Author's Note

Again this chapter is less story driven and more focused on the motivations of the characters.

Expect the next chapter to be a little longer and more story driven. Also thanks to a few private request I’ll be updating more consistently.

Jungle Trek

It had been days, possibly weeks, and although she wouldn’t go as far to say months, it certainly felt like it some times. The long jungle trek had been torturous, both physically and mentally. Since the start of their journey 4 ponies had dropped dead from the jungles harsh elements, and many others, including herself had come close, but were naturally prodded and forced along by their Zebra companies who seemed to be completely unaffected by the environment of their natural homeland.

The Zebras didn’t just see them as enemies, combatants in war based on politics resources, no, if they were Zebras they might, but they were ponies, and the deep scorn of Zebras towards her race went back far beyond this war, the war only seemed to heighten their hatred and give them a good opportunity to enact it. Ponies certainly didn’t like Zebras either, in fact she’d unashamedly say that most hated them (rightfully, she thought), but ponies at least consider themselves to be civilised, and only the lowest of the low among their ranks would ever seriously think of enacting that hatred in anywhere near the degree of their racial counterparts.

Although their Zebras counterparts, who unlike Ponies had known nothing but hunger, poverty, suffering, strife, and brutal civil war the comparatively lavish Equestrians who lived out their lives surrounded by more luxury and peace than they could dream of seemed glutinous, undeserving of their luxuries, especially considering the lack of strife they had endured in comparison to their people. Why should Zebra foals starve when many of Equestria’s foals suffer from various degrees of obesity, why should rape, murder, and theft be something that every Zebra feard daily when the average Equestrian never gave any of these things a second thought, why should they suffer so greatly when even a small amount of bits, food, medicine, or supplies thrown their way could save thousands of lives, things that the Equestrians could easily do without.

The only kind of interaction they had gotten from Equestria for centuries was one sided trade in gems. The Zebrica jungles were rich in gems, but the conditions were far too harsh for most ponies to face, so the trade was simple, the Zebras would extract precious gemstones in exchange for food and medicine, the only problem being that the gemstones they extracted were often many 10s, or even 100s of times as valuable as the meagre supplies they were given, but any argument or attempted negotiation, however slight from the Zebra’s part would result in an immediate withdrawal of Equestrian goods. There were thousands of other Zebra mines the Ponies could deal with, so they’d simply be left to starve, used as an example of how callous Equestrian business could be in the face of even a minor disagreement or offence.

The Ponies saw themselves as being completely innocent, how could they be guilty of anything when most Equestrians didn’t think twice of where their gemstones or other goods came from, and furthermore, would they be able to choke up the appropriate price if they did know, or did the Ponies infamous morality come to an end when they were personally affected. Therefore it’s easy to see why the Zebras would have such a contempt, such a hatred for the Ponies who in their eyes had oppressed their people for centuries and stolen their lands natural resources, while staying just removed enough, just ambiguous enough to keep their morals. So why should a Zebra, already fiercely brutal by design of his environment and generations of natural selection have any sympathy for a Pony, why shouldn’t he revel in the sudden unexpected change of circumstances between his people at that of his centuries old enemy, his centuries old ‘oppressor’?

This is why the Zebras were not only completely unempathetic to Pony suffering, but actually enjoyed it with a kind of mad vengeful lust, with the idea of dominating an innocent young pony mare being their sort of apex, the principle and most potent symbol of their rightful dominance of their previous oppressors, for what could possibly be more degrading to a Pony than to be raped and defiled by their previous victims. The fact that Ponies seemed completely unaware of their previous strife and extremely doubtful of its severity and couplabilty in it only furthered the Zebra need for revenge, not only would they get what they rightfully deserved, their oppressors would in turn get was owed to them.

So as one could easily imagine, after centuries of civil war and internal conflict, mostly driven by the rights to various Equestrian goods and gem mines, when the Zebras began to unite under one banner for the first time in any Zebras living memory they all saw their natural enemy clearly, the Equestrians, the Ponies.

Although naturally Candy, like most Ponies, was unaware of the extent of Zebra strife or their reasons for hating them, not that such a thing would have afforded her captors any sympathy, not after what they had done to her comrades. Needless to say the rape of a mare called Shapire, the first she had witnessed, was far from the last.

She felt like the fact of her being the only mare not to repeatedly and relentlessly raped by her Zebra captors was a specific kind of torture in of itself. Although she was rarely touched, asides from the odd attempt by a few particularly rowdy Zebras, who were quickly caught and severely chastised, usually just seconds before she had what was left of her innocence torn away from her, her captors seemed to take special delight in teasing her, like she was some kind of forbidden fruit that they all lusted after but none of them could have.

She was regularly sexually harassed, both verbally as well as through gropings or tugs at her tail, with the occasional herd of Zebras gathering around and behind her flank to gawk at her, hoping to get even the slightest peek under her tail. When her harasses got particularly numerous their commander would often command her to raise her tail for them to look at, with any act of defiance being met by him tying her tail to her back, not that she was in much of a state to fight back in any meaningful way throughout most of their torturous trek.

Although she found her harassment to be extremely degrading, and the constant looming threat of rape terrified the life out of her, she couldn’t feel to bad herself, in fact she felt quite guilty about her petty ‘shame’ in comparison to what her fellow pony mares were forced to go through, and they certainly didn’t seek to comfort her. At some point she had became a source of scorn for her comrades, they couldn’t show any hatred towards their rapists, least their situation become worse, but they could show as much contempt and envy for the ‘spoiled little bitch’ who despite weeks of their tournament and constant humiliations had gotten by unscaved with her virginity intact.

At first it was just the odd stare that set Candy of with confusion and slight worry, but by the end of their journey she was fully convinced that if they were ever let free she’d be brutalised and probably killed by her own comrades, their irrational hatred for her had just become too fierce, and for reasons of survival with each rape they progressively learned to channel their anger towards her rather than their predator. Beyond being terrified by the resentment she felt from her fellow Pony mares, she didn’t understand it, but then again she couldn’t blame them, she hadn’t been raped, she didn’t know what it was like. Sometimes she even felt her sympathy for her comrades turn into guilt, and she’d half convinced herself that she deserved to be raped to make up for her terrible sin of being a pure virgin, of not suffering alongside her fellow comrades.

Knowing how cunningly devious Zebras could be she had become half convinced that they didn’t touch one of them just to channel and contain the hatred of the others. While nothing was personally done to her like every other pony, mare and stallion, she was forced to be witness to every brutalisation of one of her comrades, she was forced to look them in the eye as they bent over, raised their tail, and with each thrust stared at her, and only her, with nothing but hatred and envy in their eyes, many didn’t even bother acknowledging their rapists, as if she had become some kind of coping mechanism for them.

By the time they actually reached the camp Candy didn’t know whether she should feel relieved or horrified. On one hoof this was it, her feeble line of protection was gone, she was fair game, free meat, and she had a feeling that having been prized so highly as a pretty young virgin that she’d make quite the reward for the camp guards, but on the other hoof maybe she could finally get rid of some of this ridiculous but oppressive guilt that seemed to constantly follow her. She didn’t know if she was being naive or not, and in truth, if given half the chance she would have ran and left all of her comrades to their fate without thinking twice, and she knew this, but, she did feel some relief in finally ending their horrible trek, if nothing else. And as disgusting as it made her feel, she had pray to Celestia that she’d lose her guilt about not being defiled like her comrades during their trek, that they wouldn’t despise her as they do now, and that she’d, as hard as it was to ask this of her goddess, that she’d eventually get used to it.

Maybe it was her own coping mechanism, or maybe her mind had just been too perverted by what she was forced to witness and the guilt she carried for not having to go through it, but she felt like maybe a great deal of her ‘sin’ would be lifted by the camp, and that by going through what they had went through she’d be accepted back into her comrades forehooves. She realised how delusional such thoughts were, but after weeks of watching mare after mare be raped in increasingly perverse ways that only a Zebra mind could dream up daily, sometimes several times a day, Candy found herself completely lost emotionally. While she wasn’t completely broken, she was a complete mess of emotional contradictions, each more extreme and troubling than the last, she obviously didn’t want to be raped, but after weeks of witnessing it and the looks she got, she felt guilty about not participating.

She didn’t know what to think, and her mind was so emotionally frazzled that any thought would likely be contradicted and confirmed by a thousand different opposing and lines of paranoid rationalisations, but she knew that things were about to radically change for her, for the worse, and possibly harder to accept, probably for the better as well.