Torn Pages & Blood-Soaked Margins

by Ice Star

Rating: mature
Tags: Horror, Other, Non-consensual, Sex, Suicide / Self Harm, Profanity, Violence, Dark, Death, Anthology, Gore, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 21312

Grimdark!Iceverse minifics. Little bits of world building, style experiments, character pieces, and such dumped in this anthology. Also, stuff I never finished and poems.

This is the NSFW gore and grimdark version of the 'prequel'. Everything in here is something that contains some level of gore, violence, and similar content to what is made clear by the tags. Though NSFW there's nothing lewd. Don't poke into this one unless you want monsters, mayhem, morbid, and all things far too disturbing for me to even try and tack the 'Teen' rating onto things. Anything I normally put trigger warnings on will be listed in the individual chapter.

Little bits of world building, style experiments, character pieces, and all sorts of under 1,000 words such dumped in this anthology. I might turn them into larger stories at some point, but not really. No spoilers unless noted otherwise. May also include deleted scenes and discarded first draft snippets as well as one shots that can't stand on their own (but lack proper sequels/prequels) and cancelled stories (if I have any, they'll be moved here)*.

Character tags represent the most recurring characters, however in this case the 'Other' tag merely reflects other canon characters. Each bit takes place in the Iceverse, so your mileage may vary.

Oh, and a warning that this may also contain any of the following (which will of course be noted in the author filibuster box):

Poetry

Extensive rambling

Lore!

Really short stories

Dialogue-only drabble

Experimental poetry:trollestia:

Potentially unexplained happenings

Shipping

Seriously, lots of rambling from yours truly

Prompts

Since this is an AU anthology expect plenty of headcanon and utter (possibly) nonsense on my part

Anything else my mind may come up with (the tags will/might start to reflect this as time goes on) There's an anthology tag for that now, because knighty finally did a good thing! Wow!

At this point let's leave it at "(Your Ad Here) have mercy on your soul."

Although this is marked as complete, it technically isn't. I just keep it like that for organization's sake. Updates whenever I have writing scraps. If you're looking for missing Luna/Sombra chapters, please check out this story here.

*As will notes about the plot and what would have happened if I continued. This only applies to published stories that ended up cancelled, not discarded drafts. Whether or not the contents of the story is still canon will be noted in the A/N as well as the lack of a [Scrapped] tag.

Contribute to the TVTropes page!

Published 2019-02-25 03:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2023-02-19 07:07:53 UTC

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

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. :raritywink:

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.

Bastard Juice [Original Version] [Archive] [Bonus Content] [Gore/death/violence]

Author's Note

This is the old version of the M-rated story Bastard Juice before the 2023 version was brought into being. Due to this being the old version, it means that this was the version that was entered in the contest it was a part of.

[Adult story embed hidden]

Bastard Juice [Original Version] [Archive] [Bonus Content] [Gore/death/violence]

Princess Celestia’s mane tended to flow more sluggishly in the mornings, which made maneuvering around it a fumbling act for her mind still fuzzy from sleep. Until she could have her first coffee of the morning, things would be slow and easy in Equestria — and for the most part, that was how the princess liked things. One of the exceptions, however, was her tail. That was more of a hassle than any mane problems, and while she would never admit it to anypony, there were times when she had tripped over it when she had yet to pull herself from sleep’s lingering fog.

Her eyes were tired and showed a little less of the ageless goddess she was before her immersive morning grooming routine. Idle thoughts danced in her mind while she tilted her watering can carefully over her window box, such as the tea she might have later with lunch, or if today called for soft orange eye shadow or cheery yellow. All the while, she contentedly watered her blooming box of bright pansies. Her crown was not even atop her head yet, and why would it be? She could worry about the face of her nation once she tended to the needs of others — even if they were but a box of flowers.

The dawn Celestia had brought to Equestria mere minutes before was a weak one, and Luna’s night had still not faded from the sky. It was always Luna who made an art of the heavens and Celestia who kept them functioning instead of flourishing. Even her daytime skies were meant for what they could to do enrich Equestria, and she brought the morning and sunset in a blink and swish of magic.

Today was different, but not abnormally so. Weather ponies had announced the forecast’s schedule in advance, as they always did, and that today would be overcast with rain later. But a mare could not help wanting to give her flowers a little snack.

It was in this slow, chilly dawn that Celestia hummed idly and considered what the grind of the day would be. Her thoughts emerged as slowly as the fog around Canterhorn Mountain parted to reveal the lower spires and gleaming walls of her city.

Only then did the loud sound of a splash and a pop boom from behind her. Celestia gasped, eyes wide, and her magic fumbled, spilling the remaining contents of her watering can as she whirled around.

Her eyes met her guest’s immediately, and some of her worries slipped away as quickly as they had come. The personal chambers of her and Luna were warded against teleportation and their few keys guarded closely; the exception to these powerful barriers and strict tabs kept on the keys being any lovers or family — and in Celestia’s case, her Faithful Students.

“Dissy!” she chided, “You gave me such a fright!”

The draconequus gave an oddly nervous smile, wringing his paw and claw in a fidget before proceeding to explode with magic, contorting his whole body in the blink of an eye to rid it of water. His rain poncho poofed away, as did the squirming fish and other odds and ends he brought with him from his evident string of teleportation. Only the smell of sea salt remained prominent.

“Celly, I—”

He was cut off by a gasp from Celestia as she smiled at the other guest. Emerging from behind Discord was a green, slimy entity bearing a dopey smile aimed at Celestia.

“Well, hello there!” Celestia cooed, prancing momentarily. “Oh, Dissy! I’m so glad you brought little Smoozie-Woozie! Tell me, has he been causing any problems lately? Nabbing any trinkets? From the castle? From Twilight’s castle? Oh dear, did he take something from anypony else’s castle? Is that what this is all about?”

“Erm,” Discord twiddled his thumbs, “That isn’t too far off…”

She reached out to pat the green slime fondly, watching it wiggle gleefully. How it was able to be male, she had no idea, but Discord called the Smooze such. “Goodness me, is something else wrong?” She tapped around the Smooze lightly, as if to scratch non-existent ears. “Is he overdue on a playdate with Philomena, because I certainly think that she would just love to—”

“No, no,” Discord said quickly, his odd smile growing bigger and more hesitant. “It’s something else…”

All of the princess’s cheer fell away, leaving her not with her usual composure but a faint nervous air. Her mane flicked with quick, idle motions, having picked up speed with her budding worry. She blocked out the noise of fish flopping around on her gorgeous, rich carpet. Even the colors in her mane seemed a touch paler in the uneven light of her room.

“Dissy?” Celestia asked, cupping his muzzle with her hooves. “What’s wrong?”

Discord, ever in motion, squirmed and fidgeted under the cool, soft touch of Celestia. “Well,” he drawled, “the Smooze is having problems.”

Celestia regarded the draconequus quietly, most of her tiredness gone from her eyes, though they had yet to shine alertly. She stepped back from her lover to turn her calm gaze to the Smooze, who was making squelching noises in the puffy little life vest Discord had put him in. For all intents and purposes, the Smooze was Discord’s pet, and a half-aware one at that. He paid her no mind, and followed her as she quietly withdrew a few bits from inside the drawers of a bedside table.

The Smooze accepted the treats eagerly, growing little from the meager offering and grinning its toothless, gumless, near-mouthless fool’s smile. Smiling back, Celestia was able to hide the discomfort from having the mucus-like residue left on her hoof, wiping it away with a conjured hoofkerchief. “I’m far from an expert on creatures of any kind, but little Smoozie-Woozie looks fine to me.”

She offered Discord a reassuring smile, pretending not to notice the Smooze ambling innocently about in the background — sliding over to her expansive vanity and ingesting a few precious, expensive crystalline perfume bottles.

When Discord did not stop twiddling his thumbs, and looked at the Smooze with a nervous stare past the bizarre creature, Celestia’s worry crept back. There was nothing to suggest anything was remotely wrong, and the only thing fishy was the smell now permeating her bedroom… but Discord worried over very little, and what his carefree attitude remained unbothered by, he tried to fix — and sometimes ‘fix’ — with chaos magic.

It drew her to him, that in all his unpredictability he became predictable. And Celestia’s expression softened with worry knowing that anything that still bothered Discord so much after her attempt to weigh in would inevitably bother her as well.

“If this is a matter of creature conundrums, you have the wrong mare. While I am no busier today than usual, and you know I would love to help, I think that Fluttershy would be much better suited to helping the Smooze. She probably knows all the best vets in Ponyville; I’m sure one of them would know whatever ails little Smoozie.”

Celestia’s horn flashed with magic, and she lifted a large basket to scoop the Smooze into, pulling the creature over to where they were. “I can get him some blankets and something else to eat, but if he’s sick, it’s only responsible to take him to somepony who knows how to help. Why, I let Philomena self-immolate, so I’m not the best consultant on pet health.”

“...Isn’t your birdie supposed to burst into flames?”

Tutting, Princess Celestia gave the confined Smooze another head pat. “Oh, of course, she is. But I still let her make such a show of it. Now, you’ll keep me updated on his condition, right? Oh, and do consider bringing Twilight into this. If Fluttershy doesn’t know how to fix the Smooze, I’m sure there’s something in Twilight’s castle library about magical illnesses.”

“The Smooze isn’t sick,” Discord said, ignoring the green slime creature’s efforts to get Discord’s attention by brushing against him. “And he doesn’t need a veteran.”

“Veterinarian,” Celestia corrected automatically. “And if he isn’t sick, then what is wrong? Are you sure you don’t need a specialist too? If so, then maybe Fluttershy isn’t the pony to contact… Oh, dear…”

“Yes, yes!” Discord exclaimed, gaze darting about fretfully as he threw his forelimbs into the air and began pacing her bedroom in haphazard, nonsensical lap patterns. “I need your help, Celly! If I needed Fluttershy or Little Miss Book Smarts, I would have brought them here by now! Or, even better, I would have snapped—” here, Discord snapped for emphasis, “—the problem away and dipped into my own hocus pocus instead of purple pony princess peskiness!”

“Dissy,” began Celestia quietly, tugging at the Smooze’s basket with a forehoof in order to draw it closer. “Just what is the matter? I’m sorry if my suggestions are inadequate, but I have no idea what’s wrong to have you so worked up.”

Discord’s pupils shrink, dancing briefly with unsettling with light. “Ponies are going to be in trouble! You’re the best at protecting ponies, not Fluttershy or Princess Friendship.”

Princess Celestia’s ears turned forward, her demeanor shifting to a hushed phantom of regal worry. The slime of the rambunctious, escaped Smooze crawling around her legs suddenly felt heavier and quite chilly.

She swallowed, her throat dry and attention hooked.

...the best at protecting ponies…

“What exactly do ponies need protection from?” she murmured, pulling the basket in her magic once more to corral the wandering Smooze with uncharacteristic brusqueness.

Discord had his claw raised close to his mouth and was biting absently at one, watching Celestia handle the Smooze with the neutral air of a distracted governess. “Celly, don’t treat that Smooze so meanly.”

‘Meanly’ was certainly not how Celestia was currently handling the green slime ball currently lounging in her oversized basket with all the awareness of a heat-dazed dog. However, that was not what really caught her attention.

“Discord, what do you mean, this Smooze?”

…

“I mean there’s more than him,” Discord replied, jabbing his paw towards the basket.

Celestia took a quiet, sharp exhale and sat down upon her vanity’s cozy nearby cushion. Her horn dimmed, and when the golden light vanished, the Smooze splashed and writhed more contentedly in its temporary home.

“And just where is this second Smooze?” she asked him, a headache of worry pulsing softly under her horn.

“On one of Neighpon’s baby islands,” Discord said, pinching the air with his paw to demonstrate.

Celestia bit at her lip. Neighpon was not only on the other side of the world and across the Barren Sea, but it was also made up of thousands of islands covering thousands of miles. The preparations needed for such lengthy travel would only be one issue to consider.

“What was it that brought you to Neighpon, of all places?” Celestia asked. Cross-continental teleportation left any creature — mortal or otherwise — drained, and was always safest done with stops. For Discord to have been there and back again so quickly, the urgency was all too apparent — as was the likelihood of Discord’s magic likely being stretched, like sore muscles after athletic endeavors...

...which would mean any magical responsibilities would be primarily her burden, were she to take up this errand.

“I try to visit all my creations,” Discord insisted, conjuring what looked like a photo album. He patted it once before Celestia could get a clear look at it.

“I see,” Celestia said, flicking an ear to the side, though the experience was not something she understood. Perhaps to Discord, checking in on his creations was like writing to a dear friend — something she could grasp. “Now, how can this Smooze be a danger to ponies when that Smooze—” she nodded over to the resting blob, “—is an inoffensive creature. Why, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Is this a case of theft against the islanders’ wealth? Has the Smooze on that island grown too much?”

“Erm,” Discord scratched the back of his head. “Yes, this one grew. She’s quite the big girl—”

“She?” asked Celestia, blinking, and tapping under her muzzle just so. “There is a lady Smooze?”

“Oh, of course!”

“...How can you tell?”

Discord gave a shrug that made the rest of his noodle body wave with the motion. “Dunno. Anyway, she’s not anypony’s little girl anymore. Oh, and she’s very cranky. He’s a small, docile bit of Smooze. She… isn’t.” Discord waved his paw in an effort to clarify. “Think of her like this little fellow here during the Pretty Prancing Gala… just bigger.”

Celestia did not want to think about that, and shifted the Smooze’s basket over to her to ease her worried mind. “Why is it you have just learned of this creature’s actions, Dissy?”

Discord winced, his breath coming in an awkward hiss. “I haven’t seen her since I was stoned.”

Celestia’s expression was devoid of any notable reaction. “Petrified,” she insisted. “That means something much different now.”

“Oh, I know!” Discord burst into one of his familiar grins, the kind that usually had her laughing in lighter times. “Fluttershy’s friend told me all about it!”

“Mhm,” was the only response Celestia had about that. She rubbed the top of the Smooze. “We had better not waste any more time, Dissy. You need to save your magic if we’re to travel somewhere so distant — and a far-flung place I’ve never been to, at that!”

He rose before her, animating the door so it scuttled open on newfound legs in order for Celestia to carry the basket with the Smooze outside. It was secured into place with a brief snap of colorful chaos magic, and Discord appeared next to Celestia, her regalia adorning him clumsily and a hiker’s overstuffed bag slung over his back.

When he grinned goofily at her, she managed to return a ghost of his smile and nuzzled him.

…

They divided their preparations and managed to complete most of them with ease. Letters to Luna had been written, letting the younger Alicorn know that she was to rule with Celestia’s absence - as obvious as it was, Celestia knew not writing would be cruel, and Luna needed to know where she was in case Discord and Celestia found themselves in any dire situations. She had given Raven instructions to relay to the rest of the castle staff. This way, Luna would not be overburdened by simply making their subjects aware of her errand.

Meanwhile, Discord delighted in busying himself with various tasks. He emptied an entire weapon rack into his bag, cramming at least five spears into the pack carelessly. Following those were a variety of suspicious-looking potions, matching couples’ canteens, a Smooze-sized sunhat, and a rubber duck.

Frankly, the sun hat was the most confusing part. Neighpon’s vast archipelago was quite rainy this time of year.

The Smooze squirmed inside Princess Celestia’s saddlebags as she went about her own work. She paid no mind to the goo creature so carefully shrunk at Discord’s command and turned her attention to the walls and center of the well-illuminated tower room.

Maps of the known world covered the walls and rough-hewn crystalline slab in stark contrast to the usual strong elegance of Canterlot Castle’s architecture. Upon the well-preserved parchment spreads were diagrams of entire regions and swathes of territory, their coordinates labeled carefully to ease teleportation’s few difficult elements. A plethora of gems was shining in numerous piles at the tower-room’s borders, a supernatural glitter coming from within and around each.

The princess calmly approached the wall bearing the most depictions of the Neighponese seas. Her wings shifted faintly, folding over her saddlebags to better hide the jewels decorating it from the Smooze. Various islands dotted the heavy parchment in ink long since dried, and few of the islands other than the nation’s major ones were known to her. Though, tales had reached the princess’ court regarding islands with themes pulled out of storybooks: cats and rabbits outnumbering the sapient residents in charming aquacultural villages and other seaside destinations.

“Discord!” she sing-songed, waving a forehoof in a beckoning motion. “Which of these islands is your other Smooze close to?”

Her horn lit, and she began to stuff a line of ensorcelled gems into her Smooze-less saddlebag. They glowed brighter when reunited with her magic once more, and she was careful to discard any that were chipped or flawed from the magical overcharge rawer forms of Alicorn magic could bring to such ordinary gemstones. Chariots and boats saw more use than her personal teleportation chapel, but that was no excuse for her not to let her hoards go uninspected.

Discord slid over to her, spinning like the marble floor was made of butter. “Hrm-hrm.”

Celestia gave the Smooze a scolding look, shoving its slimy body away from where it tried to snag some of her gems that were making her saddlebag bulge considerably. Her hoof was all that told the creature what it was doing was unwanted, since never once had the Smooze responded to anything other than voice or touch — which was an abnormal behavior even for a non-sapient animal.

“That one!” Discord exclaimed, pointing at a speck of land painstakingly labeled in small hornwriting as Uninhabited Islet #127.

“You’re certain it’s that one?” asked Celestia, giving Discord a gentle, but serious look. “We could be island-hopping for heavens know how long if this isn’t the right island.”

“Definitely that one!” Discord tapped the map, ignoring Celestia when she shoved the Smooze back into its saddlebag. “There was an island shaped like a potato chip nearby, and if you look very carefully this one is clearly shaped like the potato chip I remember.”

Princess Celestia looked doubtful at the inky silhouette. “Don’t most islands look like potato chips?”

“Of course not! And besides,” Discord said, scoffing, “this one is clearly a ruffled chip.”

“And that makes all the difference?”

“Absolutely!” Discord crossed his forelimbs. “Imagine if you were here with somepony else who thought any old potato chip shape would do. You would be lost in no time!”

Celestia clicked her tongue, smiling and shaking her head. “Oh goodness, Dissy. What would I do without you?”

“I just told you: be lost in no time!”

“Well,” Celestia gave the maps one last look, “if that is the closest island, then I suppose we must make haste.”

Discord nodded, and held his paw out, charging it with the colorful and frantic aura of chaos magic. Celestia’s magic shimmered to life once more, the gold intensifying with every second. The princess wrinkled her muzzle from the effort and squeezed her eyes shut from the bright outpouring of golden aura coming from her saddlebag. The Alicorn magic tethered to the gems jumped at her conduit, eager to be used and drained into something.

Before the chance to complete anything came, Celestia laid another layer of preservation enchantments upon the room’s contents with a flicker. The heat of the tower room grew more intense with the duration of Celestia’s magic.

Discord tapped his paw to Celestia’s horn, complete with a raspberry sound effect before sparks and booms sounded behind them and the two lovers faded in a flash.

The first sound Celestia heard was terrible crashing in the distance. It was too deliberate to sound like thunder and did not sound as if it came from the sky. The ring that ached in her ears during the aftermath did not fade when she opened her eyes.

Her crown — which Discord had slipped back into its proper place — did not totally secure her mane from whipping in the harsh torrent of wind. Ocean waves cascaded upon the sand underhoof shakily from all the clamoring on the other end of the island. Discord’s sense of direction and the second charge of Princess Celestia’s three-charge worthy cache of residual magic had brought them to where they needed to be from across a narrow stretch of sea.

She looked around, inhaling unsteadily, and tried to stand her ground. Sand slipped into one of her shoes. Anarchy dominated the poor, scrappy cay where Celestia and Discord stood. Trees were weakened and trembled in the wind. Whatever was causing the disaster on the island rattled the tall palms like twigs until any collapsed, weak, and disregarded like toothpicks under the might of a boulder.

Celestia was tense with the anticipation of a dragon’s roar or other monstrous calls that never came, leaving her and Discord to watch as trees fell, collapsing towards the alien boom coming from the island. Tense seconds after each fall passed in something closer to silence, the sound that followed somewhere between the furious roiling of a sea monster and a lumber mill’s snarl.

The first few steps forward were halted, and the goddess balked when she felt the Smooze slip its green form partly around her leg. It quivered with all the fear she could barely show, innocent to the combat she simply dreaded. Celestia was no goddess with a domain in fighting, and her ability in combat was minimal, at least for an Alicorn. Whatever beast this other Smooze would prove to be was one she could only be glad wasn’t bigger, worse, and anything she knew was not easily combated. Smooze was not as susceptible to magic in the same way other creatures were — everypony had learned that at the gala — but it was hard to look at the little green blob clinging to her and think any counterpart it had could be clever in the way other creatures were.

“Celly,” Discord said, shaking her by the wither and jolting her from the Smooze’s grip. “Look at those.”

And she followed to where his claw was pointing, her mane brushing under his chin. All the island’s plants and stones were filled with holes and marks suggestive of one thing.

“This Smooze has been… eating the island?” Celestia asked, muzzle wrinkling. “Is that what those marks are? Dissy, I thought you said that this creature has been here for centuries!”

“Oh, it has. I’m afraid it’s just been stress-eating much more rapidly recently.”

Celestia offered a small frown in response, suddenly very conscious of her figure at the mention of stress-eating. “As much as I’m sure the ocean will be problematic for this Smooze, I can’t imagine it being more than a delay…”

She trailed off, only seeing Discord offer a quick, nervous nod of agreement from the corner of her eye.

“How does your magic do with this one?”

Discord gave what Celestia initially mistook as a shrug before scooping up the frightened Smooze between them and giving it half-hearted pats that bordered on simply poking it. “About as good as this one. Extremely. Magically. Retardant,” he punctuated each word with another poke to the quavering Smooze.

“And this one is entirely malicious?” Celestia asked, keeping her ears perked and composed visage up even when the latest boom made the island rumble. A mare could not rush into battle entirely unprepared, no matter how poor she might be at it.

“Very, very malicious, Celly.” Discord leaned toward her, poised for a stage whisper. “It has sharp teeth too.”

Celestia paused, opening her mouth and shutting it again when she couldn’t figure out how to adequately ask a slime beast could have teeth. “I-I see… and it cannot be reasoned with? Or pacified in any way?”

Discord let a quick shrug wave and bounce from shoulder to shoulder. His expression dipped into something momentarily downcast and uncertain. “I’m not sure. She made about as much sense as I do.”

The princess honed in on two things: this Smooze was apparently a ‘she’ and that Discord looked like he would have rather said ‘no’. Only Discord whipping out a colorful chart fully scribbled in crayon pulled her from further considering the implications.

“Oh, and when I tried talking to her she threw three trees at me. That makes a ‘Very Angry’ creature rank on the Tree Throwing to Emotions Conversion Scale.” Discord tapped his chin, his chart vanishing as quickly as it came. “Could you imagine if poor Fluttershy saw something like that?”

Celestia nodded, as was proper, but hid the way her thoughts strayed with the politeness of the motion. Lady Smooze was big enough to hurl multiple trees and work at consuming an island. A creature at least the size of a cottage came to mind, the approximate size feeling quite right for something that could potentially be hurling multiple trees at once. All this was quite different from the Smooze that had returned to wiggling with fear in Discord’s grip. Why, even the act of referring to the Smoozes with such an air that the large ‘S’ brought was beginning to feel puzzling now that it was no longer a name and creepy, for neither made sense to have that grand, commanding letter as a species as Alicorns did. At least the names of Mister Smooze and Lady Smooze could ease that.

“I still need to get a good look at this Lady Smooze we are dealing with,” Princess Celestia said, casting Discord a worrying look and letting her tail trace patterns in the sand with quiet sobriety. “If I attempt to stun the creature from a distance, we shall only be heaped with errors neither of us can afford.” Celestia winced with distant recollection, not at the thought she almost called the unknown smooze ‘she’, which was all too personal a designation. “Anything I am to cast against this offending being will need to be done at close range.”

“Oh,” came a familiar teasing edge, “I’m very familiar with your attempts at long-range combat.”

Discord pretended he was trying to hide his snickering with a claw while Celestia clicked her tongue. With a glow of magic and a snap, her saddlebags came off and she plopped them into Discord’s grip already burdened. The barest hint of mischief danced behind her seriousness.

“Take these,” she insisted. “If I’m going to be doing much of the work in driving out our new friend, you will need to mind our way home and make a lure to focus its direction. We’re in this together,” Celestia said, giving him a quick nuzzle, “and I’ll need you to be ready for battle.”

Discord affirmed her words with a play salute. With that, Celestia spread her wings and took off.

…

The heart of the island was a nest of terror. There was no hint of elegance or identity to the Lady Smooze, just the scars it inflicted upon the land. Where it reached out and uprooted features and foliage could be plainly seen, even where Celestia soared high above. With yawning bites by the dozen, the horrifying beast grew in size and hunger. Already, it was plain to her why this creature was a threat: enough of it was already spilling across the other end of the cay and bobbing into the sea with a bouncy gait like a waterfowl. If there was anything to suggest that it could swim, ponies really were in danger. She was certain any wildlife dwelling here had already met a grisly fate.

Knots writhed in Celestia’s stomach at the thought, and she made a noisy dive closer. The full grotesque appearance of the creature was spread before her, and Celestia took in the foul sight with a shuddering breath.

This was no form of an oversized slime mold, and it was the size of half a dozen cottages. Ravaging the island was an abomination unlike any that Celestia had seen before. Dozens of ginormous misshaped mouths lined with rows of malformed teeth snarled and chomped away at the world. While there were some slimy looks to parts of the creature, the bulk of the body was a hideous mass of pulsating tents of flesh oozing into themselves, their overall look a smelly array of guts dripping in a slurry-like they had been turned, folded, and melted upon themselves enough times. The thick drippings from the muddy, alien life-ooze trailed after the main body and never separating.

Worst of all were the countless array of body parts protruding from the purplish mass. Half-formed paws chipped antlers, salt-ruined giant insectoid wings, bulging stingers, ridges of diverse bone dripping smooze-filth, and writhing tentacles were dragged limply along in the monster’s crawling search for more.

Just what was this horror? And how could it come to be?

Celestia whickered nervously before charging her horn with a blinding ray. The searing light did nothing more than taze the smooze as she held it to the creature.

Her effort was enough. Immediately, dozens of eyes shifted from across the mass with an audible, disgusting noise to the top of the best. Their sizes were as irregular as the forms of teeth and bone already present, but each one was seething with an emotion Celestia could only conclude was fury. Their hostile reddish pupils and irises were ringed with soured yellow that could not make it clearer whom their focus was — or how much they hated her.

Gulping discreetly, Celestia fired her magic again before barrelling noisily to the side. She acted none too late, as the irritated beast swatted its form spastically and she narrowly avoided contact with the fleshy gunk.

Again, her light grazed the irritating creature with a blinding intensity that dwarfed the ability of any unicorn. The steadiness of how she continued to apply her stun efforts made the monster flail and lurch; as it did another island rumble reached Celestia’s ears.

Now she had it moving.

…

Another sound greeted Celestia as the beach came into view once more. The wind whipped violently in her ears and the motion of the Lady Smooze below was equal to a buffalo stampede. Above all that, a faint and jolly sound carried over both.

Discord was instructing his Smooze on how to play a whole ensemble of ridiculous instruments. The green Smooze made slobbery attempts at song into a harmonica and sent symbols banging hideously with its every move. Nearby, Discord hopped up and down, simultaneously directing his Smooze like a maestro’s more spastic counterpart while maintaining his own control over his own array of instruments. From where she was, Celestia counted at least fifteen under the control of Discord — though, their sounds were anything but controlled.

While those two lured the angered Lady Smooze forward with their band, Celestia continued to fire modest amounts of her power behind the rampaging purple mass. This served as an excellent way to irritate the creature, leaving a distorted path of glassy, fragile magma where sand had once been.

In the chaos, Discord was quick to dodge, his orchestra vanishing with a snap. He always was. While Celestia could only fight in short-range, uncontained bursts, Discord had no heart or mind for fighting when being slippery and tricky could work. Only this time, he couldn’t slip from conflict so easily: he had forgotten to remove the green Smooze from the line of the other’s fury!

Princess Celestia wanted to call out, to urge him to go back for the neglected Smooze, but her words didn’t come. They caught in her throat like a weight that dragged her focus back to the task at hoof, and that meant having to tear her gaze away from two things: Discord’s horrified realization dawning at who he had left in danger’s way and the fearful green Smooze burbling and blubbing in confusion for Discord to come back.

Celestia tried pumping her wings faster. Worry made the sweat fall down the back of her neck faster. The green Smooze had no features that could properly express fear, but the princess knew the sound of fear when she heard it. Even non-sapients like the Smooze had their primal emotions and their torment was not something Celestia could ignore.

She could see the green Smooze trembling in the shadow of the Lady Smooze, and her mind spun deception the more she took in the creature’s fear, trying to convince her that she was wasting time when only seconds had past and the initial whiplash of fear between her and Discord was still in full swing.

With a torrent of writhing and wiggling, the green Smooze appeared to diminish itself in what Princess Celestia could only think of as the opposite of deimatic behavior. It fell in on itself as if it had anywhere to go when in the shadow of a foe…

...only to unfurl itself, size doubled instantaneously…

...and it kept expanding.

Before Celestia could blink, her raging heartbeat demanded she halts her flight, and she did. The once insignificant green Smooze was transformed into a being unrecognizable when compared to its previous form, much to Celestia’s fear and Discord’s visible antsiness. However, its new appearance was very, very much like Lady Smooze.

What was previously her and Discord’s Smoozie-Woozie was now an amalgamation of flesh, limbs, and oozing terror and other secretions. Dozens of mouths widened with fury and pain, gnashing rows of mismatched teeth. An ear-grating symphony of roars ripped from each one, each one its own discordant call. Though she was not as keen with beasts as Luna was, Princess Celestia could feel fear all twisted up in those frightening, agonizing cries.

As distant as he was, Celestia could feel Discord’s increased fear like it was a sheet draped over her withers. It was a subtle thing for him to show fear, and the princess knew that if she were standing near him, Discord would still be unlikely to express real terror instead of a cartoonish ghost of it. Such was his nature.

And yet, the feeling might just be a product of her own fear, multiplied and nothing more. It was hard to discern as she beat her wings and dived downwards. The weight of her heart was rattling in her ears.

In her mind’s eye, she had the barest inkling of something new tickling her thoughts. Unfortunately, it was also something that toyed with her own fears she tried to bury. If her hunch had anything behind it, the green and purple smooze could be reconciled. Was that not something she should rightly be troubled by?

Magic was bright on her horn, and Celestia worked on weaving a familiar spell: one leftover from time as an Element Bearer. It was woven with Harmony’s own light and filled with Kindness. She only used it on Faithful Students and the inconsolable, for it would bring them one of their positive memories as a pacifying gesture.

As light filled her eyes, she was struck in her moment of blindness. Celestia yelped, eyes lost in white-hot nothingness. Moments later, it registered that in her flight the Lady Smooze had reached up and been able to slip a foul limb around her, leaving bile and other secretions upon her even when she had managed to escape its grip.

In the struggle, she had let a burst of teleportation magic free without ending her previous spell. The incomplete Kindness spell’s iridescent light and the gold of her teleportation had layered atop one another, and even though she had managed to teleport from the creature’s vile grip…

...her previous spell had been released too, and struck through the blurs of radiance in her vision, she could see it hit the green Smooze...

...and then…

...and then...

...

The memory pulled itself around all her senses, smothering them with fog and fear. Her magic tinted the world of mist with harsh golds and deep yellows. In it, Celestia was not herself. She was immaterial, both infused with the feelings of an observing force and the mare at the center of the dream simultaneously. The fear of the latter seeped into the oppressive, constricting sense the memory had. It was as if Celestia had her mind poured into half-frozen jello when she was still herself and left to weigh there.

And to think that this was all happening in an instant outside of her. The tugging of her mind and body, so painfully indivisible from each other, was enough of a reminder.

The third sensation was the fragile one from within the mare, dim and dying in a way that a goddess like Celestia could only acknowledge, but not understand. There was only the barest mind to that one.

The memory was fragmented, twisted, and controlled by the toll of something mind-breaking for which Celestia had no name. She could only view these splinters mutely. There was obviously little else this mind had to cling to, and it was so much that the area other than the raised sandstone topped with drenched cotton sheets was lost, devoured by the warped memory’s nature.

Another mare with the patterned veils of the desert stood by the prone mare. Her face was pale with fear and slick with sweat, but only the clamminess of the mare upon the bed-slab. The curls of their manes were stuck along their faces, and Celestia felt the echo of the sliminess they made.

Words flew out of the pacing mare’s mouth in what Celestia could only guess was a predecessor to modern Arabian. How she hovered over the other mare who was in the throes of labor made it clear that she was a midwife, and the mare whose sweat-soaked mane was free to tumble upon the sheets squished under her was her charge.

The sight between the patient’s legs was ghastly enough; no birth was a pretty one. But something else was at hoof, something ominous and urgent. The new mother’s eyes showed hints of fogginess in her horrible, pained spasms and she was heavy beyond what any mortal mare could reasonably carry. What was truly creepy was how it looked as though she were still bloating…

The midwife, in a fit of nerves, murmured what Celestia guessed were prayers, pressing damp clothes over the other mare’s brow. Her soothing words did nothing to hide that this mother was pale and screaming with what little energy she possessed.

One of her lower legs spasmed went limp, and too much blood came out, along with something else. Something meaty and mushy that should not have exited the body — and certainly wasn’t any part of the fetus. More of the mare gaped, and it became obvious — to Celestia — that she was being torn and stretched as something tried to exit her womb.

And whatever it was, it pulled itself out without care of the dying sobs or effort from the birthing mare. It wanted to force itself out, only for Celestia to remain fixed by the viscous quality of the memory and have to watch.

Hunks of something fleshy and gruesome began to burst out; the mother’s flesh flopping and ripped from her, coming out in twists with the motley of terror too big to have fit in her in the first place. Under the array, malformed body parts pulsating under grime and gore-sludge was the hint of something greenish.

At the sight, Celestia knew exactly what the green meant. The memory collapsed just as Celestia caught the last glimpses: the midwife fleeing from sight and a symphony of snaps and wet rips.

…

Aisha knew she loved the draconequus when her chores were consumed with thoughts of the peculiar youth. She would wind a forehoof in her pink tresses and feel her face grow happily warm at the thought of the creature. She made nightly treks up to the temple her village had built to house the rare one when she knew she would be the only priestess there.

She was not the only one in her village who adored him, for they all left the draconequus — that was what he called himself — food, drink, and other offerings. Aisha just happened to be the only one who had her heart made light and warm by the creature.

Aisha was special to him; she was sure of it. He showed her all the tricks of his magic and spun stories of made-up friends that told of equines like no other, with magic beyond mortal capacity, wings, horns, and everlasting life. No other mare got to hear such tales, he told her, in a rare moment of seriousness. His tone would have the same, fleeting softness that he only used for one other thing — compliments to her dawn-pink mane and tail, which she kept so carefully groomed and dust-free.

On all other occasions, they were careless. He said it was his nature to have this complete recklessness and go wherever the wind took him. There was no poetic skill to him at all, and his horrible ability with words only endeared him to Aisha because it was so different from the stallions of her village. The creature told her about how he spent his travels rising with the sun and staying where he pleased when he pleased, and for however long he pleased.

Once, Aisha had asked him if there was anything special that would ever make him want to stay anywhere. She had batted her eyelashes at him and wore his favorite scarf — a flowing pink streaked with purple and green — to catch his attention and give him every hint.

He had grinned at her and asked if Aisha wanted to watch him touch his eyeball with his tongue.

Aisha couldn’t put her hurt into words for him — that wasn’t what hearts were for. So she let it slide from her memory and hadn’t shown it. He was only being himself. They continued to be young and reckless.

And now Aisha had something that would make him want to stay with her forever, and it was something that they had shaped together. Plus, all the other priestesses would be so very jealous.

What she had not expected was to find him already gone, the entire temple empty of even one lit torch, and only the sound of night wind over the oasis to greet her.

This memory had come to Celestia through a haze tinted with gold and the iridescence of harmonious light magic, and yet those colors so bright and good should not have been harsh or inappropriate in any situation.

...

Celestia cried out again, in fear and distress. She shook the last shambles of the past from her eyes, kicking and thrashing mid-flight as she did so. The world hit her sideways and her bearings snuck up on her. The goddess flexed her wings and pumped them rapidly, unable to make the tight veers and motions due to her size. Soon, she was out of harm’s way and the moments she had viewed from her miscast spell dizzied her with their gruesomeness.

...There had been nothing left in the mind of the creature she had once thought of innocent Smoozie-Woozie.

No, the minds of the creature. It was two beings fused in torment together, the fusing of a mother and foal left in agony all these years later…

...and she had thought of it like a pet.

Something foul and sickly wanted to push something up her throat. Despite the acidic taste, Celestia forced her throat to tighten and flew higher.

On the beach below, she could see Discord standing in the shadow of what had been the green Smooze. His nervous surprise would look comical in any other situation and was not nearly as attentive to how the creature bellowed and wailed. Instead, he waved his arms about, grasping a bullfighter’s red flag and jerking it about inelegantly.

She couldn’t hear just what he was saying from so far above, but it was catching the attention of both beasts. They jostled one another and surged towards Discord, causing Celestia’s heart to race. Though her head was still light, she debated if there was a spell that could help, only for none to work their way into her hazy thoughts.

Being closer, the green Smooze reached Discord first. Her heart raced with how she juggled her thoughts to interfere. Princess Celestia continued watching with bated breath, her expression still and somber. If Discord needed her, he would call to her, and yet Celestia could not fully wrestle down her usual instinct to dive in and make everything as it should be, without anyone else needing to worry.

Discord was more than capable of what he was doing; she just had to mind that, and mind it repeatedly to quell all her thoughts saying otherwise.

Once the green Smooze was close enough to him, Discord did away with the bullfighter’s prop and held out his paw in an inappropriately friendly wave.

Every one of the green Smooze’s eyes immediately focused on Discord. Some even wrenched themselves around, tearing what little cohesiveness there was to the Smooze’s general form in order to look at the lone draconequus.

Warped torrents of irregular multicolored magic encircled Discord’s talon. Green and gold were the brightest shades of the familiar chaos magic that jumped out in Celestia’s eyes, and before she could offer her own contribution, Discord tapped the creature. Dozens of eyes swirled with rings of color and the beastly transformation began to deflate.

When the green Smooze was fully reverted to its gooey form, Discord scooped up the creature and swung out of the way from where the Lady Smooze barrelled forward. He disappeared from sight in a snap of magic; Celestia’s body tingled with adrenaline and she would have dived forward to scoop up her love had he not been quick and tricky.

A tap on wither jolted her from the rapid pace of her thoughts.

“Dissy!” Princess Celestia cried, whirling around to see her Dissy poking over from a nearby cloud. The green Smooze was clutched in his forelimbs, oozing over his grip. Celestia felt her coat go paler at the sight of the now-passive thing and its dumb smile. “You could have let me know…”

She inhaled sharply — perhaps even too much so — and tried to figure out what it was she had meant to say. What exactly could he have done that wouldn’t have given her a fright?

“Oh poo,” Discord said, though his lack of a smile spoke of their serious situation. “What has got your tongue, Celly?”

He waved a disembodied tongue in his grip while Celestia sighed.

“So… your Smooze… and that...” Celestia shivered, still not wanting to look at either. “...They are the same, then?”

“Oh, yes,” Discord replied casually, patting his gooey companion. “She and I go way back too, even farther than this little guy!”

Celestia offered a broken glass smile while Discord didn’t notice. He was too busy giving the gooey hybrid a noogie. How he knew the gender of each smooze suddenly made a bit of sense, even if there was likely a ‘she’ mixed into both smoozes anyway. Still, she had to put off what horrifying memories of dual demise would be in the purple Smooze.

“Is… is there no way you could do that same spell on our purple friend?”

“Celly?”

There was something in Discord’s tone that Celestia couldn’t put a hoof on. “Yes, Dissy?”

“Do you think there is anything left in her to call a friend?”

Celestia hung her head, unwilling to speak the truth.

…

Discord insisted he was pushing the cloud higher, hugging the green Smooze tightly. Celestia refused to correct him and continued to keep her aura steady as she tugged it far above the island’s sky. When she was satisfied with its height, she settled down next to Discord and let him wrap a paw around her withers. Thankfully it was smooze-free.

Together, they peered down at the Lady Smooze’s rampage below.

“And you’re sure this is the only way?”

Discord gave the world below a distasteful look. Their bags floated aimlessly within the green Smooze, undissolved. “Unfortunately so, Celly. No magic is going to work on her. Can you think of anything else that would?”

She avoided his pointed look entirely, pretending to adjust her mane by running her feathers through it.

“This wasn’t going to be a friendship and rainbows errand.”

Celestia kept her eyes downcast. “So be it. We use your plan, then.”

Discord nodded, patting her wither absently with his paw. With another snap, chaos magic engulfed his talons. Ignoring the showy display, Celestia lit her horn with the modest amount of aura needed.

Below them, the world cracked and rumbled. The sound of the fit thrown by the Lady Smooze was lost to a noise eerily similar to an earthquake. Celestia leaned over the edge, her mane spilling with the motion, and watched the results of their magic attentively.

The island was being uprooted, and the strength of their magic made it appear as ordinary as pulling beets from a garden. The Lady Smooze was too big to scamper, but she was obviously filled with confusion as her cay home was pulled and shrouded in the dual glow of two gods.

The sea rushed to fill the chasm left in the wake of the cay’s absence. Celestia bit her lip watching the torrent of raging dark waters. Discord manipulated the floating island first, jerking it forward and elbowing Celestia until she tilted it too.

Lady Smooze went tumbling in, no more than a moment of purple vanishing among the churning waters.

They pressed the cay back into place until the ocean surrounding it was tinted with dark rings of red.

Discord had told her multiple times it was the only way to be certain.

Princess Celestia thought she could still smell sea salt long after they returned. She let the automatic grind of royal duties sweep her up for the rest of the day, and her mind numbed itself with routine. She promised Discord that they would have time together the next day. When Luna excitedly wished to hear all the details there were to her ‘adventure’ — because everything was an adventure to her — Celestia gave the most civil answers possible. A princess does not present herself as unwilling to hold a conversation.

When the next morning came, Princess Celestia noted that she was slower than usual to brush her mane in uncomfortable silence.

She never cared for those two words much. All silence was uncomfortable, so the little turn of phrase always came across as too obvious and redundant.

No silence ever lasted; she knew the ways to banish it and fill its place.

This time, all she had to do was have a conversation with Dissy. Really, there was nothing frightening about that, or about him.

But what creature could blame her for not knowing how to address the smooze in the room?

…

Mister Smooze glowed happily as Princess Celestia doled another helping of lesser gems into the bowl. The warm flame of her parlor’s hearth made the gooey creature dance with friendly light. It was an odd air of innocence to cast over such a creature.

Discord popped a few of the bubbles that came from his pipe. Celestia heard him snicker at something from behind her. Perhaps it was a new idea for mischief. She simply focused on keeping the scraps of copper and semi-precious stones from spilling over the edge of a pet bowl.

Celestia bit the inside of her cheek. She had been the one to purchase the supplies to care for Mister Smooze whenever Discord brought it to Canterlot.

It. Him. Them.

She wasn’t even sure what was the correct way to refer to a combination creature like smooze.

How could she have ever thought pet supplies were appropriate?

Something tickled from behind her ear and Celestia turned around quickly. She blinked in astonishment at the sight of a golden bit held too close to her face and Discord’s big grin.

“Yoo-hoo, Celly! Look how shiny this one is!” His grin widened when Celestia matched it with her own imitation. “There must be a fortune on your mind.”

“Mhm,” Celestia murmured, keeping her gaze away from the sloppy eating of Mister Smooze. “I suppose that is inevitable with how our errand went.”

In reply, Discord offered a childish frown and tapped his pipe to his chin thoughtfully. “What do you mean, Celly?”

“You never mentioned that we were going to fight ponies, much less a mare, and her foal.”

Discord blinked and chewed at his pipe. “Hrm.”

“Hrm?” Celestia mimicked. Knowing Discord, any kind of ‘hrm’ from him was practically a language of its own.

“Of course,” Discord replied, shrugging. “I just never thought of them that way. You were there too, and would you really say that these remnants are ponies?”

“I…” Celestia hesitated, bringing a forehoof to her chest like that could make her words settle faster. “I think that it’s very difficult to see them as anything else. There was so little in their minds, Dissy. Goodness, I don’t know if what they had left could even be called minds.”

“Erm,” Discord raised a claw, holding it up like a student hearing their teacher makes a mistake. “Doesn’t that make them no different than ponies who take a great fall and become brain dead, Celly?”

“Well, I suppose… though, accidents like that are filled with so much less torment.”

“But would you call them and a happy, healthy little pony the same?”

Celestia closed her mouth quite primly, completely unwilling to answer. There was distant grief clear in her eyes. “Ponies are ponies.”

Discord scratched his head.

“And smooze… are they all your foals?”

“They’re what happens when any draconequus and pony copulate.” Discord gave a wavy shrug and his pipe vanished in a snap of magic. “You’re more than lucky that Alicorns aren’t ponies.” He stage-coughed into his paw. “Just saying.”

Celestia was well-aware that there was no other draconequui that could be spoken of, and that when Discord spoke of himself, he was speaking for his species too.

Her feathers ruffled with worry, and the sight of a crackling fire did nothing to put her solemn demeanor to rest. “Dissy, how much more smooze is out there?”

“Ahem,” Discord adjusted a bowtie he had conjured and straightened the thick, nerdy pair of glasses accompanying them. “I do believe the correct question would be: could there be any more smooze.”

“Mhm, so it would seem.” Celestia took her seat on a small stool. It was relaxingly soft and as opulent as her other furnishings — but most importantly, it was away from Mister Smooze.

“And…” Discord snapped everything away, eyes bright with his usual teasing. There was no doubt that this was all meant to cheer her up. “...the answer is: I have no idea! Before being stoned there were quite a few pretty pink-maned things that caught my eye after we last saw one another.”

Princess Celestia inhaled very calmly and went three shades paler; there was no other fitting reaction. “I beg your pardon?”

The expression on Discord’s muzzle was like a foal who had run out of ways to insist that a shattered vase was not their fault. “Erm. How do I explain it? Your mane used to be pink and—”

“Not that, Dissy. How could you not know how many foals you have? Is this what is to happen when any young one has draconequus heritage? What of draconequus mothers? I know you are not cruel to leave a mare to die, but what else can be made of so many other mares you’ve been with left to this as their destiny?”

“Firstly, I don’t think my kind were called foals, we grew into fools! For your second and third questions, yes-but-not-quite. I never heard of any union between ponies and the noble draconequus begetting anything more than bastard juice like smooze. My kind was careful about those particular cautionary tales and that regardless of gender, every creature involved would be doomed. Not exactly fun stuff, you know. Overall, ponies are just the worst kind of mortal to play with. They’re very basic, require too much attention, don’t live very long, flaky snacks don’t work as bribes into doing flips, and there’s the whole smooze problem. Now, get a small enough dragoness and there’s a compatible species…”

“Dissy,” said Celestia, voice clipped, “that isn’t what I asked.”

“Oh, but I didn’t even get to the matter of my favorite Alicorn mare yet!” Discord winked in her direction. “She’s a lovable, squishy marshmallow of a mare. Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”

Clicking her tongue, Celestia settled down once again, re-folding her wings and trying to indulge Discord in his effort to soothe her worrying. “Perhaps. You still have left the matter of so many mares and their fates unknown to me. For good reason, I presume?”

“Suspense?” Discord offered weakly, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Well, not really. The answer is actually a dreadfully boring one. When I was a much younger, naive cad I never stayed anywhere long; I simply couldn’t bear to do anything so dull. When I got bored, I left. Oh, and it turns out that for ponies certain ‘biological processes,” Discord wasted no time being subtle with his air quotes, “are a teensy-tiny bit different from draconequui. How was I supposed to know everything under your sun about pony pregnancy? I’d never seen a pregnant pony before! I thought they were all just fat and mean!”

“Oh,” Princess Celestia murmured. She folded her forehooves in front of her and gave a sigh of relief, closing her eyes momentarily. Her mane swirled faintly with the motion but still retained a muted air compared to its usual energy. “I suppose we can at least be thankful nothing more nefarious fueled such decisions.”

She bowed her head and only shifted when Discord tossed her the first in a long line of colored hoofkerchiefs his magic made.

…

Dusk was always a time of impatience for Princess Celestia. In terms of function, it could easily be called the most useless part of the day. Sometimes she pondered if it could be seen as anything more than a heavenly reminder for ponies to hurry off to their homes and finish their evening meals. The evening always held its breath for something Celestia could not spell out. It only created unneeded tension.

The sight of Mister Smooze just worsened the feeling of distant anxiety. The green, gooey creature had been stalking her around her chambers. Discord had gone away some time ago to stir harmless trouble in the castle while Celestia wished to maintain a sensible bedtime - especially when she had yet to put the island errand with the smooze behind her.

Would seeing the fragments of memory left in Lady Smooze — if there were any — have made things worse?

The squishy sounds of the smooze following her across the balcony weren’t an adequate reply. She frowned, recalling how she had found the little creature to be cute and silly at the Grand Galloping Gala. Discord referring to Mister Smooze as his own and how the creature followed its father about in a stupor of joy no longer were innocent gestures.

As Celestia ended the day, Mister Smooze ambled along, halting in her shadow. The last rays of sunlight gave the slimy body of Mister Smooze an unsettling luminescence.

Mister Smooze gave her the same passive smile he showed Discord.

Mister Smooze gave her the same smile he showed everypony.

Celestia stood there on her balcony, barely able to look at the creature. Here was the union of mother and child, bound together against the desire of the only of the two allowed to live. Together, they had lasted for centuries sealed with a bond that only one state could break. Though Mister Smooze smiled up at her, was he still suffering even in his compact form? Had she and Discord truly done good in a way that was complete?

One smooze was still here, unable to do more than eat, follow at others’ heels, and delight in what little it could experience as an eyeless blob of slime. How could it tell anypony if it was still hurting?

Something sprung to mind, a single word dark and creeping. It was no thought free from darkness, but Celestia was not surprised by it. Right now it was chillingly relevant to the dilemma of the remaining smooze, and the struggle it brought to Celestia's thoughts. There was a single word that every Element of Kindness, past or present, always had to gain familiarity with.

Euthanisia.

Untitled #4 [Gore/Violence/Death] [One Shot]

Author's Note

Mature/Gore/Death/Violence/Dark/Horror/Sad/Historical

TRIGGERS/spoilers: incest described, inbreeding mention, child death 'on-screen', abuse of a corpse, non-explicit mention of mutilation, 'on-screen' mutilation, brainwashed children(?)

An unnamed pegasus filly in the Tribal Era is more than proud of her race. She's willing to do whatever it takes to truly join the esteemed Flock of soldiers who fight the earth ponies and unicorns. There is a ritual, a beloved rite of passage, she is all too eager to take part in.

My first sorta-true grimdark story. Experimental kind of style. Bewarb. I thought about calling this one 'Coda of Blood and Clouds' but I dunno. Nothing really stuck.

Untitled #4 [Gore/Violence/Death] [One Shot]

I am a Pegasus. I know eight winters.

This is all I am. My name is a reward.

I have known the Flock since birth. I am of a broodmare I have never known.

The Flock does not abide by weakness. Those who show it are cast from the cloud's edge.

I do not cry. The weak cry.

I have heard their mewling myself. My fifth winter task was to toss a weak newborn.

Every task is an honor. I have succeeded in them all.

I am always eager to taste the wind. What I hunger for most of all is battle.

To slice the flesh of an earth-worm is to bless the ground. To see blood on one's face is a strong mark.

In the dirt they live. In the dirt they die.

I shall cut the air with blades. I shall clean them of sullied flesh when all is done.

In the Sky we live. In the Sky we thrive.

I hear the worms dirty their blood. Their foals are not from family blood.

I hear tales of how our stallions show their mares what is right. They use them up and show what is right.

Earth-worm mud ponies are fools who lack family broodmares and studs. The wretches raise their own dirty-blooded foals.

I am a Pegaus. I am better than any mud-worm. May my wing-blades raze their wrongs.

I am a Pegasus who thrives of the mud-wrestlers food. They are powerless. But the horned ones are not.

A horn-head mare is hard to break. That is what our stallions say. I think a blade is all that is needed.

Magic is housed best in them. That is what the Esteemed Ones say. Their word is All the Flock needs.

I heard that unicorn filth still reap mud-wrestler harvests. This means they are weak. They trade their land with ponies.

Like earth-worms they join their stallions and mares. They have no other means to trade land. The Flock needs none of this story nonsense.

In the Flock nopony belongs to nopony. In the Flock the city is for all. Only those faced with being Fixed are not wholly shared.

Those who are Fixed know blade, coal, and more. Coals are heart-fires flown from the ground.

I am not Fixed. I know soldiers who are. They do not become family broodmares and studs.

Earth-scum and unicorns both have dirtied blood I am eager to spill. Eight winters is too old not to have stomped a face in. I must act on the stories.

I must have boasts of my own. I must slay their weaker magics. The Flock walks the Sky!

There is none past the Flock and none still past the Esteemed Ones. They know all our city's movements. From birth I have served them.

The need for war is deep in me. I must be made ready by a soldier higher than me. I must face another who seeks the same.

If I am able to feed the clouds with their blood in the place only the war-bound know I will be ready. I must show loyalty without question. I always have.

There are no blades, no armor, nothing else in such a ceremony. We have wings, hoof, and teeth. Magic rings in my bones and wings. The Pegasus I face is a filly like myself.

I can tell she is Fixed. Her tail is pressed between her legs. It is a weak instinct to cover the scars of those of unworthy blood.

The Esteemed ones watch with faces stronger than any stone. Their faces are cut from wind and storm. Their bodies are scarred with battle.

They await our moves. Victory at all costs. I know this.

For my whole life I was made for war. I am of the Flock. I am War.

My fellow Flock members cannot be here. To want is wrong but I want them to see me. My victory and war cry were meant for them.

This is the day that foals yearn for. This is what adults are proud of. Everything after is a notch in their armor and a scar on their pelt.

My mark is a chipped stone spear-head. As stone is fetched from the ground to make our tribe victorious I shall cut through her skin. Her flesh is week with her bad blood.

I do not dance. I do not waste. I am a Pegasus and we are always above everything.

Those below us will be crushed. One day there will only be the strong and the Sky. Fighting is so one day no unicorn and mud pony will hoard food.

Bruise. Blood. Bite. Slash.

Kick. Scream. Howl.

The crack of her wing is my most favorite sound. I am sure she loves how her teeth have ripped out a chunk of my ear. Mine have yanked bloodied feathers from her wings.

She wants to move away. I spot her limp. In her back leg is a flaw from a filly Fixed with coals flown so carefully to the city.

Such an obvious burden makes me think about how she masks it. Her broodmare and stud must have been weak to let a filly like her fight a filly like me. Her reason for being Fixed is so clear that winters after it happens it shows.

I buck at her side. It is puffy with bruises unlike any other I have given somepony in training. She is weak and unworthy of the Flock.

Just like any other soldier I will get rid of her. My world fades to her screams. I kick and kick again until she is down.

An Esteemed One cheers with the noise that comes from another bone breaking. This is glory. This is the War I long for.

With great leaps and as many pumps of my wings as I can do I advance. She has fallen upon the clouds moaning as new red coats the old red of this sacred place. There is thunder in my hooves.

I toss my mind to the wind and think of flight. With more winters my flight will grow stronger. I will brave storms, winds, snows, and all.

I already know the weather anypony in training knows. I have seen the weak plummet to the ground under the weight of training armor. I am strong and bellow with a leap forward.

She is screaming as I leap upon her again and again. I hear splinters unlike anything that would happen if I stood on cloud. I jump with everything I yearn for in war.

My howls are louder than the last of her calls because I do not hear them. My eyes are closed and I feel things under my hooves. I shift with how she breaks.

The Esteemed Ones are roaring with everything I want them to. I can feel my hooves sink in something rick with warmth and raw. Something hard and broken jabs at my drenched legs.

All around me is warmth. Pulpy bits and hunks are below my uneven stance. War whoops ring and wind brushes my caked mane.

That wind is different from our city's cold gales. It touches all of me that is not steeped within a filly that no longer breathes.

My legs are heated with the fire of her insides that remind me of the sloshy mash in my rations.

When I open my eyes air is strangling my throat even when my mouth is closed. The Esteemed Ones shuffle among themselves. There is a trampled and beaten mess that I stand in reeking of sickness.

Rattling pains my chest. I crumple within her hot and broken body. What is left of her only lets me kneel so much.

I am cramped in what has yet to be a shell of her with her hot blood coating me thickly. Flesh and parts I cannot name and describe churn. Not all of them are broken.

I am unable to howl and my head is filling with something. The Esteemed ones are changing and their faces are showing something. I am filled with tight cowardice.

Over and over I can only see this filly and this flesh at my hooves. The Esteemed Ones see weakness. I know not if I have these parts in me like the weak one at my hooves but if I do I want to pull them from my mouth and feel no more.

No more of this. My body is being bitten by something not the cold and from the inside. I think of all the winters I have seen.

I will be taken to the clouds. I am called a filly but I am no filly. I have not been a filly since I was torn from my broodmare.

This is not a filly at my hooves. She was a mare as young as I. Soldiers, the true soldiers, call us 'filly' until we pass this and it sticks to our own tongues like the blood on my skin.

I know her blood has touched my own and my wounds. I can see the Esteemed Ones flying towards me with grim purpose. They must be close enough to know my weakness.

Upon my cheeks are spots like the water-weakness that spills from the eyes of infants and cowards. The soldiers assigned to train us in our earliest winters are experts at striking it from our faces. But I have always had two spots like this weakness upon my face.

I am a Pegasus mare of eight winters. Tomorrow my wings will be tied to my sides and my hooves shall leave the clouds. Any others of my broodmare and stud will follow.

This is not my victory.