Author's Note

Warning: This chapter contains extreme violence, gore, and graphic depictions of torture. If this is too much for you to handle, please skip this chapter. Reader discretion is advised. YOU. HAVE. BEEN. WARNED.

Ch.1 Agony

Gold Vine groaned, a pulsing pain running through her head as she came back to the land of the living. She felt something cold and metallic grip her legs and neck and could hear a steady dripping echoing around her. She opened her eyes to be greeted by darkness, faint blurs present as well that sat just outside her range of vision. Slowly, her senses came back to her. When they did, what she saw put her on edge.

She was in a dungeon, the previous blurs now revealed to be cold stone walls illuminated by light that peeked in from windows further up the ceiling. Looking up showed a seemingly infinite black void, the small windows no bigger than a distant star serving as the only breaks in the darkness. She tried to move only to find that she was shackled half way up a wall, the cold metal she felt before making more sense to her. She closed her eyes and tried to figure out how she got into this situation, a task that her pounding head did little to aid her in.

She remembered being angry, no, furious about something. She remembered stars and a knife. Then she was afraid.

What was it? What had me so scared?

The dungeon's door slammed open, the booming noise shocking her eyes open. The second they landed on who had let themselves in, she knew exactly what had scared her last night. Pushing a cart with a sheet draped over it was none other than Moonstone Dagger herself, the mare sporting a near giddy smile as she moved closer to Gold. While the Vine Family was renowned as a family of Assassins, Moonstone's family was known for a different kind of service to the crown. To the public, they were a family of information gatherers that used espionage to bring ponies to justice when in truth, their methods were a lot less civil. While they hadn't been employed by the royal sisters for such tasks in centuries, the Stone Family were masters of torture. If they wanted you to tell them something, they knew countless ways to loosen lips. It was because of such despicable practices that Gold's family rejected Moonstone's, even going so far as to consider them enemies of the highest order at times. It was a feeling that was mutual as far as the Stone's were concerned, the two families holding several covert civil wars in the Canterlot's twisted underworld through out the years.

"Glad to see you're awake," Moonstone giggled, stopping the cart in front of Gold. "I was afraid I had hit you too hard last night."

"If we could all be so lucky," Gold spat.

"Oh don't be like that," Moonstone pouted, then smiled wickedly as she said, "I even brought some of my favorite toys for you!"

As she said that, she pulled the sheet away with her magic. Laid out across the top of the cart was a wide variety of knives. Some were as massive as cleavers while others were no better than tiny scalpels, each of them razor sharp and waiting to be put to use. Gold Vine stared at the blades with worry, now wishing for her magic more than ever as she pulled against her restraints. Moonstone giggled at that, a small knife giving off a faint red glow as it floated to the Unicorn's side. She slowly approached, drinking in the fear coming off of Gold as she closed the distance between them. The Earth Pony froze when the cold edge of Moonstone's knife was pressed against her cheek.

"Now, where do we start?" Moonstone mused. "How about you answer my question from last night?"

"Which is?" Gold asked, a faint tremble filling her tone.

"Oh, come now, I'm sure you remember," she smiled, gently pressing the blade harder into the mare's cheek. "Just because you have the body of a stupid beast doesn't mean you have the brain of one."

Gold Vine hissed, the blade drawing a small trickle of blood out of her from the faint movement. Moonstone's smile fell and she quickly slid the blade across Gold Vine's cheek. The mare bit back a scream, what was left of her pride not willing to give the other mare the satisfaction of hearing it.

"Tell me why you're a Mud pony now," Moonstone growled.

Seeing little point in keeping it a secret, she stared at the ground and told her what happened. She was dead anyway. Why not give the mare a bit of gossip before the end? Maybe, if Gold was lucky Moonstone would make the same mistake she did. Her only regret would be that she wouldn't be around to see it when the mare crashed and burned as badly as she herself had.

"So, Princess Celestia has a daughter," Moonstone hemmed, hoof pressed to her chin as she mulled this new information over. "Perhaps I should send a letter of thanks to this 'Sunset Shimmer'. After all, its thanks to her that I now have such a pretty new toy."

As she said that, a manic grin spread across her face and she rammed the blade into Gold Vine's shoulder. Her grin grew twisted as she turned the blade, the pain too much for Gold to handle as screams tore past her lips. When the blade was finally jerked free from her body, Gold's throat was raw from screaming and her vision faded in and out of clarity.

"You have no idea how much I've wanted this," Moonstone growled, watching with sick glee as Gold Vine's blood dripped off of her knife. "Ever since we met at The Gala seven years ago, I've dreamed about tearing you apart. I would spend hours thinking about how I would rip that smug look off of your stupid face. I could barely sleep last night as all kinds of plans came to me. So I decided to let my dreams chose for me and guess what? Death by knives won."

She aimed the blade at Gold's left rear leg, but before she could move past that point, something about Gold's injured shoulder caught her attention. The bleeding had stopped, a complete impossibility given the amount of damage she had caused. Curious, she levitated the sheet over and roughly wiped as much of the blood away as she could. To her shock, what had once been a gaping bloody wound was now a fading scar. She wiped the blood off of Gold's cheek to be met with the same sight.

"Oh my," Moonstone breathed, a wild smile spreading across her muzzle. "It would seem Discord's curse was a bit more literal then you thought."

True terror settled in Gold Vine's gut as she watched her shoulder heal, the implications too terrible for her to fathom. Desperately, she pulled against her bindings in a futile attempt to do more than entertain her tormentor. One by one, she watched as each of the knives floated off of the tray, their points aimed at a different part of her body. She screamed, hoping against hope that by some miracle somepony would save her from the horrors that awaited her. Instead, all she did was widen Moonstone's smile as she happily said ten words that made her scream louder.

"Let us see just how literal he was, shall we?"

***

https://youtu.be/H4xE0u4OQcY

A faint buzzing filled the air, a few flies taking up residence in Gold Vine's cell since she took up residence. She watched them from where she hung, her chains tense as they bore her full weight. For weeks, Moonstone had tormented her, cutting and stabbing her for hours. Her throat was red raw from all of the screaming and the lack of food and water her capture provided her did little to remedy the situation. In a desperate attempt to retain her sanity, she focused on the small swarm of flies and what had attracted them. Laing by the door was a three foot tall pile of flayed flesh. Gold Vine's flesh.

At one point, Moonstone wanted to see just how far Gold Vine's curse could go. The hours the mare spent pealing the flesh off of her victim's body was the most agonizing Gold Vine had ever experienced in her entire life. The pain she experienced the following night as she waited for her skin to grow back was a very close second.

The door slammed open at the same time it always did, Gold Vine barely holding enough energy to move her eyes towards the silver Unicorn. Moonstone smiled brightly, a metal flask floating next to her in her magic's grip. The lack of knives confused her. While she didn't look forward to her daily torture, it had become something of a routine at this point. The break in pattern put her on edge as Moonstone opened the flask.

"I must say, this whole arrangement of ours has been simply divine!" Moonstone beamed. "The life of a nobel is full of so much stress. It does the heart good to have some catharsis when one comes home after a long day."

Gold said nothing, her starved body too weak to dredge up the energy needed to argue. Moonstone's smile grew slightly at that as she approached. The Unicorn put up a barrier to ward off the flies, her nose wrinkling slightly at the smell of filth and waste that covered the floor beneath the bound Earth Pony.

At around the two foot mark, she continued with, "After everything you've done for me these past few weeks, its only fair that I give you a reward."

As she said that, she floated the flask up to Gold's face. She stared at the object wearily, but lacked the energy necessary to fight back as she jammed the flask's opening into her mouth. The taste was the first thing to hit her, an extremely bitter fluid with a heavy metallic tang to it. Then came the pain, her raw throat the first to feel it as an agonizing burn tore through her. A gargled scream forced its way past her lips as her stomach felt like a swarm of angry bees had been let loose in it. When the flask was finally emptied, Moonstone pulled it out of Gold's mouth and used her magic to keep her mouth shut. Gold writhed in agony as the acidic burn in her gut moved further into her, tears running down her face as she silently begged for it all to stop.

Moonstone just giggled and said, "Do you like it? It's a little something special I had made just for you. I know how much you like the finer things in life so I pulled out all of the stops. A nice little cocktail chucked full of precious metals and the rarest poisoned herbs fresh from my family's private garden."

Gold struggled harder as her body fought to reject the toxic mixture running through her, but the grip on her muzzle was too strong. Gold could only cry as Moonstone watched her suffer under the poison's effects. In time, it did more than hurt. Pure pain shot through her as she started to seise, her body violently shaking as her eyes rolled to the back of her head.

Make it stop! Please! For the love of Celestia please make it stop!

As if to answer her prayers her world turned dark and the pain stopped, but it was not the last time she would experience this pain. For untold weeks, Gold Vine was forced to endure Moonstone's twisted cocktails, each more potent and refined than the last.

"N...o m...or...e, Plea...se," she begged, her body too weak to fight as Moonstone stepped into the room.

"Exactly what I was thinking," Moonstone beamed, a syringe floating next to her. "Why make you drink it if there are more interesting ways to get it in you?"

Fear filled Gold at the sight, even in her delirium she knew what was coming. With tears running down her face, she closed her eyes and braced as best she could for what was to come. She barely felt the needle pierce her skin after all the pain she had endured up to this point, but what came after was something she could never prepare for.

The room started to shift, the walls warping in and out as if they were breathing. The shadows in the room took the forms of twisted horrors, each sporting claws and wriggling tentacles as they closed in on her. Her eyes drifted to the dark ceiling of her cell where a swarm of spiders crawled towards her as a writhing living mass. Gold closed her eyes, doing her best to tune out the thousands of legs crawling all across her body. It did little to protect her from the voices as they yelled, laughed, taunted, and cried around her. She wailed as her eyes were forced open, hundreds of demonic faces surrounding her as they let their tainted voices wash over her mind. Her breaths came out as panicked gasps as she watched them, her heart thundering in her chest in the face of her new tormentors. When something grabbed her from the front, a scream of pure terror came out of her.

The creature looked like Moonstone, but had falcon-like claws in place of hooves. Her eyes were bloody pits of carrion with maggots crawling out of them, her smile manic with flies slipping past her lips. Her coat bubbled and warped like heated metal a she leaned her muzzle closer to Gold's, a loud buzzing becoming more and more apparent as she did. Pure terror robbed the former Unicorn of all thought as she struggled against her bindings. The monster's smile grew and slowly opened, a swarm of flies pouring out of it like water from a tap. Gold screamed and the swarm forced its way down her throat.

She wanted to run. She wanted to die. She wanted it all to end. She was denied all of that. All she could do was scream.

***

Nothing existed to Gold. Time was a blur, reality a foreign concept. She didn't even know if she was awake or asleep most of the time. Each dream and hallucination becoming just as detailed as her damned reality. At one point, she thought she was a Pegasus. She flew high over Canterlot, the wiping winds passing through her mane and tail. She felt so wild, so free, only to come back to her cell when she opened her eyes. Another time, a sea of rats broke into the cell. She barely made a sound as they striped the meat from her bones. With just a blink she was back, not a single rat in sight.

She didn't know when exactly, but at some point she stopped feeling the pain in her gut and throat.

Was that good? Pain meant something was wrong. That something was broken. Was I broken?

She felt something circulating inside of herself. She didn't know what it was, just that it was important. Something exclusively hers.

What is that? Did I know what it was? I feel like I did. What is it?

A faintly familiar slam. The sounds of something big being brought into the room. A sharp pain in her shoulder and the world came back into full clarity. Moonstone stood before her, now dressed in surgical scrubs with a tray standing next to her. She said something, but it only came out as muffled gibberish to the damaged mare. She watched as a scalpel floated off of the tray then slowly moved towards her. Gold gave no resistance as Moonstone cut into her, her body and will far too weak at this point to do anything. That is, until the thing circulating in Gold shifted.

Her eyes widened as the thing inside her strained against something, the act almost in synch with Moonstone as she tried to pull something out of Gold's cut open foreleg. A pained gasp escaped her when the Unicorn ripped a bone out of her, not from the lost body part, but the damage doing so did to the thing inside her. She silently begged for Moonstone not to do it again, to leave the thing alone. Moonstone continued, each extracted bone doing more and more damage to the thing. Tears trailed down her face as the last part of her not tainted by the Unicorn's cruelty was torn apart right before her eyes. Eventually, Gold saw what the heavy object was that made the loud noise earlier; a large glass aquarium, but instead of fish and water, it housed a dense swarm of Skin Beetles. Moonstone let out more gibberish before she levitated a heavy axe out from behind the container. Gold had just enough time to wonder what her the Unicorn had planned before she swung the weapon just below Gold's head and everything turned black.

***

"Wake up!"

A hard smack across the face brought Gold back to the waking world, Moonstone's frowning face just a couple feet away from her own.

"Can you hear me?"

Gold tried to respond, but she didn't have any strength left to do more than blink.

Moonstone let out an irritated groan and said, "Stupid mud horse. Blink twice if you can hear me!"

Gold did so, earning a more familiar smile from the Unicorn as she said, "Good. Turns out that I may have given you too much of your special cocktail a few weeks ago. As a result, you couldn't hear a single thing I said last week! How unfortunate and I went to the trouble of putting your bones on display and everything in my office."

She giggled behind a hoof at that while Gold stared at her blankly.

"Anyway," Moonstone smiled. "After so many months tending to you, this room has become quite filthy. Fortunately, my family has made sure that cleaning something like this could be done with next to no effort."

Gold continued to stare, a small part of her wondering were this mare was going with this.

"You see," Moonstone continued. "This whole room is covered with Incinerator Runes. Fairly powerful ones from just after the unification of the three tribes. All I have to do is step out of here, activate them, and everything in here will be burned so thoroughly that not even a full grown Dragon could survive. Do you think you will?"

Gold was silent, but internally she was panicking. Her mind jumped to a time that felt like a lifetime ago, when she had been foolish enough to aim beyond her station. The flames of Sunset Shimmer burned worse than anything she had ever crossed at the time. She didn't want to go there. She didn't want to go through that again!

Moonstone just giggled as she watched Gold spasm weakly in her bindings, the closest thing the now emaciated mare could to struggling as the Unicorn backed out of the room. The second she closed the door, Gold knew her fate was sealed. The click of a latch was all it took to suck the fight out of her, tears of despair rolling down her face as she stared at the ground. Slowly, red runes started to appear all across the floor and walls, magic coursing through them for the first time in a very long time. Gold felt like a helpless filly standing in the face of a horrible monster. She had no power, no hope, and no way to stop what was to come. With a shaky breath, she closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable. This was her fate, to be the plaything of a sick noblemare until the end of time.

No sooner had that thought crossed her mind before flames flooded the room. As she was devoured by the fire, something inside her snapped. All of her pain, fear, and despair vanished along with her flesh and bones. In their place burned a revolting hatred and the tattered remains of her magic.

***

Moonstone hummed a happy tune to herself as she opened the door to Gold Vine's cell, curious to see if the runes had been enough to permanently kill her new pet. Her hopes were seemingly granted when she looked inside the chamber. As she had said the day before, the fire had incinerated everything in the room. All of the waste, blood, and pests wiped from the face of Equis with one quick blast of fire. The only things in the chamber not affected were the shackles and chains that hung from the walls that had been enchanted to be immune to such a thing long ago. Them and the seemingly sleeping gold pony laying on the ground. Moonstone's smile grew at that, a happy skip entering her steps as she entered the room. All mirth fell right out of her the second the door closed behind her.

The air felt heavy, every instinct in Moonstone Dagger's body telling her she was in grave danger. She ignored them as she made her way towards the sleeping pony. The Unicorn used her magic to grab the Earth Pony's body only for a cold chill to shoot through her body. She quickly canceled the spell, the split second her magic made contact with her "guest" bringing back memories of the time somepony held her at knife point. Fear that she couldn't explain filled her as Gold stirred, only to turn into near panic when the mare lifted her head. When the withered Earth Pony's orange eyes met her crimson ones, she could barely breathe. The air turned as thick as lead when Gold staggered to her hooves, her eyes never leaving Moonstone's. An even denser silence filled the room as the two mares stared each other down, both waiting for the metaphorical pin to drop.