Author's Note

Spoilers for: Stay Golden, of course. These are the original versions of various chapters from the first half of Stay Golden. The story went through revisions in regard to Marigold herself, some dialogue, and the gory details.

Here are the original chapters before I revised them to something I felt less iffy over.

Mature/Gore/ProfanityDeath/Non-con/Violence/Dark/Horror/Thriller/Sex/Historical

TRIGGERS/spoilers: prostitution, a minor buying a prostitute, rape, pedophilia, a child being exposed to sexually inappropriate situations, indecent horse exposure, allusions to nastiness and sickness, abuse (physical/sexual) of a very young child, abuse of an adult, a teenager who breaks Romeo & Juliet laws, also adults that break those too, cutting, allusions to abuse, lots of scars, a bad pony who likes to degrade and humiliate others, death, dead body described in detail, along with injury and decay, mentioned rape and sexual violence/sadism, hints of eating disorders.

Stay Golden's Original Chapters [Bonus Material] [Profanity/Gore/Non-con/Death/Violence]

Gunpowder Gloom

Marigold Blueblood blinked her ruby-flooded gaze and smiled like a pumpkin damn near split open on Nightmare Night.

“Oh my,” she breathed, cooing. “How lovely my new toy is!”

The teenager itched with the urge to slip a frolic in her step, but the skirt she wore today was rather stiff. She did not want to risk tearing another. Seamstresses were nothing but slavers with the rates they charged, entirely undeserving of what they charged on a service deserved by all. Many were also uppity unicorns or fellow earth ponies managing ludicrously fancy sewing machines that they insisted needed this upkeep and that, daring to treat Marigold Blueblood as if she were not a fellow earth pony, but instead a mere customer.

Marigold pawed at the hard lump under her shawl, letting the aura from it flare briefly and tugged at her stiff, hock-length skirt. The ruffled edge of the underskirt poking out looked too bright and starched in the coming dusk.

Marigold’s brow furrowed, as if in pain. She squeezed her eyes shut to hide their light and focus on the throbbing ache that drummed in her skull as she demanded magic do its work. A plain black rain cloak rested over her golden attire, half-translucent with the suddenness of the conjuration and never solidifying entirely due to Marigold’s weakness. By the gods so rotten, she was still an amateur. No matter how fantastical her precious artifact was, she still was on shaky leaps and bounds.

It still covered all of her perfect ensemble, and gave her shaky telekinesis a place to conceal her weapon. The paleness she suffered from after her feat was well-hidden by the dark accessory, as was Marigold’s disgust when she felt the heel of her glamorous laced-up boot squelched into something dreadful.

Hissing through gritted teeth, she jammed her pistol into her saddlebags harshly, her magic losing the peculiar sense of the inner mechanics of the strange contraption fading from the bizarre way where they traced themselves under her skull. Lately, any time she grabbed at something with magic, the unthought-of complexities of the process produced such an effect and buzzed in her skull differently each time she gripped something.

What could she really expect in this part of town? There were efforts to keep all of Manehattan clean, from rottenness and rotten ponies alike, but parts of the city were not patrolled by Celestia’s gold-clad army as much as they should have been. Bad routes and other mortal failings gave way to pockets of corruption and isolation so perfect for one Miss Marigold Blueblood.

Thick, dirty windows always had the curtains drawn in this part of town. Those who had such windows would place large furniture in front of them and stuff gaps with rags to block out the sound. Boards were often hammered carelessly to the interior sides as well, and it was always junk wood or some horribly smelly driftwood pulled from the bay harbor surrounding Manehattan Island - though, that was less common since the harbors were not crawling with any criminals except the odd smuggler.

Trash was piled high and overflowing from the bins it was carelessly stuffed in, each barrel more terrible in stench than the last. The shadow of the Liberty Mare was far from here, and rightfully so. No liberty dwelt here, only perversions and the ponies who fell to them. To Marigold Blueblood, it was exactly what she needed.

These seedy streets with apartment blocks that bleed and lumped into one another instead of merely being wall-to-wall into one another held the perfect ponies for her plans. There were no scrubbed bricks, balconies, businesses, or neighbors here. Center Park was unheard of, and those that snagged spaces in these half-abandoned flats were transient and without community. The nearest schools were beyond blocks away, but they had to be. When the sun peeked over this particular web of streets and alleys, they would be empty and the rich rolling hills of the Continent would go unseen; only the shadows of despairing apartment rises would be cast upon this space.

Marigold approached one such building, marveling at the scent of wet plaster that spilled out. The building creaked as she rapped her hoof on the door.

No response. Marigold let out a hissing breath through her teeth.

She knocked again, and the sound of hooves stomping came from inside. Rusted chains rattled and the door was pulled, then slammed again. A wheezing voice cursed from inside. More chains rattled and the sound of fumbling hooves followed. Eventually, Marigold caught sight of a leg through a crack, and the door was pulled open.

The sight of a mare once healthy greeted her. Purple eyeshadow was applied thicker than paste to blend in with recent bruising around her eyes. She made a face that was known only as the hooker’s smile: yellowed teeth, thin unnaturally black spots on the gums, a few brown molars peeking through, and the stench of too many ponies escaping her mouth like a miasma.

The sleeves of her dress were ragged and showed rings of rope burn around her legs, crusted over with dried blood. The bruises on her throat peeked out from the high collar of her dress, so obviously expensive and fashionable, only to have fallen into a state of skimpy altercations and ruined from too much participation in her crimes.

The mare angled herself so she blocked the door horizontally, and Marigold caught a purposeful flash of a bit too much from her butchered short almost-skirt. Weird black colored wounds stretched across her legs, some kind of infection from the excessive chafing of her ridiculous fishnets. Even though her cheeks were thin under the incorrectly colored makeup palette dumped on her scabby face, her thighs and hips were swollen with ugly red marks streaked with blood residue. They peeked out from beneath the crisscross of her cheap fishnets but weren’t from anything as distinct as the whips and crops made illegal to own in Equestria and other civilized, allied nations. Maybe she let her hourly owners beat her with something else.

All in all, she was fairly healthy as far as most mares and stallions in her criminal field. The distinct odors of other illnesses absent from her - usually, these dirty ponies had it wafting with every flick of their tails. This one had the sense to at least ensure hers was made into a brick of products instead of letting it become a dried tangle of other fluids.

Her dull glassy eyes looked over Marigold, visibly confused. “How old ye?” she hissed, voice thin with what was left of the youth her appearance lacked.

“Fourteen,” Marigold answered honestly, sweetly. “But that rarely matters to a whore like you, does it?”

The nameless mare narrowed her eyes. And really, they were all nameless. If the pony was not a lone participator in self-exploitation, as the law dubbed such a branch of crimes, they would be nothing more than the nameless pony under a pimp or madam running their own multi-pony criminal establishment. Only those sorts might carry a name. But for a pony like this? A mare disconnected from any family for years, without a lover, who slaps a vulgar name on herself to make up for being a worthless grown blankflank and sells herself, desperate for any bits as and caught up in a horrible cycle of letting anypony who buys her do anything to her?

She was nameless. A cog in a pattern that Marigold and any who committed the crime of purchasing a pony knew. Nopony had to know what she might have really been called, or the little innuendo she gave herself. They just had to pay her for the hour and take the risk she would not be as sick as another mare or stallion that might be in the same building or caught up in the identical cycle of self-destruction.

She would not do anything if her buyer beat her too bad, or had their vicious way with her as long as she had the bits in the end. Both of them were familiar with the sides of the crime they participated in, and it was not like she could run to the Royal Guard without being held on charges of her own. Yes, they would lock any buyers up if they were successfully tried for such a thing, but this whore-mare would have to pay in time with a side trial of her own, for there was no immunity from certain severe kinds of offense… and her regular, sexual offense aside, statutory rape cost any creature their head.

“Ye better have bits!” demanded the mare with as much force as a whore like her could have.

“Oh, I do,” Marigold whispered, tugging her shawl under her cloak to ward off the night’s chill. “One might ask how old you are as well. Come on, tell me. Does anypony ever ask?”

“Course not,” scoffed the mare, “they pay and be done. I ‘m nin’een, though.” She was too dumb to lie, really. Most were, even though one at her ripe old age - if whores had a ripe old age - had a few years of experience.

When Marigold slipped a hoof under her cloak, she flipped it over and showed off the coin purses spilling bits upon bits inside. “I think I have more than enough.”

When the whore caught a peek of the shine of bits in the dark, her expression went into a limp, drooling, sort of dullard's bliss. “Y-Ye d-o.”

“How much for three hours?”

“Ye can have me for three days with bits like that.” Only the most psychotic of buyers would try to spend three days straight with their purchase - especially considering whatever they gave you to remain awake for so long would either cost extra or be some kind of trick. Even worse, it could be a toxic concoction when it was made by somepony as terrible as her kind.

“No. Three hours.” Marigold fixed the whore with a cruel stare until the malnourished mare was quavering. “Nothing more. I am the buyer, am I not?”

“Ye be buyin’, missy,” whimpered the whore. “Bits get ye whae’er ye wants.”

“Of course it does,” Marigold said breathily. After all, there was no such thing as one of these kinds with standards: they could not make money unless they let buyers do whatever they wanted. “Now, I think it is best I actually get what I aim to pay for, yes?”

She lowered her ears in surrender, taking a hoof and patting her gelled-solid streaks that passed for imitation curls. The strands that strayed from that encasement were frizzy from telltale abuse of cheap dyes - it was something rarely done by ponies outside of costumes and parties, but mares and stallions like the mare before Marigold would get cheap stuff for their manes and coats to hide their true identity.

Marigold followed her inside, paying half a mind to how the door was locked for when she alone would need it later. Her pistol was a pleasant weight in the saddlebag opposite of her coins. She watched the whore hobble up the stairs, the distinct quality to her limp only meant one thing. Certain mares of her crime were known to acquire it when they fell to a certain condition - and were able to survive without passing from the struggling with the ‘consequence’ alone later. That was, of course, provided they had not managed a homemade attempt at termination - one that they had to survive, of course.

Marigold could only smile her sweetest smile. Even if she was too good for these dusty narrow hallways that tilted down at her with their narrowness, she might be rewarded doubly tonight. As they climbed floor after shabby floor, Marigold heard the usual array of sounds characteristic of the half-empty apartments frequented by her type. My, my, if the owners only knew the horrors that went on in the homes they struggled to keep well - the newspaper headlines only made it so much more obvious that up and coming landlords often had no idea that they rented to bottom of the barrel ponies. Those that did would later have to face criminal charges for facilitating crimes.

The sound of muffled cries, screams, shouts all accompanied by various thuds reached the filly’s ears. Some of the sobs even sounded young enough to belong to foals younger than her - but that was no surprise. Quite a few buyers were being extra brutal tonight - Marigold knew what it sounded like to strike a pony as hard as possible through the thin walls of these places by now. She was not the kind of filly to cringe from the degrading language or sounds of violence she heard. In fact, it put a skip in her trot.

Eventually, Marigold and the whore came to a weathered wooden door that had known better days. Two battered bronze numbers reading ‘75’ could no longer shine, even if all the drifting clouds of dust had let them.

The whore was wheezing from the climb. Her thin hooves clumsily fumbled with her key a dozen times before she managed to use her disgusting mouth to twist the cold, heavy iron. Then she drove her wither hard into the wood to budge it open, wincing with pain from the impact. Marigold figured that she probably had more than enough splinters stuck in her skin beneath the distressed dress she wore.

Marigold made no effort to hide the noise she made or how she sucked in one big breath. Her cheeks pushed out, the sparkling freckles she painted on her face moved with her, like gaudy constellations. After making sure her boots would be safe from more damage, she stepped inside, following her whore.

The first room was a mess of glass bottles, most broken and shoved aside. Marigold was definitely glad she had boots now. Unknown stains were the gallery upon the peeling wallpaper, though the creaky floors had their share too. Dirty shirts had not even bothered to be pulled over vomit stains. Many had not even been half scrubbed away. Browned blood spatter decorated many sheets, spelling out the shame of the whore and splattering various other possessions she had.

Though, ‘possessions’ was a kind word for coils of rope, a wooden chair, a tired-looking crate, and a sack of dried fruit. Marigold was rather impressed, as most ponies like her ate out of the dumpsters of diners and markets. Being able to afford a whole sack of dried fruit was a sign of popularity, even if half the fruit was likely withered rather than purposely dried.

The only light in this room came from a herd of candles melting on a plate too tarnished for Marigold to tell what it might have been made of. The second room Marigold was led into was less of a catch-all room for the whore to dine in and keep general wares. A cracked, stained mirror that was missing quite a few pieces from the flowery wooden frame. Perhaps she had been slammed into it too many times.

Marigold’s greed bubbled to light, and her gaze immediately found the collection of clothes scattered around the mirror room, a clear sign that this was where she primped and preened to the best of her ability. Various articles were spilled around, either piled up, draped over wooden chairs, or hanging from homemade lines strung across the room. Numerous dresses were awaiting the slutty homemade alterations that left them as parodies of anything that was once pretty, charming, flirtatious, or even tastefully attractive in any sense of the word. More fishnets and assorted scraps of lingerie in various states of disrepair were huddled with main pieces.

A few plainer dresses with actual short skirts stuck out, partly because they had actual patterns - or because they simply weren’t lost from abuse yet. Marigold recognized them as having likely been made from feed sacks, and the thought that somepony like her was either dumpster diving for these things or that she had been able to budget for food staples at one point after rent and clothes hoarding was absolutely hilarious. Along with few the ugly shawls hanging nearby, these were the things Marigold knew the whore would wear when she might risk being seen in public during daylight hours. She could likely pass as an average grandmother from a distance.

There was even an assortment of bland thread colors and scissors - a clear attempt at the sewing kit needed for this fool to try and deter gazes from her hideousness through fancy clothes always in need of repair. On a teetering stool was a collection of high-end perfumes threatening to fall off from where they were crowded. The bucket of water next to the stool told Marigold that she had to water down most of what she paid a hoof and ear for to conserve supplies before she dunked herself in it. Not too far away was a knee-high pile of various cosmetics. Many of the containers were not properly closed and the various powders and paints leaked across each other like they were desperate to escape a mare who would do nothing more than slather them carelessly on her face.

After passing that room, Marigold had the misfortune of getting a whiff of the small bathroom to the side.

“Blegh!” Marigold gagged.

Her whore’s reaction was to hunch her withers forwards, saying nothing. Could she make it any more obvious she probably just kept buckets in there that she dumped gods knows where because she couldn’t afford utilities?

At last, Marigold’s whore shoved open the last door. Marigold Blueblood stepped inside and beheld what was supposed to be a bedroom. The biggest shock was that this mare had so many pillows lumped around the bare, dirty mattress bleeding its contents out from multiple gaping holes. Yes, the pillows were torn and lumpy, but she was a whore that had managed to afford furnishings.

Marigold plopped down on the mattress, side-stepping all the largest puddles of mixed fluids tainting the floor and a few coils of ropes and cord. There was a broken table leg flecked with what Marigold couldn’t mistake for anything else - some clumps of skin and more than enough blood - a few feet away from her. She noted that over the absolutely nauseating stench - the fecal odor was among the most predominant - that the few hairs distinguishable in that mess matched the whore’s coat.

A feeling of gooey warmth spread in Marigold’s chest. None of these sorts had anything in the way of a barrier you could not push except what it took to kill them, and while the table leg was far milder than most things Marigold had seen, it was a good sign. She would be able to have more of her way before her finale.

As Marigold’s hooves unfastened her cloak, she noticed how her whore bumbled over to an area close to where the lone table leg was. Arranged crookedly on one of the most disgusting towels Marigold Blueblood had seen were the missing pieces of the mirror in the vanity room, each jagged piece well-used and stained with enough beads of blood to discolor the once reflective pieces from a distance.

The cloak fell, and Marigold slipped off her saddlebags and laid them next to her. She fished out a few sacks of bits, eyeing her whore.

“Two-fif'y,” she wheezed, “fif'y bits an hour.”

Marigold smiled like her whore said something clever. “Very well,” she said, hurriedly grabbing enough pouches and spillover and hoofing them over.

Fifty bits an hour was rather cheap for a Manehattan whore. It was like the imbecile did not realize her prices were just below average. Farm fresh apple cider shipped from the hills was eight bits for six bottles. The law said buying a pony was cruel and a plethora of other ways to reiterate serious crime this and grave offense that.

Marigold Blueblood just found it laughable that you could pay to beat, cut, or restrain a pony like this however you like if you were afflicted with such an unlawful want, and that it might only happen to cost you as much as enough fine cider for a large rooftop celebration or twenty-five nights at the average rural inn. Someponies, somewhere long ago had invented what was known as the world’s oldest crime and decided a price could be placed upon a pony. It was absolutely glorious.

Her whore scuttled off for a few moments, thinking that she would be good about hiding her funds. Marigold had to stifle a snicker with a hoof. Did her whore think that she had not seen her limp away into the bathroom?

Marigold’s whore slammed the door behind her when she returned, and to the annoyance of the former and the mild astonishment of the latter, a whine erupted from nearby.

Before she could be stopped, Marigold dared to stick her designer boots into the fray of sheets filthier than wherever the souls of whores were kept in Tartarus. She hit something fleshy and the cry came back again, annoying Marigold too. From within the rat’s nest, she revealed a sight more wretched than the whore half-alive upon the mattress: the whore’s son.

The colt could not have been past two years old. His few teeth were gray and cracked. Unlike his dyed and poorly painted mother, the cause behind her limp was unclothed except for the assorted filth, grime, and fluids caking his spring green coat. His mother was obviously selling him as a bonus, as virtually every whore did when they survived their home birth. It was practically synonymous with the mares selling themselves. If they didn’t, they would either be rid of the foal post-birth or take out whatever they pleased upon their spawn in less sexual ways. Marigold knew it was more complicated for stallions involved in the same crimes.

Somepony - very likely the whore herself - had burned whatever wings might have adorned the little one’s back. What was left were permanently featherless stumps just enough to leave the back of the colt as a trauma-worthy sight all across his back, but not enough to kill him. No matter how indirect Marigold’s touch was, any contact she made that reached the colt was enough to make the little thing wheeze and whimper.

“Shut up!” screeched his whore-mother, completely unaware that her dental deformities made the ‘t’ in ‘shut’ sound like a ‘d’. Her face was rather monstrous in the room’s candlelight.

Marigold tilted her head to the side, watching wide-eyed as the unregistered foal feebly moved as his mother dove at the mattress. She struck one of his legs once, and before any real noise could happen, she jammed one of her forelegs into his mouth enough that one tooth broke from his soft, pained gums.

“U’ly shit’s al’ays s’eaming! Enough! Enough! Hate the little bastard!”

Marigold blinked her golden eyes coolly, expression airy and bored. “How much for the both of you? I think that it is quite obvious he is for sale too.”

The whore wrinkled her muzzle. “Ye seem a bi’ young te be foal fiddler,” was her garbled response, neither refusing Marigold nor sounding shocked. “His price is ‘ou’le.”

Of course, ponies paid for it, at least foal-fiddlers did. Not a single one would be able to get away with so much as looking at a known foal the wrong way. The crown was good about that, and Princess Celestia made sure the ones that had not acted were handled and segregated, while those that dared break their passivity and act on their perversion were met with justice and the ax at Princess Celestia’s hooves.

But an unregistered foal was a fiddler’s prize, and for the right amount of bits, somepony like Marigold’s whore would participate. Or they developed whatever the crown knew as a sickness but Marigold had little care for. If it was just another thing that enabled her to find mares and stallions to suit her own desires, what did it matter? She was no filly of the law herself, the complexities of the system to handle the rare monster that lusted for foals was not something that crossed her thoughts.

“Then double I shall pay,” Marigold said lightly, offering the whore more coin pouches.

They were accepted without any second thought, just like how the whore-mother had stricken her own foal. It was fascinating, really. As she took her second leave to stash the bits away, Marigold got to work on removing her clothes. Next to her, the colt made a sound between dry heaving and a steady whimper so pathetic that Marigold herself was considering striking the little beast, who struggled so pathetically with the tight cuffs of twine cord hog-tying his legs together tight enough that the limbs looked funny. It would not have been the first time she paid for such a service.

Marigold’s boots slipped off once she pulled the knots in the laces free, carefully to keep her muzzle away from anything she stepped in. Slipping out of her ensemble was more elaborate without giving away her magic, and the earth pony was left to the familiar struggle of undoing her elaborate outfit. Off came her skirt, blouse, coat, and stockings and the fashionable Manehattan pieces fell to the edge of the bed. They would no doubt be ruined soon, or she would have to dispose of her glorious garments.

When her whore returned, she stared at the heavy piece that remained around Marigold’s neck, looking so emaciated without anything to hide her ugliness. After all, it was neither kept away like her earrings so neatly kept in the saddlebags that always survived these trips or close to the colors of her other clothes.

“‘ou ‘onna git that off?”

“This?” Marigold asked, feigning innocence and placing a forehoof upon the piece of red and dark hues. “This is the Alicorn Amulet, and it is my family heirloom. I never will part with it.”

Oh, the family part was a lie, but how was a mare of such ill repute to ever know such a thing?

Her nameless one shrugged and trotted over to where Marigold had laid out a few items from the side of her saddlebags that had not contained bits. She regarded the foreboding cloth hoods without the sense of fear anypony with a mind worth a few bits would and stared at the other hoof-made trinkets laid out beside them with a dull expression.

“Those belts?” she asked, jabbing a forehoof at the notches.

“Gags,” whispered Marigold, pleased at how wise she was to always bring extras. “I like a pony quiet and hurting, and with your little brat that is a necessity. Please fetch one of those shards too, I do like the look of those”

Her whore sat down with an unceremonious flopping motion when Marigold motioned for her to, passing her owner of three hours the mirror shard she requested. There were a variety of things she could command this mare to do that were illegal to solicit for bits from anypony: stripteases, illegal unregulated stud ventures, lewd dances, and other varieties of things that all fell under that tree of self-exploitation.

Marigold liked saying that to them at times, to remind them of all the awful things they did, showing them how learned she could appear. It was a good way to watch them so small and helpless before her before she got to have any fun. After all, she was not the one who was small without all her ornaments. At least, she did not feel small.

Marigold had usually only sought to purchase a pony more generally selling themselves as a prostitute than anything else, generally due to mares being weaker than the studs and carrying more jewelry. In the few months, she had been doing this, she had gotten quite good at getting whatever she pleased - and keeping such mindless ponies oblivious to her. Of all those who purchased such ponies, an underage buyer was not an intimidating one.

With a smile on her face, Marigold pulled the notches of the gag on her whore tight enough to elicit a dry, sobbing sound. Had this one lost a tooth from the force too? On went the mare’s hood, with the drawstring pulled harshly enough to get a muffled gulp. She was given a well-deserved kick for her disobedience.

Managing the colt was easier. He was already half-dead, as were most of the other whore-foals Marigold had seen, and his legs were all tied up. Blood dribbled from his mouth, no doubt dizzying him to the point where he could barely thrash. All this did was increase Marigold Blueblood’s desire to fit the gag right in that gap, where the exposed gum would be rubbed at. Over the sniveling brat’s head went his hood, pulled to the most restricting limit possible to account for size.

Now that all eyes were obscured, Marigold let her magic flow. Luminous red washed over her world with no sound her captives could hear, and she selected the mirror shard with an imitation of the pickiness of somepony sampling a variety of gourmet treats.

Nopony knowing the power she held that little piece of glass in gave her shivers of delight, as did quietly withdrawing the pistol to lay it next to her.

Maybe her whore thought she was inexperienced, though anypony would if they had no idea four other skeletons of ponies preceded them. Perhaps in her weak mind, the whore was thinking there was any sense of innocence left in Marigold, not knowing that she had purchased whores for their intended purpose, if one could really say a pony had the same purpose objects could, just to gossip at school that she had done ‘it’. Marigold found the much-whispered of ‘it’ to only be of gain when it was twisted into a clear power dynamic - which fell so easily into her usual wantings that she still indulged her teenage drive in on occasion, letting her mother speculate that she had a special somepony instead of buying un-special noponies.

Without any attempt at restraint, Marigold hooked an edge of the glass in with somewhat overcharged telekinesis. Welling blood dazzled her into letting out a gasp of exclamation at the ghastly sight. Crimson trickled down the back of the shivering whore, who let out a faint pained sound. Oh, now she probably thought Marigold to be the kind of buyer who preferred to enact the usual illegal monstrousness upon her kind without any conventional lustfulness that followed.

A swift kick to the lower back quieted the whore, and Marigold giggled. “Oh, you bleed so nicely! Your blood just looks so clean for your kind of mare? Has anypony ever told you that?”

“Mph hmmph mmph,” was the response Marigold received.

Troubled by the inelegance, she gave her whore a swift kick in the tailbone. “Answer me! Answer me right when I speak to you! I bought you! I own you!”

The absence of the usual snotty edge Marigold had only produced an odd spasm in response - or perhaps it was because Marigold had sunk the glass into the web of scars on the whore’s back, aiming for flesh that might still be soft. That could also explain the reaction

As the fragment sank faster with the increase in blood flow and the spike in Marigold’s anger, the colt gave out a noise of fear. Annoyance twisted its way into Marigold; any brat with the history of usage from birth to now that the whore-son had was usually in a state of surrender and feral resignation.

Furrowing her brow, Marigold let her magic pulse more greatly. Her pistol rose shakily, grasped crookedly and encased in ruby light before slipping it close to where the whore-mother’s blood was pooling. Marigold lacked the ability to levitate the blood itself, but with discretion, she was able to slip the end with the hole close to where just a little bit could be collected, all without pressing touching the surface to the whore’s flesh.

Enough fell in for Marigold to yank it away. Swallowing, she felt an ache center in her forehead and willed and twisted the blood inside. As with anything else she gripped in her amulet’s magic, the feeling of the object was mirrored palely and peculiarly in her mind. In regards to the blood, it was like something was dripping around in thoughts, sloshing around her own thoughts.

And then…

...the breathtaking cold twist of crystallization, like a momentary frost over her own heart.

Gripping the insides of the pistol that drew itself in the phantom image via telekinesis in her mind were now two blood-red crystals.

Marigold lowered the hollow nozzle - she was a lady, and a lady had little need for vulgar vocabulary - right against the hood-bound head of the little colt. He barely squirmed, and as she inhaled deeply, gathering the concentration to conjure the needed spark to propel the crystal with more than just the Alicorn Amulet’s might.

She had to do it this way, all sloppy and terrible, or there was no fun to be had.

Marigold Blueblood fired her weapon for the first time that night.

Her point-blank shot was dreadfully loud, the squeeze of the trigger usually grasped by a talon nowhere close to the thrill she imagined. The magic touch made it more personal, just not personal enough to live up to expectations. The explosive sound tear from it coupled with the hot splatter hitting her was what sent her heart pounding.

Her whore was absolutely howling. “YE DINNIT PAY ENOUGH TO SHOO’ ‘IT!”

“Quiet!” Marigold hissed harshly, snatching up the glass that slipped from her novice magic. Recoil could prove to be a bitch.

Before she could receive any further protest, Marigold kicked the weak mare to the ground. With a hoof triumphantly upon the whore’s back, Marigold stomped the breath out of her before wrenching the glass in again.

Then she lowered the nozzle of her pistol again, fiddling with it briefly before firing it a second time. When silence settled over the apartment, at last, Marigold wasted no time in gathering her things. Her head was dizzy with the fuzzy, hot rush of violence, but she knew that the guard could still come. Never tarry around a scene was more of an instinct than a lesson to be learned, and Marigold had a cloak to summon again, clothes to burn, rooms to plunder, and a refund to give herself.

Worst of all, it was a school night!

First Corpse

Tatters of a mare had been found in a brownstone building close to Balikun-Shetland. The location had been one of the more obvious initial surprises regarding the situation to mortician Ebony Henbane. First was the location: she had simply not expected such a terribly abused corpse to be found in one of Manehattan’s more average neighborhoods. Something as heinous as a murder troubled her. The idea of a mare being found such a short distance from a main street like Derby Avenue begged the question about how she could have gotten in her reputed state…

...at least, it was a question until Ebony finally got her hooves on the mare. There was a bit of insult in having one of the best embalmers at the Morgue of Manehattan and Fort Barnacle be given this particular ‘client’. She had drawn the sheet back with her magic only to find that there was nothing about these remains that could be preserved through such a method if the legal right to such funerary treatment was lawful.

Ebony actually had preferences over the kinds of remains she preferred to deal with, and civilian ones were at the top of the list. She rarely ever had to deal with family - gods know she didn’t become a mortician to deal with ponies - and those that she did were always diverse in makeup and how they had cared for their family.

The only thing diverse about anypony in sex crimes was the way that they died.

A brownstone was a relief compared to the places these kinds of remains were usually found because many residents usually had no idea they lived next to somepony foul until guards showed up for any reason. Lawful residents meant the overall environments remains were found in were generally more hygienic than the few derelict places such sorts usually had taken up. Ebony recalled reading a case file from years ago regarding the butchered limbs of a few illegal models - though, nothing they did could be considered modeling - recovered from a condemned building on the bay, disposed of there by a particularly sadistic Manehattanite killer. The conditions that those bones had been concealed in! Gods, Ebony figured only Tartarus itself could be worse.

She was left to analyze most of a torso and roughly half of the hindquarters of the mare. One hind leg was still intact, and that still looked like somepony had tried to dull a whole collection of knives going to town with cutting up the thing. Why it was not so far from the truth. The kinds of marks that Ebony had been able to accurately identify as knife’s cuts upon the mare had been from kitchen knives instead of the meat-cutting kind in New Shirdal’s carnivore shops. Their handling suggested a pony too, most likely a particularly spastic unicorn by the frenzy put into the strikes.

The prostitute had been given those leg gashes while she was still alive. The mid-section of her body was what was desecrated postmortem. Most of the mare’s coat cheaply dyed-over so many times was lost to the killer who took such delight in paring off so much the mare’s epidermis like they had wanted the first thing Ebony to see was what the results would look like when the mortician finally got to see them - two days after the body had already been exposed enough to attract attention from assorted insects.

Ebony’s mask only helped so much. Gods-dammit, if she did not get a request for a raise granted after this, there would have to be somepony else to pick through the dead, half-decayed lewd criminals of the city. Let the guards have all the half-decayed living ones. Gods knew this one was at one point. The severely malnourished state of the pony had made the bone breaks her buyers give her heal improperly at their best. No psychologist was needed to say this one was probably suffering from masochistic disorders in life if she was willing to stand what definitely weren’t foalhood injuries and let her leg be shredded up.

Despite all the older - at least, speaking to how they predated the murder of this mare - crop marks (gods, why was she always stuck with the most depraved freaks) across her back and hindquarters, Ebony Henbane was able to conclude she had no cutie mark. Most participants in higher crimes never had any. Why that was, she had no exact explanation for. Ebony wasn’t a cutie mark expert, but she had known a stallion who had nothing to him but being an utter pervert in high school - and at the twenty-year reunion she attended, he was still a pervert with his blank flank as the exclamation point to what a washed-out, literal basement-dwelling disappointment he was.

Oh, that stallion had never killed anypony. He had had his name run upon more than a racetrack with how he was nothing more than a lecherous bum banned from a few general stores for harassment, but nopony ever implicated him for any sexual or violent crimes. He was self-destructive in a withering kind of way, which was better than if anypony had the misfortune to try and get together with him at any point and been victimized as a result.

It was almost karmic, to borrow an elephant concept, that perversions and violence got nopony anywhere in every possible sense. Cutie marks on the scum of Equestria, or any pony nation, were an exception rather than the rule. Every class on the arcane sciences from adolescence to the highest university classes always had some passing reference to the phenomenon: no cutie marks existed for violence, nor any kind of sexual reason, from either healthy sexuality or something maladaptive.

Even with the too-literal philosophy of talents pushed to the side - though, really how could things like brutality really be considered a talent - the mystery of cutie marks still made something clear. You had to make or have something going in your life to get to show your best you on your flank. The only other exception Ebony recalled hearing anything about was from one of the psychology of this with magical influences of that course from Tall Tale’s Starswirl College of the Mind and Body about how ponies suffering from severe intellectual and cognition impairment their whole lives often gained only the cutie marks of their simple joys - or nothing at all and lived modest lives as somepony’s neighbor, waitress, grocery-bagger, or unskilled this-or-that.

Or something like that.

Ebony had not attended a cutie mark class for a long time. She just cut open the ponies who could no longer be called late bloomers, but instead selfless in the most literal sense and tried not to gag at their lingering stench. She was stuck in a hall of freezers with glorified trash stretched in front of her, a headache, and the part of her that knew better to just head home to Bretonlyn Heights, where her wife would be waiting for her.

Instead, she was completing a file on a mare whose remains would never be claimed by anypony who knew her and could give her an identity. Nopony even had an idea to what her product name - really, Ebony had no better name for such a ludicrous label - for herself was.

What was left of her teeth were a teaser of information: the mare was quite the old gray whore of twenty-two years old, showed signs of the distinct decay of a heavy bulimic, and frequently got herself slapped hard enough to have vertical denture fractures. What made No Name of Bali-Shet so difficult and traditional when it comes to ponies like her was that she still did not have enough teeth - at least not healthy ones - to make any positive identification.

Most likely, when she was cremated and stored away, this mare would be lucky to gather a posthumous nickname to be remembered by instead of her assigned number. The few cold cases Ebony Henbane was aware of usually had the plain pattern of Miss or Mister of Here or There. Even when a confession was gained or the killers were caught, the true identity of these ponies was still lost; their murderers rarely knew them by anything but product names, appearances, locations, methods of doing the deed, or the identity they projected on the ponies they preyed upon.

Solved cases happened more often than not; the guard knew what they were doing, unlike these ponies. Ebony could say this because she found far too many toothbrushes and items of a similar shape and length in the mare’s stomach. A lesser mortician would think the pegasus had pica.

The wings of this pegasus were ornamental, and that was putting it kindly. This mare was an idiot in life or paid no attention to whatever hygiene and pegasus life education she had. While her whole physiology suffered from the mangled wings of Miss Bali-Shet, the disgusting state of the feathered limbs was the crown to how damaged they were.

Wings were never meant to be restrained. Even the specially made prison bindings that incarcerated pegasi had to wear could do damage if never changed if alternated and managed properly, despite a pegasus with a sentence of any length having to wear those bindings for any time to months to the rest of their life.

Tying up wings, pulling wings, binding wings, and any kind of treatment that didn’t leave them free was self-destructive to the highest degree. Pulling and plucking feathers was also terrible torture to inflict on any winged creature, and yet this mare had so much of just that disgusting treatment inflicted on her long before she died. Miss Bali-Shet should have just gone to a griffon shop and asked them to put her wings through a meat grinder while they were attached to her if she wanted to be tortured so badly - it would have been less than what she got, and the blood loss would have been enough to get rid of one more idiot in the world.

Bald patches occurred where her feathers weren’t broken. She clearly never preened them in any way or abandoned any semblance of hygiene for a couple of years, minimum. Every feather was scraggly and decayed, bent and greasy. The joints were effectively crippled from whatever terrible things she had been allowing wrapped around where they were conjoined with the rest of her body. The evidence of bad bone breakages on the ugly appendages did suggest she had been in contact with somepony who got a thrill over slamming them in doors repeatedly during her adolescence - the number of pegasus specialists Ebony had to contact to positively identify those breakage patterns nearly drove her up a wall.

One wing was severely disfigured, but in life had some range of motion - an abnormal and painful one, certainly, but there likely had been reflex too it. The other was cramped up, the skin evidently black and limp some time before death, and entirely featherless. Old, untended, and thick burn scars from debilitating wounds gained at some point in her adulthood, though Ebony Henbane cursed herself for being unable to tell just when those wounds had been gained. The pegasus was too badly decayed around the torso from the treatment to her front midsection, and the information from other examiners regarding possible facial restorations and her original colors for sketches hadn’t come back. There most likely would have to be multiple sets to show some of her injuries might have come from early life.

Her skull had to be kept elsewhere. Those teeth were the closest to any real identification and evidence other than a silver hoop earring found in one of the mare’s ears. Losing such precious artifacts to Miss Bali-Shet’s inevitable cremation would be terrible, as would the other customary last pieces: mane samples, tubes of blood, hoof clippings, and in this mare’s case, feathers.

For a prostitute, this mare had died at an older age. Her teeth also weren’t terrible enough to suggest she had been able to fall beneath social services’ notice and live like that. If her family was still out there, anywhere in Equestria, or she had a friend who might recognize her as somepony from forever ago before any rot set in.

Unfortunately for this mare, there was far too much evidence on her muzzle of what Ebony couldn’t imagine had been anything close to a consensual encounter, given the circumstances and how quickly this mare had likely been attacked once bought…

A mare had done this. That much was clear by what had been left. Ebony was not surprised, after all, what should make her feel so? Mares and stallions were equally capable of heinous deeds, and the usage of weapons and various objects to batter the slain victim before Ebony was more consistent with a female offender’s modus operandus in terms of violence. Had an average stallion attacked this mare, Ebony was a veteran of this morbid career long enough to know she would be expecting more bruising - perhaps evidence of strangulation by magical or non-magical means too.

Ebony Henbane’s notes in Miss Bali-Shet were required of everypony in the morgue. Upon a successful examination, official causes of death and facts of the corpse in life were to be scribbled down. But Equestrian law also dictated another section be added for more than professional observations and positive conclusions: in the case of a murder or other non-natural death, the investigating guards and morticians were given the heavy task of chronicling the might-have-been and speculations.

So far, Ebony had filled out close to a half-dozen papers of cramped hornwriting on the matter. The history of breakages indicated the mare was either pulled into the crime since she was a teenager, which would suggest she was either a runaway or her guardians sold her out to the offending stock who had no conscious about purchasing another pony. Had she been a runaway who managed to keep herself from falling into the usual period where the Royal Guard swiftly shut down anypony engaged in self-exploitation (anywhere from three months to two years is the short time these ponies had for their crime spree) but the history of abuse would have remained unchanged in the theory. The abuse she suffered in the long term would only fall squarely upon the withers of her buyers.

Affording a brownstone would mean she was able to hide much of her physical impairment and was likely very popular - an unfortunate case, as it meant there were now at least dozens of ponies walking free for their half of the crime. If her landlord was not close to the center of the investigation now, they ought to be. Even offering a fake name on papers could be a clue, if she had actually secured her residence upfront instead of trying to seek - or purchase - other loopholes.

The neighborhood she was in did not match one high in sexual offenses; no other forms of self-exploitation had ever been busted there and no sexually motivated murders had occurred within the neighborhood’s borders. Bali-Shet was also a pure neighborhood, making it illegal for any registered offenders like a non-acting pouláriphilic brute or an ex-participant in the crimes Miss Bali-Shet had lost her life doing.

A prostitute who was bad at being apprehended or suspected was usually one who was unlikely to have their case solved. From the start of their illegal endeavors, they had to be a pony without prior connections but willing to let themselves be known only in Equestria’s slim excuse for underworld. Other criminals despised them for their unsanitary states, cruelty, foolishness, lack of skill, and horrible ability to succeed at evading law enforcement indefinitely, so they lacked the interconnected network a hitpony and a mercenary might have that could produce information ponies and evidence. They were one of the few kinds of criminal that was often a victim of anything too, due to their buyers. With no lives, little paper trails, health records, and status as close to a ghost as a living pony could have in society, the danger and disease they were to society was starkly apparent.

If this mare had vanished from a decent home when she was, as an example, twelve then she was but a young, promising shoot of the weed she ended up dying as. That would be what she would have to be compared to, what everypony would have to dig through memory for: a half-forgotten filly that no doubt aimed to be a flower of a mare and make her own hoofprint on the world, only to wind up destroyed by her own hooves and others.

Murdering a pony like this to take out somepony that nopony remembered. Physically, a twelve-year-old who managed to be so lost from years of memories would have so little resemblance to the corpse she was now. To solve the murder of a prostitute was ultimately to try and figure out the demise of a child nopony knew had died - or that they had suddenly reemerged into a life they had disappeared from.

And Ebony Henbane had dealt with too many of these fools and children. Gods, too many of the mares would eventually have their own unregistered children, their short lives poisoned and dark unless they were lucky enough to be taken in by foal welfare services and adopted into a loving home while their mothers in name only were erased with years-to-life in a cell, never to see them again.

The last thing Ebony Henbane had to add to her notes was the only real exceptional peculiarity upon the corpse. The cause of death was from numerous, tiny crimson deep ruby crystals in possession of an oddly damp quality that never went away, regardless of how they were prepared and quarantine. These crystals had pierced the soft flesh of the mare in so many crude tears and cruel puncture. In hindsight and on notes, Ebony had been careful to add how the peeled skin made the attack on the mare like the steps to prepare meat.

Glistening, mysterious crystals were never common, no matter the odd magics and mayhem that could go into a murder - whether it be in Manehattan or elsewhere in Equestria. Crystals so endlessly ruby-bright that turned out to be made of the victim’s own blood and unknown magic were one of kind. The Equestrian Arcane Registry Base would need every sample of the substance possible to be able to identify the aura behind the caster of the crime. Every unicorn in Equestria was in that base, with the arcane processes, aural maps, and young magitech to link various unicorns to places by magical signature too.

Other creatures with magical auras could find their way into the E.A.R.B. too, but aside from running through them, there was no other evidence that could positively be linked with a non-equine. Unicorns were at the top of the list for this kind of magical offenses, and Ebony Henbane pitied whoever was tasked with sifting through the thousands of suspects that could exist in Manehattan alone.

Ebony looked over the notes she levitated at the mare missing more than just chunks of her putrid, crystal-embedded flesh and tried to keep her withers from shaking with distant sobs aching to be. The hardass mare of death in Manehattan-Barnacle was weary beyond belief. The city Ebony held as so beloved in her heart struggled more than most places in Equestria, but it was no hotbed of crime! Yes, every pony like Miss Bali-Shet, her equally disgusting buyers, and her unknown killer tainting her urban jewel broke her heart - and she was not alone in this - but the Big Apple was no bad one, and gods knew it was her home and the home of millions of other ponies! The mare who never cried over any dead brought before her was watching her city whisper of terrible things, not of one foul murder against the urban island sprawl that was dear Manehattan, but that murder so foul must have more to come.

And the worst part was that she knew this wouldn’t be the last time she saw such crystals. By the gods, she knew it couldn’t be.