Author's Note

This chapter contains a pretty detailed hanging/execution, just in case you want to avoid that.

Executive Orders

Again, Dusk found herself at a loss with how she should feel. On the one hoof, she had just reconciled with one of the ponies she truly despised. On the other, she had just reconciled with the pony that ruined her species’ lives.

She needed time to think things over, but luckily her jail cell made that pretty easy. She supposed it only made sense – couldn’t have her wandering around freely, and the guards obviously didn’t know about their plan yet…

Come to think of it, what was their plan? Celestia had been extremely vague, and Luna had been almost silent the whole time. The only words she had gotten from Luna were “Everything will be okay” before she was sent back to the dungeon.

Now she found herself sitting flat on her rump, once again in chains that were still painfully digging into her skin.

“…fuck.” She muttered, letting herself lie down to ease some of the pressure. Her muscles were still screaming. Her body was telling her to get the damn metal off of her, but she couldn’t. She’d just have to wait. Her eyes drifted shut, and she did just that.

But waiting would apparently be a lot harder than she thought. Her mind was racing at a mile a minute. What the hell was she doing? She was public enemy number one. She had criminal contacts spanning all of Equestria. What exactly could she possibly do to make herself vanish? It wasn’t like she was just some generic pony, draconies were extremely obvious – and one with a face as well-known as hers wouldn’t last very long if she tried to escape her past.

Then her mind wandered to even worse thoughts. Tempest still had a hold on Celestia, that much was obvious. Dusk could tell that the princess had delegated far too much of her power away – she was practically a figurehead at this point. For all Dusk knew, Celestia could be signing a document ordering her execution right now, and her entire talk would have been for nothing.

These fears were irrational. She tried to tell herself that. You saw how she acted, she thought to herself. She meant it. You’ll be fine.

She looked down at her hooves. They were shaking, even though she hadn’t put any weight on them. Gods, why am I shaking? She looked around, trying to avoid thinking about it. Nevermind. Just…get some sleep, and it’ll be fine. Everything’ll be fine…

With her fears at least somewhat abated by her own encouragement, Dusk gently shut her eyes and let herself drift off to sleep – a sleep that would be fraught with nightmares until she was woken.

CLANG.

Dusk’s head shot up, only to give herself whiplash as her shackles yanked it back down. “Fuck!” She hissed, her neck aching from the sudden movement. Her eyes scanned for the source of the noise, but it was just her meal delivery again. It had been slid under the door as always, through the small flap.

“Ugh…” She dragged herself over to the tray, peering down at it. Her eyes, which were dull and aching, lit up at the sight. A fresh salad, with water that actually looked clean for once. “Well thank the sun, I guess…” She let a small smile cross her lips, her teeth gently biting down on the tray so she could drag it over to her bed.

With a bit of effort, she heaved herself up on the cold metal surface, and she reached her hooves down to pick up the tray. She nearly dropped it, but she at least had enough coordination left to put it on her lap.

She couldn’t resist any more, she stuffed her face into the bowl and started to hungrily devour it. While vegetables were bland and boring usually, the satisfying crunch of the lettuce and the sweet, watery flavour of the cucumbers was like heaven after two weeks of eating stale bread.

To anypony looking in from the outside, she would have looked like a pig. But she allowed herself to let go of her normal inhibitions and put on a smile as she dug into the salad – of course, with how fast she was eating it, it was gone within a minute.

Not that she wasn’t grateful. She carefully gripped the cup between two hooves, tilting it back and taking a sip. The water was cool, crisp, and tasted like fine wine compared to what she had been forced to drink before. It did carry an odd aftertaste, but Dusk wasn’t about to complain. She drank it sparingly though, making sure to wet every bit of her mouth before swallowing. Finally her throat felt something cold for once.

After she had drank all of the water, she allowed herself to relax. The weight of her chains felt like much less of a burden now, and she felt re-invigorated. Real food will do that, she thought to herself. She laid her head back against the wall, gently pushing the tray to the side and taking a deep breath.

A gentle nagging feeling was poking at the back of her mind, but she ignored it. The food had helped clear her head. If it wasn’t for the chains, she might have actually tried to exercise a bit to get her muscles working…but as it was, she just got off the bed and started walking around the cell. She still ached, but with extra energy and a meal that didn’t make her stomach feel like it was turning to stone, she had enough vigor to walk, at least.

Dusk was satisfied. She’d wake up in the morning, and she’d probably be called down to the throne room or one of the Princess’s quarters to talk. She needed her rest, though.

After a few laps of her small cell, she heaved herself onto her bed. Pushing the tray onto the floor, she stretched herself out and sighed happily, resting her head on her hooves and shutting her eyes again.

Another loud crash of metal against concrete woke her up. Her eyes shot open, her head slowly lifting from its lying position. The bright light of the hallway seeped in through the open door, prompting Dusk to lift up her hoof to block out the burning light. “Ugh…you could’ve knocked…” She groaned, squinting to get a look at who it was.

A guard stood in the doorway. Dusk could make out a few others shifting around in the hall. “Dusk Rider.” The guard spoke. “Come with us.”

“Yeah, I’m coming…” She rolled off the bed, groaning in slight discomfort as her hooves hit the ground and she nearly fell. Still, she had more energy than usual.

The dracony stepped out with the guards, who rather roughly shoved her forward, forming a protective convoy around her. “Geez…” Dusk rolled her eyes. The extra pep she had from her previous meal made her more able to keep up with their constant pushing. “So, who is it this time? Or is that classified?” Dusk asked. The guards offered no response.

“…kay…” She shrugged and kept walking where they told her to. Twists and turns, past all sorts of different cell doors, but none of the prisoners spoke to her this time. What time was it, anyway? She had no concept of the time of day when there was no window in her cell.

She kept walking along with the guards, until they pushed open a set of double doors in front of her. Again, her eyes were assaulted with bright light – sunlight. Something she hadn’t seen in a few weeks, though technically it had been shimmering through the stained glass windows in the throne room.

“Fucking…could’ve warned me.” She groaned and tried to stretch a hoof up to shield her eyes, but she needed all four to support herself. She could hardly see anything, but she heard an odd amount of voices. An entire crowd, maybe.

The guards still said nothing. As her eyes adjusted to an amount of light she hadn’t seen in weeks, she saw her assumption was correct. A huge crowd of ponies was gathered. A sea of pastel colours and a combination of flapping wings and stomping hooves was standing in front of a wooden stage, one that really didn’t look that glamorous, especially for a Canterlot audience. In fact, it looked dusty – like it hadn’t been used in years, and the surface had only recently been trodden on.

Dusk tilted her head. Something seemed odd about it. “Er, am I supposed to give some kinda public apology?”

“That won’t be needed.” One of the guards said, pushing Dusk towards the steps.

Dusk blinked. At the shove of the guard, she ascended the stairs.

As she reached the top of the stairs, she looked up.

Her muscles went taut.

Her eyes went as wide as the sun shining down on her.

Every fibre of her being wanted to scream.

A guard headbutted her in the rump, knocking her forward onto the stage. The ponies in the crowd had gone quiet, aside from some murmuring and whispering.

She was standing on the stage, but it wasn’t a stage. It was a platform. A platform meant for one thing – one thing that hadn’t been needed in Canterlot for years. Two tall wooden beams suspended a longer beam above the middle of the platform, and from the exact center of that beam hung a rope.

The sight of it made Dusk feel nauseous. Her head spun. Her vision was already blurring. There was no way this was happening.

A purplish-pink magical aura wrapped around the rope and slowly tied it into a knot.

No, it was happening. And she was the only pony on stage, besides…

“…Sh…Sh-…Shin…ing…?” Dusk managed to stammer.

Standing at the other side of the stage was Shining Armour, dressed in his full Royal Guard armour and looking up at the rope as it was tied. He said nothing, even as two guards stepped up behind Dusk and began to move her forward.

“N-…w-…w-…” Dusk couldn’t formulate a sentence. Her face, one that at the very most would express feelings of sadness and on a normal day showed almost no emotion, was frozen in a state of shock and terror. Even as her chains were removed and her hooves were held tightly behind her back, she couldn’t move. She couldn’t work up the strength.

She was forced to stand on her hind legs on a chair. The guards made sure that she couldn’t move, wrapping strong ropes around her hind legs, tying her front legs behind her back and lashing her wings together against them.

“This…th-this…” Dusk mumbled, her words jumbling together into an incoherent mess. “Y-you can- you- Sh-…”

“Citizens of Equestria.”

Shining’s voice brought a complete hush among the crowd.

“I have no doubt that you all know this face.” One of the guards put a hoof under Dusk’s chin, holding up her head for all of the ponies to look upon. “This,” Shining continued. “Is the face of a criminal. A most heinous criminal, who has threatened the security of our land.”

Dusk’s eyes were watering. She couldn’t hold back the tears if she tried. They flowed freely down her cheeks.

“This mare – this evil pony,” Shining kept speaking. “Is a public menace. Arguably the most dangerous pony in all of Equestria.” He looked over his shoulder, his eyes meeting Dusk. His gaze was cold. Dusk couldn’t see a hint of remorse. “This is something that the Equestrian monarchy has not done in over thirty years.” Shining said in a slightly lower, more solemn tone. “Public executions are reserved for only the worst of the worst.”

Every word he said hit Dusk in the harder than the kick of an earth pony.

“You all have come here of your own fruition. This is your last warning to leave if you do not wish to see this.”

The noose was fitted around Dusk’s neck. She felt the rough rope scraping against her throat. Her lungs were working at such a speed she could hardly take in enough air to keep herself conscious.

“Dusk Rider. You are charged with one-hundred-and-forty-six counts of first-degree murder, along with nearly one hundred other criminal charges that are too numerous and varied to list them all in the time we have.” Shining was facing her now, his dark eyes glaring right into hers. She felt like her insides were going to melt just from the stare alone. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Dusk’s words wouldn’t come out. All she could force out was a jumbled mess. “Sh-Shining- b-but- Princess- Tempes- D-Dracony- n…n…”

Shining Armour turned away with a shake of his head. “Then by the decree of the Princesses of Equestria,” He took a breath, closing his eyes for a moment. “You are hereby sentenced to death.”

A shrill scream rippled out of Dusk’s throat, still dry despite the water she had been given. Her howl of desperation made a few ponies in the crowd shift uncomfortably, but they didn’t need to listen to it for long. She felt an impact on the chair through her hooves, and it was knocked out from under her.

The momentary drop had Dusk gasping for air, before the rope went tight around her neck.

She had never felt this before. The sensation of something cutting off her windpipe, that was familiar, although not extremely. What she had never, ever felt before was a level of fear this strong. Her mind was racing so quickly that she couldn’t form a coherent thought. Any noise she tried to make came out as a strangled gargle or just silence. Her limbs flailed as best as they could while they were tied up, her throat feeling like it was burning due to the rope closing tightly around it.

Shining Armour didn’t watch. He simply stood at the side, looking out at the crowd.

Dusk tried to free her hooves. She shook them, rubbed them against her wings, tried to snap the ropes with her tail, but it didn’t do anything. Instinctively she tried to breathe out and replenish her air, but she couldn’t do either. Her eyes, now strained and bloodshot, frantically darted around the stage, but there was nothing to help her. Nopony on stage was looking at her.

The fear was setting in faster than the asphyxiation. I haven’t done anything. She thought. Nothing. My life was a waste. A WASTE! She tried to scream it out loud, but all that came was a painful, strained rasping as her breath leaked out of her lungs. With no oxygen at all, her mind began to wander even more than before. She saw flashes of things from her past – her life literally flashing before her eyes. She saw momentary images of her standing side by side with Shining, saluting a superior officer. She saw images of her standing over a dead body, from an angle that she couldn’t possibly have been able to see. She was looking at herself from an outsider’s perspective – and she looked like a piece of shit.

Her body still thrashed. She still desperately tried to kick herself upwards, her bound hind legs dangling almost a foot from the ground. She rasped and wheezed, her desperation so clear in her eyes that some ponies in the crowd could feel it even from their distance. Her muscles began to lock up, focusing completely on forcing another breath in, but the noose was too tight. There was no possible way for her to breathe. She was dying.

She probably wet herself at some point. She heard a bout of laughter and assumed that’s what it was about. Her jaw moved up and down, like a fish stuck on land and trying to breathe a substance it only ever knew in liquid form. Her stomach was scrunched in to the point her ribs were visible, her neck muscles bulging and throbbing, her eyes wide and feeling like they would pop out of her skull. She tried again to scream, but no words could come out, for no air remained in her system.

Dusk’s body started to spasm. It wasn’t under her control anymore. She tried to fight it, but her muscles weren’t getting any oxygen and neither was her brain. Her eyes began to flutter, her gasping stopped, her body just spasmed and twitched in the air. Her tail, tied to her hooves and flailing desperately, slowly fell limp. The glow in her eyes that once gave way to a flaming inferno of passion and pent-up rage died out. They practically turned grey.

And then she fell still. Her body didn’t move. Her head fell forward, slumped over. Her mind only had one thought.

I…never got to do…anything.

But that was the last thought she had, before her mind shut itself off. Her eyes didn’t even fully close, remaining half-lidded as her lifeless body hung there from the gallows. Saliva dripped from the side of her mouth, onto the dusty wood beneath her.

Shining allowed his head to bow slightly, his teeth gritted. “I’m sorry.” He muttered to himself, before motioning for the guards to take the body down.