throat begin to move in small starts. He reached out a hoof to tousle her mane while she worked. Eventually she opened her mouth and breathed noisily through it, to show it was all down.

“I’m going to untie you now,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m letting you go. I paid a lot of dough for you, and I’m going to get my money’s worth out of that, understand?”

She had closed her eyes and looked like she was trying to turn in on herself. “Yes,” she whispered. “M’ster.”

“There’s nowhere to run, anyway. If you do manage to get out the door and bolt, the guards are just going to catch you and bring you back to me.” That was a blatant lie, of course. The guards that did patrol the society’s dungeons were there most of all to make sure the safewords were being respected. If he wanted them to take an active part in his scene he would need to book (and pay for) a particular role-play script in advance. She knew that too, but he hoped she would understand and let him set the mood anyway. “You’re not going to like what happens then. Or you can be a good little slave and do as I tell you, and then I think we’ll get along pretty well. Do you understand, slave?”

She made a strangled little sound and tried to nod against her straps.

He set to untying her from the wagon. “You have a pretty mane,” he remarked while he worked. “Perhaps I’ll let you keep it.”

It was some time before she answered. “I could carry it around for you, master?” she suggested uncertainly.

Ooh, clever girl. “We will do that to begin with,” he said with a chuckle and gave her stifle a small squeeze while he unspooled the rope from her hind legs. “And now we’re going to find out how honest Bram really is, I guess. Down here!”

She jumped down to the floor, and he took the wing clamps off her. She stood there wearing only her collar and decorative hoof straps, tossing her mane and shaking her legs one by one.

He gave her some time to get her circulation back, and then sighed theatrically. “George,” he said disapprovingly, “has nopony taught you how to stand in front of you master?”

She looked over at him, frowning. “Um, I don’t think so,” she said, shrinking away from him ever so slightly. “No, master?”

“Eight brands,” he muttered to himself in what he hoped was an appropriately bitter tone. “Only one owner, he said. Excellent choice, he said.” He sighed again, turning his attention back to George. “Okay, we’re going to start fixing that right now.”

Position training had not been among the suggestions Sip found in Spank! when he was planning the scene. But it had been mentioned often enough for that. Practically every issue had an article leading with, ‘When plain old position training has lost its spark . . .’ and gradually he got the impression that perhaps he was supposed to begin with that before the spark, whatever it was, would be lost and he would need to move on to the more exotic options from the magazine.

He remembered that he had been shown the position manual in his intro class, but he had not listened too closely then, because it didn’t seem to involve anypony being tied up. (Besides, he had been more focused on listening for surprise safewords). Once he pulled down the manual and really read it, he realized he should have been more attentive. It turned out the positions were not taught in the sub introduction course, such that they could be trained in them by their own doms instead. Since C-557 was a new member, he could become the one to first teach her the basics – but only if he struck fast before she found another dom to do it. So he had memorized a good number of the positions and made it a major part of the program for today.

The training session was surprisingly enjoyable once he got it going. He had a riding crop down and used it to correct small mistakes in her posture – not so much hitting her with it as pointing and prodding – and she on her part did her best to be putty in his hooves, eager to please like the salespony had promised.

He didn’t have a word for the feeling he got when she jumped and spun to get into a precise position at his command, save that he liked it a lot. And as for the look on her face when he praised her for doing something right . . . he actually relaxed his standards a bit so he could get that more often.

A few times she did goof up, mixing up the names of the positions or forgetting the head and tail poses that went with them. He didn’t make a big deal out of that, just sighed and rolled his eyes and said, “It all adds up . . .” in an ominous tone, leaving it for her to imagine what it would add up to. It worked, too; he could see she tried extra hard for some time after he had to do that.

He spent more time on the position training than he had planned to, but eventually he decided it was enough of that. George seemed to be getting tired, reacting slower and making more little mistakes than she had at first.

She ended up lying on her back on the floor with her legs sprawling out in all four directions, a position that the manual called ‘surrender’. He savored the sight of her that way, laid bare and open before him, for some time before moving on to the next phase.

“That’s good,” he praised her. “Now stay in position but bring one foreleg back along your stomach and start touching yourself.”

He could see her breathing quicken as the implications of his order dawned on her. She wore a nervous little grin as she hesitantly moved a hoof back and began massaging her marehood.

He walked around her, inspecting, while she got into a rhythm. The only sound in the room was his slow hoofsteps and the repeated wet slicks of her grinding along. He wasn’t sure if it was completely bizarre or insanely hot – here she was, lying on the cold hard floor pleasuring herself to the room, just because he had told her to. He hadn’t even touched her. That was a new sort of power, different from the kind with ropes and chains that he had expected to wield. But he liked it.

“Are you enjoying yourself, slave?” he asked.

“Y-yes, master.”

“Tell me when you’re just about to come.”

“Mmmh.” She made a nodding movement with her head. It was not a proper answer, but he let it slide. After all, this was meant as a pleasant little break for her before he was going to attempt edging – which the training manuals had made clear was a real thing, not just a made-up idea for erotic stories, but given precious little information about when enough would be enough. He had reluctantly concluded there was probably no substitute for getting real experience himself, which meant he had to start doing it without really knowing what he was doing.

“Almost n-now,” she suddenly gasped, yanking him back into the now.

“Stop,” he replied. “Back into position, hooves spread to the sides.”

She did as she told her and lay there splayed out on the ground, panting. Her teats were pointing straight into the air, trembling slightly. He put a forehoof down on one of them, feeling the soft tissue give way as he pushed down, until it reached the limit of its shape and came up firm and warm under his hoof. He moved the hoof around in little circles, massaging the boob, listening as her breath grew more jagged. He lifted the hoof until only the tip of the teat touched it, and brushed the hoof against it lightly on the way to the other teat, where he repeated the movement.

Now she was making little strangled whines at the beginning of each breath. Her marehood was dark and glistening with secretions seeping out from between the folds. He reached his muzzle down to sniff at it, and then, on impulse, stuck his tongue out and licked. It tasted like –

“AAaaah!” she shouted, and began convulsing in front of him, her marehood turning in and out, up and down in patterns he hadn’t thought possible. Her body twisted and turned as she moaned loud gibberish, though she managed to keep her legs mostly stretched out in the position he had ordered her into.

Whoops – so much for edging. Oh well, he’d known he’d probably fail at it the first time. Only it didn’t feel like failing. In the sudden clarity of hindsight he wondered if the whole ‘edging’ business had been a lie he told himself so he would have a way out if he didn’t manage to make her come.

There was still a track to get back on, though. He stood up and stepped back from her, trying to put on a disappointed expression while her throes waned. “George,” he said with a sigh, “did you just orgasm?”

“Yes . . . ahh . . . master.”

“Did I allow you to do that?”

She frowned. “Um, no . . . but –”

“What am I going to do with you now?” He walked slowly around her towards her head end.

“I don’t know,” she said, sounding confused. “. . . er, master.”

In his imagination, it had been her who would suggest that he punish her at this point, but she seemed to completely fail to read his mind. He sighed again. Okay, it wasn’t as if he depended on her telling him what to do.

“Assume the ‘present’ position,” he said. “Keep your head on the ground”.

That wasn’t easy for her; she had to first roll over on her belly and then carefully winch her rear end into the air using only her hind legs. Sip stood by and watched her efforts, being careful not to help. When she was fully in position he walked over to the tool wall and picked down the cane. She followed him with her eyes, watching him solemnly. He remembered she had been blindfolded when he caned her the week before; she wouldn’t recognize it by sight. He took a quick swing at the air, and then she reacted, eyes going small as she remembered the sound.

“I think you’ve met this one already,” he told her. “It’s a magic wand that makes bad, worthless slaves into nice slaves who still have a chance of being useful to their master. And right now it’s your best friend. Do you know why?”

“B-because I’m a bad, worthless slave?”

Kneeling in front of her, he held the cane up to her muzzle. “Kiss your best friend, slave.”

She managed to stick her head out a fraction of a hoof, and touched her lips to the cane. Just as he was about to pull it away she did it again, and he ended up sliding the cane slowly past her while she planted kisses along the length of it.

He stood up and walked silently around to her behind. She was holding her tail obediently to the side as he had taught her when they trained the position earlier. Small jitters were traveling down the tail, and he grabbed the tail briefly to give the end with the safety bell a light shake – not that he really thought she was forgetting the safewords, but it wouldn’t hurt to remind her, before things were about to get real. No sound, other than her deep, deliberate breaths.

He touched the cane lightly against her buttocks, taking aim while he found a good footing. “Count the strokes,” he ordered. Then, after waiting for ten of his own heartbeats, he swung.

“OooONE!” she shouted, so loud it was almost a scream.

Sip waited a goodly time before the next stroke, to give her time to tap out if she was going to do that. But nothing happened. He swung again, a little lower this time.

A few seconds passed. “Two,” she called out, a hard edge to her voice as if she was speaking through clenched teeth.

Sip swung the cane again. This time she took even longer to respond, hyperventilating loudly. At last she half whispered, “th-three.”

He put down the cane and went back to her head end. She lay still against the floor, with her eyes clenched tightly shut and a small trickle of tears running down her cheek. He knelt down in front of her, stroking her forelock gently.

“You’re doing very well, George,” he said. “And since you’re being good, I’m going to give you a choice.”

She opened an eye, looking up at him.

“Either we can do the rest of your punishment like this. Or I can strap you to a rack and give you a gag you can shriek around all you want.”

From a planning point of view it was a bit of a gamble to let her choose for herself. But on the other hand, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go through with the next part of the plan if it wasn’t something she wanted. In fact, he was pretty sure he didn’t. So it couldn’t be helped.

She thought for what seemed to be a long time. Eventually she took a deep breath and answered, “The rack, please.”

The rack Sip had selected was one of the three that were permanently mounted in this kind of training room, a simple upright one consisting of four sturdy wooden legs in parallel to the sub’s legs, supporting an adjustable horizontal plank along the bottom of her barrel, all with plenty of attachment points for straps and ropes. While setting up for the session he had mounted a headrest extension that stuck out in front of it and would support a pony’s head if she stuck her neck out horizontally.

As he led George over towards the rack, it occurred to him the he really should have made her crawl instead. But it was too late for that. Another time.

He had her walk directly onto the rack, spreading her forelegs wide apart and making small steps to avoid kicking the hardware in the middle. Sip used the hoof-operated hydraulic mechanism to raise the top plank until it just touched her body – it could go higher than that, lifting the sub’s hooves off the floor, but the manual had warned him that could make breathing harder, and he didn’t want to need to watch out for that in addition to everything else.

He set out strapping her tightly to the rack, starting with a blindfold and a band around the back of her poll to keep her head down, and continuing down her neck, forelegs, body, hind legs, until her every joint was securely immobilized. For her wings he put on the clamps he’d gotten from Bram’s, tying them together with string so she couldn’t fold the wings down to her sides, and then he tied her dock up towards those.

The gag came last – he’d wanted to leave her free to complain if he did one of the straps too tight. But she hadn’t said anything at all, other from occasional little hums that sounded almost comfortable while he tightened the straps, and a startled yelp once when he chanced to brush one of the straps against her buttocks. Eventually, though, he had her test her bell and stuffed her mouth with a big ball gag.

All the setting-up had taken so much time that most of the intense atmosphere from the first part of the caning had left the room by now. He felt a short burst of despair at having botched the planning, but managed to convince himself there was nothing he could do about it. He had promised her more punishment; he couldn’t go back on that now just because the mood was wrong. Call it a learning experience, he thought while picking up the cane where he had left it. Perhaps if he’d kept talking while he strapped her in? If he did it in this order again – if there’d even be an again after this – he would need to have something planned.

“I believe we were at three strokes,” he told her. “Ready for the rest?” He knew she couldn’t answer him, but asking would give her some time to prepare.

He could see her tense up, muscles working against the straps, the dock string going limp as she tried to keep her tail up and away. “It will hurt less if you relax, you know,” he chided gently. He thought he recalled something like that from the physiology-of-pain lecture. The strings danced up and down as she tried to make herself take the advice. He took aim and struck.

As soon as he connected, she let out a shrill screech through the gag. It echoed through the room, or perhaps only through his mind. He closed his eyes and told himself sternly that he had to trust her, had to depend on her tapping out if it was too much for her.

Out loud he said, “Four.” He waited several moments to give her time to ring her bell. She didn’t. He struck again, perhaps a bit softer than before.

Another scream.

“Five.”

Still no bell. He swung again.

This time she kept screaming, again and again, only interrupted when she ran out of air and had to draw more in. He decided this was enough, dropped the cane, and rushed up to her front end to throw his hooves around her.

“There, it’s over now, you did good, yes, let it all out, I’m so proud of you,” he babbled, an endless stream of soothing nonsense. When she stopped screaming, he kept hugging her for some time before he collected himself and stood up to remove her gag.

“What do you say now?” he asked when she didn’t speak at first.

She was still short of breath after her ordeal. “This – this slave is thankful to her master for the discipline she received. Your slave needed to be shown her place. The slave is ashamed of her reckless actions earlier, and she will be more obedient in the future.”

He couldn’t help but smile. Where had she learned to talk like that? Of course, she had probably read a lot of the same stories he had. He kissed her on the snout. “My slave is an awesome and brave little slave,” he said warmly.

Even though she was still blindfolded, he could see her blushing and smiling. He began unstrapping her from the rack, making sure to keep speaking as he went. “In fact, she has been so awesome that I think she has earned a nice little reward. Do you know what that is?”

She pondered that for long enough that he got both her hind legs free while he waited. “This slave couldn’t even begin to guess,” she answered cautiously.

“Don’t worry, you will find out soon enough.”

He decided to leave the gag off and instead put a simple halter on her before he led her out for another blind walk through the dungeons. He hushed her when she asked where they were going and she took the hint, staying silent for the rest of the trip. When he looked back there was a little smile playing on her muzzle, or sometimes even a cautious grin. He liked seeing that; and she couldn’t have done it with a gag.

The trip ended in a little alley behind a closed collar studio off the road towards the pet play district. He had chosen this place because the back end of the alley opened into a small open space overlooking the slave markets. The sounds of the hectic activity down there blended into a background murmur, and with the street noises from the busy road drifting in through the alley, nopony who had ears to hear with could doubt they were out in public.

He tied George’s lead rope to a ring in the wall next to the collarsmith’s back door. “Keep quiet,” he whispered, “we don’t want to attract attention, do we?”

She shook her head slowly, as far as the rope would let her. He gave her ear a loving little bite before starting down her neck with a trail of pecks and nibbles, around her shoulder and down the side of her barrel. She gave a little gasp when she realized what he was up to, and quietly shifted her weight around, spreading her hind legs apart for him. But he didn’t let himself be hurried, and took time to stick his muzzle in below one of her wings – not biting anything there, just nuzzling around, inhaling her scent – before he shifted himself fully around her and started licking the point of her hocks.

He found himself becoming excited faster than he had expected to. The risk that anypony would walk in on them in the deserted alley was quite small – with luck, she would never know that – but the fact that somepony could felt surprisingly arousing.

Her marehood was winking slowly in front of him, dripping fragrant secretions onto the pavement between her hooves. He reached up and licked it carefully, and suddenly her attempts to stay quiet became a lot louder, wheezing and stepping in place and thrashing her tail from side to side.

He gave in and let himself be consumed by the act. She was ready; he was more than ready; edging had failed him once already. Nothing more to wait for. He reared up, steadying himself on her croup, and pushed in. She may have whinnied; he didn’t care. He may have cried out, he didn’t even know. He knew just her, his mare, wanting him, eager for him to claim her. He pushed himself deeper and deeper into her body, her marehood accepting every inch in its warm, moist embrace. He closed his eyes, surrendering to his body’s instincts, and his hips started to rock back and forth, working his shaft into her with steady, gentle thrusts. He didn’t even try to hold back the orgasm that quickly built in him. He let out a small, shuddering sigh as the night’s second climax overtook him, her marehood massaging his shaft to squeeze out his seed as much as he was pumping it in, leaving only warm glowing happiness behind.

It was not far to the nearest aftercare room. It was not the same one they had used last week, but similar enough that George recognized the decor as soon as he stripped her of the remaining restraints and the blindfold.

“Aah,” she said, spreading her wings out and in again. “That was fun! Thanks.”

He grinned back at her and sat down in one of the armchairs by the fire, exhausted but happy that it had all gone . . . well, mostly well. He motioned for her to sit down in the other one – now just an invitation, not an order.

“I never knew position drill could be so much fun –” she said, sitting down – but as soon as her buttocks touched the upholstery she shot back up, wincing.

It must have been the caning. “Oh,” he said, crestfallen. “Did I hurt you?” Of course he did; that was the point. Stupid stupid stupid.

“Yes.” She smiled bravely. “But then you hugged me afterwards. That was nice.”

Sip didn’t think that sounded very reassuring. “Do you –” he fought to find the right question to ask “– should I rather just have hugged you instead?”

She seemed to think seriously about that. “No,” she said at last. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

“Do you need a hug?” she asked suddenly. “I mean – some of the teachers said sometimes it’s the dom who . . .”

He shook his head. “I just wanted to know you’re alright. But I’ll take the hug anyway.” He got up from the chair and wrapped a hoof around her. She responded with both her forelegs, squeezing him tightly, rocking slowly back and forth.

He lost himself briefly in the warmth and strength of her embrace. It was only a hug, but somehow, in a way he couldn’t explain, it still felt even more intimate than coupling with her earlier had. He wasn’t in a mind to question it, though, as long as it continued.

Eventually she let go of him. “Seriously, though,” she said, “does this look as bad as it feels?” She turned her rump towards him and lifted her tail out of the way.

He could see faint red lines across her behind where he had hit her with the cane. “It shows a bit,” he admitted. “Perhaps you could wear a skirt on your way home or something?” He hoped the marks would be gone by morning.

“A bit?” She didn’t sound reassured.

“You could see for yourself, out in the shower.”

“There’s a shower?”

Right. If she had only been in an aftercare room once, with him last week, she wouldn’t know the door behind the bed led to a bathroom. So he showed her that and helped hold her tail to the side while she inspected her wounds in the full-height mirror. “It doesn’t look all that dramatic . . .” she said.

Sip remembered something else about the safe rooms. “There’s supposed to be a tube of analgesic cream somewhere here,” he said, and started looking through the cabinet under the sink. “Perhaps that will help?”

“Might be a good idea,” she acknowledged with a grimace.

So he got to rub her butt with the cream, very carefully, while she held her breath and did her best not to whimper too loudly when he stroked across a particularly sore point of the welts. She didn’t need to do that for his sake, but he was glad she made an effort all the same.

“You’ll tell me if it’s ever not fun for you, right?” he asked her as they walked out of the bath together.

“Mmmhm.” She rested her head on his withers.

“I mean, it would be terrible if I kept doing that to you, and then it turned out both of us thought we were humoring the other.”

She stopped walking, lifted her head away from him. “Are you saying you were only humoring me?” she asked, looking hurt.

Oops.

“No no no, that’s not what I – I mean it was hot but –” He forced himself to breathe. “I liked doing it, you see? But if you only let me do it for my sake, then . . . it has to be something you want. Otherwise it’s just . . . horrible.” He remembered the picture of Beating Heart’s beat-up marefriend, so long ago.

She stood frowning for a while. “I don’t know what to say,” she said at last. “It hurt, but it also, the whole thing also felt good. Somehow, I don’t know why. But it did.”

He flopped down onto the bed. “I want to make you feel good,” he said, not looking at her. “Whatever it takes.” And that was a terribly cheesy thing to say, outside play. They weren’t even dating, just meeting up once a week, so far, to help each other figure out how to do this. And if he hoped for a deeper relationship than that, her red collar made it plain she wasn’t looking for that.

Suddenly she was in the bed on top of him, hugging him. “Thank you,” she whispered.

He squirmed around under her so he could hug her back, thankful that she had let his faux pas slide without comment. “You’re wonderful, do you know that?”

“It’s not something ponies tell me often,” she replied.

“Don’t listen to them.” He hugged her tighter. And they kept lying like that for a long time.

She rolled off him cautiously, but lit up in a smile when she was free of him. “I think the cream’s working now,” she said.

He managed to smile back, somehow sensing she was preparing to leave. “Next Tuesday?” he ventured.

She nodded. “At seven?”

“Bram’s?”

She chuckled, shaking her head. “You can’t keep buying me again and again, can you? How about the west livery stable?”

“That works too.”

She planted a quick kiss on his lips on her way up. It was over before he registered what happened. “Take care,” she said.

“You too.”

She waved to him from the door as she left. Eventually he stood up from the bed and set out towards the training room to clean up there and take the wagon he’d borrowed back to the vehicle pool.

5. Recruit

“Silent, do you have a minute?” Pencil Note asked innocently.

Sip felt a moment of despair before he remembered that he didn’t need to be that afraid of a little chat with the supervisor. He had actually approached a mare and gotten her to agree to a scene – only one mare so far, and not quite in the way Pencil Note had prescribed, but he didn’t have to reveal that. He could say without lying that he was making progress; hopefully Pencil wouldn’t inquire too deeply into precisely what progress and how much.

“Sure,” he replied, as casually as he could.

Pencil Note mumbled indistinctly to himself while he searched for something among the papers on his desk. “Oh, here it is. I’ve got an opening for a, hmm, special assignment on short notice, if you have time. There’ll be some intensive training over the next week or so – probably Sunday and Tuesday evenings – and then a performance on Friday or Saturday.”

Sip was reasonably sure he didn’t have any evening plans outside the Society coming up. But – of course – “I’ve got an appointment Tuesday night,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Well, they’re flexible. It could be earlier on Tuesday. Or even Wednesday. There could be a long-running role in it for you if it works out, too.”

Sure, he could manage that. He’d gotten Tuesday off from work already, on general principles. “Tell me more,” he said.

“There’s not much I can tell you; strictly need to know, which I don’t. But –” Pencil Note made a show of looking around to check they were alone in his office “– how would you like to be a quiet?”

“Oh. Sorry,” Sip said, clamping hooves to his muzzle. He hadn’t even been aware he was making a noise.

“No, not that way. I mean – you’ve heard of the Quiet, haven’t you?”

Sip slowly remembered bits and pieces – overheard half-whispered rumors about ghostly ponies who would appear out of nowhere and pick out a sub that they’d take away to an unknown fate. Worse than death, one small group of slaves awaiting sale had agreed in hushed voices. Those they take never come back, said others. Sip had never encountered the Quiet himself, but it was clear enough they were something to be scared of.

“You don’t mean . . . Them?” he said, unsure if he ought to play along or, on the other hoof, feign bravado.

“Yes, them,” confirmed Pencil Note. “The horrid sub-snatching bogeyponies. And now one of them has gotten himself hospitalized, and they need a replacement. What do you say?”

“But, you can’t just go and join . . . them, can you? I mean, they’re –”

“They’re not in the job listings, that’s for sure,” Pencil chuckled. “But they have to come from somewhere, won’t they? Anyway, based on my judgment of your reliability, the gig’s yours if you want it. Oh, and you need to promise not to tell anypony about what you’re doing.”

Sip’s mind was finally catching up with the conversation. He was already part of a hidden, secret society, and now a whole new layer of inner, deeper secrets were being dangled in front of him. He couldn’t possibly say no to that, no matter how much work it would take to be worthy.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

* * *

The Quiet met in an activity hall at the back of an area of blowing alleys and squirt courts behind the main cum dumps. Sip was met by the door by a pegasus wearing a plain black collar who had him swear to secrecy once again before she let him in. The pegasus, who said she was called Ashen and was a sub-leaning switch, had a mane in several shades of gray, which made Sip think she could probably do a pretty good Daring Do cosplay, except she was wearing a blue floral dress that Daring wouldn’t be seen dead in.

The other two ponies in the room were Star Spur, a robust fellow with a heavy Appleoosan accent, and a spry old unicorn who introduced himself only as ‘The Boatmare’.

“Not much of a mare, you think?” he continued impishly. “Perhaps not. But my predecessor’s predecessor was one, and she invented the role, so it sticks. It’s no good fighting it.”

Sip shook his hoof. “I’m Sip.”

“So, Sip,” said Star Spur, “what all d’ya know already ’bout what we do?”

“Um, not really anything,” said Sip, trying to find an intelligent response. “From what I’ve heard, you gobble up little foals and snatch ponies away so they’re never heard from again.”

“Ah, no, that’s the Headless Horse,” exclaimed Boatmare. “We should do a co-production someday.”

“Close enough.” Star chuckled. “At the bottom of it, The Quiet’s just another subnapping outfit. Doms hire us to round up their sub and carry her to them, give her a fancy start to their scene – like you might get some guards to do the Sudden Arrest or the Runaway Slave.”

Sip nodded. He remembered reading through a list of those scenarios, wondering if it would be worth it to use one of them for a session with George. There was a wide variety of options on offer from enterprising groups of doms, with names ranging from Debt Collection and The Job Interview to Ransom Seekers or Now You Take a Nap. “I don’t think I ever saw The Quiet in one of those lists, though,” he said.

“You wouldn’t, ’less you’re in one a the guilds down in Root we work with.”

Root meant the deepest layer of the dungeons, where particularly intense or risky kinks were practiced. It made sense that would be where the mysteriously spooky Quiet took the ponies they abducted – even though Sip was having trouble imagining that these ponies were worthy of the hushed voices and sideways glances he had witnessed.

“Um, I’m not actually allowed down in Root yet,” he said. Perhaps Pencil Note had made a mistake? “I’m only barely allowed here.” Nopony laughed.

“You won’t be going all the way down,” said Ashen matter-of-factly. “And I’ll get you a visitor permit for –”

“Sorry I’m late, guys,” came a voice from the door. It sounded familiar. “Had a client who just couldn’t get through her . . . why, isn’t that Sip!”

Beating Heart strode across the floor to Sip and caught him in a hug. He hugged back slightly awkwardly. She’d never done that when they worked together at the Hayburger.

“You’re here after all!” she said. “I thought I’d scared you away for good.”

“Ohoo,” the Boatmare cackled. “I sense a story coming up!”

Beating shrugged. “Not much to tell. Last year the outreach board tapped me to recruit this young upstanding pony into the Society. But he was just a coworker and . . . well, it didn’t go so good.”

“Now that we’re all here,” interrupted Ashen in a loud voice, standing by the door Beating had come in through, “the door is locked, and we can get to work. Break out the suits!”

The costumes Beating and Star pulled forth from a tarp-covered cart gave Sip a better understanding of the hushed voices he had heard ponies speak of the Quiet with. They were full-body suits with elaborate spiky breast plates and side trains, and wide face-concealing helmets. When Beating Heart had donned the full kit, Sip could easily see her not as the pony he knew, but instead a shadowy creature from the forbidden dimensions of despair.

Meanwhile Ashen and Star Spur were showing him how to wear his own identical costume. It turned out the mirrored outer surface of the helmet was easy enough to see out of; he had an excellent view of his surroundings once his eyes adapted. The rest of the suit was going to take some getting used to, though. He made a circuit around the room while Star put on a suit too.

“Gettin’ the hang of it yet?” asked Star when he came back. His voice sounded distant and muffled from inside the mirrored blob that was his head.

“A bit hard to walk in,” Sip answered. “I feel like I’m slipping all the time.”

Ashen nodded. “You need to practice. Keep the felt booties with you when you leave today, and wear them enough that you’re sure on your hooves by Friday. The key thing about the Quiet is that you make no sound. You don’t speak a word during the performance, and even your hoofsteps must not be heard.”

“It’s not that bad,” said Beating. “Most of the dungeon, the floors are not polished like this one.”

The Boatmare wore a different costume, a plain gray cowl that covered most of his body. Beating Heart, the lucky nag, got to take off her helmet so she could cast a piece of lighting magic on him that made his face disappear completely in shadows under the hood of the cowl.

“Don’t you have a costume, Ashen?” asked Sip.

She shook her head. “Today I’m standing in for your victim. During the performance I’ll be supervising out of costume.”

“What she’s saying is she’s our manager,” explained Beating. “She handles the bookings too.”

“Indeed,” said Ashen. “Our next appointment is for Friday evening. We expect to find the victim in tall-cage block five of the slave market. If she doesn’t show, we’ll try again Saturday.”

“What, would she just stand you up?” Sip asked. “Us, I mean. And the dom we’re taking her to.”

Ashen and Beating looked at each other, frowning.

“Ain’t like that, really,” said Star, “but we only ever do blind jobs. The mare we take put herself down for bein’ snatched by somepony sometime in a certain stretch a days. She can’t know just when it happens, or that it’ll be the Quiet. So we can’t precisely tell her to be sure to be in on Friday.”

Ashen raised her voice a bit to grab control of the conversation back. “On the day itself, while you suit up I’m going to scout out exactly where to find your victim, and then tell you before you come out in public. Or, as may be, cancel and postpone.”

“Can’t have the Quiet appear and then not snatch up anypony,” cackled the Boatmare.

“So let’s do a dry run,” continued Ashen. “Star on the left, Beating on the right – helmet back on, please. Silent, you’re in the middle because it’s your first show. Try to keep pace with the two others. Line up and go!” She produced a whistle from princess-knew-where and gave a short sharp peep.

They went in big angular figure-eights around the hall for some time to give Sip a chance to practice walking in formation. Ashen provided a running narration from the sides:

“As you’re walking down the main street, you notice how ponies are moving out of the way, avoiding you, keeping a respectful distance. A few ponies gawp, others avert their eyes. Once or twice somepony will discover you only after wondering why the pony they’re talking to has suddenly gone mute; then she turns around and notices you with a startled jump that she does her best to dampen, anything to not attract the attention of The Quiet. Nopony knows where you might be looking, mirrored helmets hiding your gaze perfectly. For all the onlookers know, you might be robots, marching straight towards an unknown destination with no waver, no sound, no mercy. A force of nature.

“Now you’re passing through the arched gateway to the slave market. Little by little the manifold sounds of the trade floor respectfully fade to a hushed murmur as traders, slaves, and customers alike notice who are making their way through the normally bustling space. Them! It is whispered fearfully among the slaves in their cages, those of their comrades who have been lucky enough never to encounter the mute menace quickly being brought up to speed. Even the most boisterous of the masked doms plying the floor feel the change in mood, shutting up for a few moments while the ominous procession passes –”

Sip had enough to do with walking in his costume and at the same time stay exactly halfway between the two others so they’d look smart and rehearsed rounding the corners. But even so, Ashen’s description got through to him, making him imagine himself as a minor antagonist from a Daring Do book. He half expected Ahuizotl himself to leap out from behind a pillar and declare that his latest plan was now unstoppable.

. . . a pillar? There were no pillars here, only a big empty hall and colorful lines on the hardwood floor marking it up as a combination indoor buckball, stiffley, or whinnyball court. Except, in his mind it had been the slave pits. He could swear he had smelled the torches.

“– a bit slower after you turned off from the main aisle into a narrow alley between the cages. But you never stop to navigate; you know exactly where you’re going. Shivering subs press themselves against the backsides of the cages you pass, hoping dearly they are not who you’re coming for. You pass them by, not even deigning to recognize their presence – until, suddenly, with perfect coordination, you turn and line up in front of one particular cage. Hey, Boatmare, come help me set up the dummy cage.”

As the debutant, Sip would get the honor of giving a red ceremonial gag to the victim, who would then put it on herself in a gesture of submission. Then Sip and Star would move in on each side of her and tie long lead lines to cords dangling from the gag. Beating, being a unicorn, was not as dexterous with her hooves, and couldn’t do magic in her costume without lighting up her entire helmet from inside.

“Lemme show ya the best way to tie it with yer hooves.” Star came over to Sip’s side of Ashen after tying his own lead. “Goes like this; it’s called a weaver’s knot.”

Star untied his example and Sip tried to do it the same way he had. It seemed to be easy enough.

“Right in one! Yer a natural, son.”

“I’m not a complete yearling,” said Sip – perhaps a bit too testily, since Ashen gave a jerk and shot Sip a sharp glance. But she quickly went back to staring straight ahead, playing the meek victim.

“Of course he is,” laughed Beating Heart. “When we take off the suits, look at his cutie mark. It’s the same knot!”

Sip had never given much thought to his cutie mark. It had been there one morning, without the great epiphany some of his friends were talking about. His teachers and parents said sometimes it takes some time for a pony to figure out what their mark means, and he had accepted that – at least nopony had thought to connect the knot to tying up ponies, which had recently begun to occupy his mind. But now that Beating mentioned it, the knot Star Spur had shown him was unmistakably the same one that had been displayed on his flank for years. Curious coincidence.

Out loud he said, “I’m not sure I can do it if the mare doesn’t stand as still as Ashen does, though. What if she doesn’t cooperate?”

“Don’t worry about that,” said the Boatmare. “You’re the Quiet; she won’t dare.”

“Why not? What happens if she doesn’t?”

“Nopony knows,” said Ashen, spitting out the gag she had been wearing while pretending to be their victim. “That’s what makes it so powerful. Everypony knows you don’t want to know what happens if you cross the Quiet. So our only real weapon is fear itself – well, fear and surprise –”

“And nice red uniforms,” interjected the Boatmare.

Ashen ignored him. “But it works extremely well, because of that.”

Sip was still confused. “But – I mean, she knows it’s the Clocktower, right? Nothing really bad can happen to her.” Not even in Root. Or could it? “Suppose she wants to show everypony she’s not afraid?”

Star Spur held up a hoof to stop Ashen’s reply. “The short of the long, Sip, is she’d be a durn big spoilsport if she pulled that. You never saw one of our shows, but they ain’t just for the gal we take: it’s the whole room followin’ along and gettin’ their scare on. There’s safewords, of course, but she’d ruin it for ever’pony else if she up and resists in character.”

“The welcome classes for subs even use us as a standard example,” said Beating. “How not to be a killjoy when you come across public play.”

“I guess,” said Sip, not fully convinced. “But what do we actually do if, say, she makes a run for it anyway? It’s not like I know any fighting tricks.”

Ashen sighed. “If that happens, I suppose you can give chase, see if she’s willing to let you catch up and trip her. If she isn’t, just call towertop and we all go home.”

“Towertop? We can do that?”

The other ponies looked at each other. Beating Heart recovered first. “Anypony can safeword, Sip. Didn’t they tell you that? Think of what Towertop means.”

“Stop, drop, unknot, comfort,” quoted Sip from his introduction course.

“Yes, but more generally it means that the scene has borked so badly that it needs to stop right now. It doesn’t matter who figures that out first. And that’s all we can do if we get a sub who won’t cooperate. No way to continue that and keep up the mystique for everypony else.”

Sip nodded. It made sense; he just hadn’t thought of it that way.

Then there was more marching, now with Beating leading the way and Ashen boxed in between Sip and Star behind her. Ashen had put the gag back on and couldn’t narrate the journey, so the hall stayed a plain old gym. Later, a section of the floor was declared to be a boat taking them across a subterranean lake, the Boatmare standing at one end of it and pretending to steer. Sip was promised he would get to see the real locations during the next practice, walking the entire route out of costume.

“I don’t think we can really practice the island part up here,” said Beating after they had alighted from the ‘boat’ and the Boatmare simulated gliding away with it to the other side of the room.

Ashen shrugged, reaching up and taking off the gag. “No, that has to wait. But, in broad strokes, what happens is you stay here on the quay until the boat is out of sight. Then it’s a short walk to the dome in the center of the island, where there’s a shaft going straight down to the reception chamber at the Root level. We strap the victim’s hooves to a four-point suspension frame and hoist her down the well; then the requisitioner takes over at the bottom. She wants to do most of the scene with the sub still hanging from the frame, so we agreed she will get somepony to winch it back up afterwards.”

“Upside down?” asked the Boatmare. “Kinky!”

“Kink’s my middle name, you know. We try to be flexible, within the bounds of the core story. Okay, let’s run through the part before the island once again.”

“Out of costume,” Star suggested. “Right?”

Ashen rolled her eyes. “If you must.”

Star and Beating immediately began popping off their helmets. Sip followed their example.

“You’re gonna overheat if you wear these suits for more than half an hour,” Beating explained. “What do you think about them, Sip?”

“Well, they’re cool, I guess. Though, with the way they cover your face and everything, it basically makes us mooks, doesn’t it? It’s like what ought to happen is that some passing hero jumps at us out of the shadows, and we end up tied up in a dumpster while they pretend to be us.”

“You think?” said Ashen sharply. “The stolen-uniform ploy is one of those things that sound brilliant on paper, but if you actually try to pull it off it never works. There’s always some little detail or procedure you’re not aware of, and nine times out of ten it turns out the uniform you’ve stolen is for a sergeant and they expect you to give orders, which is not the kind of advantage you’d think it is. And don’t even get me started on how you find a mook to mug who wears the right size . . . Clearly somepony here has read too many bad adventure novels.”

Sip made a mental note never to try to discuss Daring Do with Ashen.

* * *

The livery stable was not part of the slave market, but was located a short walk along the main dungeon street, near the submissives’ locker complex. Like Honest Bram’s, it was a place for subs and doms to meet and start a planned scene while already in character. But here the waiting slaves were not for sale; instead the pretense was that their masters had put them up for board until they had need of them again. The back half of the building housed a boarding kennel that the pet-playing members used for the same purpose.

When Tuesday came, Sip didn’t go there to pick up George right at seven o’clock. He had read some of the leaflets about the place, and it looked like waiting for the absent masters, locked into boxes or cages, was a large part of the experience it offered. It made sense. He could understand that. And he didn’t want to make her miss that part of it.

But understanding something is not the same as feeling it. He kept feeling like he was standing her up, imagining that the wait would make her so disappointed that she gave up and safeworded out. This didn’t make sense, he knew that, but he couldn’t help thinking it.

He lasted little more than half an hour; then he couldn’t bear it anymore and went in to look for her.

George was standing in a narrow tie stall near the back end of the stable, wearing a blindfold and a gag bridle. Sip felt a small sting of regret that he hadn’t been the one to put them on her – or at least the one to decide she would wear them – but he told himself that was silly. He knew what it was like to be the volunteer preparing a mare to be picked up by somepony else; what counted was that Sip was the pony she wore them for.

He put his head slowly up towards hers. “Hello George,” he purred. “Did you miss me?”

Her ears sprang up, and she spread out her wings involuntarily, only for them to hit the sides of the stall. She nodded eagerly, as much as she could with her reins tied to a knob on the stall door.

He might as well let her keep the toys on. “Test your bell,” he ordered. She would have done that already, of course, but it was still good form to hear the bell yourself when taking over a gagged sub.

Ding.

He took her reins and led her slowly out of the stable, towards the training room he had booked.

The Quiet training had taken so much of Sip’s time that he hadn’t come up with a real program for today, only some scattered ideas that he wouldn’t dignify by calling them a plan. But he did remember that the first thing she had said in aftercare the last time was that practicing slave positions had been fun. Still, he couldn’t quite shake off the worry that she would find it uninspired to do more of the same – but if he wanted to do right by her, he first had to train her to be honest with him about what she liked and what she didn’t. What better way to do that than by giving her what she said she liked? Besides, she’d been right: it was fun.

He did shake it up a bit by making her keep the blindfold on during the training session. She didn’t need her eyes anyway, as long as he stuck to open-floor positions rather than the ones that required a wall or furniture. The gag had to come off, though, so she could ask questions in response to his instructions, and say, “Yes, master!” when he gave orders. He had missed her voice – meek and apprehensive, sometimes cracking a little, but also somehow sounding of steely calm determination to obey him.

Since she couldn’t see him, he tried to make up for that with touches while she held the positions. Gropes, it would be called outside the Society, but here it was his right and duty. He stayed mostly away from her mare parts, saving them for later – other than a few blatant, probing squeezes at the beginning to make it clear he could – and concentrated on caressing her legs, her sides, her neck, running his hooves through her mane, stroking her wings . . .

Her wings! He was less afraid of damaging them after he had read up a bit (of course the Society’s library contained a helpful pamphlet entitled An Earth Pony’s Field Guide to the Pegasus Body), and they were a whole new world to him. Several times he commanded her to spread them out just so he could bury his face in the feathers. They smelled like nothing else – was she using some kind of perfume in them?

She reacted to his touches with twitches and shivers and little content moans that she did her best to suppress. He toyed briefly with the idea of ordering her not to hold back on them, but her attempts sounded so cute that he let her.

It was time for the next step of his sort-of-plan. He ordered George into ‘display’ position, standing up on all fours with her tail swished aside to expose her behind, while he went to the toys drawer to get a few implements.

She gave a startled yelp when he put the anal plug up against her upper hole. He kept it there for several moments, to give her time to bow out if he was going too fast, but she said nothing more and just stood there, breathing quickly.

“Relax,” he said, resting a hoof calmingly on her croup. “That’s an order, by the way. I can’t do this if you scrunch it up.”

She nodded slowly and shifted her hind legs a fraction of a hoof further apart. He began pushing the plug in, hoping he had gotten enough lube on it. He had tried this before, on some of the mares at Honest Bram’s, but they had been used to the plugs – perhaps a newbie like George needed more. But it slid in easily enough, the flared base stopping up against her ponut with an audible bump.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, letting go of the breath she had been holding while he pushed. “Uh. Ah.” She wiggled her butt up and down, making small very careful steps in place to get a feel for the foreign object inside her.

Sip was ready with a lubed-up dildo for her main hole, but decided then and there it would wait for another day. The plug would be enough at first; there had to be room to escalate later, now that he was somewhat sure there would probably be a next time.

“Lift your left hind and hold it up towards me,” he ordered. She complied slowly, and he set to putting one of the felt booties he had borrowed from the Quiet on her. He had spent most of Monday walking around the Clocktower in those booties himself, and eventually thought he had the hang of them – but also thought it would be an interesting device for a sub to be forced to wear. George would be going for a little walk now.

When he had the booties on all four of her hooves, he led her outside the training room, into the street, and finally took off her blindfold. “Do you recognize where we are?” he asked.

“I . . . I think so,” she said, looking around and blinking against the light.

“Good. Now I want you to go up to the lost-and-found desk at Two Fountains Plaza and ask the staffer there to tell you which color the butt plug you’re wearing is. Then come back here and knock on the door. Think you can do that?”

She looked uncertainly between him and the street leading up to the plaza in the distance, blushing slightly. At last she sighed and lowered her head. “Yes, master.”

He watched her walk away unsteadily, trying to keep her balance in the booties at the same time as not making any big movements with her thighs that would disturb the plug. He wanted to go with her, to support and steady her, but it wasn’t what she needed now.

“It’s orange,” she said, barging into the training room after coming back from the plaza.

Sip turned around and raised his eyebrows at her. He probably ought to teach her a lesson about knocking (not something he was too good at himself, but he wasn’t playing a slave) and how to approach her master respectfully. But it would be another day; he had bigger turnips to slice now. “Is that what the lost-and-found pony said?”

“Yes.” She nodded.

“Describe this pony to me.”

“Uh.” She began looking uncomfortable. “I’m not sure. It was a unicorn, I think. A stallion. With a . . . sort of yellowish coat, perhaps?”

This was a passable description of the pony who had been at the desk earlier, whom Sip knew from volunteering with him in the slave market a few weeks ago. He had had a chat with him while he was waiting to pick up George from the livery stable.

“That’s strange,” he said. “The plug is orange alright, but I agreed with that pony that he would tell you it’s black.” He looked her up and down with his best not-angry-but-disappointed expression.

She closed her eyes and swallowed, ears folded all the way back.

He waited.

“I went into the bathroom halfway up and looked in the mirror,” she whispered at last.

He wanted to hug her – but, again, that wasn’t what she needed. “Do you remember I told you to ask at the desk?” he said mildly.

She nodded despondently.

“Why didn’t you?”

She was silent for a long time again. Eventually she said, in a small voice, “I’m sorry, master.”

Sip sighed loudly. “Lie down on the bench over there, belly up.”

George walked slowly to the padded bench at the back of the room Sip was pointing to, and climbed up on it.

He started taking the booties off her. “Obedience is the fundament of everything,” he explained while he worked. “If I cannot trust that you will do what I say, where would we be?” He had imagined giving this wonderfully snooty lecture the next time he’d have to discipline her, but now that he was doing it, it sounded weak and trite to him. He went on all the same. “I’d have to keep you in a cage and only use you through the bars.”

She made a little wordless whimper that he couldn’t quite interpret. When he looked over at her head she was staring blankly at the ceiling.

Fortunately he was done with the booties now. He let her keep the plug. “Now splay out your legs like in ‘surrender’. Left forehoof down and start grinding your marehood. Tell me when you’re about to come.”

She shot him a surprised glance but did as he said.

He stood behind her and stroked her mane and ears gently while she worked, sharing her perspective. After some time he took to blowing softly at her ears.

“Don’t mind me,” he whispered teasingly. “Just pretend you’re home.”

“Per- . . . permission to use two hooves, master?”

“Granted.”

She moved her other forehoof down and began massaging with that too. He couldn’t see exactly what she was doing; it looked like she was taking it to her teats. He kept licking the ear he had whispered into, stroking the other side of her head with a hoof.

“Getting there,” she suddenly said.

He stood back up. “Stop. Forelegs back up. Lie still.”

She stretched her forelegs out to the sides, and looked at him quizzically for a short moment before he unfolded a big cloth napkin and threw it over her head, covering her face.

Then he waited.

It took several minutes before she spoke up beneath the cover. “Are you there? Master?”

“I am here,” Sip confirmed with careful indifference. He had drifted over to study the toys hanging on the side wall while he waited, and didn’t turn around to speak towards her.

“What happens now?” she asked hesitantly. “Please, master, I was so close to –”

“You’re being punished for your disobedience.” He sighed and finally turned around, walking over towards her. “Perhaps you would prefer a quicker sort of punishment?”

“Yes. Please.”

“You’ll have to beg for that, you know,” he explained mildly. “What do you think I should do with you, George?”

“I . . . you could spank me with the cane again?” she suggested.

He nodded sagely, though she couldn’t see him. “How many strokes do you deserve?”

“I don’t know. Three?” she ventured. “No – four? Four!”

He set off briskly towards the toy wall. “Raise your hinds up towards the ceiling,” he called out behind him. When he came back with the cane, she had her legs in the air, swaying slightly. “Beg me for your punishment.”

She emitted a strangled little sob while she collected her thoughts. “Master . . . please punish this worthless slave for her insolence. Make her know her place, make her feel what it means to cross you. Make it hurt and hurt, and make her cry and shake and regret she even thought of being disobedient . . . please, master . . . make me good again.”

She gave a start, tensing up all over as he rested the cane gently but firmly against her buttocks. “Tell me when,” he said.

She took a deep breath. “Now.”

He pulled the cane back and swung at her with a whack! All her legs twitched at once when he connected, and he could hear her fight against crying out. After a few seconds she resumed breathing. “One,” she gasped.

“Keep still, slave,” he said patiently, putting the cane up against her once more. “Again.”

“Now.” Whack! “Hnngg. . . uh, two?”

“Good.” The twitch had been a little smaller this time. That was enough to allow her a small boon. “For the last two strokes, you may scream.” He had not ordered her to keep it in so far, but she had done that anyway, a rule of her own. By releasing her from it he was making it his too.

“Thank you, master,” she whispered. “Now.”

Sip struck again and she screamed beautifully. He remembered how out of it he had been the first time he made her scream in pain. This time, though . . . he could still hear the pain, but he also heard a strange pleasure, excitement, the joy of giving in and letting go, pride . . . and trust. Trust in him.

That was a lot for a single scream to do. Sip swung again, without waiting for her to count or give pace, and the cane hit her right across her upside-down marehood, dislodging a small cluster of fragrant droplets that sailed across the room in slow motion. She was screaming again, louder.

Four strokes was what he had promised her. He put the cane down on the bench beside her and considered how to go about comforting her after the well-received punishment. It would be a long walk around the bench to hug her at the head end; instead he just wrapped his hooves around her upstretched hind legs and squeezed lightly, stroking her fur. After some time her screams gave way to little whimpers.

He let go of her legs and reached in to pull the rag away from her face. “Are you good now?” he asked.

She looked up at him and nodded, a small smile playing through tears.

“I think my slave has deserved a nice little reward now.” His cock had dropped out during the caning, and now he used his hooves to gently spread her hind legs apart, and climbed halfway up on the bench, preparing to stick it into her.

“Um . . .” Her eyes went wide when she saw what he was up to. “If master pleases, perhaps he could restrain this slave before he rewards her?”

He suddenly realized he had not tied her up at all during the scene. Damn, how could he forget that? “Of course,” he said as smoothly as he could while he climbed back down, trying to make it sound like it had been the plan all the time.

Fortunately there were lengths of rope hanging from wall racks at strategic locations throughout the training room, so he didn’t need to rummage around in closets or drawers to find something to make up for his mistake with. He quickly grabbed some and pulled her forelegs out to each side with ropes between her slave hoofcuffs and fixed hooks on the frame of the bench she was lying on – also a universal feature of Clocktower furniture.

Then he fetched the blindfold she had been wearing when he met her – and stumbled again on the realization that he had been blocking her vision for almost the entire session already. But that couldn’t be helped; the experience he imagined she wanted would be a lot better if she couldn’t see coming what he was doing to her. And he could look her in the eyes later, in aftercare. She wore a comfortable smile while he put the blindfold on her, squirming quietly against the ropes pulling on her forehooves.

He used a weaver’s knot to tie another rope into her braided mane and keep it down to the edge of the bench, preventing her from lifting her head. Then he got a pair of sandbags from the bottom shelf of the large-toys closet and placed one on top of each of her outstretched wings. The Earth Pony’s Field Guide had suggested that as a safe and hard-to-get-wrong way to restrain a pegasus lying on her back.

He wasn’t quite sure what to do about her hind legs. Tying them down to the bench would have her lying on the fresh welts from the caning, and he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He ended up using ropes to pull them towards the opposite corners of the bench, on each side of her head. It left her a bit of freedom to wave them around, but he hoped it would do. He had seen mares tied that way in porn; it certainly did leave her marehood wide open to the room.

“There, all nice and helpless now?” he asked.

She struggled genially against her bonds to demonstrate. “Mmmm.”

After all that preparation it would be an anticlimax just to fuck her right away. He got up on the bench beside her and began licking one of her hind legs, from the sensitive frog and backside of the pastern down towards her body. Her fur was damp with sweat that tasted earthen and salty, and he wouldn’t really have liked that, except she was warm and alive under his lips and tongue, and responded to him with cute little yips and jitters.

When he ran out of leg, he shifted around so he could nibble at the fleshy part of a wing while he stretched a hind leg back to rub against her marehood. He felt bold enough to bite down softly, and she gave a little gasp and started breathing faster. He nuzzled onwards slowly from the wing root up along her side, across her breast and neck, and back through the soft fuzz on her belly, moving his head up and down as her ribcage expanded and contracted.

As he neared the region of her teats, he switched out the leg rubbing against her marehood for a forehoof, not just stroking idly, but systematically smearing, grinding, seizing her behind while he ran his muzzle in circles and diagonals across her boobs, building up to suckling each of the teats in turn. She alternated between holding her breath, little squeals and whimpers, and occasionally locking up for a quarter second when his hoof met one of the tender stripes from the cane, but almost instantly getting back to writhing in anticipation.

He had to break contact for a moment to maneuver himself around her near leg and line up with her body. But she only had time to draw a deep breath before he was ready, barrel nestled in the V of her hind legs, cock held ready to spear her and, yet once again, make her his. She let out a short surprised scream as he slid into her, this time definitely one of pleasure and need, and began thrashing wildly in her bonds as he pushed in again and again, drawn in by the warm, soft, pulsating cavity, gradually losing himself until all there was was bliss.

He was spent. He waited for her convulsions to subside a bit and let himself flop gently down to rest on top of her, belly to belly. He could feel her breathing again, and her heartbeat through her skin, tapping a complex syncopated rhythm against his. Allowing himself a selfish moment, he decided to keep lying there, with her, for just a bit before he had to be collected and in charge again. But without getting up he could reach the ropes he had tied her hind legs with, and he pulled on the loose end so the slip knots at her cuffs came apart.

Her legs free, she wrapped them around his loin and pulled him down tightly.

The safe rooms right by the training room they had used were all occupied, so they ended up walking through the dungeons towards the next group of them, side by side. Sip didn’t quite know what to do with himself. The scene had ended, but aftercare had not yet started, or had it? He couldn’t begin hugging and comforting while they were walking.

Eventually he decided just to start talking. “I’m sorry for tricking you.”

“It’s alright. It’s part of the, the play, you know? There has to be a reason.”

She had a point. If she was to be punished (and he was pretty sure, almost, that she wanted that), she needed a way to deserve her punishment. It was for herself to decide to be bad, but his job to give her the opportunity. It did feel a bit underhoofed to let her think she might get away with it, but she had to have known she was misbehaving.

What he really wanted to apologize for was forgetting to tie her up until the end, but he couldn’t find a way to say that. He sought refuge in smalltalk instead.

“So, are you having better luck now at getting doms to pick you?”

He realized too late that was a dangerous question to ask when she brightened up in a happy smile. “Oh, yes!” she said, beaming, and he died a little inside.

“Last week I got bought by a nice colt who taught me positions and had his way with me in the street. And this week he sent me out on errands by myself and spanked me again when I screwed that up.”

“’m happy for you,” he muttered. Wait, something didn’t sound right. “Uh, are you talking about me?”

“Who else?” She reached out a hoof and booped him playfully on the muzzle. “It’s not like I’ve had time to frolic around with anypony else.”

He tried to make sense of that. “So you’re only coming here on Tuesdays?” He had been sure she was looking for other play partners between their sessions. Finding out she didn’t . . . now he felt horribly ashamed at how he had been trying for other mares, unsuccessful though that had been.

She nodded. “Yeah, I’m –” Suddenly her face fell. “Wait, did you really think I’d . . . just do that?” She stopped walking, looking at him with a hurt expression.

Whoops again. He tried his best to find a way to backpedal. “Well, you know, you’re wearing red.” He pointed a hoof at her collar.

“That doesn’t mean I’m going – . . . Perhaps it does. I haven’t really understood how it works.”

“A red collar is if you’re doing scenes with a variety of doms,” he explained. “White is for if you want to find a permanent owner.”

“I know that!” She stomped at the ground with a forehoof. “But that doesn’t help much. What if I’m okay with single scenes, you need to start somewhere, and I can’t really be a chooser, but if the right stallion comes along you don’t want him to pass you by because he thinks you’re only . . . you know –”

“Well, I didn’t make the rules!” He had no idea how he had gotten so defensive. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to start a fight.” He held out a hoof towards her shoulder, suggesting a hug but unsure if it would be appropriate. To his relief she hugged him back.

“I tried to ask one of my mentors,” she said, after they resumed walking. “She just said it’s completely my own choice what color I wear. What kind of help is that?”

Sip grunted sympathetically. One day as he was getting close to finishing his introduction course, a group of older ponies had summoned him to a meeting room and told they were his official mentors and he could ask them anything he wanted about the Society. He hadn’t had any questions to ask then, and later on he saw no reason to seek them out and admit how he was failing as a dom. Pencil Note was enough trouble for him already.

“Suppose I wore white instead,” she said casually. “Would you still have asked me out, back then?”

Sip had an idea this was a question where many of the possible answers would be wrong. He had no idea which of them it was. “I’m not sure,” he said eventually, betting the house on the truth. “I’m afraid I might have chickened out. It’s a lot to commit to, when you don’t have any experience.”

It couldn’t have been all wrong; she kept talking to him. “You’re wearing red too,” she observed.

“Yeah. They said it was a good choice for a newcomer.” He hadn’t given half as much thought to the color of his dominant’s mask as she seemed to have to her collar.

She nodded. “Don’t rush into it. Get to know somepony first.”

“Exactly.” She must have been told that in the introduction too.

He carefully didn’t ask for her opinion of whether he could possibly be that ‘right stallion’ who came along. That would probably be inappropriate for a red collar – and, anyway, there had been plenty of opportunity for herself to speak up if she had any thoughts of that kind.

“But you’re right, there ought to be a color somewhere between red and white, for if you’re open to either kind. Candy-striped, perhaps?”

She chuckled. (Crisis averted!) “I’ll candy-stripe you,” she said.

It was a good aftercare session. Once he had rubbed analgesic on her cane marks, neither of them had a lot to say about the scene itself – she seemed happier with it than he thought he had any right to expect, so he didn’t press the matter. But there were plenty of other things to talk about, starting where they had left off with Daring Do the last time (or was that the time before?) and moving on to other things, books, life outside the Society. She was still living with her parents and working as a ‘cloud counter’, something he hadn’t even known was a thing. He found some things from his own life to talk about that didn’t make it sound terminally dull, and she made a good job of sounding interested.

They ended up on the aftercare bed together, hugging. Eventually she stirred lazily. “Silent,” she said, “do you –”

“Please call me Sip.”

“Sip?”

“It’s what my friends call me.” And his parents and teachers and everypony else. But he hoped she was his friend.

She nodded gravely. “Only if you call me Cirrus.”

“Hmmm?”

“Cirrus. That’s my real name.” She had raised herself up on the fore-elbows and was smiling at him expectantly.

“Sorry, too late. You’ll always be George to me.” He meant that as a joke, but he saw her face fall and knew he’d made a mistake. “But Cirrus is a pretty name too,” he added. “I’ll have to practice it. Cirrus.” He remembered a bit from the introduction classes, about using the sub’s real name a lot in aftercare. Oh, stupid stupid stupid. He reached up to give her a testing little squeeze.

“It means a special kind of cloud,” she said, getting back on her track. “They lay it out very high, where only the strongest fliers can reach. If you get up close it’s not really there, just a kind of white haze. But they’re pretty from below.”

“Then it fits you well. Being pretty, I mean.” He did remember when they met (only two weeks ago?) he had thought she wasn’t all that pretty. He couldn’t recall why. “Thanks for telling me. Cirrus.”

She was relaxing a bit, letting her weight return to his chest. He put his hooves back around her, massaging the root of her wings even though he didn’t really know how. “I’m glad you’re not so high up you can’t be reached.”

“Mmmm.” She nuzzled against his chest fur. “It was stupid trying to keep it a secret.”

“No, no – you have to protect yourself.” It was funny; outside the Clocktower ponies knew each other’s names when they started dating, but it might be a long time before they had sex. Here it was exactly backwards. “We’re freaks, aren’t we?” he asked the world in general.

She kept lying on top of him. “See if I care,” she responded.

He didn’t either, really.

Cirrus!

6. Quiet

“So,” said Sip, “what does a ‘plugwright’ actually do?”

The smallish room where he and the other Quiet were waiting had shelves full of jars and boxes of unknown substances on one side, and enigmatic objets in what he assumed to be various stages of completion on the other. Between them was a small but tidy work table beneath a tool rack on the end wall. Some of the tools looked like they might be used for woodworking; most of them he couldn’t even guess at.

Beating Heart took her helmet off and put it down on the work table. “Far as I know, this one mostly does personal gags. You take your sub here, and the plugwright measures her mouth and then moulds a plug that fits her oral cavity perfectly.” She mimed stuffing something into her mouth. “Oewwy znog,” she gargled, mouth kept open by the imagined plug. “Very invasive. Some of them barely need straps to stay in.”

“I see.” Sip looked at one of the half-finished objects again. Yes, that made some sense – these two ridges would fit in between the teeth and tongue, and that hole at the small end could be a breathing passage. But now those two strange things, looking like upside-down oyster mushrooms . . .?

Beating followed his gaze. “I think those are for ears. Though if you want earplugs, you should try the plugwright down at Overfall Passage instead. She makes some that are completely deafening and have a little built-in tube for squirting in cold water.” She grinned at him.

Sip allowed himself a small wince at the thought. He had begun to suspect that Beating delighted in throwing him off balance by her appetite for rough play. Right now, though, he was in full costume, so she couldn’t even see if he reacted or not. And, well, if her subs liked it that way . . .

The door burst open and Ashen entered, waving a clipboard around dramatically. “Everything looks good,” she half-whispered. “Helmet on, Heart, for the dark mare’s sake! The victim is in cage B-12, bravo one two.”

“Baker twelve, right ya go,” came the cheerful reply from within Star Spur’s mirrored helmet. “We all ready?”

Beating rolled her eyes and flipped her helmet on while Ashen stepped back out into the alley behind the plugwright’s workshop and looked around quickly. After a moment she threw the door wide open. “Clear upwards, clear downwards. Go, go, go!”

The three Quiet filed out of the room and lined up side by side, Sip between Star and Beating. Then they started marching soundlessly around the bend in the alley where it turned to connect to the main street out in front. The show had begun.

“If ya keep goin’ up that alley it keeps twistin’ and turnin’, and at last you come out halfway up the Gauntlet,” Star Spur had explained when they met outside the plugwright’s for a non-dress rehearsal a few days earlier. “So it goes somewhere, but ain’t the shortest way there. It’s quiet enough ta slip into without bein’ seen, and once we get out, ever’pony’s gonna think we came all the way.”

Sip could appreciate the theatrics of it. The Quiet had no barracks, no headquarters, but were just suddenly there and nopony knew from where. But – “Won’t ponies notice nobody ever sees us go in at the other end?” he had asked.

Star nodded. “Might do, if we kept usin’ the same place to start at. But Ashen has, I wouldn’t know, thousands of them sneaky little spots lined up to rotate between. Ponies like the plugwright who owe her favors. Right, Ashy?”

“We have an adequate supply,” Ashen confirmed primly.

As they glided down the main corridors, Sip marveled at how the crowd in front of them scuttled hastily out of their way, nudging and whispering among themselves. Ponies stopped what they were doing and stood out to the side, following them with solemn gazes. At first sight it was just a curious audience lining the streets as the procession went past, but there was also a weird note of the curious audience cautiously backing up against the walls, trying not to attract attention.

It reminded Sip of how he had felt on his first shifts as a volunteer in the slave markets, when he was suddenly a figure of authority that the slaves needed to be aware of, oriented themselves towards or attempted not to be noticed by – but never ignored like a random passer-by. Only this time it was writ much larger. Even the doms stopped and watched the Quiet silently while they went by. The doms wouldn’t be afraid, of course, but Sip thought he glimpsed something else behind their masks. Respect?

This was just as Ashen had predicted, in flowery commentary during the rehearsals. At that time he had thought she might be exaggerating a bit. But if anything, this was more. Or perhaps it only felt larger when it was happening for real rather than being narrated like one of the florid passages of a Daring Do book. Either way, he could get used to this. Everypony’s attention and respect was for his role rather than him, he knew. But it still beat being the nopony he usually was.

A great wave of hushed quiet displaced the normal hustle and bustle of the slave market as soon as they came through the main entrance. There were ponies everywhere, just as there usually were, but they made nary a sound while Sip and his comrades walked a zig-zagging path between the pens and corrals. Sometimes a sub they went past let out a whimper as she thought they were coming for her.

Eventually they reached the block of tall cages they were heading for. Cage B-12 on the right side of the aisle contained a white pegasus with a mint green mane. She looked up when Star Spur pulled the door to the cage open with a loud creak, eyes widening as she realized what was happening.

“No . . . please,” the mare stammered. “It must be a mistake!”

Sip glanced at the ID plaque at the front of the cage, just in case. It said SL-35714 (answers to ‘Sunny Leaf’, brands 7/4/4 or inquire at trading desk for deals), like it was supposed to. But he had also memorized the victim’s mane, coat and eye colors, and her cutie mark matched too – this was their gal alright. He stepped halfway into the cage and held out the scarlet ceremonial gag towards her with a slight bow. After a bit of hesitation she took it, but she was shaking so much that she dropped it to the floor. Sip inclined his head a tiny bit, and she picked up the gag, quenching a sob as she did so. She put it on and stood fumbling with the clasp at the back.

Something was not right about this, but Sip couldn’t quite put a hoof on it. Suddenly Beating brushed past him, ripped the gag out of the mare’s mouth, and gave it back to Sip. He stared at it for a few seconds until it dawned upon him that her safety bell hadn’t sounded. At the Clocktower, nopony puts a gag on anypony without hearing their bell work first – even themself. He held the gag out towards the mare, bowing again. She looked at him in confusion and slowly took the gag and put it on again. Still no bell.

Sip felt lost. He was supposed to be the Quiet, never speaking. How could he make her understand she needed to test her bell? He tried pointing a hoof significantly at her tail, but she stared uncomprehending at him and backed towards a corner of the cage, eyes starting to well up.

Behind him, Star Spur cleared his throat.

“Um, clockface, miss, but yer bell seems ta be on the fritz.”

A dawn of understanding rolled across SL-35714’s face, quickly followed by an embarrassed blush at having forgotten the most basic of rules. She nodded eagerly in apology and flicked her tail.

Ding!

There was something wrong with Sip’s helmet. Suddenly he couldn’t hear anything. He fought an impulse to shake his head to make his ears work again. Then the mare put down her forehooves after adjusting the gag, and he heard them clop against the floor quite clearly.

It wasn’t the helmet or his ears: The whole room had gone silent at the sound of the mare’s bell – all across the gargantuan cavern hundreds of ponies held their breath. He had thought they were quiet before, but not really. Now he might hear it if somepony dropped a pin off the railing at the far end. Ashen had not said anything about this.

Wow.

“Two bells to continue the scene, miss? Clockface,” continued Star Spur in a businesslike tone.

She nodded. Ding ding.

Star began tying his lead line to the mare’s gag, and Sip remembered he was supposed to do the same from the other side too. While he did so – weaver’s knot, just like his cutie mark, he recalled – he couldn’t help but admire how Star had handled the problem. Of course breaking the scene with a safeword had been the right solution. It felt a bit irregular to ask her to ring her bell again to resume – Sip had learned in his classes that both dom and sub should say the ‘clockface’ safeword to end the timeout – but it would probably have embarrassed the mare even more to ask her to take off the gag again just to do that. And it definitely would have been bad to make her ring an entire five-ding ‘clockface’. Everypony who heard that in the sudden silence would have thought she was tapping out and then see the Quiet march her off anyway.

Sip hoped he would one day be wise like Star Spur.

With Beating Heart in front they made their way out of the slave market. Off to one side Sip caught a glimpse of a young volunteer slaver who looked like he was just about to confront them for walking off with the merchandise without paying, before he was hastily reined in by the floor manager. Sip found himself grinning behind his helmet. That could have been him, a moon ago.

Mercifully for SL-35714 – who didn’t look comfortable with being the center of everypony’s attention – it was not far to walk to a door in the side of the cavern, behind which a little-used spiral staircase went downwards. A uniformed guardstallion was standing right in that doorway, watching the spectacle mouth agape, but turned and disappeared down the stairs when he realized they were coming right at him. Sip guessed he was one of Ashen’s countless one-time extras, engaged exactly to make sure the door would be open when they reached it.

The stairs led down to the ‘Branch’ level of the dungeons. Sip didn’t have clearance to go there on his own, so he had been here only once, at the rehearsal. Fortunately all he had to do was follow Beating, who knew which way to take through the corridors. They passed some ponies, but not many – Branch didn’t have the large crowds of the upper level, and their route had been chosen to avoid the busier part of it. At this point in their act, the goal was to let the victim feel alone and isolated, not to parade her in front of an audience.

That was certainly working for SL-35714. She was walking along shakily, sometimes halfway stumbling over her own hooves and then having to trot for several seconds to keep up when Sip and Star Spur continued apace, pulling her onward with the lines tied to her gag. A few times Sip heard her sob quietly.

He couldn’t help being impressed with how completely she immersed herself in the situation, considering that she had just been reminded in the most blatant way that she had safewords to fall back on, and that even the Quiet were only ponies playing make-believe. He wondered if Cirrus would be able to do that.

Cirrus being taken by the Quiet! He could vividly imagine her in SL-35714’s stead, struggling to keep up, looking around desperately with big scared eyes, keeping her wings tightly folded along her sides as if she thought they had forgotten about them and would stop to tie them up if she reminded them. Oh, Cirrus would love that! And the dom who set her up for that trip . . . Sip suddenly realized that he wanted to be that dom, wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything. In a burst of brilliant insight he saw how everything in his life until now, reading Daring do with a flashlight in the middle of the night, joining the Society, all that had been merely preludes to being the stallion who gave Cirrus George C-557 the ride of her life.

Wow. This was what having a goal felt like.

Suddenly Beating Heart stopped walking, and Sip narrowly managed to come to a halt himself without breaking formation too much. He saw that they had reached their goal: a short pier on the bank of a hot subterranean river. Sip could feel the heat through his uniform. Scattered banks of stream rose slowly from the waters and drifted through the cooler air over the surface, illuminated by a faint orange glow coming from the river itself.

At the upstream side of the pier a long black gondola lay waiting, the Boatmare standing like a statue in its far end. SL-35714 had frozen in place, staring into the black abyss of his cowl, but stepped onto the boat with a shiver after Sip tugged on her lead. The other Quiet boarded after them, and with an almost invisible flick of his big oar, the Boatmare steered them out into the stream.

After the pier dropped away behind them, they went around a bend in the river and it opened up into a larger reservoir in a giant cavern. The ceiling was not even visible in the dim light, but Sip caught SL-35714 staring longingly towards it, as though she expected the Princess herself to break through any moment and come galloping down a ray of sunlight to save her.

He imagined Cirrus with that expression on her face. Yes, there was no doubt. This was what he was made for. This was who he was. It felt almost like some of the stories his schoolmates had told about getting their cutie marks and suddenly knowing their destiny. Sip had never had one of those to tell. But – wait! Beating Heart had remarked that Sip’s cutie mark was exactly the knot the Quiet used for tying lead lines to their victims. Could this be it? It had to be. That was why he’d never recognized it before. Silent Pride, lowly fast-food pony and general loser-at-life, was meant to be a Quiet.

He almost had to sit down on the floor of the gondola to recover from the realization. If the boat ride had been much longer, he might have. But just then they arrived at the small island in the middle of the reservoir, built up with the tall stone walls of a nightmare castle, stretching up towards infinity. The Boatmare steered them through an imposing gate into an inner lagoon and the boat came to rest against a short quay. Sip had a job to do here. A job he was meant to do. So do that first; marvel at your fate later.

They led SL-35714 into a big round room with a deep well set in the exact middle. Sip stayed by the door while Star and Beating walked her halfway to the center and Star turned around to face her and made the hoof signal for the ‘box’ position. SL-35714 blinked in surprise for a moment, but followed the order and lay down with her back on the floor, legs folded above her body.

Meanwhile Sip unhitched the wrought-iron suspension frame from its hook on the wall and let it glide slowly in towards the well. The frame hung on a chain from a pulley in the ceiling far above, and Sip only had to pull gently back on the steering rope to stop it right above SL-35714. Star and Beating began hooking each of her slave hoofcuffs to the four corners of the frame, cross-checking each other’s work. Though Sip wasn’t directly handling the victim, in some ways his job was the most important of them all – –

At the rehearsal there had only been the Boatmare to operate the winch, from a hidden gallery halfway up the rotunda, because Ashen was still standing in for the victim. When he took a small break to get a better grip on the crank, and Sip saw Ashen stop rising, dangling upside down from the suspension frame about a pony height from the floor, he thought now was the time. He let go of the steering rope and Ashen began sailing across the room, towards the well in the middle.

As the curve of the swing brought Ashen lower, her mane began to brush against the floor. Sip suddenly realized that in a few moments her head would slam into the low stone wall around the well. “Watch out!” he shouted uselessly.

Ashen kept swinging, but in the last fraction of a second she contorted her body in a way that somehow kept her head clear of the wall, missing it by half a hoofwidth. Then, on the upswing on the other side, she called out, “Towertop!” and the pyromantic safety bolts on her wing clamps went off, allowing her to divert her trajectory away from the well with a few big flaps while Star Spur and Beating rushed to catch and stop her.

Afterwards there had been Words. “What the buck do you think you’re trying to do?” she demanded. “It’s just an ordinary Breaking, meaning her will, not her skull. Not a snuff scene. No, don’t mind me, I’m fine, no trouble – I am a trained lychnopendulist, you know. But the real victim will not be. Could you see the torches on the other side beneath my back before you let go? No, I think not. And you don’t simply let go of that rope anyway; you’ll need it to stop the swing in the middle so you can lower me down the well. What were you thinking?”

“Sorry!” stammered Sip. “I thought –”

“Less thinking! More following the instructions!”

Sip had been sure this was the end of his career as a Quiet before it had begun, but at the end Ashen apparently decided this was the kind of mistake a pony makes only once in his life, so he got to stay on.

This time, though, everything went well. Star and Beating stepped back from SL-35714, and a moment later she was lifted smoothly into the air, Ashen and the Boatmare working the winch together. Then while she rose, Star hurried back to make some kind of last-minute adjustment to her wing bindings, which took until well after she had settled at the correct height. Sip knew a tactful way to prevent another screw-up when he saw one, but he decided to be grateful Star was trying for tact at all.

The victim disappeared slowly down the well, and several minutes later the quiet clanking of the winch stopped and Ashen and the Boatmare came down to the floor. Already the faint echoes of an unknown mare’s villainous laugh were wafting up through the shaft. They nodded to each other – the three Quiet had taken off their helmets as soon as the victim was out of sight – and went back down to the boat.

“Good job, everypony,” said Ashen while they were crossing the reservoir. “Well done, Sip.”

When they got back to the pier and had packed the costumes away, Ashen distributed the pay they had earned for the appearance. Sip was astounded to find he had earned an entire brand for an hour’s work, and even more astounded to learn that their customer, the unseen mare at the bottom of the well, had paid thirty-five of them to have SL-35714 delivered to her with style.

“It’s supply and demand,” Beating Heart explained while she escorted him back up to his own level of the dungeons. “We can’t do shows more often than once a moon or so – the mystique would wear off. So Ashen jacks up the price until that’s how many doms are willing to pay. Most of that goes back to the Society’s coffers, of course.”

That sounded reasonable – even fair, because play money had no connection to how rich you were outside the Society. Still, Sip’s new life goal of giving Cirrus a trip with the Quiet would become rather more expensive than he thought. It was good that he would have plenty of time to save up; gaining Root clearance for them both would take years anyway.

All the better to get started soon, then. He waved goodbye to Beating and set off towards the library to begin planning their next date.

* * *

“Now, George,” Sip said when the door had closed behind them, “clockface.”

She blinked and looked around in the small training room. “Is there something wrong?”

“Um, no. But, I mean, it’s looking like we’re going to have a lot more of these sessions.” (Did she brighten up a bit at that?) “So I thought we should take some time to go through some of the toys in the room, to find which of them you’d want me to try using on you. If you want, that is. Otherwise I could take a lot of tries making guesses. And I need you to be out of play so I know it’s what you want, and not just what a good slave should want.”

It wasn’t his own idea; one of the Society magazines had suggested it as something couples ought to do from time to time. But . . . they weren’t really a couple, not yet, no matter how much he planned to stick with Cirrus while they both earned their way towards Root. And it would probably sound creepy to explain that entire plan to her, and getting taken by the Quiet was supposed to be a surprise anyway.

So he was prepared to see her roll her eyes in response. “Aren’t you the dom?” she would say. “That’s your job to figure out.”

But instead she thought for a brief moment and smiled and said, “That sounds lovely.” She even blushed a little. “Where do we start?” She walked over to the tool wall with its array of crops, whips, canes, and floggers on display, scanning it with interest as if it was the first time she saw it.

Sip got down the toy manual and opened it at section one: “Headgear. Bridles, gags, blindfolds, blinkers, et cetera. That’s the drawers over there, beneath the paddles.”

He filled the pages of a notepad with her yeas and nays and maybes. As expected, there were quite a number of nays – she shook her head firmly at the cock gags, and threw ‘The Uvulator’ across the room in disgust when she realized where its thin semi-flexible silicone spike, half again as long as her head, would go. But there were also yeas, some of which he would never have imagined. Nostril hooks? He himself would need some time to get used to that idea.

The maybes were the worst, because he wasn’t sure which of them meant, ‘if you really want this, you can’ and which were ‘please try it, but perhaps I will tap out’. And he couldn’t find a tactful way to ask her to make it clear. He ended up watching her face closely and noting down maybe-but-really-no or maybe-but-really-maybe as his own best interpretation.

“What’s this?” She pointed at a box of what looked like big chubby toddler-friendly mane clips.

“Hmm . . . ah, here: Number 48, non-piercing ear clamps,” he read aloud from the manual. “Pull her ears up or out for posture control in upright bondage, or down to a table or rack. Clamps can bolt directly to floor if she’s lying on her back. Or dangle weights for grace training or punishment. Also see: pp. 78ff for predicament ideas. NOT FOR OVERNIGHT USE. To avoid pressure damage, remove clamps after 3 hours, massage, and re-set.”

“Oh.” She sounded surprised, and looked vaguely puzzled. “Oh. Um, can I try them on?” Her cheeks flushed red in sudden embarrassment. “I mean, right now?”

He didn’t see why not, so he cracked open a pair and mounted them on her ears while she stood with her eyes closed and gasped almost inaudibly when he let the teeth of a clamp bite down on an ear.

She smiled at him with the clamps held high, looking like somepony’s comically failed attempt to construct fake bat-ear tufts for Nightmare Night. “There were weights too, you said?”

The manual page had a helpful table of how much weight a pony ear should be loaded with at various comfort levels. Sip selected the mildest step other than ‘I just like how it looks’, and hooked a couple of standard weights into each of the ear clamps.

Her expression was hard to read this way – excited grin at the front, but ears hugging her cheeks in bottomless depression further back. It was the grin he could trust, of course. “That looks like a success,” he said. “Here, let me take them off again.”

“No!” She shied abruptly away from him when he reached for her head, sending the weights on her ears swinging wildly around her. “Ow.”

If she wanted to wear the ear clamps while they continued, there was no actual reason she couldn’t. “Careful with those things on, George,” he chuckled. “No sudden movements.”

Should he have called her Cirrus instead? They were not in play. He braced himself for failure, but she smiled sadly (no, not really sadly – just those ear weights talking) and said, “Yes, master,” turning carefully back to the toy shelves. “What’s next?”

Most of her maybes tended to become maybe-but-really-no on his notepad after that. She stared long and enigmatically at a pair of teat clamps before declaring them to be ‘another time’, which started a whole new maybe-but-really-perhaps category on the pad. Later she wanted to try on a vaginal spreader ring, but that eventually became a ‘no for now’. No-but-really-maybe?

When they reached a tray of anal plugs she was amazed by seeing how small the one she had worn last week had been. First she didn’t even believe him, but when he stood his ground she ended up demanding to have the next larger size stuck into her right now, and made him promise not to take it out before the session was over.

This was going slower than he expected. Perhaps he shouldn’t just have started at the beginning of the catalog and taken one item at a time? The magazine had been a bit vague about how much detail he’d need. After they finished off the dock rings and tail bandages (yes and yes), he decided to cut his losses and move on to having some actual fun. They could always continue later.

“I think that’s enough of this for today,” he said, doing his best to sound in charge and like this was all according to plan. “Ready to get back into character?”

She let out a small sigh that might be relief, and nodded – slowly, so as not to send the ear weights dancing again. “Okay. Clockface?”

Of course she remembered the ritual. He put his notepad and the toy manual away on the table and picked down a riding crop from the wall. “Clockface. So, slave –”

This training room was quite small compared to most others, but it had something most didn’t: a yard. Its back door led out to a big hall whose ceiling had been enchanted to show a time-shifted view of the sky above the Clocktower, so it looked like you were outside in the late morning. It was a nice sunny day, with little tufts of cloud sailing lazily by. Further down, matching enchantments on the walls completed the illusion of a well-kept sandy paddock surrounded by fields along the edge of a forest.

George gave a small gasp of surprise and delight when he led her out of the small shed that the entrance to the training room had been made to look like. Sip had been right in hoping she didn’t know this existed. He let her have several moments to look around and take it all in, before he barked, “Eyes straight ahead, slave!” and bapped her with the crop.

He guided her out to a weathered old standing rack at the far end of the paddock. Close by, a low hedge separated the training area from a dirt road that connected two sections of dungeon corridor – in fact, part of the continuation of the back alley where his performance with the Quiet had begun on Friday; that was how he’d discovered the paddocks. If he was lucky, George might get to see a pony or two walk past before it was time to take her sight away.

George didn’t have to be told what the rack was for, but climbed onto it and waited calmly while he strapped her hooves tightly to the –

“Howdy, neighbor!”

The voice didn’t come from the road, but from behind him. Sip turned around and saw a big earth stallion waving at him over the post-and-rail fence between his yard and that of the training room next door. He left George with only her hind hooves tied to the rack and went over towards the fence. “Um, howdy.”

“Out enjoying the weather? I’m Carrot Broth.”

“I’m Sip.”

“Nice to meet you, Sip. Good-looking mare you’ve got yourself over there.” He nodded towards George’s butt, raised slightly into the air by the rack.

“Um, thanks.” Sip wasn’t quite certain of the etiquette here. Was he expected to introduce her? Her real name wasn’t his to reveal, and he suddenly felt unsure whether it was socially acceptable to call one’s slavemare George. He looked over at his neighbor’s sub, hoping to find something to compliment about her in return. She was a young sky-blue earth mare with a red mane, wearing a pulling harness from which a loose bundle of thin ropes went back to a low cart that Carrot must just have stepped down from. Sip struggled to imagine their purpose.

“I’m training Cupcake here for line dressage,” explained Carrot who had apparently noticed Sip’s confused look. “Never heard of that? There’s three control lines going to each of her teat clamps from different angles, so by pulling in the right combination I can move it in any direction. And similarly for the buttplug and dildo.”

When Sip looked closer he could see that though the control strings all went through holes in a board mounted across Cupcake’s back, they continued in different patterns around her body, threaded through little rings mounted on the harness. Some of them eventually ended up somewhere under her belly; others disappeared into a maze of straps and rods and strings beneath her tail.

“I see . . .” he ventured. “But what for?”

“Oh, for giving instructions, of course,” Carrot grinned. “Watch this.” He stepped back onto his cart and began nudging the lines where they terminated at a dashboard in front. When he pulled a particular pair of strings, Cupcake smartly lifted a forehoof up to chest height and held it there until he let go. A different combination made her walk sideways in a circle, turning the cart around in place. She didn’t seem to notice Sip as she went past him, staring right through him with her face locked in an expression of deep concentration. He saw she was wearing a black collar, indicating that she and Carrot were a couple. That made sense; what they were training looked quite complicated, not worth it for a casual romp. He wondered if he and Cirrus would end up doing something as bizarre as this, if he managed to keep her interested.

When Cupcake had made a complete circle, Carrot had her do a four-legged jump and a curtsey for a finale. “Amazing,” Sip had to admit. “But why not just shout orders instead?”

Carrot Broth rolled his eyes. “Where’s the fun in that? And it’s against the rules too. At tournament level, ear plugs and muffs are mandatory.”

“Oh, you’re doing competitions?” Somehow it didn’t surprise Sip that was a thing. “Are you good?”

“Not yet. The pros also use a clit clip with three-axis control, but Cupcake responds really badly to that” – Carrot winced – “so we’re trying to replace it with a pair of labia clamps.”

“Ingenious.” In fact Sip had no idea if it was clever or not, but he felt obliged to make some kind of positive comment.

“We hope. But there’s a lot of crosstalk with the dildo signals. Ah well, I think we need to get back to work. Nice talking to ya.” He pulled yet a different set of strings and drove off, Cupcake goose-trotting in front.

“Good luck,” yelled Sip after him, and went back to George.

She looked up at him quizzically, but he shrugged and continued strapping her forehooves in and then fixed her head down to the rack’s chin rest with a blindfold-bridle. The little chat with the neighbor would serve perfectly to prime her to feel outdoors and exposed. Then he took to immobilizing her in earnest, with several tight straps around each of her legs, and a set of straps around the barrel that weaved through and interlocked with her wings in a pattern he had memorized from the Earth Pony’s Field Guide. To make sure she really couldn’t twitch a muscle he also pulled her tail tight up along her spine, fixing it to the wing straps, and for good measure tied the ear weights together below the chin rest.

He spoke to her while he worked: “Now, George, in our last few sessions you have had a certain amount of choice. You could either be good and obedient, and get praise and rewards, or disobey and be punished. This may have given you an impression that being a slave is about having some kind of influence on what happens to you. Today is when you learn how wrong that is. Today you’re going to be helpless.

“In a little while, I’m going to do some things to you. Some of them will hurt. Perhaps others will not. Some of them may even be pleasant. But all that doesn’t matter, because the only reason I’m doing them is that they’re things it amuses me to do to you. There’s absolutely nothing you can do to make me stop, or to make it last longer or shorter. Perhaps at the moment when you think it’s finally over, I’m only making you wait before I continue. Or perhaps when I have done everything, I will find it amusing to start over.

“It doesn’t matter if you scream and whine. It doesn’t matter if you like it or not. And it certainly doesn’t matter what you deserve or not, or if you learn anything from it. All that matters is that you’re in my power and I can do what I want to you, when I want, for whichever reasons I have.”

He almost finished off with, “Do you understand that?” but managed to stop himself in time. He had just gone on at length about how it didn’t matter what she understood. The whole wonderful bunch of lies had come out remarkably well; it would have been a shame to flub it at the end.

Instead he told her to test her safety bell. Ding. Good; the tail bindings did not interfere with her use of the bell. He finished his work by gagging her with a rope muzzle that she had given a solid yes-and-really-yes earlier.

He let her stew for a minute or two while he trotted back to the shed to grab some toys. He didn’t have a fixed plan here – or rather, his plan had been to get some inspiration for an alternative to the cane while they reviewed toys. But they hadn’t even made it to that section of the manual. More or less at random he picked down a small paddle, a silk flogger, a vibrator, and a stiff-bristled coat brush. And, yes, the cane. Hopefully he could make all that add up to something. And if not . . . well, one thing that speech hadn’t promised her was a consistent experience.

When he came back out, George’s exposed marehood was already pulsing and dripping with anticipation. He flipped the flogger’s tails lightly against it, and trailed them gently upwards, over the top of her croup and along one of her sides, across her chest and up the neck. He noted with approval that even as tightly wrapped up as she was, she could still shiver.

Then he drew the flogger back and got down to the real work.

* * *

Afterwards, when he had done everything and decided against starting over (ha ha!), he steadied her on the short walk back to the training room. She leaned gratefully into him, and he felt the warm push of her body against his, a different kind of togetherness than the whipping and spanking and rutting that had gone before.

When they got inside, she flopped down on her side on the divan by the door with a long, content sigh. Once Sip’s eyes adapted to the dimmer light, he could see her looking happily up at him. He must have done something right again. He sat down beside her and put a hoof on her shoulder, massaging gently.

He ought to get moving, pull the buttplug out of her and deposit it and the other toys in the cleaning hopper. And then stand her up and begin the long walk towards the aftercare block at Overfall. But she didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get onward. And with the scene over, they were equals again; if she needed a pause here, it wasn’t his place to spur her on. He kept massaging her shoulder and stroking her mane with the other hoof.

Eventually she shifted around on the divan, rolling over on her belly so she could raise her head towards him. “Silent,” she said, “I mean, Sip?”

“Mmhm?” He thought she was looking less happy now. Had she been waiting for him to get up and get going?

“Do you think you could go another time?” she asked tentatively. “I’d like to try – if you want, that is – I want to try blowing you.”

“Now? Here?” He remembered how he had forced her to do that weeks ago, how her mouth had felt, how she had surprised him by seeming eager. She had been tied up then. Now she wasn’t even in play; she had called him Sip, not ‘master’.

She nodded, suddenly blushing furiously. “Look, I know it’s not –”

“Okay,” he managed. The erection he had growing up between them wouldn’t have been easy to deny.

She brightened up a tiny bit and lifted herself up on her forelegs. “Just lean back and enjoy,” she said, in a deeper voice than she usually used. “I’ll make it worth your while. I hope.”

So he lay back and thought of Equestria while she licked his shaft cautiously. It wasn’t a bad feeling – in fact, he felt quite hard just from her licking the sides. He would have to order her to do it again in play sometime. After all, her being his slave was at least notionally for his pleasure. And if she didn’t even mind . . .

It sure was odd not to have any control of what she was doing to it, though. He had to stop himself from reaching back there with a helping hoof himself, but it had been unmistakable that this was supposed to be her thing. A moment later, when he had stopped himself a second time, he reached both forelegs up and pinned them under his crest, emitting a satisfied little sigh to make clear he was only making himself comfortable. Just think of Equestria, indeed.

Was this how it felt for a sub when sex was something that was done to her? He must remember this; it would help him make the right experience for her. Of course, real subs had all kinds of cuffs and chains and ropes to help keep them from interfering. He imagined himself like that. What if Cirrus, instead of merely telling him to lie back, had cuffed his hooves behind his neck and tied his hind legs down to the corners of the couch? The idea was strangely exciting. In his fantasies, before the Clocktower, he had often imagined what being the mare would be like. Once it became reality, though, he knew he would never have it in him to allow anypony that kind of power over him. But, perhaps, if she was that anypony, he –

That train of thought derailed forever when Cirrus had enough of his shaft and began running her tongue around the flare. He managed not to spasm very much in surprise, but couldn’t prevent an inarticulate grunt escaping him. She stopped licking, and when he opened his eyes (when had he closed them?) he saw her looking back at him, lips still around the tip of his cock, with her eyebrows raised in a wordless question. “Go on,” he croaked, nonchalantly.

Somehow she broke a smile even with her face full of cock. She resumed tickling him with her tongue, sliding her mouth down over the shaft with – oh, wow! – her head tilted so the tip scraped against the inside of her cheek. She stopped with her lips almost down to the medial ring – and then made a sudden run for it, continuing down with decisive force until he felt the back of her mouth hit against the tip and bounce back. Before, that had made her cough and sputter; now she merely paused for a moment or two before she continued.

By now Sip had given up on noticing the details of what she was doing. He had enough to do with keeping his legs still, keeping himself from shouting out, and remembering to breathe from time to time. He was curiously aware of how his own breath sounded, explosive gasps interrupting periods of locked-up tension, until he realized he had heard that breathing before, from Cirrus when he was rutting her at the end of a session. If that meant she felt like he did now, he would –

And then he came, came, came. He never learned exactly what she had done to set him off, but did have time to hope it was good for her too, before the big wave of good spread out from his loins in all directions through his body and made him lose focus for a few moments.

When he began thinking clearly again, still lying on his back and drenched in sweat, she was sitting up straight in the vee of his hind legs with her eyes closed and her mouth visibly full. Suddenly she scrunched her forehead up tremendously and her ears folded back flat and her jaw clenched, and he saw a small bulge travel down her neck, from throatlatch past her collar to the chest. She did that once more before she relaxed somewhat, drawing deep relieved breaths.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” he said softly.

She shook her head determinedly. “But I want to. I have to learn, sooner or later; that’s how they all – I mean, wouldn’t it turn you off if I went to the bathroom and retched instead?”

Sip wasn’t sure that would be much worse than watching her grimaces. She had a point, though. But couldn’t she just declare oral to be one of her limits? He wouldn’t mind that. They had been very particular about respecting limits in his dom classes.

At the back of his mind, a small traitorous voice was pointing out that if he encouraged her not to learn to swallow, it wouldn’t be as easy for her to find a better dom than him to play with. He shook it off. It was her decision, not for him to meddle either way.

Instead he said nothing, but collected himself and sat up behind her, putting a foreleg around her in a hug. She snuggled back towards him. Good. He took to nibbling softly at her cheek.

She shifted her head slightly, and he had a sudden image of her turning around and kissing him. If she did that, he could kiss back, he resolved, no matter where her mouth had just been. It was the least he could do.

But she didn’t.

Some time later she cleared her voice with what sounded like a small wry giggle. “At one time out there,” she said to the room, “I thought it would end with you and that stallion both taking me, one at each end.”

Sip tried to imagine that. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of sharing her. Would he be in the front or at the back? In either case he would be looking right at the other stallion instead of at her, and he couldn’t find that appealing. But he could understand that it might be exciting for her. And he had already decided he was in for the long haul. If sharing was what it would take to keep her, perhaps he might as well pony up to it?

But he was getting ahead of himself. When he thought about it, he wasn’t sure if she was talking about something she had hoped would happen, or something she was thankful didn’t. He would have to ask her.

Very carefully, so as not to make it a leading question, he gave her a small squeeze and asked in a casual tone: “Cirrus, is there something in particular you would like us to try doing that we haven’t done yet?”

She thought about that for a long time. “I think,” she said at last (oh shit, here it comes!), “I mean, I’ve thought sometimes that it could be cool to do a really long scene. You know, suppose we go to sleep at the end and when I wake up in the morning we’re still in play?” There was a small glide in her voice at the end that made him imagine her blushing hard, even though she was looking away from him.

He needed some time to get his brain in gear for this new idea. “You want to do that?” he asked stupidly.

“Mhm. Look, I know you’re probably busy –”

He stopped her with a slightly harder bite on her cheek. Silly filly, he would make all the time for her he needed to. It was her who could only be at the Clocktower on Tuesday nights. “You’re the one with the busy schedule. When would be a good time?”

She broke the hug and turned towards him, blinking. “I mean,” she started, “mom and dad are in Las Pegasus next week and Mr. Drizzle owes me a day off, so I could stay the night after our usual . . . unless that’s too soon to arrange?”

Sip was almost reasonably certain he worked evenings next Wednesday. If not, he would wheedle somepony into covering for him. That was just details. “Lady, you’ve got yourself a deal. Tuesday, seven to whenever.”

She nodded enthusiastically. “Perhaps we’ll have time to look at some of those whips?”

So she had noticed too. He reached up a hoof to boop her nose. “Perhaps. Come well rested, though; you don’t know what you’re getting into”.

She booped him back. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

7. Bully

Sip had never imagined having a destiny would be this complex.

Even though he was meant to be a Quiet, he couldn’t actually be that very often. The Quiet only worked a dozen times a year, randomly spread out in a pattern that Ashen had designed to look like there was no pattern to it. And however well he got paid for each of those gigs, with so few of them it would take him an eternity to earn enough to pay for his own for Cirrus. Thirty-five brands, Sleipnir above!

So he was back on the slave floor for more volunteer shifts. Or, as it were, back at Two Fountains Plaza to help auction off a tour group of visiting zebresses. Sip and two other staffers were taking turns unlocking a mare from the line of waiting merchandise and escorting her up to the raised platform on the long side of the plaza, where two auctioneers with bullhorns were hawking them to the assembled crowd.

Some of the zebras barely spoke any Ponish other than the safewords. One of them looked so nervous that Sip found himself ruffling the fuzz on her crest reassuringly while they were waiting in the wings for her time on stage. “It’s all right,” he mumbled, even though she wouldn’t understand.

The filly (it was difficult to tell age with zebras, but he couldn’t think of this one in any other way – younger than him, at least) shied away from his touch and looked at him fearfully, as if she thought it would be the beginning of molesting her then and there. It might have been, of course – she was wearing a silver-studded collar that indicated her consent to be jumped on by any passing dom without warning. Sip wondered if she was getting second thoughts about choosing that.

He had spent two hours earlier in the afternoon in a lecture hall, bearing official witness to how one of the senior den mothers and an interpreter explained to the visitors exactly what they were going into, and then circulated around to everyzebra, taking individual confirmations. Clocktower Zebrica wouldn’t have let them join the trip if they were not subs in good standing there, and of age to make decisions for themselves, but the Society’s belt-and-suspenders approach to consent demanded a cross-check of all that on arrival. Sip certainly appreciated knowing for himself that this filly was merely a good actor, not seriously scared and lost, in a strange country full of ponies she couldn’t understand –

“Going . . . going . . . gone for nine lashes and two!”

This was Sip’s cue to lead his zebra into the center of the stage, between the auctioneers’ lecterns.

“Up next is lot number seventeen. Isn’t this a cutie, brother?”

“Indeed it is, brother. Just look at that collar, too! We will open bids at two brands straight for a five-day contract . . .”

The filly plodded resignedly towards the stocks set into the front edge of the stage, apparently expecting to be locked into them. There wouldn’t be time for that in a simple auction, so Sip yanked her leash to stop her, and instead got her positioned with her rear facing outward, using tugs on the leash and light baps with a crop. He lifted up her tail to present her features to the audience.

As bids began coming in, he let her turn around facing the crowd. She stood looking back and forth in confusion between the auctioneers on each side of her as they exchanged patter.

“– Will this frightened young stripeycow end up at the bordello? Poor thing, she has no idea what’s going on. But I’m sure she’ll take to the language quickly, with all those stallions passing through.”

“I think Madam Crust has different plans for her mouth, brother. She has bid three brands and four – do I see four brands anywhere? Four? Going once . . .” The auctioneer with the mustache held up his gavel. The zebra’s eyes grew wide as she realized what the gathering was for.

“Oh, for pony’s sake!” exclaimed the other one. “Is there not a single sentimental bleeding-heart stripelover left in this crowd?”

Apparently the crowd was fresh out of bleeding hearts.

“Going twice for three brands four . . .”

“Only four brands to save this sweet, slightly shaking striped specimen from a fate worse than honest labor?”

“Gone!” And that was that, and Sip took the filly down backstage and chained her to the three mares that had already been bought by the brothel keeper.

Sip could understand why there weren’t many bidders. These tourists didn’t have anywhere to go home to after a night at the Clocktower; they would be expecting to stay in play round the clock. It made his head spin just to imagine being responsible for that. He was finding it taxing enough to plan his overnight session for Cirrus, spanning less than a day. The more he thought about it, the more little details demanded to be solved. How would she even sleep – locked in a cage or tied up in his bed? He couldn’t do both at once, so he kept changing his mind, and also kept feeling that no matter which of them he chose she would be disappointed that it wasn’t the other one.

When he had helped clean up after the auction, he went to the volunteer office to pick up his assignment for the next day, but found it deserted except for a middle-aged zebress tied to a coat stand in the corner.

“My owner had to go,” she explained in a slight accent when she saw Sip looking around. “To where I do not know.”

There was a sound of a toilet flushing, and a moment later Pencil Note emerged from the back room. “Why, hello, young Silent.” He glanced sharply over towards the zebra. “She hasn’t been uppity, has she? I swear, if those two stallions have pulled my ears once again . . .”

Sip wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to that. Fortunately Pencil Note didn’t seem to expect an answer, but sat down at his desk and searched through his notes. “I think I’ve got you next time at Bram’s on . . . tomorrow, in fact.” He looked up at Sip. “You’re not overworking yourself, are you?”

“Oh no, I’m just . . . enjoying myself. Having fun, you know. By the way, thanks for setting me up with that other job.”

“Which other job?”

“You know, the Qu-”

“UNFORTUNATELY I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.” Pencil glanced pointedly towards his zebra. “And probably shouldn’t have.”

Whoops. Sip knew his job with the Quiet was a secret, but he hadn’t imagined needing to keep it secret from the pony who introduced him to it. He hurried onwards with the thing he had really come to ask.

“Say, there are some bedrooms in the Clocktower for scenes that last all night, right? Do you know how one goes about reserving one of those?”

“Well, there are two ways.” Pencil put down the calendar and adjusted his glasses. “First, you can go to the Membership Services office up in the mansion; they can usually find something for you on the day. But if you have a specific room in mind, you need to go to the guild that maintains that particular room.”

“I’ve been looking at the Admiral Fairweather Memorial Wing . . .”

“Oh? Then you’re in luck, that’s one of ours.” Sip knew this already – in fact he had done a lot of homework on this subject, picking the exact kind of room he wanted for his date. He could easily have looked up the booking procedure too, but asking Pencil Note had felt like a good way to point out, without being blatant, that he now had a sub who would do overnight scenes with him. It was a bit of a letdown that he didn’t even remark on that implication.

Pencil Note was up from his chair and waving a hoof for Sip to follow him into an adjoining office. “It’s Mistress S in here who handles it. Hey Swish, young Silent here would like to book one of the Fairweather suites.”

“Uh huh,” replied the mare in the next office, not looking away from her paperwork. If Pencil Note had first reminded Sip of a tax accountant, Mistress S was just as unmistakably a librarian. She even wore her mane in a bun. “When for?”

“Next Tuesday,” said Sip. “Until Wednesday morning, that is.”

Now Mistress S turned around, looking at Sip over her reading glasses as if she was doubting this would-be patron was even literate. “Sweetie, you need to book at least three weeks in advance.”

“Oh.”

After what felt like an eternity, Pencil Note spoke up. “Come on now, Silent is one of our most dependable volunteers. And I know you have those little lists . . .”

Mistress S rolled her eyes. “Very well then. But only because my colleague vouches for you.” She opened a filing cabinet and took out a ledger. “It is all full up on Tuesday,” she said authoritatively without even opening it. “But there’s a waiting list, and I can put you on it. If it doesn’t open up, you’ll have to take whatever Central assigns for you”.

“Don’t worry,” said Pencil Note reassuringly after they had returned to his office. “She’s always complaining about cancellations. So, you’ve gotten yourself a mare collared?”

So he had noticed after all!

“Yes. I mean, not collared collared,” Sip had to admit. “She’s still wearing red.”

“Good, good. There’s no need to rush; take the time to get to know her properly before you make a commitment.”

Sip knew Pencil meant well, so he nodded in agreement and didn’t press the matter. But he already knew Cirrus well enough to be sure she was who he was made for. He would wait, yes – but until she was ready to take his collar.

* * *

When The Day came, he managed to wait for almost an hour before he went into the livery stable to pick up George. He paused for a moment in the corridor outside the stable room to get fully into character. Inside, some of the subs were talking animatedly. Suddenly he heard one of them say something that sounded exactly like “– it was The Quiet!”

That was interesting. Sip inched closer to the doorway, to hear more of the conversation without interrupting it.

“They walked right past me,” continued the same voice in an excited half-whisper. “Or glided, or floated, whatever it is they do. And then they turns to the mare next door – I thought my hour had come, I tell you – and they don’t say a word but she pings her bell once and off they go. Like she knew it’s no good even trying to resist.”

“I knew her! Sunny Leaf, the one they took!” said a different voice, apparently holding back sobs. “She was always so nice. And now she’s . . . she’s –”

“It’s not like she’s dead,” replied a third mare. “Sometimes they come back.”

“Sometimes! But if they do, they’re – they’re different. Everypony says that.”

“Such is life, though. At least we have some breathing space now. They never show up again until you’ve forgotten to worry about them.”

“Says you. One of my watersports instructors said there was a week once where –”

“Gee Molly, how many instructors does it take to teach you how to get peed on?”

“It’s not just that! Sometimes you have to aim yours too. And –”

Sip decided that was as much as he cared to hear. He slipped on his dominant’s mask and stepped into the stable.

The four mares in the stalls closest to the door hastily shut up when he came in. George was standing in a stall by herself a bit further in, looking somewhat forlorn away from the gossipers. Sip wondered if she had trouble fitting in among the stable subs. It had been her own idea to start the scene here, but perhaps he ought to begin looking for an alternative? Or had he waited too long to pick her up? But she brightened up when she saw him.

He had a wonderful opening line prepared, but when he reached the gate to her stall he found himself blanking out on it completely. He stood there staring at her stupidly. She smiled back. To hay with it, he thought, and said nothing while he opened the gate and grabbed the lead rope hanging from her collar. With a tiny nod she followed him out of the stable.

It felt strange to begin the scene like this, without even saying hi. But in a weird way it also felt right, both of them slipping into their roles like they’d known each other forever. He liked that. Perhaps someday he could try making it through a whole scene to the climax without any words.

On the way out he took her aside to the tack room at the front of the stable. She had been wearing just her collar and cuffs while she waited for him, and even though for a long scene he shouldn’t keep her too tightly wrapped up, he figured he ought to get some kit on her to keep her reminded of her place – otherwise what would be the point? Still without a word he put a plain bridle on her head. She continued the silence while he pulled a pair of burlap wing covers around her wings. He could feel her muscles twitch a bit as he tied the drawstrings around the wing roots. The bags would let her flex all of the joints and feathers in the wings but not spread them out.

He stepped back from her to take stock of the result. Somehow she sensed he wanted to see her in motion and started walking about in the room while he had still to come up with an order. She pirouetted around at the far end and walked back past him, swishing her tail provocatively from side to side, head held high and proud.

She was beautiful.

But he had a scene to run, plans and reservations to follow through with. “George,” he said with a sigh, pouring all his regret at breaking their magical silence into sounding disappointed, “is that how a slave walks? You’re strutting like you think you own yourself.”

She let her head fall down, and her ears, and her easy smile. “I’m sorry, Master,” she said tonelessly. But for a fraction of a second, so short that he almost missed it, there was a small expectant grin and a jitter of her tail.

So now it was on. “We’ve been over this in training,” he said patiently. “Humility. A slave’s head doesn’t go above her withers, unless she’s told to.”

She nodded and lowered her head a bit further in front of her body.

“But you seem to have trouble remembering. So we’re going to do a special exercise to help you with that.” Kneeling down in front of her, he strapped a pair of magically charged martingale boxes to her forecannons, and then tied strings between the trigger levers and her bridle. He pulled on one of the strings to demonstrate how the box would emit a piercing whistle if she raised her head too high. “When this happens, you will stand still with your tail tucked aside and await punishment.”

“Yes, Master.” She nodded again carefully.

He clipped a leash to her collar and led her out on a walk through the dungeon.

She made it almost all the way up the main avenue and back again before the first time she forgot. They had stopped to admire a gangbang in progress when somepony at the other side of the scrum started jeering loudly, and she instinctively raised her head to see what was up.

The alarm whistles sounded. Most of the audience to the gangbang turned around to look at George and Sip. George quickly put her head back down and closed her eyes as if to shut out the staring ponies, blushing deeply.

Sip himself was keenly aware of the onlookers as he walked around to George’s hind end, drawing his cane. Stay calm, it’s just a crowd. Things like this happen in the Clocktower all the time. When he took aim at her buttocks he noticed how her marehood was damp already. She must be more excited than she was letting on. He realized it would be her first time getting spanked in full public view too.

He swung at her once and she gave a surprised grunt when the cane connected. She staggered forward by a hoofwidth but then stood there waiting for another hit, breathing quickly. There was a low whistle from the audience, somepony appreciating her composure. Sip hoped she noticed.

One stroke was enough, though. He picked up the leash again and led her onwards while the crowd turned their attention back to the gangbang.

The next time the whistle sounded, he did not see what had distracted her; she was already waiting with her head down and tail up when he turned around to look at her. There were not many ponies around to watch her being caned this time, so it was a bit anticlimactic. He was beginning to worry that he was relying too much on that cane, ever since their first scene and he still didn’t have a lot of ways to punish her. Was he getting stale already, a one-trick pony? He’d need to get around to talking to her about other tools soon.

When she earned her third stroke, they had just emerged from an alley leading off from the slave pits. He had glanced back to be sure she was following him, when suddenly her head bobbed gently upwards, only just enough to trigger the whistle, and he could have sworn it looked like she was doing it on purpose. But the next instant she was looking surprised and mortified like she ought to, throwing her head down and getting into position. Or perhaps astonished at what she’d just done?

The slave pits were busy enough that not everypony in sight dropped what they were doing when the whistle sounded, but there were still a fair number of ponies looking on curiously. Sip felt a mischievous impulse to let George wait for her stroke – that’ll teach her to misbehave deliberately to get punishment! – so he tried to make a bit of a show out of producing the cane and swinging it about in the air before taking aim. He wasn’t much of an entertainer, but he managed to keep about a third of the audience with him until George gave up on waiting and opened an eye to find out what was going on.

The moment she started turning her head he swung the cane, a bit harder than he had intended to. She jumped straight up with a yelp, wing bags fluffing up as she tried to spread her wings for balance. She barely managed to stay upright when she landed.

A few of the onlookers chuckled loudly at her reaction. Sip felt angry at them, and at himself. He hadn’t meant to make her that surprised. She found her balance again and waited miserably for a fourth stroke – the whistles had gone off again when she jumped – but he couldn’t bring himself to continue. It had been his fault that he waited long enough for the alarm boxes to reset.

For a few moments he wanted to call off everything. But that would have been abandoning her in mid-scene, and he was supposed to be in charge. Make a decision and own it. He lowered the cane and instead walked up and hugged her lightly, patting her mane encouragingly. “Let’s just continue,” he whispered. He waited for long enough for her to make a tiny nod against his foreleg before he let go of her and grabbed the leash instead to lead her off.

The crowd had dispersed as quickly as it formed. It was getting near dinner time.

Sip had chosen the restaurant with some care. There were, of course, plenty of places in the Clocktower where a dom could take his sub out to eat. But in many of them, that meant the sub remaining chained under the table, or at least waiting meekly at the feet of her master or mistress. Not that there was anything wrong with that – Sip suspected Cirrus would have found it perfectly satisfactory. But, selfish as it was, he would be damned if he took the mare of his life out for dinner for the first time and then didn’t get to talk to her properly. So here they were, in a pretty fancy place with white cloths and silver candlesticks on the tables, where the subs were sitting at those tables.

As soon as Cirrus took her place, wincing bravely when sitting down on her freshly caned behind, two waiters swept in from the sides and padlocked her forehoof cuffs to short chains attached to the corners of the table. Her wings spread out in surprise – they’d left the wing covers in the cloakroom – and she looked alarmed for a short moment until she saw him looking calmly on. Then she accepted the invasion meekly. He was reminded of teaching her to trust his guidance when she was out walking in a blindfold.

She sat there with her eyes downcast. Perhaps she thought they were still doing humble-posture training. “Lift your head so I can see you properly, my pretty,” he said mildly, somewhere between a command and a permission. She did so with a blush and a shy smile, which grew to a happy grin when Sip smiled back.

One of the waiters was passing out menus, and Sip began reading through his, looking for something that was neither too extravagant nor too cheapskate. He would be paying real play money for the meal – in most of the Society’s eateries the food was free, covered by his membership dues, but here paying for it was part of the story. Ostensibly George was chained to the table because he was putting up his slave as security that he wouldn’t skip out on the bill. He had plenty of money, though, even if he ought to be saving most of it for the Plan.

He selected torretini di carote e fieno with balsamic and sweetpepper relish. The waiter came back with glasses and a pitcher of water. “Ready to order now, sir?”

Sip nodded and pointed to the dish in the menu, not daring to attempt the foreign name.

“And just water and crackers for the pet, I presume?”

He had not realized she wouldn’t be eating food from the same menu as him. She hadn’t even gotten one. Maybe he could just ask for another potion of his order for her. Or would that ruin everything?

The waiter noticed his hesitation. “Or if it’s a special occasion, perhaps I could recommend our rice gruel?”

“That’ll be fine, yes,” he improvised. So much for being prepared.

“One gruel. Would you like a dollop of cum in that?”

Sip glanced over at George. Her eyes had gone wide and she was shaking her head quickly. The waiter was barely acknowledging she was present, however, and clearly expected Sip to answer. It was his job as a dom to make the decisions, of course. But this wasn’t even part of the plan.

“I’m not going to pay extra for that,” he ventured. “There has to be limits.” Hopefully the cum wouldn’t turn out to be complimentary.

“Very well, sir, no cum.” The waiter bowed and left.

Sip turned his attention back to George. “It should be enough for you that I’m getting you that nice gruel in the first place,” he told her, trying to claim back the initiative in the scene.

“Yes, master. Thank you, master.” Perhaps her smile was more amused than grateful, but he didn’t press the matter. She too was doing the best she could.

He had hoped to get into a real conversation, though, like the ones they had in aftercare. How did one start that? Just jump in?

“So, what are your parents doing in Las Pegasus?”

She did blink a few times before she answered, but she didn’t seem angry or disappointed. “It’s their anniversary. They always go for a few days around that. Otherwise Mom doesn’t travel much. So it’s a good thing it’s now so I can get away with staying out a night.”

“Are they very strict?”

“Oh no, no. I mean, they wouldn’t – I’m sure I could have coltfriends if I wanted to.”

Sip noticed she didn’t say she did want a coltfriend. He reminded himself he could still be the dom to give her the Quiet ride of her life without being a coltfriend. And it was her decision anyway. Perhaps she’d come round afterwards.

“It’s just – you know, being a slave and all.” She lifted her hooves up from the table as far as the short chains would allow, looking at them blankly. “I mean no disrespect, sir. But I don’t think it’s what they’d want.”

“I suppose,” agreed Sip. What would his parents think of him being here? Chaining mares to tables. Tying them up and using them. He hoped he’d never find out.

“Master, can I – might this slave please have some water?”

He realized she couldn’t reach the water pitcher with her chained hooves. “You may,” he agreed magnanimously, and poured for her. Her glass was low and wide, almost a bowl, so she could drink without needing to lift it.

It felt oddly naughty to mix real life into the play like this, jumping right from chatting about parents to being master and slave without a blink. There wasn’t anything wrong with that – Sip knew there were couples in the Society who stayed in play all day, every day, and their lives must be full of this. He didn’t think he could do that; he couldn’t get ideas fast enough to be in charge all the time. And he wanted to have time to try to be her friend outside play too. But it was kind of exciting to pretend to be full-time anyway.

Perhaps she was feeling it too. She looked up from her water, smiling. “At least Mom’s not riding me about grandfoals yet. My brother got that hard.” She chuckled.

“There’s always the Breeding Guild,” he suggested jokingly. Even though most of what the Breeders did was make-believe, they also catered to couples who wanted the real thing to happen in the Society’s dungeons.

She grew more serious for a moment. “Maybe I’ll do that one day. But I’d make a terrible mother. And I’ve seen what it does to my brother. Don’t worry, I’m not skipping any of my spells.”

He nodded. One of the few absolute requirements for anypony, mare or stallion, to be active in the society was to go to the thaumiatry center once a month and have a standard set of contraceptive spells cast. Except for collared couples who applied for a waiver.

“But it could be fun to try playing it,” she said – and then abruptly caught herself, dropping her head. “Sorry, master. I didn’t mean to presume –”

Planning future scenes while still being in the middle of one was probably a step too weird. “Perhaps we can, someday,” he agreed. “If you behave.” You’re not in trouble, but I’m still in charge.

She nodded, with a look of relief.

Then a pair of waiters arrived with their plates.

After dinner he took her to a blowing alley for dessert. It wasn’t far from the restaurant, but looked a great deal seedier – a narrow storefront with a single door under a painted sign that said MAMA ROSA’S CREAMERY in faded letters.

Inside was a long room where about a dozen collared and blindfolded stallions were strapped to standing racks, in a rearing position so their bellies faced the room, their forehooves and heads locked into stocks far above Sip and George’s heads. Some had their cocks out, hanging into the air in front of them. A poster near the front pronounced them to be “Fresh colts from Clocktower Equestria West EVERY DAY! Ask the staff to see contracts and dietary certificates.”

Mama Rosa herself was a pegasus mare that Sip remembered as one of the fellow visitors on his first tour of the Society. She wore a black peaked cap and a battered old flight jacket that had been modified with a lot of straps and buckles. Most of the straps hung loose except the few that were buckled haphazardly across her chest and sides. Her heavy-duty horseshoes made booming clacks against the floor planks when she walked.

“Get ’em out, you mules!” she barked as soon as Sip and George entered. “There are customers waiting!” She went down past the line of stallions, whacking those who were not ready with a nasty-looking crop until they all had full erections sticking out in front of them. The smell of musk and precum, never completely absent in the Clocktower, was palpable.

George had stopped right inside the door, trying to take in the scene without raising her head higher than proper. Sip turned to her, tugging lightly on her leash. “You know how they say a good slave can recognize her master by the taste of his cum?”

She nodded slowly, already guessing where this was going.

“You can’t do that yet, because you don’t know what to compare to. To repair that, you will now suck each of these cocks, and take careful note of the variation.”

She looked up and down the room, blushing. “Yes, master.” He could hear from the slight quaver in her voice and her quickening breath that the idea was exciting to her. He hoped.

He bapped her rump lightly to start her moving towards the first of the stallions. As she walked, he ran a hoof through her tail in the gesture he thought of as reminding her she could still safeword out if he had misunderstood her completely. But she didn’t.

The stallion in the rack must have realized he was first even though he couldn’t see, for his cock started twitching and grew half a hoof longer as George stepped towards him. She stopped for a moment barely a head in front of the waving phallus and looked back very briefly at Sip with a nervous grin. He caught up with her and put a hoof supportively around her back, to reassure her he approved. She took a deep breath and slid her mouth around the tip of the stallion’s cock.

It was not as painful to watch George blow another stallion as he had feared. He remembered himself being more or less in the stallion’s position, after their last session, and did feel just a bit envious. On the other hoof, it was still his scene. She was doing this for him, not for the anonymous stallion. And he was the one controlling her, creating an experience for her. He could work with this.

It didn’t seem to take long before the stallion went off, thrashing against the straps of the rack, and waving George around at the end of his cock, up and down and in and out, while she made gagging noises and fought not to spill the cum. She waited until he stopped ejaculating, and pulled back with a smack. She looked back to Sip for instructions, trails of semen slowly rolling down her chin.

“Don’t swallow, honey, it’s just a tasting” said Mama Rosa, who had appeared from the back of the room to place a bucket with some water in it in front of George. “Give it a good swirl around, then spit out here.” Sip nodded his assent, and she did her best to follow the instructions, depositing a mouthful of glop in the bucket. Mama Rosa produced a bowl of fresh water with lemon wedges floating in it and told her to rinse well before the next course.

As George moved down the line of stallions, Sip slowly let his supportive touches spiral from her back in towards naughtier parts. First it was merely petting her sides, nuzzing at her cutie mark, then he moved down under her body to squeeze and grope at her teats, then finally back and up towards her marehood, which by now was glistening wet and pulsated slowly with anticipation. Sip was getting pretty full and hard himself from that sight, but laboriously forced himself to hold back and stick to his plan. The third stallion from the end, that was when he would mount her while she sucked, so she’d get the taken-from-both-ends experience she had hinted at last time. And afterwards there would still be two stallions for her to blow, so it wouldn’t be a big climax, just casually being used by her master while she was carrying out orders. Oh, yes! He could hardly wait.

But before she reached that point, about two thirds down the line, she froze briefly after she’d rinsed her mouth, looked back at him with a small worried frown, and stated quietly: “Staircase.”

The slow-down safeword! Sip could feel his entire wonderful plan come apart – but that couldn’t be helped. She was the one who mattered. Was her problem with the blowjobs or to his own groping at the other end? He wasn’t sure. Better play it safe.

When he made up his mind, George was already looking away from him again. In a way, ‘staircase’ was the most difficult of the safewords to react to; it meant he had to keep the scene going, and adjust on the fly how he ran it. “We don’t have all night for this, slave,” he said gruffly. “We need to stop the exercise now, but you will be punished later for delaying.”

She hung her head. “This slave apologizes, master.”

There was still the matter of his own quite stiff erection. He told himself the safeword was just for dialing down the scene, not for stopping it completely. It might be enough simply to jump to the finale. He led George all the way to the back end of the room where a few of the racks did not have any stallion in them. Sip climbed onto one of them himself so his cock hung out in front of George. “Suck,” he commanded.

The rack was surprisingly comfortable to lean against, but he couldn’t see much up here, with his head almost up against the ceiling. He closed his eyes and tried to relax, concentrating on how her muzzle and lips felt as she probed around his flare and began to slowly slide down around it. He felt vaguely guilty, like he was abandoning her to navigate the scene herself, while he just – . . . no, that was wrong! Just enjoy. He was the dom after all; he was allowed to –

Ah! She was beginning to use her tongue for real, in a way he didn’t think he had noticed before Had she already gotten that much experience from blowing those other stallions? It felt good. Relax, enjoy. He caught himself attempting to thrust into her, but the bars of the rack were in the way. No matter. It was for her, and she was doing well. Warm and wet and supple around him, humming against his cock – happy to please her master?

He felt he ought to hold back, to let her savor her part longer. But the rack offered him as little opportunity to delay the proceedings as to hurry them along. That was what it was built to do, of course. He had a sudden fantasy out of nowhere of Mama Rosa reaching up and strapping him to the rack, along with her other stallions. In his imagination she then donned a strapon and took to fucking George from behind while she was still blowing Sip. For some reason that thought was what pushed him over the edge, and he came helplessly, squirting the lust he had been building up all day into George’s mouth.

It took him a few moments afterwards to realize that he was not really strapped down, and that George had let go of his cock. He wanted to keep leaning on the rack, relaxing while he caught his breath, but it was his job to take charge again now, to be there for her. He forced himself to start climbing down from the rack. Mama Rosa was nowhere to be seen – ah yes, there she was, up by the register near the door, eyeing them skeptically.

George stood below him with her cheeks bulging, looking up. He paused his climb for a moment. “You may swallow this time,” he allowed, nodding graciously.

Swallowing hadn’t become easier for her since their last time, but by the time he was down on the floor she had managed, and was panting a bit, catching her breath. He could see some moisture in the corners of her eyes, but they seemed to be smiling. He ruffled her mane approvingly. “Well done, slave.” On impulse he segued the ruffle into a hug, pulling both forelegs around her. “Good girl.” She leaned into him.

Sip borrowed a blindfold from Mama Rosa, for George to wear on the way to their room for the night. That was something he already knew she liked, something that could save the day if his fancier ideas fell flat.

To be honest, it was also because he didn’t know exactly where they were going. Mistress S had explained he would only learn on the day itself whether he had gotten his waitlisted spot in the Admiral Fairweather wing. If not, he would need to go to the central concierge desk at the entrance to the dungeons to find out where he had been assigned a replacement room. With George blindfolded, she wouldn’t need to know the walk was him scrambling around to save his plan. It was only as they left the blowing alley that it struck him that he could also have gone and checked earlier in the evening, before he picked up George. So much for his masterly planning skills.

He looked back to check how she was holding up. She was smiling quietly – good. Perhaps she was walking a bit more unsteadily than she usually did? He wasn’t sure how exhausting the program thus far would have been, but she had safeworded back there. He decided he’d better take the direct route, rather than make a trip out of it.

A few days earlier he had walked past the Admiral Fairweather lobby, just to be sure he knew how to find out if he’d been lucky. It turned out to be hard to miss: Right by the entrance was a big board where the names of each suite’s occupants were posted. A few of them were on little hoof-written paper stickers; those must be ponies from the waiting list who had been given a room at the last moment. Unfortunately, today the board had no paper stickers on it. Sip stopped in front of it, staring blankly while he allowed himself a quiet sigh before turning away to continue towards the concierge desk. Cirrus would never need to know he had had better plans than whatever they ended up with.

At the last moment his eyes caught something on the name board. Down in one corner, one of the polished brass rectangles had engraved on it in big bold letters: “master Silent PRIDE”, and below that in smaller writing, “+ 1 slave”. He had almost missed it because he didn’t even bother to read the board before giving up! He cursed silently at himself while he stomped across the lobby and up the stairs to the right level with George in tow.

It was a pretty nice room he had gotten, with a window overlooking a small stockyard. He took the blindfold off of George as soon as they were inside. She looked around the room with interest. Suddenly her eyes went wide and she kept looking back and forth between Sip and the room. “Wow,” she breathed.

Sip followed her gaze and saw that the bedspread on the princess-sized bed in the middle of the room was decorated with a gold and orange silk appliqué forming a giant pony-sized weaver’s knot design.

If it had been somewhere else, Sip would have been floored. But this was the Clocktower, and he already knew some parts of the Society could be rather in-your-face about how the magical field permeating the dungeons (supposedly fueled by the “devotion” expressed between doms and subs doing BDSM – Sip didn’t know exactly how; that was unicorn business) allowed feats that would be wondrous marvels of thaumic prowess anywhere else in Equestria. Manifesting bedclothes adorned with his cutie mark, just for the sake of this one night, and done in hours after the spot in the calendar had opened up for him? Pssh. Stranger things happened here regularly. Besides, they hadn’t gotten the colors of the knot right.

So he didn’t make any sign of sharing George’s amazement, but instead smirked nonchalantly and motioned for her to follow him into the slave training room adjoining the bedroom. That training room was why he had wanted the Admiral Fairweather wing in particular; most of the other overnight rooms didn’t have them. It wasn’t very large, but it did have the usual selection of toys. That meant they could continue the review of all the toys he had cut short at their last session.

He called clockface, and they began going through whips and paddles.

“So what’s next?” Sip gingerly closed a drawer containing the many parts of an adjustable feather-for-feather wing restraint system, which Cirrus definitely wanted to try someday – in fact she had sounded like she was about to suggest doing it right away. Sip was glad she hadn’t; he was pretty sure he wanted some time to read the instructions carefully before he attempted that.

She turned a page in the toy manual. “Drawer C-4. Twelve-piece farrier play . . .” There was a long pause before she finished, in a smaller voice, “. . . set?”

Sip looked up from the collection of hoof rasps and picks in the next drawer and saw that Cirrus had put the manual down and was glancing worriedly towards the drawer.

“I – I think that’s a hard limit, all of it,” she said. “Sorry.”

Closing the drawer, he walked over and gave her a small hug. “Your limits are your own,” he said reassuringly. “Don’t be sorry for them.”

She nodded against his shoulder. “Know how you can find books with pictures of old-fashioned farrier’s chairs with straps to tie your hooves down? That’s the only situation where I can’t think being strapped down would be kinda hot.”

“It’s alright.” Sip let go of her, making a strong mental note to cross out the ‘farrier play’ page in his ideas file.

“Actually it’s funny,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d need to declare any real limits as long as I make sure not to qualify for a gold or crystal bell.”

He stared at her in confusion. The color of a sub’s safety bell told which levels of the dungeons she was allowed to use. Cirrus would need a crystal bell before she could be taken by the Quiet; those scenes always ended on the Root level.

“Sure, there are some noes in there –” she gestured towards the notebook where Sip had been recording her answers “– but that’s just single things, not, you know, entire kinds of play.”

“I mean,” he said, “why wouldn’t you pass the tests for those bells?”

“Oh.” She smiled. “You don’t really have to take the test unless you want to. It’s far too wild for me what’s going on there. Down in Root there’s something called the Breaking Guild where they’ll be so rough with a sub that she breaks down and can’t even think and forgets who she really is and ends up changed somehow. That sounds pretty scary. I like being me.”

Sip knew about the Breaking Guild – most of Ashen’s customers for the Quiet came from there. But there were also other guilds that could use them; if Cirrus didn’t want breaking he could join one of the other ones. All of them were in Root, though.

“But that’s not the worst,” Cirrus continued. “Have you heard about The Quiet? They’re some kind of super creepy ponies who suddenly appear out of nowhere and pick a random slave and force her with them down to Root. The other subs say They showed up in the slave market last week and took a mare.” She shuddered. “I mean, of course it’s all just a game the Society arranges, and consent and all that, but that’s not kinky, it’s just bullying! So I figure if I stay a silver bell, I won’t have to deal with them and spoil it for everypony else.” She almost spat the last words.

Sip felt dizzy. He almost started to argue against her, she shouldn’t base her opinion on rumors when she hadn’t seen the real Quiet herself. But now they were safeworded and she was setting limits and as the dom he was not supposed to question that. Especially not in a way that would sound like trying to convince her to have different ones. He opened his mouth. He closed it again.

“I guess so,” he eventually managed to mumble. Where should he go from here? Just continue with the next item in the manual?

He noticed she was still visibly agitated after her outburst, so he put a hoof round her again, gave a short squeeze. “Do you want to get back into play?” He would certainly like to get out of continuing this conversation right now.

She drew a deep breath and nodded. “Clockface.”

He put the blindfold back on her before he led her back to the main room and tied her across the bed, with her hind hooves on the floor and forelegs stretched out over the bedspread towards hardpoints on the other side of the frame. As he knelt down to tie her hind hooves in position, he noticed a set of standing stocks stowed neatly under the bed. He pulled them out and guided her hooves down between the notched boards. When he latched them together they gripped her pasterns more rigidly than he could have done with rope. The whole assembly could be bolted to the bedframe if he wanted to be even stricter, but he didn’t bother. She wouldn’t be going anywhere like this.

He sat down on the bed beside her head and began brushing her mane genly between her ears. “Who are you?” he asked softly.

She thought for a short bit. “I am you slave, master, to use and command as you see fit.”

“That is what you are, not who.” He didn’t stop brushing. “Try again.”

“I’m Society Sl–” She stopped herself when he abruptly removed his hoof. “Cirrus? No.” Then she let out a small sigh and he felt her relax beside him, giving in to the role. A blush spread on her face beneath the blindfold. “I am George, master. You named me yourself.”

He bent down and kissed her snout. “Very good. A slave should always know what and who she is. What do you desire most, George?”

“Your, ah, throbbing stallionrod inside me, master.”

“Wrong answer!” He stood up from the bed, making his voice a bit harder. “It might be true, but if so, you’re a very self-centered and ungrateful slave. What you should desire is to serve and please your master. Whether that will involve stallionrods, be they throbbing or otherwise, that is for me to decide. Do you understand that, slave?”

“Yes, master.” The blindfold didn’t hide her smile, but he could hear she was at least trying to sound contrite.

“I will gag you while you receive your punishment for harboring selfish desires. Test your bell.”

He set about working her over with a small flogger from the training room, made of a rubbery material that the catalog promised would deliver ‘all of the sting with none of the punch’. That meant he could use it all over her without worrying about breaking anything, and give her rump (better padded but already caned once today) a breather. He began at her hind legs, pausing between strokes to listen for her reactions. They started out as short gasps, somewhat muffled by the gag, but as he slowly progressed towards her front end they became small whimpers and eventually louder moans. She never quite screamed, but by the time he had gotten up to her forehooves, and back to her flanks, she was thrashing desperately in her bonds and kept whimpering for seconds after each stroke. He decided that was as far as he dared push her.

According to his plan this was where he’d mount her, to end the day on a high point. But as it turned out, he found his stallionrod decidedly not throbbing, in fact not even out. He hadn’t really enjoyed punishing her like he usually did, either, just done it to keep following the plan. That’s not kinky, it’s just bullying, it kept echoing in his head.

He would have to skip the sex and move on. “Now you can think about what you’ve done,” he improvised weakly and let himself flop down in the armchair on the other side of the room. This step in the plan was to leave her bound in silence for long enough that she might begin thinking she was supposed to fall asleep like that. Perhaps five minutes?

He desperately needed that time to get his own thoughts in order, too. If Cirrus didn’t even like the idea of the Quiet, how would he ever get to give her the scene with them that was his destiny? She was the one he was meant to give it, wasn’t she? He had been so sure. But the way she’d spoken about them . . . even if he somehow got it fixed so she wouldn’t need Root clearance to be taken by the Quiet, it sounded like she would safeword out immediately anyway. In fact she wouldn’t even get that far; Star Spur had explained that all of the victims had to okay in advance being taken by anypony without warning, and it didn’t sound like Cirrus would ever consent to that.

But if Cirrus wasn’t it, then what would he do? Go back to searching aimlessly for a sub who would eventually be up to it? He vividly remembered how miserable that had made him the last time. On the other hoof, sticking with Cirrus merely because it was the easiest option . . . he didn’t think that was how it was meant to go.

Perhaps, he thought, if he broke secrecy a little and assured her the Quiet would not take just any crystal-belled sub without a prior arrangement, she would change her mind about not taking the tests? – No, that wouldn’t help anything; the crystal bell was only a means to an end, and if she rejected that end anyway, there’d hardly be a point. And – oh merciful Celestia! – what would she think of him if he broke secrecy and she learned he was one of the Quiet she despised? He felt cold all over.

This was leading nowhere. He got up from the chair to release Cirrus for the night. She was lying very still across the bed now, her tail somehow having ended out to the side, stretching almost up to the headboard, so he could see her marehood as he walked towards her. It winked slowly, two trains of darkish fluid running down the inside of her stifles.

Suddenly he found his member was at full mast anyway. Without any thought of preparation or foreplay – in fact without thinking much of anything at all – he jumped her, forcing his cock into that marehood, thrusting, rutting her as desperately as the day he had met her in the cum dumps. It’s nothing, just a sub who wants to be used, and I’m the one using her, what of it? He half expected her to ring ‘staircase’ with her bell like she had that day, but she didn’t, so he kept going, and eventually he came, and that felt about as satisfying as it had done in the cum dumps too.

Only after he flumped down onto her back did he notice she was breathing heavily and shaking faintly in a way he couldn’t remember her doing before. He quickly scampered down off her and the bed and hurried to the other side, her head end. But when he removed her gag and blindfold she was smiling happily, as brilliantly as he had ever seen her.

“Thank you, master,” she breathed.

Just another case of having done something right without really being sure what it was, then. He had enough presence of mind to kiss her forehead in response before he began freeing her legs so he could lead her over to the cage in the corner of the room she would sleep in.

She lay down in the cage with a smile, and he chained her forehooves to the bars and locked the door with one of his personal padlocks. “Goodnight, George”.

She yawned. “Goodnight, master.”

Sip himself turned out the light and climbed into the big master bed. Wrapping himself in the bedding, he tried to sleep. It wasn’t easy.

Cirrus’s breathing over from the cage sounded very loud in the dark room. Occasionally when she stirred and her chains clinked softly, it sounded like a vast avalanche of tumbling metal to him. He’d had his own bedroom since before he could remember – there’d be something to get used to if he ended up with a marefriend.

If! He had a cutie mark and a purpose and a plan, and this mare had made it pretty clear she wouldn’t be part of that plan. Still, he could feel his stomach twist into a knot when he thought he’d had to stop seeing her. To break up? Would it be ‘breaking up’ when they weren’t really a couple anyway? Either way, what would he say to her? Her smile from before, when he took off her blindfold, still hovered before his eyes. He didn’t think she would take it well when he . . . well, whatever it was he would do to her.

On the other hoof, stay with Cirrus while he kept looking for the real mare of his life on the side? That felt even worse. What would he tell her if he found her? Or just stay with her, period, accepting that the dream of his life had been sunk before it ever got going? Everything he had ever been taught told him that couldn’t be the right thing to do.

Eventually he did fall asleep.

You just give her the slip, Sip.
Go on, cast her aside, Pride.
You don’t owe her that trip, Sip.
Just let ’er go free.
It’s time to fold, colt.
Walk towards the doors, horse.
Pick another goal, foal
and start over again.

8. Regular

When Sip woke up, it all felt much brighter.

The strong work lamps in the ceiling of the Clocktower’s main cavern had been turned on, for the morning cleaning crews to see by. Their light streamed in through the bedroom window – a cool, white, matter-of-fact light that helped him chase away last night’s dark mood. He had probably just misunderstood her. Or she might have misspoken. They’d clear it up in aftercare.

For now, though, he had a scene to continue. Cirrus had wanted to wake up and be in play right away, so he had to be prepared for that. First he’d need an erection – still lying in bed, he stuck a hoof in between his legs and began making one. It didn’t take long, thinking about Cirrus and yesterday’s session, at least the first part of it . . .

He rolled out of bed, ready to get into character. Immediately there was a sound of chains from Cirrus’s cage, and he saw her lift her head to look calmly at him. She was already awake! Had she seen him jerk off? He told himself sternly that was alright – she had shown him already, on their first night, and turnabout ought to be fair play. Still, the thought that she had seen it made him very hard and ready for what would come next.

Her cage was low enough that he could rear up and stick his penis in between the bars, resting his forebody on its polished wooden top. She didn’t need to be told what to do. He couldn’t see what she was doing down in the cage, but he could certainly feel it. And he could hear her, humming happily around his cock. It still amazed him how enthusiastic about blowing him she was. To think he had been ready to decide he needed to leave her! He must be going crazy.

It took him some time to come, though. Down in that cage, not only was she out of his sight, but he also couldn’t really feel her moving under him, could barely smell her scent. It felt disappointingly impersonal. He rose up on his forelegs to help the matter along by thrusting a bit. The cage top had an inlay of lighter wood in the shape of a weaver’s knot. Great alicorn, how far did they go to personalize these suites for each occupant?

Eventually he did go off, of course. He took a few moments to catch his breath and then climbed down from the cage and walked away, forcing himself not to look back at Cirrus while she worked on her swallowing. That was the sex slave’s life, reduced to a cocksucking appliance and left behind when her services were no longer needed. At least he hoped that was what she wanted to try. He could be caring and considerate later.

The suite had a small tea kitchen squeezed in behind the training room, on the way to the bathroom. He found a bag of oats in the cupboard and poured a portion into a feeding bowl. That would be her breakfast.

She looked up at him with a relaxed smile as he returned to the bedroom, but then remembered her station and cast her eyes down, blushing. He unlocked the door to her cage but left her hooves chained to the side bars when he placed the bowl in front of her. She began feeding without a word.

Sip didn’t usually eat breakfast, so he went to the bathroom to take a shower while Cirrus ate. The warm water helped wake him up properly while he went over the scene so far in his head. Did the plan still hold up? He noticed that even here in the bathroom there were little rings set into the floor and walls for restraining a sub. Of course she would need a shower too, and she couldn’t very well be allowed the freedom to take it herself, could she now? So there was an amendment to the plan already.

When he emerged from the shower, she had finished her oats. Sip recalled his idea from the day before, to see how far they could get before needing to speak. That might be worth a try. So he didn’t say anything while he freed her from the cage, and she silently let him lead her off to the bathroom and latch each of her hoofcuffs to the rings in the floor.

He briefly wondered if he ought to gag her, to ensure she wouldn’t inadvertently spoil the plan. But no, that wouldn’t work – he’d have to tell her to test her safety bell first, and then he’d have spoken already. Besides, a gag would have felt like cheating. Gags were for her to want to speak but not be able to. That wasn’t the kind of silence he was aiming for.

Just before he turned on the water, it occurred to him that he had better take off her collar first – no point in letting its soft padding get wet. He could do so easily; even though she usually put it on and off herself, in a submissives’ locker room somewhere, Sip’s dom mask did have a key clipped to it that would open the symbolic padlock on a society slave’s collar. Still, she looked on with a worried frown and a definite shudder as he unclasped her collar and put it down on the vanity table on the other side of the room. It struck him that Cirrus without her collar was the most naked he’d ever seen her. Was she shy about that? Some unicorn cities had a tradition for clothes, he knew. Perhaps pegasi too?

But she didn’t volunteer an explanation, and he didn’t ask. That would have lost the game. It was probably nothing.

Her mood seemed to improve when he started lathering her up. She leaned a bit into him, and eventually began humming quietly while he massaged shampoo into her fur. He rewarded her good behavior with a few extra loving squeezes. When he finally put her collar back on, after drying her and bushing her mane and tail as best he could, she was beaming.

His plan for the morning had been more position training, but as he led her into the training room, it dawned upon him that that would mean talking too, at least for him. Most of the positions had hoof signals to go with them, but he had not bothered to memorize them, much less taught them to her. The sight of the training room also reminded him of how she had been standing in the middle of it while she called the Quiet bullies and stomped her hooves angrily. Yes, they’d clear that up later – but it didn’t really feel like a happy room to spend the morning in.

He made a quick decision to go for a walk instead while he replanned. The detour into the training room could be to kit her out a bit for the trip, so it didn’t look like he took her there merely to turn around and leave again immediately. A blindfold, perhaps? No, he had used the blind walk once already this time around. He settled for just a leash, and a rope to tie her tail up along her back to her collar. And a fresh set of wing bags.

The dungeons felt oddly tranquil this time in the morning when not many ponies were about. Sip and Cirrus could go for several minutes before they’d pass a solitary pony, or spy a couple in the distance on the way home from a night that had perhaps gone on for longer than they had intended. In between, their own hoofsteps was the only sound echoing through the normally busy corridors. Sip found himself looking around the empty dungeons in wonder instead of planning his next steps. Fortunately Cirrus seemed to be just as enthralled by the atmosphere.

Two Fountains Plaza was almost deserted too. The information desk was closed and shuttered, with signs stating it would open again in the late afternoon. Next to it, a storefront had been converted into a pop-up bordello, open for business round the clock – but the young zebra on display in a suspended cage out in front had curled up on its floor and lay snoring quietly through the air holes in a pink ball gag. Sip remembered helping auction her off to the madam several days earlier. He wondered how she was liking her vacation.

On impulse, he led Cirrus up the side stairs to the stage where the auction had taken place. He paraded her back and forth in front of the absent crowd a few times, and stopped in the front center where a set of stocks were permanently mounted into the stage floor. She needed only a vague hoof gesture from Sip before she got the point and stepped into them, facing the plaza. The last ponies to use the stocks had left them in a position where she would be forced to stand with her legs somewhat farther apart than her natural stance, but that suited Sip fine. When he locked the outer planks shut around her fetlocks, a shiver ran through her, but she then looked briefly back at him with a small expectant grin. Good. He awarded her a short peck on the cheek and left her locked in while he went backstage to pick out some tools and take a few moments to think about how this would go.

The first task would be to make sure she couldn’t see what he was about to do to her. Blindfolding her still felt like it would be a wrong move – he wanted her to see whichever passers-by would witness her ordeal. He thought about using ear clamps again, to tie her head down towards the stage edge so she couldn’t turn it. But the small toy wall behind the stage was not as well stocked as a standard training room, just enough for making an improvised scene interesting. There were no ear clamps. It looked like he’d have to rely on making her not look back. That might be a challenge to do without needing to speak. Well, he could make an attempt.

He returned to the stage with a crop and used it to gently guide her head into the pose he wanted, like he had often done in position training. She complied easily enough, looking straight ahead at a couple of mares in maid uniforms who were pushing cleaning trolleys across the plaza. A light push on her cheek with the crop made it clear to her that she was not to turn her head to follow them. But when the maids had disappeared into the aftercare block behind one of the fountains, she tried to turn her head back towards him, and he had to quickly slap her on the shoulder with the crop and guide her back to looking the right way. He stepped back and waited for a minute to see if she would try again. She didn’t, until he reached out a hoof to tickle her side – and then it only took another slap with the crop for her to think better of it and go back to staring straight ahead.

Sip pulled up a low stool and sat down behind her rear end, to begin working her over in earnest. At first it was just massaging her teats and buttocks with his forehooves, but once he felt her relax a bit, he started alternating with some tools to make different sensations – a soft-bristled brush for her marehood, a slightly stiffer one for the sensitive spots he had learned she had on the inside of her gaskins, a lubed-up butt plug that he teased her with several times but never stuck all the way in. Each time he switched to a new toy, he had the crop ready to correct her if she broke posture and tried to look back, but she had understood his unspoken instructions beautifully.

Eventually he could hear her breathing grow deeper and more erratic, and he gradually laid off the toys in favor of his own mouth and muzzle, nibbling her hocks, licking her thighs, nuzzling at her flanks. She made little starts and jitters, as if she was trying hard to hold back from fighting the stocks. But she wasn’t controlling her marehood, muscles working as eagerly from within as he did from without, pulsing and swelling with sweet-smelling fluid. Now was the time. He pushed her butt plug all the way in and kicked the stool noisily backwards as he reared up to push into her himself.

He caught a glimpse of a pair of ponies who had stopped a few dozen steps in front of the stage and were looking up at them. The stallion inclined his head towards the mare and whispered something to her. She nodded slowly, almost completely wrapped in a hooded afterrobe. Sip didn’t know how much he really liked being a public spectacle, but he had set it up himself so fair was fair, and he had a mare of his own to care for anyway. He concentrated on rutting Cirrus, pulling her mane in synchrony with his thrusts, wrapping his forelegs around her wing roots for purchase, feeling her body tense up when at last she gave in and started thrashing against the stocks.

After what felt like an eternity of bliss he came, and then collapsed down to hang from her back like an oversized saddlebag. The coarse covers he had put on her wings felt scratchy against his belly, but he didn’t care. He lay there peacefully, feeling her ribcage expand and contract as she breathed. When he eventually looked up, the pair of spectators were long gone.

Finally he did speak. “Good morning, George.”

* * *

“Ahhh!” Cirrus flopped herself down on the couch in the aftercare room. When Sip turned back after dropping the used toys into the laundry hopper, she sat there, staring blankly ahead.

“Are you all right?”

She gave a small start and a smile that looked a bit forced. “I’m fine. Just a bit . . . fried? That was a very long round.”

He sat down beside her and reached a hoof around her barrel in a suggestion of a hug. “Too much?”

“Oh no. No, it was good. I’m glad we did it. Just, you know, it’s good it’s not that much each time. I mean, you look a bit drained too.”

“Mmhm.” He wasn’t sure if he ought to be disappointed she wasn’t more enthusiastic, after all that work and planning. He did his best to hide it; it wouldn’t do if she started thinking she had to fake enthusiasm for his sake.

“Sip, do you think there’s a bottle of preen oil out in the shower? I don’t think I ought to go home looking like this.” She stuck a wing out between them and wiggled it back and forth. It looked quite a bit more frazzled than Sip thought he remembered it being when he had dried her off after her bath.

“Let’s go and have a look,” he managed. Now that she mentioned it, he did remember that the Earth Pony’s Field Guide said pegasi used a special oil to care for their feathers. He had forgotten that when he suddenly decided to bathe her. It couldn’t have been that bad to miss it for a few hours, she’d have safeworded to tell him if it were. Wouldn’t she?

There was indeed some preen oil in the toiletry cabinet. It was a good thing he had Cirrus with him; it came in a shaker that he wouldn’t have looked at twice if he’d had to fetch ‘oil’ by himself. It would melt when it came into contact with body heat, Cirrus explained while she lay down on the bed and shook out a puff of fine powder across her left wing.

Suddenly the whole room smelled like her wings. So that’s what it was. He had wondered where that certain scent came from. He took a deep sniff to –

“Sip? I said, would you like to help?” She was looking at him quizzically, but also with a hint of amused smile.

He collected himself. Preening, yes. He had only vague ideas how that worked. “Tell me how,” he said.

It turned out it wasn’t all that difficult when he got the hang of it. Her feathers seemed to know the right patterns to arrange themselves in – he just had to nudge them in roughly the right direction with his muzzle. He quickly learned not to lick his lips while working, though. The raw oil had a distinctly bitter taste.

“Yeah, you’ll have to wash your muzzle afterwards,” said Cirrus when she saw him scrunch up. “There are some brands that have fruit flavoring added, for foals, but we never use those at home. Mom says the real stuff builds character.” She rolled her eyes.

It took quite some time to get both wings done. He could understand why it was usual to get somepony to help; it would have been much more difficult for her to reach some of the places herself. But he didn’t mind the work; it was a new way to be together with her. They talked over the scene while they worked, in no particular order. As so often before, she seemed to be more satisfied with it than he thought he deserved.

“Thanks for letting up when I had to staircase,” she said at one point. “In that blowing alley.”

Sip continued tidying feathers. She wasn’t really supposed to thank him for that. It was his duty anyway.

“Suddenly I felt if I had to suck one more of those stallions, I might have puked all over him.”

“Oh.” He remembered he had made her suck one more stallion: himself. “You should have said something, I wouldn’t have –”

She giggled and bapped him in the face with the unpreened end of the wing. “Would have been your own fault if you got puked on. And anyway –” she blushed a little, and the playful tone in her voice disappeared “– it’s different when it’s you.”

“Sorry for putting you through that. I thought you might like it.”

“But I did!” she insisted. “I mean, I didn’t like doing it, but . . . that’s why we’re here at all, isn’t it? When you make me do it anyway? I like that. Like when you put me into a cage to sleep instead of in the bed with you, and in a way that’s super disappointing and horrible, but on the other wing that also made it totally hot? It’s . . . I don’t explain myself very well, do I?”

He had known the cage would be a mistake, but there was nothing to do about that now. “As long as you’re happy,” he said weakly.

They went back to the shower together to wash the preen oil off their muzzles.

“By the way,” she said while he was drying himself off, “there was one small thing I didn’t like. In the bathroom this morning when you took my collar off. That was . . .” She shuddered.

“Sorry. I thought it would be a pity to let it get wet.” He held the door for her, back to the aftercare room. “I’m not supposed to?”

“I mean, I don’t think it’s forbidden, but there are some stories going around. About a mare who’s taken down to Root by a dom she doesn’t know, and then once she’s tied up he rips her collar apart and starts saying how she’s not worthy of deciding which collar she wears herself. I don’t think it actually happened, just an old mare’s tale, but it’s scary all the same. It’s a reminder of the things that could happen if someday the rules and the safewords don’t work. Not with you, of course, but still . . .” She sank down in one of the armchairs.

“Sorry,” said Sip again, choosing the couch for himself. “I didn’t know about those stories.” But now she had brought up the topic again, it was time to clear the air after yesterday, no matter how he wished he could pretend it hadn’t happened. “You also mentioned Root yesterday?” he said probingly.

Somehow that seemed to cheer her up. “Oh yes,” she said with a knowing smile. “I guess those stories have done their part in turning me off Root. But you can bet they’ve been effective. Never gonna set hoof down there ever if I can help it. Don’t you worry, I’m not going to run off with some Root-qualified super-dom while your tail is turned. Bucking noobs have to stick together, don’t we?”

Sip didn’t answer. It was as if the room was beginning to spin slowly. This wasn’t how clearing the air was supposed to go.

Presently some of the levity disappeared from Cirrus’s expression, and she leaned slightly forwards towards him. “But really, Sip, I think the best thing that could happen to me after joining was that I met you. Do you know I used to be a bit scared of doms? I mean, I can’t very well be submissive without someone to submit to, but I always worried if I hooked up with somepony, he’d eventually expect he could drag me down to Root and do unspeakable things. But with you, I know you’re just a regular pony after play’s over, and that means a lot. Thank you.”

Sip didn’t recall much of what else was said. Somehow he agreed to another date the next Tuesday, more out of inertia and habit than anything else, and somehow Cirrus decided that this date and aftercare had been a success, and it was time to go home.

He walked her to the stairwell leading from the aftercare rooms down to the plaza. It had been his plan to invite her for lunch in the visitor’s cafe up in the Mansion (absolutely no play allowed), but his heart wasn’t in it. Instead he let her plant a kiss on his cheek and start down the stairs alone.

He stood by the window, watching her cross the plaza, feeling empty inside.