The Only Painless Path

Luna hadn’t seen Ivangir in at least four days. She was of course happy about this, but the break in routine worried her. She had spent the days since he lost consciousness at the end of his cock in what she assumed was a macabre stable for mares where her peers were kept to await their transfer to a permanent owner. What her purpose there was, Luna did not know. She already had a “master” so being there made no sense to her. Despite the uncertainty, being there had afforded Luna the opportunity to speak with other mares; many of whom were captives from the recent defeat of Twilight Sparkle’s resistance. These mares were utterly devoid of hope; their loss in the Everfree had broken their spirits. Seeing yet another former princess reduced to a sex slave didnt do much to improve their condition but Luna could do nothing about that, she did not choose to be there.

Fortunately some of the mares were more resilient to the caribou’s mental attacks. They told Luna of the outside world before their enslavement and from their patches of stories she sewed together a quilt of truth. She learned of the utter domination of Equestrian society by the caribou, of the obviously magical influence they extruded onto the stallions and the beginnings of their conquests of the bordering lands. The news would horrify her; apparently their excursions had been almost complete successes besides one recent failure so famous that even the mares knew of it, yet not once would she let it weaken her resolve to resist. The fact that her stay there had induced the longest period of time she’d gone without a rape since her capture didn’t dampen her spirits either.

However, on that fourth day she once more heard the worst sound she ever had: the voice of her hated violator, Ivangir. The cursed caribou burst into the hall of the stable with an air of hateful purpose about him. Scanning the large, open room with his piercing gaze left every mare there frozen in fear; the rumors of his cruelty had spread to all corners of society. Finally he spotted Luna and in an instant he began marching towards her. His former slave felt fear threaten to take control before she quickly steeled herself against her emotions. If she was to return to his torment, she would do it with as much dignity as her position could afford. Miraculously, she didn’t need any of that bravado as a caribou guard stepped in front of her rapist before he reached the halfway mark. Ivangir towered even over the other caribou yet the guard stood firm at least long enough for his captain to arrive on the scene.

“Lord Ivangir! I have orders to prevent you from accessing the Moon Slut, please cease your actions and exit the premises!”
Ivangir turned towards the captain and again attempted to intimidate him with his superior stature yet once more the guard held fast.

“You are nothing to me, whelp, and you cannot keep me from my female!”

“Usually I would agree with you my lord, but my orders are directly from his highness.”

“You think I don’t know that? The king isn’t here now though is he? So step out of the way and let me take my cunt!”

“We both know she is no longer yours.”
At this sentence their conversation quickly cut out of Luna’s mind. All she could think of was the fact that it seemed she’d be free of the hell Ivangir had made for her. It mattered not where she would go from here, Ivangir was the worst of the worst and she had survived, she silently thanked the caribou monarch for freeing her from his grasp.

She then immediately mentally kicked herself for even thinking that, and continued to enjoy her new reality.
“... but like I have already said, the orders came directly from-“

“The king isn’t here now, Dainn is-“

“Right here, Ivangir”
At once all heads in the room turned towards the powerful, authoritative voice of the caribou king himself. Dainn walked towards Ivangir with the confidence only a being of his station could hold. Every step carried with it grace and power and although the guards had not lost their composure against Ivangir’s height and build, Dainn looked up to the towering caribou as if he was dirt under his feet.
“And, since apparently my decrees only matter where I am present, that would mean that you are required to leave.”
His voice was calm yet the threatening tone coating his words was intentionally obvious, despite this Ivangir attempted to continue.

“You cannot take a female from me! Never in our history, especially not to a lord member of the council, and especially not to give her to some lowborn whelp who-“

“Completely succeeded where you failed? Saved armies you had led to certain doom? Not only almost single-handedly toppled the Zebrican Empire but also captured the last of the alicorns? Tell me what else has he done, Ivangir?”

For the first time since she had known him, Luna saw Ivangir falter and it warmed her entire being.
“He does not deserve to steal my female.”

“He deserves a reward and that was his choice.”

“But why mine damnit!”

“Because you deserve to be punished, you thick-headed oaf!”

“I did nothing but serve you and our nation!”

“You led hundreds of good caribou to their deaths, you humiliated our race at the hands of nothing more than striped ponies, you almost cost us the war and you did it all because you disobeyed direct orders!”

“Good commanders disobey orders sometimes.”

“You’re obviously not a good commander.”
With that Ivangir and Dainn stared deep into each other’s eyes. The tension between them grew and grew and Luna expected the taller caribou to continue, yet finally he relented, and stormed out of the hall in shame. Unfortunately for Luna her suffering was nowhere near over. The king turned to her and began walking towards her cage. In an instant she was thrown onto the ground and as if Ivangir had never left, the king grabbed her hair and hoisted her into the air, legs dangling off the ground, to bring her head level with him.

“Do not think that his departure is synonymous with your freedom, mare. I doubt your new master will be much more gentle based on his battlefield reputation.”
In hindsight Luna realized that what she did next was the most idiotic thing she could have done but in the moment all she could think about was the symbol of her race’s oppression holding her in the air to taunt her.

So Luna spit at the king's face.

He stared at her, those dark eyes penetrating her very being turning mere moments into an eternity. Despite her action neither of the guards moved, both too shocked to react within that stretch of frozen time. Then in an instant it collapsed as Dainn slammed her into the ground with enough force to knock the wind from her lungs. Scrambling for air and escape, Luna had no time to react to the sharp kick he delivered to her ribs further hindering her ability to breathe. He kicked her again and again and despite the pain she could not scream til she drew a breath - a task which was proving almost impossible for her at the moment. Dainn then knelt down and took her throat in one powerful hand, pinning her to the ground and halting all flow of oxygen to her lungs. Despite her constantly echoing the sentiment that death was a preferable alternative to this life, being held down like she now was awoke a primal fear in her mind. She fought like an animal, desperately trying to remove the king’s hand from her neck yet for all the scratching and clawing his limb did not budge an inch as he spoke in a furious yet controlled tone.
“Insolent cur, your sheer ignorance is outstanding. How you managed to conclude that what you just did would end positively for you I shall never know, but now you receive the punishment due to a wretched whore such as yourself.” Finally letting her go Dainn rose to his feet leaving Luna coughing and sputtering while desperately trying to breathe in any amount of air. “I’m going to Durnir’s workshop, prepare this cunt and then bring her to me immediately” he ordered the guards. They quickly saluted their monarch as he stomped out and then converged upon their prey.

Neither spoke a word as the junior guard draped Luna over his shoulder and trailed his superior into a back room. Luna was unable to resist now being too weak to move her limbs more than a few inches at most. She was powerless to stop the guards as they laid her on a table and stuffed her anus and marehood with plugs that immediately awoke a previously nonexistent heat within the alicorn. The guard captain then inserted a gag into her mouth in the shape of a large cock, reaching down her throat and gagging her while the other attached a leash to her collar. She was unceremoniously shoved off the table as the younger guard tried to force her to crawl behind him yet even if she had wanted to she felt far too weak to move. As a result of her inability to move she spent a majority of the trek to wherever they were taking her being dragged across the ground. Unluckily for her they had to pass over the dirt paths of the palace grounds, brutally exposing her to being dragged over gravel that scraped through her fur and into her skin.

As they approached the sizable “workshop” an ear-piercing scream of pain rang out. The sound of a mare enduring some unimaginable torment stabbed into Luna’s ears instilling within her a sense of fear that she could no longer control. Entering the building greeted the trio with the sight of a large, yet older looking caribou standing over a sobbing earth pony mare locked in some kind of metal holding device. Luna’s eyes then wandered onto the blemish on the mare’s yellow coat: antlers burned into her thigh completely obscuring her cutie mark freshly added by the brand in the caribou’s hand. Even with the penis gag shoved down her throat Luna screamed, her stifled sounds catching the attention of the brand-wielding stag. He turned his face to her and immediately his eyes lit up with excitement.

“Ah, this is the bitch then your highness?”
As if on cue Dainn stepped out from a back room to join the visual torment Luna was receiving.

“There she is Durnir. You two, lock her into one of the slots!”

The command was acted on immediately but Luna found new strength within her and struggled with every part of her body to prevent it from being followed. Kicking and screaming she was once more dragged across the rough floor and hoisted into the metal frame. The strength of the two guards eventually rendered her struggling obsolete. She was locked face down and ass up with the rings piercing her nipples attached to the bottom of the contraption, stretching her breasts and completely exposing her flanks to the devastating touch of the iron. The older caribou, Durnir, walked behind her holding the wretched piece of metal while Dainn knelt in front of her head. The king slowly removed the gag from her mouth before speaking. “Do you want to say anything to your king, cunt? Perhaps an apology for your misbehavior?”

Luna just glared at him, refusing to reward him with an answer.

Dainn just smirked and rose to his feet, turning to a nearby shelf to grab a multi-thonged whip. The sizzle of the branding iron being heated on hot coals added to the feeling of dread caused by the caribou king walking around Luna with said whip.
“You are such an amusing creature. I can see why Ivangir wanted to keep you so badly. He ended his sentence with a sharp crack of the whip against Luna’s back causing her to flinch but left her surprised with its lack of force. He then removed all doubts of his strength with a far more painful strike to the same spot which forced a gasp from Luna’s mouth.

Luna began squirming from the uncomfortable feeling in her nethers as Dainn struck her again on her back, then on her flanks, then again and again all over her body. She finally could no longer take it silently and began to yelp with each strike. More and more lashes were landed on her body, each one filled with more pure fury than the last. Luna’s eyes began to fill with tears just as they seemed to stop and the king’s voice now thundered in her ears.
“Has your mind finally succumbed to its natural state?” Luna’s lack of a response prompted him to continue, “Very well, I don’t much care whether or not you accept your fate, it is your fate nonetheless.” With that he gestured to the old blacksmith who brought the iron up from its resting place over the flame with him to where the alicorn was restrained.

Luna was unable to see the bull as the touch of burning metal met her right flank. The iron was pressed into her flesh as if Durnir meant to ram it through her body. She screamed. She screamed a soul-piercing scream for the first time since she had been captured. All the pain inflicted on her was nothing compared to the overwhelming agony in her flank. Her eyes filled with involuntary tears, all feeling in her body became numb besides that burning torment; it completely took over her mind. After what seemed to her an eternity the iron was removed, leaving her to go limp in her bonds. For a while all that was heard was Luna’s forced, labored breathing, the rest of the world was drowned out of her mind. Then the second iron was applied. Screaming even louder than before, Luna tried with all her might to get away from the now familiar torture but like all her attempts it was without success. When the second brand was removed she just laid there motionless.

Dainn’s voice cut through the silence “Excellent work as always, Durnir but I have one last request.”

“Anything your Highness.”

“I’d like one more brand, just to remind this cunt of why it’s unwise to disrespect her betters. I’m thinking right above her tail?”
Hearing his request set Luna’s mind ablaze. Instantly her thoughts raced, the terrible pain fresh in her mind such an influencing force that eventually her lips and tongue - fatigued from screaming - tried to speak.

“plse…”

No more than a whisper was uttered yet as soon as it was Dainn reacted, “What was that, mare?”

Luna hated herself for every next word that left her mouth, “Mm srry.”

Dainn smiled, this was completely unexpected, yet he reveled in his captive finally showing signs of cracking, yet he could not reward her for this; she had insulted him gravely and she needed to know that her actions brought with them painful consequences.

“Very good. Durnir, get the brand ready.”
Luna began sobbing. She couldn’t take another moment of that horrendous pain. She pleaded to deaf ears; the caribou monarch cared not for her pain. The sizzling of the brand on hot coals ended with its removal from the heat. The grizzled old blacksmith walked over to her, each step a gong heralding her doom. Then the door opened, halting all proceedings.

The voice of a caribou rang out, younger than Dainn and Ivangir but still mature and full of power, “My liege, I apologize, I was told that my new female was here.”
Dainn turned to him, “Alseric! Glad to see you’ve arrived! She is, Durnir was punishing her for a grievous mistake but she is all yours by right.” Luna heard what seemed to be her new master step towards her before continuing.

“Your Highness, I mean no disrespect but I requested that she remain unmarked, it was my foremost request if I recall correctly.”
“It was, but some actions require severe reaction, Durnir?”

The old bull took the final step towards the immobile alicorn when Aleric once again objected, “My King, she is my property. It is not proper that you mark her like this. I mean no disrespect but I feel as though I’ve earned at least this much.”

Luna silently prayed for her apparent rescuer to win this duel of words.

“You’ve earned one of the finest cunts in the kingdom, and should be content with that. But you are correct, Durnir, leave the iron, he may take his prize.”

In a matter of moments Luna felt the bonds on her body begin to loosen. The tears that had been silently falling from her eyes now increased in volume, but they became tears of utter relief. Her muscles were so weak when the bonds were completely removed that she collapsed onto the ground and didn’t protest at all when the younger caribou lifted her into his arms, carrying her like a new bride. A short “Thank you, Your Highness” was uttered before she was carried out of the workshop and towards the palace. The heightened emotion and pain caused the broken and battered Luna to cling to her savior with all the strength she could muster.