Journey to the Heart of the Realm (A Fall of Equestria: Shattered Order story)

An orange-coated Pegasus mare was stumbling through the streets of a crowded city. Her confused and disoriented mind barely picked up the surroundings. This was very clearly Vanhoover, she realized - just as she had wished for. Something was horribly off though.

She stumbled along, passing a series of pillories. Since when did Vanhoover have punishment devices like that? Most of them held mares, all of them nude. The mare saw a stallion placing himself behind one of them and beginning to unzip his pants.

The part of her mind that still worked began to wonder if she was still in that wretched place she had only just left behind… tricked into believing she was back home by the mind games of… whatever that thing had been.

The mare stumbled towards her own house, but something was not right. The lights were on, and other ponies seemed to be in it. Was this a home invasion?

She heard screams inside. The parts of her mind that still worked went into panic.

She clumsily fetched the key from her pocket and tried to push it into the door’s lock. It didn’t fit.

She cursed.

The screams got louder. They were clearly coming from the inside.

The mare snuck around the house, hiding under a window. For a brief moment, she was able to peek inside.

She was looking into her own living room - except it wasn’t. The entire room had been redecorated, and weird devices was hanging or standing around everywhere - torture devices, she realized. It was nothing she hadn’t seen before, but finding them in her own living room was odd, to say the least.

Careful not to be detected, she took another glance, and found the source of the screams. A mare was strapped to an X-shaped cross, her face turned towards the cross. The pegasus couldn’t see her face, but she could discern no wings on the other mare’s backs - so she must have been a unicorn or earth pony. A huge, brown-coated creature with impressive antlers was standing behind her, repeatedly hitting her with a large bullwhip. The bruised, screaming mare was wearing a black collar around her neck.

It was only now that the pegasus realized the red collar around her own neck. This gave her a brief moment of full clarity. She noticed her wings felt different… like they were encased in something. She felt herself unable to move them at all...

Her mind went into panic mode. She was clearly still trapped inside the artifact’s mad delusions, she thought.

Another scream came from the inside.

The pegasus turned around, and ran.