Deferential Peace

The tips of Twilight Sparkle’s ears were getting sore.

For over an hour, there had been nothing to accompany the sound of water dripping from stalactites except for a concise, rhythmic pinging noise; like several dozen iron hammers clattering off of a stone wall. Twilight’s precise mind, combined with a lack of having anything better to do, had been given ample time to isolate the cadence of each sound. There was indeed a pattern – each sound, when compared only to one of the exact same pitch that had come before, was creating a perfect beat all its own. If they were hammers, Twilight reasoned that they were being operated either by a machine, or an absolute master artificer. Any less, and their timing was simply impossible.

Twilight’s day had not been without its surprises. At the parade, they dressed her like a harem slave and told her to prance. She had thought that Kessen would make an example out of both of his captured princesses, and had every reason to assume that after the public use of her mentor, she would be next. From her perch atop the second carriage in line, Twilight had little choice but to view her teacher’s political defloration. She could no more turn her face away from such a spectacle than any other pony present, but her expectations were derailed when she did not, in fact, end up as conquest number two.

Instead, when the mock ceremony finally concluded and Kessen led his prize back into the castle, several burly dog guards surrounded Twilight’s carriage, lifted it clean off the ground, and spirited it away in a direction that was very much opposite to the grounds of Canterlot Palace.

Now, Twilight found herself somewhere she could not place. It was clearly a subterranean cavern, and the crystal formations were so similar to what she knew to exist under the palace that she had to assume she was still in the city somewhere. But spelunking was not among her repertoire of skills, and thus she quickly lost her way amidst winding passages being introduced at speed by a troupe of quickly marching dogs.

Eventually they sat her down, hauled the carriage away, and simply left her in an empty chamber. She was secured only by a heavy, hempen rope that connected her collar to a post in the floor that was buried so deep, she thought it must have been slammed home by dropping a boulder on it. There she stayed, alone in a dark place she could not bring light to, with no company but the persistent ringing sounds.

The empty solitude soon began to grate on her. With great intelligence came a mind that demanded constant input, and Twilight knew that if she didn’t set her mind to some task, any task, the monotony would drive her mad. Thus, she followed every single sound, allowing them all to perk and swivel her ears so many times that she had gone sore.

Twilight glanced at one particularly large crystal. She concentrated, hoping to illuminate it sufficiently for its reflective surface to act as a mirror, but it remained an only partially defined shape in the low light. She sighed, chastising herself for her foolishness, and instead craned her neck all around for a visual inspection of herself.

Her outfit was not dissimilar from what the crown princess had been wearing for the parade, albeit less grandiose and without a bridle. Twilight wiggled her hips, and remained thankful that Kessen had seen fit to place his mark in Celestia’s backside only. Her mane and tail were adorned with colorful ribbons thatched with faux flowers, but neither had been bound in the way her mentor’s had. Her eyelids were crusted with a thick layer of blue shadow and her lips were apple-red with color. Her flanks and rump were adorned with silks so sheer that her coat was visible as an almost ghostly shape beneath them, gathered at her hips so that wisps of the material danced about her legs and lent a sort of poetry to her movements. Upon her legs she wore long stockings much like Celestia had, only Twilight’s were striped in green and purple. She was unused to wearing something that hugged her legs, and had already developed a habit for prancing with her forelegs when she was standing still.

Around her neck was the one item that didn’t fit with the rest. Twilight’s collar was set with gems like Celestia’s, but instead of resembling the wings of a griffon, hers had all the thick, heavy, burdening garishness of diamond dog lust. Her ring was twice the size of Celestia’s, and the rope that bound her was nearly the thickness of her foreleg.

Twilight swung her head at a nearby crystal, but found herself just out of reach. The rope held her in place and teased her away from her vain attempts to bash at the lock on the sleeve around her horn. Her wings were no match for her bonds either. She sighed, and the sound echoed down the corridor to mingle with the pinging noises.

Twilight had negotiated the surrender terms alongside the royal sisters. She had agreed not to ruin the fragile peace. Yet she continued to struggle all the same. She mouthed a silent apology to her mentor, but in her heart, she wasn’t certain if she could endure this treatment for the rest of her days. If nothing else, as a natural unicorn, she still had the itch to let her power free.

Clattering noises that Twilight recognized as the chinking of armor plates drew her attention. She turned, and there before her stood yet another in the long line of burly, nearly identical diamond dog guards, with a low helmet that eclipsed his brow.

“Pony,” the beige dog barked, “you come now.”

Twilight raised her brow and snarked at her rope. “I’d like to, but as you can plainly see, I’ve found a room already. Maybe you could tell me when check out is?”

The dog tilted his head, and what little light the crystals naturally radiated glinted from his helmet. He seemed puzzled, and took no offense as her rapier wit sank harmlessly into the blubber between his ears.

In the guard’s paw was a narrow spear with a deceptively sharp head, which he used to make short work of the rope in a truly brutish fashion – severing it instead of being bothered to undo the heavy knot. He nabbed the end of the rope with surprising agility, and had the thick cord wrapped twice around his forearm before Twilight could as much as flex her wings. She felt a hard yank at her neck, and nearly toppled over as the guard simply began to walk away with the makeshift ‘leash’ in his grasp.

Kicking up dust as she fought for her hooves, Twilight scurried to fall in with him. She glanced at the ceiling and the myriad portals in every wall. It occurred to her that even were she to have taken flight, she had no idea where to go. Another, harder yank at her neck broke up her thoughts.

“Ack, hey!” The princess complained, “be careful! Are you even listening to me?”

The guard neither spoke nor so much as flicked an ear in recognition. Twilight had little choice but to follow him as he plunged into another dark corridor; his eyes likely far better suited for the dark than hers.

The darkness of the caverns was not absolute, but it contributed to Twilight’s continued inability to trace a return path through the twists and turns of her journey through them. She had expected to be taken down, further into the crack in the earth’s crust that designated a diamond dog habitat. To her surprise, she found that the grade her legs were moving upon sloped upwards, so steep at some points that it almost constituted stairs. Such was severity of the slope that she sometimes took wing, simply to float a few inches off the ground and spare her hooves the strain.

Eventually the craggy slope did form itself into something resembling proper stairs, and Twilight noticed that the higher she climbed, the more dog workers they encountered. The ringing noises were indeed coming from miners at toil, in every position from digging in the floor to hanging by ropes upon the walls, repelling down sheer slopes to bag their quarry. The princess peered out over the edge of a narrow slope into the large black pit from whence she had emerged, but could see nothing of the beginning of her journey.

Twilight wondered how exactly a dog miner chose what spot to excavate in such a massive cavern. Of greater curiosity were the tools of their trade – a few of them employed crude stone tools or finer items that had obviously been pilfered from Canterlot, but the majority of the workers simply gouged at the silt with their claws. These unequipped miners were generating just as much of a ringing noise as the ones who toiled with hammer and chisel. Diamond dog nails were apparently much harder than ever the princess of friendship knew.

At length, a shaft of light that did not match the glow of crystals or lanterns brought a squint to Twilight’s eye. Up ahead was an opening in a wall that was so jagged, it looked like something she could have done herself with a blast of magic power. Beyond was a chamber that was far too orderly to be of dog make. It sported fine tapestries and walls with corner lines so sharp, you could slice a loaf of bread just by throwing it at them.

Twilight thought she recognized the architecture. When her handler led her through the portal, she quickly realized why. The hole that had been excised from the wall was one of many, each of which had been bored directly into the ground basement level of Canterlot palace.

There were dog miners everywhere, trotting about to and fro between the portals as they went about the task of hauling gems and placing them in large piles haphazardly throughout the huge, single basement chamber. Equestrian finery and artifacts, placed in storage there previously, had been cast aside or simply buried in the shiny materials that dogs valued far more. The center of the massive chamber had been converted into a makeshift base of operations, where dog guards stood at attention. Other dogs, with crude medals pinned to the breasts of finer jackets (some of pony make that were merely draped about their shoulders) were grunting at the workers from the “base” area, pointing either to the portals or a spot on the ground.

Not far from the perimeter of dog ‘nobles’ lay the largest mounds of the finest sparkling specimens from below. Before these gems sat a large chair that seemed to have been hewn directly from the side of a mountain with little thought for craft. Upon it slouched a huge, jet black dog. He was mostly unclad, save for a velvet cloak of royal blue that was even more garish than Kessen’s, and a crown upon his head that was unmistakably Twilight’s. Drumming his fingers upon one arm of the chair, he was spinning a sizable gem around in his other paw with all the excitement of an appraiser who had seen far too many of the same specimen.

Twilight had little time to gawk. Yanked again by the guard, she stumbled through the line of nobles and was promptly brought before the seated dog, who seemed to be in charge by virtue of the fact that he was the only one who was at rest. Twilight’s guard held fast to her leash, but stepped aside and came to sharp attention as his charge was brought within casual conversation distance of the throne. The dog guard reached out with his spear and swatted Twilight’s knees, bringing her forelegs into a proper bow.

Twilight’s first instinct was to resist – to rise again in defiance of such treatment. Another quick glance around the room stayed her thoughts, and brought a question to her mind so fast that she blurted it out even before introductions.

“There are no ponies,” She said aloud, turning her attention to the enthroned dog. “What have you done with the ponies?”

She expected some sort of tongue-lashing by the seated dog, whom she had spoken so rudely to. Instead, the bored sovereign seemed pleased to finally have something to put his attention on. He blinked his icy blue eyes at her and tilted his head, allowing one ear to flop.

“No ponies,” He said simply, his voice surprisingly high and shrill for his immense, commanding size.

Twilight froze with horror. “Y-you…what do you mean ‘no ponies’…? Wh-what did you do with them all…?”

The High Dog shrugged. “No ponies work,” He replied, and then pointed one digit from his paw towards the ceiling. “Rules.”

Twilight considered the dog’s words. A thought struck her, and she brightened despite the situation.

“Kessen…” She reasoned. “Kessen won’t let you put the ponies to work in your mines, will he? He’s still trying to mollify the populace with that whole ‘integration’ approach, isn’t he.”

The dog narrowed his eyes and huffed out a breath. “We were promised good gems. The best gems. Gems from Canterlot mines.” He pointed at one of the holes. “This is our place now. We can have gems, and keep them here. But we cannot have ponies…” The dog’s finger traced slowly until he was pointing directly at Twilight, “…except for you.”

Twilight was pulled out of her bow by the guard. Unable to get her bearings this time, the guard simply dragged her on her side up to the throne, and began to tie her bulbous leash tightly around one of its impossibly heavy granite legs.

“You are my pony,” The crowned dog said simply. He then reached out and roughly ground his paw into the space between Twilight’s ears, ruffling her mane like a pet. “Pretty pony.”

Twilight sat up and sought for a proper introduction. “I…I am prince—“ She stopped herself, “I am Twilight Sparkle. It’s nice to meet you, king…er…lord—“

“King!” The dog announced, finally sitting up straight. He pointed with pride at Twilight’s crown, which still graced his brow. “I am strongest dog! So I am king!”

“King…’king’,” Twilight muttered, perplexed. She glanced around the room again, attempting to make conversation. “So the basement is your…place to gather the gems from the castle mines?”

The dog king grabbed up another gem from the pile, this one the size of Twilight’s head, and held it out as though brooding over the skull of Yorick. “Pretty gems, all ours now!”

Twilight managed a small smile, and spoke as though to an infant. “That’s…all you really want, isn’t it. Just more shiny gems. You dug holes around the city for Kessen’s troops to pop out of, and you died in droves…just for more gems.” Curiosity bit her, and she continued, “What do you use the gems for?”

“What?” The dog king turned sharply to her. Twilight nodded at the gem in his grasp.

“What do you use them for?” She asked again. “As far as I know only dragons can eat gems. Are they currency? Status?”

“Gems are pretty!” The king growled, casting the large gem aside and slamming his fist down on the chair arm. The burly guard who was standing nearby winced. “Dogs will have all of the pretty gems! I am the strongest dog! I am king! I will have the most gems!”

Twilight instinctively shrank before the dog king’s bellowing bombast. Her mind began to work. She softened her expression, smiled amicably, and spoke.

“What if I could give you more gems than this? More gems than Kessen promised you?”

The king’s lip twitched, his droopy jowls waggling. Twilight was pleased that this specimen of sentient canine at least did not drool the way many of his fellows did. To a dog, the ability to keep one’s spittle inside one’s mouth was probably a sign of noble breeding.

“More gems?”

Twilight twisted her body, allowing her silks to wind provocatively around the shiny star that was her cutie mark. “I used to be a princess, before your noble warriors overthrew me,” she buttered, “princesses have lots of gems.”

The king sniffed, as if he could catch the scent of the promised wealth in the air. “How can pony have more gems?” He inquired, pointing again at one of the busy portals. “Down there are many gems. All the gems.”

Twilight shook her head. “Nope. There are even more gems. But only I know where to find them.”

The dog considered this. He scratched his chin thoughtfully, but the gesture was clumsy enough to suggest he was merely copying behavior he had probably observed from Emperor Kessen.

“Where are more gems?” He finally asked.

Twilight placed her hooves on the arm of the throne and brought herself up, close enough to him for a whisper. “I have magic that can find more gems.”

“Magic?”

“Mmhmm,” Twilight nodded. “You know that some ponies have magic spells that can find gems, right?”

“Ponies are good for finding gems,” The king gave a simplistic reply. “We wanted more ponies to find gems for us.”

Twilight continued to spin her web. “You have the gems Kessen promised you, but you’re not really happy, are you? This would all go a lot faster with pony workers, and he won’t let you have any.”

The king grunted derisively, sending a puff of hot breath into Twilight’s face. “We can have a pony.”

“One pony,” Twilight held her hoof up. “Kessen must not want you to find all the gems, or he would have given you more than one pony, right? What if he’s keeping some of the gems for himself? The ones he knows you won’t find?”

The king squinted, and Twilight could practically see the wheels turning in his head. She pressed on-

“Wouldn’t it be a shock to him if you ended up finding all those gems anyway? If that one pony he gave you found all the gems he’s hiding?”

The king looked positively befuddled. Twilight kept her ears submissively down and bowed her head slightly, displaying the rubberized, locked sheath upon her horn.

“With my magic, I can find all the gems,” She whispered. “All you have to do is take this off. I’m your pet, right? You have your collar on me, and you have a crown. You’re the strongest dog. The king. Kings make wise decisions. Other dogs would be amazed at your wisdom if you found all the gems.”

The dog king’s eyes met Twilight’s. Twilight saw a certain intelligence there, but it was on a level just slightly above the feral. He was a brilliant beast, but still a beast. Twilight had promised Celestia she would behave, but if he would just take the sheathe off…just give her one chance…she could right all of this before her mentor even had time to complain about it…

“What kind of gems?”

Twilight was taken aback by the question. “What…kind…?” She wracked her brain, “Um…all kinds. Rubies, emeralds, sapphires, garnets, amethysts, diamonds—“

“DIAMONDS!?” The dog roared the word so loudly that he drew attention from cowering subjects. He did touch Twilight’s horn, but instead of removing her cage, he wrapped his hand around it and stood, lifting her entire body off the ground and to his eye level.

Twilight instantly knew that she had said too much. She might be brilliant, but she was playing the one game that diamond dogs knew even better than their own names.

“There are no diamonds in this region! Pony is lying! Pony is trying to escape!”

Twilight thrashed as the pain from being lifted up by her horn made her eyes water. Her limbs hung helplessly before her as she croaked, “D-did I say diamonds…? I meant…ergh…p-peridots…”

The king sat down again, a sign to his retainers that all was well. He kept to his grip, and Twilight found herself suspended above and between his legs.

“Pet pony is not here to find gems,” He explained. “Pet pony is here to be dog’s pet. There are dogs that are dumber than diamond dogs. Animal dogs. You ponies keep them as pets.” He grinned, his jowls spreading with the movement, “Now, dog keeps you as a pet.”

With that, the dog king, deposited Twilight onto his lap, spun her around, and smacked her rump so hard she would have topped off of him had he not held her fast. She cried out, still reeling from the pain in her horn, as the dog continued.

“Pony is my pet,” He rumbled. “Pony will please me, or pony gets locked in the deepest place in the mines, all alone, with no light that ponies need to see, until pony becomes like animal dogs!”

Twilight received two more swats under her tail until she was unceremoniously cast onto the floor, the stone that rose to meet her knocking the wind from her lungs. Huge hands grasped her rump, hauling her backside up until her hind legs were straight, but her chin was still mashed into the floor. She felt a presence – something stiff, thick, pulsing and cylindrical, playing at the cleft of her backside. From behind, the dog king chuckled.

“Ceremony is over. Pony belongs to me now. Pony is beautiful. I am king, and I have been waiting.”

Twilight felt a blast of hot air engulf her shoulders and mane. She tried to stand, but the combination of pain and the slippery unfamiliarity of her stockings kept her in a lewd position, with her rump sticking up to meet him.

“W-wait…” she whimpered, her words muffled by the corner of an ornate rug that happened to be trapped under the closest pile of gems. “I’m not ready, you can’t just—“

Twilight fluttered her wings, but the commanding force of the king’s grip was too strong to break. Without her magic, she was nothing but a scrawny mare, and as he impaled her with his canine thickness, she could do nothing but squirm and cry out. Her blurry vision revealed that she had become a spectacle for the amusement of the nobles, many of whom had abandoned their tasks to watch. Almost none of the dogs wore pants, and their casual penchant for simply petting the swelling between their own legs made minotaurs seem tactful.

It was all happening too fast, and a wicked thought struck the former princess. This was exactly what they had planned all along. The dogs had planned to make a sexual plaything out of her from the start, and she had only managed to distract their lord for a moment before his mind returned to the anticipation of sinking himself into her wet, silky, once-forbidden hole.

The dog hilted her, mashing Twilight further into the floor. It was her first experience with a non-equine partner, and she registered the feeling of a growing bulb inside her – his swelling knot, that would soon lock her to him until their coupling was complete. The king wasted little time. He mounted her properly from behind, his paws moving up to wrap almost entirely around her waist as he rammed himself home.

“Nngh…w-wai…anngh…”

“Quiet pony!” The king bellowed. Twilight thought she was being given an order, but the command turned out to be directed at one of the noble dogs. Gray of coat and adorned with more medals than the others, this one gripped Twilight under her forelegs and hauled her front up.

“Quiet pony,” The noble repeated the order. He began to prod at her muzzle with his tip, smearing drops of pre-seed into her fuzzy cheeks.

Twilight whimpered. From her earliest days, when the biggest challenges in her life came in the form of simple arithmetic, Twilight Sparkle had become used to success. The conquest of her home had been a pill that only Celestia’s sister seemed to have a harder time swallowing, but even from the ashes of that defeat, Twilight found she could take small comfort in negotiating a peace treaty that spared her friends and countryponies from abject exploitation.

In that she had succeeded. But as she opened her mouth and accepted her second ever canine spire only moments after the first, she realized why her gambit had failed. Diamond dogs were not stupid – they were merely simple in their own way. And that simplicity was, to a pony like Princess Twilight Sparkle, as foreign as apple farming was to a haughty scholar at the Sorbonne in faraway Prance.

They had exploited her one weakness. Her inability to fathom their limitations.

The noble dog ended Twilight’s attempts at subterfuge by taking away her only remaining asset – her voice. He ran his fingers through her mane and gripped her behind the ears, introducing himself to her palette over and over again while using the leverage to force down her gag reflex. She shut her eyes and did her best to accept him, clumsily probing unfamiliar territory with her tongue despite his complaints that she would require a great deal of additional training.

The dog king had gotten over his initial use of force. He was still roughly taking his pet, but the savagery had mellowed out as the pleasure enveloped him. The volume and persistence of his winding grunts told her that he was far less interested in Kessen’s level of decorum. The dog king was simply enjoying his first breeding session with his new interspecies pet, right there among his subjects as though it were a casual act.

Twilight knew nothing of dog mating habits, but she could feel dozens of pairs of eyes on her, and the ringing sounds from the mines had begun to vanish under the sounds of group coitus. Were they all just rubbing themselves or having sex of their own, like lemmings at the behest of their lord? She couldn’t tell. There was nothing before her but the thickness of a gray dog coat, and the musty, thick smell of masculinity that would one day cling to her always.

Above it all, the most difficult part of accept was the tingle that had begun to spread through Twilight’s loins. She would deny it later, but as the king’s demeanor softened into breeding need, her body had begun to respond to him. She had been under constant stress for weeks, and she was so tired. A voice, deep within her, encouraged her – made excuses-

He’s already inside you. There’s nothing you can do. Accept it. Does it really feel so bad? Nopony has to know. Just let it happen. Take pleasure from it. That’s your revenge. They can make you do it, but they can’t make you hate it.

Twilight managed the only sound she could make – a high pitched whinny. She bore down on the penis inside her, her slickening walls welcoming it in secret. She felt her tail, pinned under his bulk, attempt to twitch as she straightened her neck and silenced her own gags.

With the grace that only a former princess could muster, Twilight Sparkle, mare pet of the diamond dog king, milked her benefactors from both ends until each of them barked with pleasure and began to offer their thick, warm, creamy gifts. She didn’t know if a dog and a pony could mate, but she could feel the king’s lust for her body, and knew that eventually, she would find out. In the meantime, she had found a new battle to fight. It might take a long time, but with every dog noble whose bed she shared, and every lusty pair of canine eyes that fell upon her, Twilight would have a small victory.

The king collapsed atop her, pinning her entire body to the floor where she would remain until his knotted lust subsided. Release coursed through her body as well, and as the gray noble came to rest upon his knees, he too kept himself inside her, moving slowly with the spread of afterglow.

She would be their pet and their plaything. She might even grow heavy with their seed, but that was a concern for another day. Twilight Sparkle was always learning. Always evolving. For now, this is how she would serve her people. She belonged to the dogs…but they also belonged to her.