Author's Note

Rip and Tear, Until it is Done

Bonus: Tartarus

The moment the energy pistol vaporized, the world went dark except for her soul-sight, her very essence being freed from mortal shackles. Grar’s magic tendrils extended to grab onto the vaporized Tartarus Lord, hers following behind to latch on to the shrieking eldritch horror. While it tried to heal, it fought back against their pulling. The portal was right behind them. They only needed to keep going.

An illusory headache came over Somnia’s mind. It wouldn’t win today. No, she would stop it from killing hundreds or thousands of innocent ponies, even if it meant going to Tartarus itself.

The tugging got her on the other side, that headache spreading into a full-grown, soul-wide migraine as she kept pulling. Chaotic energies swarmed around her, ripples spreading over her spirit, yet her grip remained. The Tartarus Lord finally pulled through with them, the gate closing behind. Somnia let go and floated away toward where the other chaotic spawn were, following the vines of chaotic energy to know where the tunnels were relative to her.

Tartarus... Now that she had a moment to think as she retreated past the chaotic spawn in the halls, she was utterly unprepared.

G-Grar? H-How do we get out? She stopped in a series of tunnels with no creatures around her, waiting as her soul started sparking, each bolt bringing another strike of pain to her mind.

There are several exits, only two of the four matter, though. Either we get to the Steps of Kronos or Angel’s Relief. But first, we need to figure out where we are.

The first traces of matter began forming from the sparks she was emitting, her mind going fuzzy as it reconstructed her piece-by-piece. The first part to form was her back-half, where the cutie mark was located, working its way upward as she gritted herself against the pulsating agony consuming her with every muscle. When it reached her brain, it finally gave her the first sense of relative relief with the pain in her fully formed back-half being reduced only to an aching, the rest still grinding at her as the head finished reforming and senses returned.

The darkness surrounded her, or rather, the oily, black rock making up the walls did. There was a glowing vein of minerals in the opposite wall, her teeth gritting together as she stood onto her hooves and wobbled. Her body could feel the radiation it gave off, tingling through her flesh as it bathed her in near lethal amounts and killing cells on-mass. She reached out with her mind, seeing... not a lot. The chaotic energies limited her soul-sight to within a dozen poni, and trying to see the future or past was pointless with the horrors cropping up from the mere attempt.

Somnia? Grar spoke up, reminding her of what she was doing from the haze of her thoughts. We need to get to a larger chamber. If we can find some of the deep fortresses, I may be able to figure out where we are. I’m not too familiar with the layout of the complete underground, so that is our best shot.

Y-Yeah. L-Large chamber. Fortresses. Um, h-how many Tartarus Lords are there? Her hooves carried her away from the direction she came, headed... anywhere. The physical darkness continued to grow as she traveled until she entered a medium-sized room with a lava pool in the center and chaotic spawn surrounding it. They were... Her stomach turned in on itself.

Once upon a time, they may have been able to be called ponies, but with their flesh absent, replaced by rusted metal and spikes that dug inside of their remaining green and purple rotten corpses, it really was hard to tell. They were only ‘alicorns’ in the technical sense, the wings, horns, or both attached to them being from other creatures and decayed to a similar degree as the rest.

Somnia leapt into the chamber to make an impact with the first, crushing its skull into the rock below with a splatter of dark red blood that stung her hide. The others responding by... fleeing. Most seemed to go into the tunnel she had come from, but a few of the dozen scurried off into the opposite one. Shivers ran up her spine as she sensed a Tartarus Lord closing in on her location from the tunnel she left, hooves bolting for the other tunnel.

With her advanced speed, she impacted one cultist to break every bone in their body and slam them into the tunnel wall with a burst of red, cracking the rock to collapse onto both her and the remaining spawn. Rocks struck her from above, crushing her newly reformed body under their weight and snapping bones, yet she punched her way through to the other side, backing up, taking deep breaths.

The collapsed rocks sealed the tunnel, but she knew better than to trust rocks to hold back a Tartarus Lord. To answer your question, probably over a million spread across the underworld, and hundreds of million more spawn.

Shit... A-And how far do you think we’ll need to go? She proceeded down the black tunnel, avoiding more groups of chaotic spawn as she trekked. It seemed like they never ended. How far below the ground was she? How deep was that lord she pissed off?

Som, the Steps of Kronos are seven kiloponi high, and the deepest part is nearly a hundred-twenty below the surface.

“Buck!” she called out into the halls, her voice echoing down them, a nearby screech of–

Her ears popped in a gush of blood at the pitch and volume, soul-sight searching until the thing came into view. It was a rounded quadruped, its body shrinking as it let out another screech into the air that cracked her bones and teeth at the sound. Somnia jumped around the corner, grabbing the smooth, leathery creature and slamming them into the ground into a pool of blood and viscera, her soul distorting as the death screech emitted from its remains.

Somnia moved back to the wall, putting her hoof on it to steady herself before throwing up all her new stomach acid and blood onto the obsidian rocks below. Why? Why here? What monster- Oh, yeah, Entropis. Bucking Entropis.

Somnia. We need to keep moving. The screech alerted its own Tartarus Lord to our location. I know it feels horrible, but this isn’t even the bad part.

T-T-Then what is?

Start walking. She did as ordered, making her way along the cavern walls until she sensed the lord, a beast resembling a gargantuan spider crashing through the tunnel up ahead. Scars ran deep along its bony legs, its torso the conglomeration of three pony bodies fused together, blending into one another with pulsing darkened veins between them. Its eyes settled on her, the fanged grin on all three of its heads growing.

hrew webcowh fjweotdpo bdsfsbiuq?

“BUCK OFF!” She charged it, grabbing one leg and tearing it from their body, them leaping back and spraying her with yellow and purple bile from its mouth. The migraine returned in full-force along with a near crippling amount of pain that consumed her physical body and mind. Somnia took several steps back as she healed, it jumping forward and impaling her with one of its legs, throwing her down the tunnel with a burst of sound to impact another stone wall, cracking it before she fell to the ground limp.

Ow. Grar said to break her from the haze of pain she was going through. Can you get up? Somnia? Are you awake?

“Ugh...” She stood up, stumbling on her hooves as the lord returned, grabbing her to lift into the air. Every sense dulled, even soul-sight shot right before another massive spike of agony consumed her from the core outward. She screamed into the tunnels, feeling the chaotic energies seeping into her flesh to corrupt what it could. Somnia lashed out to break another leg, it dropping her before more acid sprayed against her body, again causing her to screech as it moved forward again, this time vomiting up even more onto her.

Not a single piece of flesh, bone, or spirit wasn’t in total, mind-shattering pain, her soul throbbing and body trembling as she tried fighting against passing out. Talons went around her, crunching into her form to carry her off with them, the raw juices from its grip sending her mind reeling against itself.

Still, she was healing in other parts of her, and once her right foreleg was able, she lurched to throw a punch into its face, getting it to drop her to the ground as its screech sent her into a huddled ball. It was too much. Coming here was a mistake. Please make it stop. Please. P-Please... G-Grar? C-Can you hear me?

The beast moved to grab her again, this time Somnia swinging her hoof to shatter one head, the lord stumbling back as she got to her hooves. B-Buck you. Buck everything y-you stand for, a-and for every pony you’ve ever hurt! Her teeth gritted together as she turned her hate-filled eyes from the purple-coated rock to see the head on the lord reform, along with the legs she broke, with even more extending from its front segment.

Her shaking legs turned and ran as far and fast as she could, passing into a web-filled chamber with cocoons leaking blood dripping from above. One hoof touched a web, getting her to stumble over as it stuck in place, sending her over herself to get one on her back as she flipped over. Her pulling did nothing, not even with her strength. Her mind let out a transmutation of the material, turning it into sticky sand, but she couldn’t get it off her entirely.

Hundreds of spiders from the size of a cockroach to pony-sized ones began emerging from their webs. Her eyes glazed along the black and red carapaces, breathing getting shallow before the first jumped. She tried opening her mouth to say something, but the beast made impact a half-second later; it biting into her and disintegrating a leg off her body and onto the ground.

She grabbed its head and slammed it into the ground with a burst of blue that boiled her very fur and hide to slog off onto the reddened rock below, a dozen more jumping at her.

Her hoof transmuted the first to sand as the next made impact with her to send her tumbling over, her hoof coming down to pierce straight through the next’s body and into the rock below. The next two shot webs at her that coated her side, again transmuted into a glue-like sand that fell to the floor. She turned to leap back at them, grabbing one to lift high into the air before slamming it down on the other, turning and bolting from the chamber.

Her muscles ached, even as her leg... didn’t reform. Spiders were crawling all over her, biting every part of her they could and numbing sensation. A burst of transmutation energy killed them off as she leapt forward and repeated the process. Her hooves took her deep into the tunnels until she arrived at a dark, empty chamber, and taking a moment lay down next to one of the glowing crystals to shiver and shake as her leg restoring sent entire waves of pulsating throbs to her mind.

The pain still made her tremble without an end in sight, every ache still gnawing at her. G-Grar?

S-Som. W-We need... We need to get out of here. His weak voice brought out a massive surge of anxiety to spike through her chest.

W-Wait! You felt a-all that?!

This is Tartarus. I bucking hate this place. That fact you’re surviving at all is a bucking miracle.

Somnia clutched at her core body, still feeling the talons when they dug inside her. It didn’t... Her eyes widened as she realized, transmuting her insides to sand then back to how they were, what flesh that reformed corrupting in an instant. Eggs... It implanted her with BUCKING EGGS!

W-Why didn’t you t-tell me this was Tartarus?

You saw what Entropis did to Excalicorn. You knew how bad it was. Just because he isn’t around to make more Tartarus Lords doesn’t mean that those that exist here get any weaker.

B-Buck me. P-Please tell me I’m not going to g-get raped by tentacles.

I-I’m sorry. I can’t.

After several minutes, or rather, three hours of sitting still to readjust, she stood back up to walk down the tunnels. The energies didn’t get any better, the ambient field getting thicker as she went. Fog started appearing in the tunnels to fill her physical vision. Her trek encountered the occasional drying lava pool, a patrol or three of fleshy chaotic spawn, chambers with more damn spiders, and then what she was looking for.

As she stepped out onto the balcony, she took a deep breath in. No less than seven Tartarus Lords were in her sight down below, fighting a gargantuan battle with thousands of spawn across a lake of pitch-black water and blood-soaked stone. Hundreds of other balconies poked into the chamber along the edges, an entire city capable of being fit inside the lake area alone. And at the far end, a bastion built into the rock with hundreds of flying spawn surrounding it.

Good news: We’re near the Steps of Kronos by a few hundred kiloponi. Bad news? It’s through that bastion, and if it still has what it had before, there should be a breeder lord inside that structure.

“H-How far are we from it, exactly?” She planted her hooves and leapt up to another balcony, grabbing the screecher before they could make a noise and throwing them off to tumble below, sending shivers all along her spine as it let loose its attack.

There’s another chamber on the other side of there. You will need to take the stone ruins to yet another couple of chambers and then cross paths with a Tartarus Lord that is less active than their brethren, assuming they are still alive.

“A-And how do you know this?” Another leap onto an empty balcony even higher up.

The Harmonic Empire mapped most of Tartarus over the dozens of millennia it’s been contained, and I’ve been here. Where do you think we mined soulsand from? Biwandiso Mine IS Tartarus, just a developed part where we maintained a presence.

Somnia kept up her leaps, every so often grabbing a chaotic spawn to throw off, including a breeder that was watching the battle down below while masturbating itself. But she eventually had to make a choice. The last balcony she got to turned a corner, and the bastion was across the chasm. Her grin turned up as she cleared her throat. “HEY! OVER HERE! COME AND GET ME YOU DUMB BIRDS!”

A sizable portion of the flock broke off to head for her, that grin twitching away as she realized... they were pretty damn big. Like twice the size of Celestia big. The first she leapt at broke with the impact, her hooves pushing off of them to grab onto the bleeding-sharp spikes that served as talons of another. She kept climbing the rocky outcroppings of the beast until she got on top. The birds had flown back, seeming to have forgotten about her, carrying her close to her destination.

She grabbed a hold of the back of the creature’s head, turning it in the direction she wanted as it struggled. After some resistance, it eventually turned over, Somnia dropping from it to land on one of the bleeding bricks that made up a balcony to the palace. Her heart pounded away as she entered inside, dreading to–

Tentacles wrapped around her legs, a mass of tendrils with a massive, toothy mouth coming around from behind to stare her down even as she shook. Blood dripped from its fangs, a low growl emitting for her ears to hear.

uoneacuh qhonqerodfh aoherooaw.

Somnia tried pulling her hooves free, finding it was much stronger than the other one and able to overpower even her full strength. She closed her tearing eyes as she felt the tendrils move closer. But it didn’t come, instead the creature only cocooning them around her to carry her off deeper.

Shit. This is bad.

No bucking shit!

She tried again to break free, getting one of her hooves to transmute a tentacle. The beast briefly let go of her, which is when she punched straight through the slimy appendages blocking her vision. It let go fully before it forced her to the floor, four tentacles going for her rear and forcing themselves inside her ass and vagina. Her wings extended at the sensation, hoof moving to grab the tentacles to pull them free from her, and tearing them straight from the monster’s body.

Another set impacted her to send her into the wall, breaking every bone as it pinned her down, three going for her vagina and one for her anus, another two for her mouth, forcing it to stay open as one made its way down her throat and into her stomach. Its mouth moved over her belly, chewing in for more to enter, her tears rolling down her face as her entire body trembled. The writhing inside her only got worse with it ejaculating into every piece of her, filling her mind with all that happened.

Except this time she could fight back. She tried her best to redirect every thought away from what was happening, even emotion, yet the corrupting energies forced the memories to the surface. Every single day played out before her, every time a merc thrust into her body and beat her to the ground. Her trembling form couldn’t stop the tears, all thoughts prioritizing escape.

She could feel its slime filling her, its vile cum leaking from her marehood and anus to the ground below. Her hooves pinned, mouth unable to be closed due to the leathery slime tentacles harder than solid rock, and body being ravaged from four holes. With one last push, she freed a hoof and grabbed its chitinous head, pulling free a plate with a sickening snap, unleashing a blistering scream into the bleeding halls of the bastion.

Its head moved back for only a moment, at which point she grabbed the tentacles on her other forehoof to transmute it free, both now grabbing the ones inside her lower-half. She pulled herself along it as the tendrils pulsed inside her, filling her with more of its semen and juices, yet she kept going. It tried grabbing her with other tendrils, ones she grabbed and tore off as soon as they touched her.

And then she got to the body. With one hoof, she plunged in through the plates and into its flesh, transmuting everything she could to the strongest acid she knew of. Its screech rippled the very air, letting go of her back-legs, at which point she forced them down on the tentacles currently inside her, pulling them free.

She grabbed two tentacles within her mouth and tore them off and down onto the floor, impacting the teeth of its jaw with her hoof to knock more free. It wrapped its tendrils around her, Somnia spinning with them to buck it directly in the center of its single eye, getting it to let go. The moment she hit the ground, she took off running.

She took a deep breath in as she looked upon the fortress stretching from the lava below to the spiky ceiling above. The aches never went away. After three days of getting lost, getting attacked, and feeling the anxiety coursing through her every second of every day, all she wanted to do was go home and go to bed.

When we get out, I’m dumping all these memories away into their own section and forgetting about them.

Same here, Som. Same here...

According to Grar, this was the last fortress in her path. The last two chambers she ‘explored’ had junk lying around, as if ponies over millennia just teleported their garbage into... Wait, that would explain why Equestria doesn’t have landfills. Bucking hypocrites! ‘Don’t do any magic related to Tartarus while we open holes to dump our crap into it.’ There was literal crap too, the sewage still giving a foul taste in her mouth.

Somnia positioned her hooves and made the leap to the next rocky outcropping, jumping from one to another until she got to the lava lake, at which point she jumped down. She landed on a cooled section of rock before catapulting herself to the next, all the way until she embedded her hooves into the stones. Tartarus was harder than regular rock. It healed itself, changed tunnels on a whim, filled with dangers from spawn to lords, but this was it.

Once she got to a window, she climbed inside and took a moment to breathe. So close, yet there was still a seven kiloponi hike ahead of her. Tartarus was an important lesson, that was for certain. She’s not invincible, she’s not all-powerful. Couldn’t stop the first Tartarus Lord from showing up and chasing her, the second from attempting to use her as a host, or from being raped a-again–

No, stop. She shut her eyes, letting out a sob, hooves covering those eyes as they produced more tears. Four days... No sleep, little rest, not a single friendly face or soul anywhere in the entire underground except Grar. How many times did she break down crying since being violated? A dozen in four days? Why is this her life?

Yet, it wasn’t the end. She fought back. The Tartarus Lord that raped her would die one day by her will, and it’s not like it hurt her body with any permanence, unlike the mercenaries.

With one last sniffle, she got up and walked down the halls. While she wanted to run, the act of changing her time perception also alerted other entities to where she was, as she found out when she got swarmed by a thousand spawn sent by a war-lord. Somnia pushed open the door to a chamber, taking a deep breath in. No lord, and... is that a foal? She squinted at the little foal floating in the air, suspended inside some sort of stasis trap. They were young, not even a year old from their size.

Was it an experiment? She checked the rest of the chamber, finding a bunch of old junk from the scrap heaps. No. Were they thrown out?! Her muzzle scrunched up as she searched the garbage, finding a cloth sack with... a light enough stain. She gave it one sniff and cringed. Semen. Somnia returned to the stasis pod and looked it up and down before punching straight through, the field falling as it short-circuited.

She slowed time to jump up and grab the foal into the bag, putting them onto her back with both her wings extended to hold them in place. After securing the bag around her neck and between her wings, her hooves took her through the halls, avoiding her temporal abilities to give away her position anymore and to make sure the foal was fine. Green and orange, earthlite, colt... Why? Why would somepony throw out their own baby? What sick, twisted parent would do such a thing?

She pushed open another set of doors to reveal an ashy wasteland with a gargantuan set of white metarock spiral stairs at the other end. Her hooves pushed her through the ash that covered her from the mouth down, grateful it protected the foal from the worst of it, unlike her, covering everything from her mane to the bag to her wings. The taste of shit at least got out of her mouth to be replaced by the dust, and it no doubt would get the rest of the webbing off her from day three’s spider nest cocooning.

Somnia took a deep breath once she reached the stairs, stepping up onto them and carrying her... What was he to her? Prize? Ward? Little baby angel?

Son? Her eyes watered up as she marched up the steps. Son sounded right. He was unwanted by his parents, left to die in a place as horrible as Tartarus. Nopony was looking out for him. He could have been experimented on or worse, but now...

The tears rolled down her cheeks as she kept her pace going. The thoughts kept looping back in on themselves, preventing her from letting go. She always wanted a foal of her own... Did it matter if blood related them to her? He... H-He could call her mommy and give her hugs, and she would always be there for him, no matter what. Her sweet baby colt. But that would have to wait. Her mom and dad wouldn’t let her take care of a foal no matter how much she asked, at least if it wasn’t forced on them by her getting pregnant.

Somnia went up two kiloponi before reaching a landing, her halfhearted smile ticking up at the sight. A three-headed machine towered above her, faced toward what it guards against. The C.E.R.B.E.R.U.S. unit assigned to this facility. Chaotic Entrapment, Repudiation, and Bypass Emergent Resource Unit Secretary. Standing fifty poni high, with a white exoskeleton and three canine-looking heads of pure engineering superiority, the guardian stood watch to prevent chaotic entities from harming the surface.

She knew she was already free of taint. It was something Grar told her to work on earlier that day, and the foal didn’t seem to be tainted at all from what she could sense.

Only one way to know for certain. Somnia moved forward and under the legs of the hound. It didn’t even move, yet she could sense the aura it emitted rippling over her in rapid waves, sending chills down every part of her. Magic and technology made into one grand force to surpass any other.

I wonder if the units in Excalicorn and the Chillrend Mountains are still functional.

I wouldn’t know, but Excalion might.

Grar stayed quiet most of the way back up. When she finally started making her way past the black stone pillars that supported the ‘cells,’ he asked one last thing of her.

What are you planning to do with the foal?

I... I think I’ll adopt him when I’m old enough.

He kept quiet a moment. I think that’s a wonderful idea. You’ll be a great mom, Somnia.

Thanks, Grar. I appreciate it.

She passed by the empty cells toward where she heard two ponies talking, one getting a cringe out of her. Luna. Wonderful...

As she stepped up, her frown stayed focused behind the princess’ back.

“Likely story...” The centaur in the cage tilted his head to peer past Luna, his brow furrowing. “And who would this be?”

Turning, Luna saw the ash covered filly with a scowl on her face and a bag slung over her back.

“Somnia, so glad of you to join us.”