Author's Note

Hello, everyone. Thanks for all of the lovely feedback so far! It really encouraged me to post this earlier than I had expected. This chapter will probably be the longest, or maybe second-longest, and it's the most visceral of the story.

This chapter contains: verbal abuse, intent to sexually assault/rape, intent to enslave, blood, weapon and magical violence, suicidal thoughts, kindergarten-level smack talk (with a few curse words thrown in), several off-screen deaths, sickness...and I think that's about it.

Once again, I do appreciate all comments that you are able to give, and the next chapter should be up on Sunday or Monday. I hope you enjoy!

2. Puncture the Shell

Baklava didn’t have long to wallow in her misery as with a shuddering crack, the clay ceiling crumbled, and sand cascaded into the room.

‘Is this how I die?’ she thought faintly as the golden-red earth began to flow into what was left of her home. ‘Drowning with sand in my lungs?’ Given the slightly ticklish sensation in her chest and nose, there was probably a head start from the storm. Then, harsh white light burst through the hole created in the ceiling. The sun...it hadn’t been nighttime outside, like she’d first thought. Sand had completely covered her home, which could only mean one thing.

The sandstorm had knocked Sweet Oasis’ walls down and had buried the whole town.

She barely had a chance to feel a fresh wave of agony when something long shot out at her from the light above. Instinctively, the mare shrunk away from what might have been a snake, but the rough line wound around her, encased in a tingling magical field. Completely bewildered and overwhelmed, Baklava’s mind blanked out and she didn’t even think to resist as her arms were tightly cinched to her sides. She did protest, however, when she was roughly yanked away from her husband’s resting place. “No!” she screamed, reaching out desperately with her upper body and only succeeding in turning herself upside down. She didn’t want to be rescued. She wanted to stay with Poppy Loaf!

Ignoring her plea, the magic wielder deposited Baklava’s body onto the scorching sand. Wordlessly, she flinched away from the heat that was burning her fur through holes in her dress, and then a hoof pressed down on her hip warningly to keep her in place. “Well, well, well,” a low voice chuckled. “It looks like you’re my catch of the day.”

Already numb from shock and grief, the unicorn mare’s body didn’t even have a chance to grow cold in terror at the stranger’s voice. The unknown stallion’s hoof dug into the soft flesh around her hips, keeping her pinned, and there was no way that her magic would counter the one handling the rope that had tied her body down. ‘This can’t be happening’ was the only thing that Baklava could think. ‘It can’t be. Please…’

More chuckles echoed around her. Earth ponies and unicorns, dressed in the mismatched garb of scavengers and bandits and carrying blades, formed a circle around their prey, leering at her. More than a few of them, including the unicorns, were carrying swords. “Look’it this one, Dune!” one of them crowed. “Right pair of tits on her!” She shrunk away from the words as much as possible, but there was no way for Baklava to hide her chest. She’d never received anything but positive comments regarding her...assets, as it were. This attention really didn’t feel good; it only added to the dirt and shame that covered her.

“She’ll fetch a decent price at the market,” a mare suddenly said, strong, cold, and commanding. “And if you guys are good, you’ll get a turn with her before the auction.” The other bandits shrunk back a step, nodding in deference to the obvious ringleader. A rough hand scooped Baklava up by her chin as if she weighed nothing, lifting her off of her feet. Through eyes filled with sand, salt, and tears, Baklava managed to get a decent look at the leader of her captors.

The massive yellow unicorn smirked at the younger mare in her grip. Her fingers pinched Baklava’s cheeks together, making it impossible for the mare to speak (not that she really could, given how sore her throat was). “Aww, don’t be so sad, little widow,” ‘Dune’ cooed, condescension and superiority shining in her maroon eyes. “Take comfort in the fact that you’ll fetch us a pretty penny for your pretty body. If you’re lucky, you’ll be taken in as a nursemaid for some lord’s herd. You’ll be useful for something, at least, being alive.”

So, this was to be Baklava’s fate. Faust had graced her with a good life, a fortunate orphan with a natural talent for baking. She’d had friends in Sweet Oasis and even married a wonderful stallion with kind and accepting parents. Now, they were all dead, and she was to be sold on the black market for a few bits just because she’d committed the crime of surviving a freak sandstorm. ‘What did I do?’ she lamented internally, and a few more tears sprang from her aching eyes. ‘What sin did I commit to bring this upon us? It must be my fault.’

With a sudden shout, Dune dropped Baklava like she was a hot stone, and she hit the hot sand with a small grunt. Above her, the ringleader was stomping around, waving her arm and sending showers of blood droplets onto the sand. A tiny silver sliver dropped from Dune's wrist and into the soft sand, tipped with blood. After swearing rather colorfully, the yellow unicorn shouted, “don’t just stand there, you idiots. Find whoever did that!”

“R-right!” Suddenly a lot less cocky and more on edge, the bandits began to move outwards from their circle, leaving Baklava alone with a very agitated Dune. Baklava looked at the little knife that had assaulted Dune. It was close to her shoulder, so if the other pony could just keep focusing on her own pain, maybe Baklava could reach it and either cut herself free or swallow it- A hoof stomped on the brown unicorn’s ribs roughly, winding the baker and disrupting her planning.

“I don’t care if the rest of them die,” the bandit leader hissed to her trembling captive, “but I’m not losing the money I can get from you.” The rope around Baklava’s arms and torso jerked upwards roughly, and she was helpless to do anything but dangle in the powerful levitation spell, her hooves a fair few feet off the ground.

“No,” Baklava croaked, trying to look back at her ruined home. “Please...let me stay-” A hard fist smashed into her jaw, forcing her teeth to cut into the inside of her cheek. Along with the sand in her mouth, blood began to pool and drip out from her lips. Completely dazed, she couldn’t do anything but hang in the air as a bubble of rushing air formed around them. Dune was forming a Speed Bubble to take them...who knew where? Maybe to a slaver’s camp. Certainly, it would be far away from the ruins of this place that she’d once called home. When the walls had stood, no bandits would have dared go up against them or the Oasis’ mages. Now, the walls had collapsed and the mages were most likely dead. ‘Why can’t I just die?’

The ball of wind shot forward with the two unicorns inside, and Sweet Oasis was quickly left in their dust. Baklava couldn’t even get one last look back at her home; Dune shifted her around so that they both faced front. The yellow unicorn appeared to be making long strides across the sand as they sped along, mile after mile across the new wasteland and putting a large amount of distance between them and whatever had first struck Dune.

Baklava didn’t have any clue how long or how far they’d traveled when something brilliant and purple smashed into the Speed Bubble. She went flying into the air, and with her arms tied, there was no way to brace herself for the rocky ground. ‘I will see you soon, Poppy Loaf,’ she thought tiredly, ready to embrace the end. However, she never made contact with the sharp stones. Instead, a much warmer and softer magic field completely suffused her, not just the ropes, abruptly halting her fall. As it completely encased her, the whole landscape seemed to take on a shade of rich, royal purple. Who’d be taking her this time, she wondered resignedly.

The answer came in the form of another pony, a mare dressed in the head-to-hoof navy robe of the more religiously observant ponies that lived closer to the Capital. The only identifiable feature was a pearly white horn that rose from the folds of fabric around her hood. It shimmered with the purple aetherial essence that was holding Baklava right now, and the stranger knelt beside her. Even in the more powerful levitation spell, Baklava shook from fear, exhaustion, or pain, or all three.

A hand, gloved in deepest blue, reached up. The young mare flinched back, but the fingers only came to probe her aching, bleeding jaw with the lightest touches, and there was an immediate, comforting warmth placed to the area. Per custom, Baklava was forbidden to touch one of the Righteous unless in the most dire of circumstances, and many of them would have turned a nose up at touching someone outside of their clade. Here, though, this mare had not only saved Baklava, but was freely touching her? “Wh-wha…” she tried, but everything was just too much at the moment. Alone, with her whole village killed, about to be abducted, and succumbing to touches that could have gotten her punished by a religious court, she just wanted to cry again at the moment.

“Shh,” her mysterious savior whispered. “You’re safe now.” She set the bound unicorn down onto the ground, but the sand didn’t burn her skin and fur this time. The purple magic field dissipated from around her, and the rope around her body actually dissolved painlessly into nothing but loose fibers. Underneath Baklava, the ground felt firmer than just sand. Had she been set down on a rock so that she wouldn’t sink?

All of a sudden, the whole desert turned blood red around the pair of mares. A beam of crimson magic shot across the sand towards them, pulsing angrily at the nucleus and growing larger with each second. Baklava gasped, terrified and also faintly, shamefully hopeful that this would be it. Unthinking, with all of the effort that she could manage in that brief moment before contact, she cast her magic against her strange savior and pushed her out of the way of Dune’s attack.

Fine Silk managed to scramble up as soon as the rescued mare started screaming. ‘The beautiful fool,’ she thought desperately, dissolving her gloves and pressing her bare hands to the golden head. It was, unfortunately, very difficult; the pony’s back was arching almost unnaturally, and her thrashes were something out of a spiritual possession or maybe even torture. Remnants of crimson magic seeped into the chestnut unicorn's skin.

When Fine reached in with her consciousness and magic, her whole body lit up in searing pain. It felt like her blood was boiling alive in her veins, that every nerve was being sliced, and this was merely a shadow of what the poor mare had taken instead of Fine Silk. This nameless unicorn’s body was going to rip itself apart if Fine Silk didn’t do something. This curse, though...even at her cursory intrusion, it licked at her palms like tongues of white-hot flame, physically burning the fur and blistering skin to an ugly red.

“No, you don’t,” she grunted, determinedly pushing back against the malignant hex with something to simulate cool relief. Most of the healing charm evaporated against the simmering, magmatic curse, but as Fine Silk continued to push, some of her magic corralled the crimson into a more condensed, manageable mass deep within the brown unicorn. The purple barrier wouldn’t hold permanently, but it could buy the younger pony a little more time-

‘Oh, yes,’ Fine Silk thought dismissively as a different spell struck her like a ton of bricks, ‘and give time for me to take care of this wretch.’ The spell blasted apart the rest of her clothing, leaving Fine to feel the heat of the sand across all of her body. Damn! That would be a pain in the flank to brush out.

The third unicorn, Dune, was still struggling to her feet when Fine Silk picked herself up. “Heh...no wonder the Righteous go around in their fancy cloaks all day,” Dune spat, a little blood mixing with the dirt at her feet. “Must be embarrassing, to all be Sky-cursed like you.”

“I really wish that you wouldn’t use such an outdated term,” Fine sighed, an unimpressed glare in her eyes. “The term is ‘paint.’ It’s a legitimate skin condition-”

“It’s garbage, that’s what it is!”

Oh, well, this was going to be a stimulating interaction. With a sigh, the black and white unicorn rolled her head across her shoulders and cracked her knuckles. “I suppose you’re going to try to fight me, then?” she asked casually, sinking into a crouch and stretching out her legs. It would probably go a long way towards making her opponent do something stupid out of rage, watching Fine not take this fight really seriously. Plus, it would do no good to go into a fight without being at peak flexibility.

“Won’t be much of a fight,” Dune sneered, drawing out a crystal sword. “I killed to be leader of the Fennec Bandits, and I’m going up against a stupid, shameless bitch who’s naked as the day she was born. It’s a bit of an uneven match.”

‘You said it, not me.’ No use sharing that particular thought with the slaver, though, especially if she wasn’t going to be able to suffer her defeat for long. “Then by all means, make the first move,” Fine Silk offered brightly, extending her arms out. “And I do hope it’s a doozy.”

“Oh, it will be,” Dune growled, her horn shining crimson again. The crystal sword in her hand, pale and opaque, suddenly glowed like a red garnet and shot forward without its wielder behind it, the wicked tip aimed right for Fine Silk’s midsection.

“Ooh,” the bichromatic unicorn cooed with an eager smile, sliding to the left at the last second. A decent challenge! The sword whistled past her, humming with the ill intent of its wielder. ‘A propulsion and levitation combination?’ she thought. ‘Clever. I might use that later.’

The cursed blade circled around Fine Silk, arc at every angle, making experimental jabs at her. She neatly dodged them all, watching the garnet sword bury itself in the sand each time before popping back out like a weaponized radish. When Dune’s sword rose up from by Fine Silk’s hooves and aimed for the underside of her chin, she stepped back just a bit, curled two of her fingers, and flicked them against the sword (with a little added magic behind the strike) to send it off it’s intended path.

“Stand still, you little-!” Snarling, Dune thrust her hand out to the side, and the sword spun around to aim for Fine Silk’s spine this time. The intended victim didn’t even turn around but instead pirouetted to the side once again. The weapon soared back into Dune’s scabbard behind her back, the slaver breathing raggedly and glaring hatefully at the paint pony.

Really? Was that all that Dune had in her? “I’m almost disappointed,” Fine Silk remarked blithely before giving a shrug. “Then again, you did spend so much energy trying to abandon your own crew in exchange for one captive. I mean, I’m just-”

Shhhk!

The sword in Dune’s scabbard dissolved as the genuine article slammed into Fine Silk’s side, cutting her off and burying itself up to the pommeled hilt. The painful pressure was immense, even for Fine, and she doubled over a little. No wait, no, that only made the pain even worse. Brackish blood began oozing out from the entry wound, then- “Gah!” she gasped when the enchanted weapon sliced itself across her middle before pulling out. The deathly sharp edge slicked through tissue and muscle as if it were nothing, creating a long slice across her midriff. Fine Silk collapsed to the ground on her knees, arms around her bleeding belly. “Damnit,” she gasped through blurry vision, an intense heat in her bones. She probably shouldn’t have been so cocky for so long.

A cracked yellow hoof slammed the sand in front of her face, kicking noxious dirt up into the bleeding pony’s nose. “That’s the problem with all you Righteous,” Dune snarled, twisting her hand into Fine Silk’s long mane and dragged her up roughly while the latter kept her arms around her abdomen. “Always treating everyone beneath you like dirt just because you worship Faust more devoutly than others.”

‘Well,’ Fine Silk thought with astonishing clarity as she hung immobile from the mare’s grip, ‘at least I’m not the only one with a bragging problem.’ Damn, the wound stung, and Brightspear was going to whoop her flank later for the sin of pride.

An ugly smirk morphed onto the slaver’s lips as she lifted her bleeding victim up close. “And look where that’s gotten you. Guess your skin really shows your lack of ‘blessing’.” They were at eye level now, angry crimson meeting darkened purple. “What’s your all-powerful Goddess got against a non-believer?”

Like a striking serpent, a black hand lashed out and latched onto Dune’s face, specifically onto her forehead. The bloody fingers seemed to sink into her skin, putting pressure around the faded yellow horn, but the attack wasn’t what caught Dune off-guard. Her eyes darted down to see that the gaping wound in her victim’s midriff, one that had cut from her liver to the front of her stomach, wasn’t there anymore. There wasn’t even a speck of blood on the glowing alabaster and ebony fur.

“What is a non-believer to a monster?” Fine Silk snarled lowly, her eyes and hand glowing so deeply as to be almost black, and the world filled with purple light.

Black fingers were brushing through a stringy golden mane. Baklava didn’t want to let go of Poppy Loaf, but the ghostly image of her husband, smiling above her, was already beginning to dissolve into dust. “I love you, Lavvy,” he whispered, a faint noise carried on the wind. “I always will.”

“Don’t leave me, please,” Baklava whispered, reaching for her husband’s face, looking into his adoring green eyes, but they were already almost gone. “Poppy, don’t leave. Poppy!”

“Poppy…” she moaned aloud from a throat that felt terribly raw, and the discomfort forced Baklava awake. The light in...wherever she was had been dimmed behind a few shades, but it still stung her eyes and made her head pound. Maybe if she sat up- no, no, that made things worse. The pounding in her skull changed to a throb, all the way to the tip of her horn. Instinctively, a hand came up to rub at the side of her temple, and she found a thick swath of bandages.

“Take it easy,” a raspy voice whispered, and a weathered hand came down gently on the chestnut unicorn’s shoulder when she started. The stranger was an older mare, with fur of a stormy gray and faded golden eyes. Her ears had the strangest shape, much larger tufted with silver fur, and some sort of weird fabric contraption was strapped to her back, but the stranger’s smile was dimpled and kind. “Don’t try to talk yet. It won’t be comfortable for you. Drink this instead,” she said and offered a steaming cup to her charge.

Baklava didn’t even think to try to question what was in the cup. Her whole body felt awful, like she was suffering from a particularly bad seasonal flu. Weakly, she took the hot cup into her hands and brought it to her lips. Something dark and smoky washed through her mouth and down her throat, and the muscles there flared unpleasantly before the pain began to dim. The throbbing in her head eased off as well, though it didn’t quite go away.

“Good girl,” the old stranger whispered while Baklava continued to drink. “It’s a special tea, an old recipe from Equestria, mixed with just a little whiskey. It should help with the pain.”

Upon draining the cup, Baklava gasped, “yes. Thank you.” While she still didn’t feel great, her immediate thought about her body was no longer, ‘oh Faust, please just let it end.’ Now that it didn’t hurt to have her eyes open so much, and with the stranger refilling her cup of tea, Baklava got a good look around. She was sitting on a massive pile of cushions in the middle of a decently sized room, filled with baskets and crates. It had no windows, but there was a flap on one wall that let in a cool little breeze. “Where am I?”

“Among friends, young lady.” The older mare pushed the refilled cup back into her hands. “You’re in our cart on the edge of town. My name is Brightspear.”

“Brightspear…” Baklava tested the name out in her tingling mouth, then took another sip of the tea. “What happened to the bandits?”

Was it her imagination, or did the grey mare’s smile have slightly sharpened teeth? “Buried far away from here. I was expecting a bit of a challenge, but I suppose that they weren’t really up to snuff.” She stretched her arms and spine back a little, and that’s when Baklava noticed that for being several decades old, at least, Brightspear was startlingly fit. Every muscle was lean and cut, and her exposed arms showed more than a few old scars. Sensing the looks she was being given, the older mare said, “Fighting’s in my blood, dear, and they weren’t just going to drop their weapons and walk away.”

“No, no, I understand. Force is sometimes necessary.” Stil, Baklava couldn’t help but wonder just how this one mare had (supposedly) taken out at least eight other ponies on her own. Maybe she shouldn’t think about it too much; the headache was starting to come back. Instead, she asked, “did you happen to see a Righteous unicorn nearby? She had a white horn, I think.”

Brightspear nodded immediately in understanding. “My travelling companion. She’s checking the town for other survivors. Her name’s Fine Silk, but she’s not a Righteous, dear.”

Baklava’s face quickly heated from the embarrassment (although it could have also possibly been because of fever), and she ducked her eyes. ‘I feel like an idiot.’ Why did she assume that her rescuer was a Righteous, just because she wore the clothing?

As if catching onto her little bit of self-criticism, Brightspear said, “You don’t have to be ashamed for assuming something logical, dear. Fine Silk’s a paint. When she goes trading, it’s usually easier for her to wear the Righteous robes than deal with superstitious folk.” It sounded like an explanation that the older pony had either used or had heard herself many times.

“I’ve never seen a paint pony before,” she admitted quietly, thoughtful as she sipped her tea. Baklava’s work at her husband’s bakery had introduced her to many travelers that stopped at Sweet Oasis on their way into the interior, but she’d never before encountered a pony with the paint condition. Granted, she supposed that a paint pony was just that, a pony whose skin was different, whether by genetics or metaphysical circumstance. It was certainly unlikely that a paint pony would be cursed, despite the mutterings of more superstitious folk. “Is Miss Silk staying away in case I reacted badly to the color of her fur?”

“You’re pretty sharp, aren’t you?” Brightspear’s smile was very genuine, though her glance was shrewd. “That’s one reason, yes. Better for me to explain and see if you’d accept her apology before she hears a random tirade about being cursed by the moon and sun. I’m told that it’s gotten draining on her after the few dozen times.”

“I don’t think it would be bad to meet her. I want to thank her for saving me.” Still, she couldn’t quite bring herself to smile, and the chestnut unicorn looked down to finger the pattern of a blanket that covered her legs. It looked to be hand-stitched, and the detail was exquisite. She was grateful, truly, but Poppy Loaf…

“Wait a moment,” she interrupted herself, “why would she need to apologize? She saved me.”

“You may not think so,” a new voice said from the little doorway, but the voice tugged at Baklava’s memory as she looked up at the new pony, who had to be Fine Silk. Behind the sheer black veil and long black dress she now wore, the unicorn could make out some of the definition in the paint’s coat. One of those beautiful purple eyes was surrounded in black fur, the other with white, but not in straight lines. It was almost like waves of night and day, ebbing and flowing across the mare’s body.

“About time,” Brightspear groused, but there was no heat behind her crotchety complaining. “Did you find anything, Fine?”

“No other survivors,” the black and white unicorn murmured, but her eyes remained locked on Baklava as she entered the wagon. Baklava’s whole body seemed to warm under her rescuer’s gaze a little, but that may have been because she was trying to drown herself in tea to hide her blush and tears. “I can at least say that they didn’t suffer.” Fine Silk didn’t speak loudly, but she sounded so miserable. At the very least, Baklava was grateful that her rescuer seemed to care about what had happened to her home.

The younger mare started as, with a slight jingle of decorative coins on her dress, Fine Silk knelt down on a cushion that was just out of arm’s reach. The shrouded pony tilted her head to regard Baklava with those dazzling purple eyes, a curious expression on her face that the bride- no, that the widow couldn’t quite understand, but she didn’t think it meant any ill will.

“Thank you...for saving me,” she said shakily, the headache coming back just a little in tandem with an unpleasant gurgling from her belly. “I don’t want to think about who that bandit might have sold me to.”

Beneath the black shroud, those purple eyes darted to the side. “I’m sorry,” Fine Silk murmured, and why did the stranger’s sadness tug at Baklava’s heart? “I really- are you in pain?”

“A little.” Even mentioning it brought Baklava’s attention back to the slight roiling, ill feeling just under the muscle of her throat and around her mouth. “I know a small pain prevention spell-”

“No, don’t!” Quickly, Fine Silk’s hand wrapped around Baklava’s horn, gentle but firm pressure from her hand and magic stopping the other unicorn’s spell before it could even start, but something else...happened.

What happened was that the whole world fell away as Baklava was faced with something that she could both see and not see. Within and around Fine Silk was magic, so potent and pure as to be almost painful to look at. That magic reached out in turn, curling around almost caressing Baklava in a loving, curious manner as she witnessed how it reached into the earth around them, trailing out in faint lines. It shone purple like Fine Silk’s eyes, but there were currents of something else in that well of magic as well, something that felt, for lack of a better word, old. It wasn’t quite dark magic as far as Baklava could tell, but she felt herself drawn to that primal energy-

An inferno erupted inside Baklava, wrenching a scream from her and taking her away from that beautiful, welcoming magic. Harsh crimson and noxious green exploded within her body, roiling under every inch of skin and tissue like grave worms with a venomous bite. What felt like a branding iron slammed into her heart, and she lurched on her makeshift bed. Something coppery rose in the back of her throat, and she was helpless against coughing it out, hot liquid bitterly coating her nose and mouth and splatting across her front. It went beyond just hurting, and she couldn’t see through her watering eyes.

A rough, hissing sound rose and fell in her ears, and as the sickening colors inside of her began to simmer down a little, Baklava finally realized that what she was hearing was her own breathing. Calmer purple rose to meet the sickness inside of her, unaided by the baker’s own magic. Fine Silk’s magic, still laced with that aged tint, crashed against the sickness like a battering ram, keeping it from bursting the poor unicorn’s fragile shell. Deep inside her, in her own magical well, a fierce battle was waged with Baklava as more of a spectator or prize. The swirling red and green was relentless, but it was an unstoppable force going up against an immovable object.

“Easy, easy,” a low voice whispered to the ailing widow. Through the waning fire, Baklava felt cool hands pressing directly on her furred skin, with one at her back, a second on her head, and a third on her torso. Moaning weakly, her eyes barely managed to flick open. The rim of a cup was placed against chapped lips, but it was a monumental effort to let her mouth open enough for the smoky tea to be poured into her throat. The fur over her whole face, even her eyes, felt hot, matted, and sticky.

“That’s why you shouldn’t thank me,” Fine Silk whispered, mournful. “The curse that you took for me is going to kill you.”