Check in One

by JinxTJL

Rating: teen
Tags: Gore, Violence, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Death, Alternate Universe, Drama, Cozy Glow, Starlight Glimmer
Length: 12689

Guidance Counselor Starlight's been missing for a while, now. Golly, I hope they find her soon!

At first, no one had been all that worried. Annoyed, maybe, but it wasn't the first time she'd taken off without saying anything. All her friends just assumed she'd gone off to visit her old village, and that was that. She'd be back soon.

After a few days, Headmare Twilight left to check on her. When she came back, she said the ponies in Our Town hadn't seen Counselor Starlight since last month. That's when everyone started to get worried. Word got out. Ponies started to ask around.

It hadn't been until five days had passed that everycreature started looking for her.

Gosh, if only they'd started sooner, they might've been able to find her!

---------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, everyone! I'm- aw, who cares! This is a contest story! You don't need to know who I am or what I write; all you need to know is that this story was written for the Cozy Glow Short Story Contest #4! This was written for the 'Cozy's got a secret' prompt, and the genre/category is black. Grim. Dark. Awful stuff ahead.

I wrote an entry for... the contest before last, I think, right around the time that I started writing. Now, I'd like to say that I'm probably a bit better at my avocation by this point, but my intrusive thoughts won't let me! I'm gonna do my best, but I don't think I'll be able to top my last submission! :twilightsheepish:

Afterthought: I procrastinated. I don't think this is as good. Shrug.

Anyways, be suitably warned of the content within this story! Gore, torture, and a heartless little filly doing the most awful things with a smile on her face ahead! I mean it. This is torture for the sheer sake of it.

We're going grimdark, folks! That is: Grim, Dark. Last warning!

Special thanks to an anonymous friend of mine who I like to bounce ideas for short stories off of! My mind's a swirling vortex of entropy, and without their occasional advice, this story would've been a lot blander!

Also, I stole an image from someone named vanillaghosties for the cover.

Published 2023-09-25 14:10:00 UTC
Last updated 2023-09-25 14:10:00 UTC

Castling

In the grand palace of learning devoted to the unlikely bonds between each and every creature on Equus, down the empty halls and past the dying setting sun flitting in through the windows, there sat a door slightly ajar at the end of a wing unlike the rest. Where each other wing of the School of Friendship bore the pride of a sole dedication to a touted Element of the highest virtue, this wing in the dusty back corner of the main hall held no such allegiance.

Harmony had a curfew, but the halls of the Guidance wing were open as long as its Counselor was in the building.

And this was her last appointment of the day.

For as many doors amidst the twists and turns that led to special rooms for specialized therapy there were, the main office of the guidance counselor stood starkly out. It held no insignia, nor shiny plaque or adornment that spoke of its purpose; this office at the head of the hall kept a clean, tidy entrance with a simple hanging card on the door that read 'Welcome' in flowery script.

As it was then, its occupant was as welcome as any other. The counselor's office was a place of trust. A place of peace and forgiveness.

A place of vulnerability.

~~----------~~ Four days later. ~~----------~~

The Headmare's office was a massive, uncomfortably open room. A stern, cold place with a thin rug and a high ceiling that had seen more than its fair share of uncompromised business. It was organized. It was immaculate. It was orderly.

As was the mare that sat behind the intimidatingly large desk at its back. Framed with a shining halo by the panning light of the room-height window she sat in front of, her hooves calmly crossed over the sturdy structure's surface, she seemed the perfect picture of authority. Of that virtue that she represented.

All but the cold frown she wore. The shadow crossed over her tight, tense expression.

Dwarfing the little chair set before it, upon which sat a smiling pegasus filly.

The mare spoke. Quietly, yet startlingly chilly, she asked the filly a question. Intent and hostile.

The filly, still smiling, gave a giggling laugh and a fully inflected response. Innocuous and cute.

The mare, at once seeming obviously frustrated, leaned forward, speaking again in terse response.

Another question.

The filly, all the same, responded much the same.

Another lie.

The mare's hoof came down on her desk—hard. Hard enough that the wood, solid and sturdy as was the friend who had gifted it to her, audibly cracked from somewhere within its unflinching veneer. An organized collection of pens toppled and spilled onto the floor. The walls seemed to tremble.

Yet the filly did not flinch. She only continued to smile, staring up at the mare sagging into her desk, who even then seemed to struggle just to reel her huffing breaths in. For anypony else, it may have been concerning to see the mare so distraught, edging so grievously close to the precipice of mania.

The filly only stared, her crimson eyes wide and alert. Her ears lazily perked. Her hooves laid flat on the chair. Her wings settled motionless on her back. Her posture eased and comfortable.

A perpetual smile on her dimpled cheeks.

Her every muscle tense and ready to bolt.

~~----------~~ Four days earlier. ~~----------~~

The counselor's office was a cramped, cluttered affair. A warm, comforting place that kept a perpetual haze of heady, lived-in solitude. An eccentric's room with as many worthless knickknacks as there were treasured memories mounted on the walls. Kites of all shapes hung from the ceiling on twine. Three glassware cabinets displayed a colorful array of baubles and picture frames. Rolled-up sheets of paper collected like trash under an overflowing scroll rack.

The room was gaudy and utterly sincere, as was the mare that sat behind the stout, stained desk at its back. She kept one hoof on her cheek as she yawned mouthily, blinking blearily even as she gestured towards the sofa that sat just before her desk.

A sofa which a smiling pegasus filly soon found to be nearly insufferably plush and comfy.

But of course, this wasn't the filly's first time on the couch. Far from her first, as evidenced by her hoof instinctively wandering to work its edge into a ratty hole in the cover as she shrugged her saddlebag off.

No, it had been many times that the filly had taken a seat there. Many times in a long series of meetings, all of which began in the very same way as the pinkish mare behind the desk murmured out a sleepy, half slurred greeting.

A greeting which the smiling filly with the dimpled cheeks would reciprocate by rote with the exact same words. The same tone. The same inflection.

Every time.

"Thanks for seeing me today, Miss Starlight! I think I've been doing better, lately!"

~~----------~~ Four days later. ~~----------~~

The door shut behind her with a none-too-subtle bang. A parting gesture from a mare too worried to know any better, though smart enough to direct it in the right direction.

Too smart for her own good.

One way or the other, it didn't matter all that much. After all, she was on the other side of the door now, wasn't she?

Scot-free.

In an empty hall at the end of the Magic wing, the nexus of the silent building, the filly stood with her haunches against the massive, imposing door of the Headmare's office. Left staring blankly forward with a pleasant little smile carved into her chubby cheeks, almost accusing for how dead-pan it seemed. Very near to a glare, at second glance.

Indeed, for every second that she stood in silence, smiling beatifically without a seeming care in the world, her wide, unblinking stare looked to all the world more and more like a hateful, seething grimace.

Furious.

Murderous.

Until the very moment that a purr rose from her chest.

A tinkling, intoxicating hum that crawled into her throat on a chilling rumble that shook her body as it bloomed, and as her breath began to lilt, the purr lost its edge and began to cycle into a giggle. Short, peaky, rolling giggles that filled the silent hallways with growing echoes, gaining in pitch for every breath for every eternity it went on, rebounding and redoubling until the self-sustained chorus of voices seemed deafening.

For that moment, despite the seclusion of its students during the current crisis, the School of Friendship was full of laughter once again.

Until it stopped short. Cut quiet, at once.

The filly went silent, her eyes still stuck on the single spot from where they hadn't strayed an inch since she'd left the room. Not as her entire body had shaken with laughter had she moved, nor had her face even twitched, carved and hollowed out by an empty half-circle of a grin.

She never took her eyes off the adjacent wall, where a glossy picture of seven smiling friends hung.

Then she turned and left, cantering away from the door to Headmare Twilight's office without a second glance back, leaving the cheerful picture by itself in the empty hallway. A proudly displayed photo of better times which had, for a single moment, shown in its reflection the eerie shadow of a demon.

A demon whose face had remained a cruel, jagged smile even as its voice tore with howling laughter.

A demon whose immaculate blue bobs of her curled mane bounced along with her gait, as with every step on her journey through the peripheral-blurred halls of the lifeless school, her smile only grew.

When the hallway split, she took a right, towards the library.

~~----------~~ Four days earlier. ~~----------~~

The door shut behind her with a quiet, pleasing click, kind courtesy of the mare standing aside the entrance, smiling down at her with a tired, yet fond glimmer in her sunken eyes. Her horn snuffed as she turned and trotted across the room, gesturing the filly towards a green couch across from the desk she circled, from the back of which she pulled a soft looking sitting room chair.

The mare and the filly both took their seats, sharing wide smiles as they settled into the borderline uncomfortably plush furniture. The filly undid a buckle on the saddlebag she wore and slid it off to the side of the couch, while the mare at the desk brushed a plate of stale candy to one of its cluttered corners, pulling an unseen drawer out with a flourish of magic and producing two mugs.

As she did, she raised her baggy gaze to the filly across from her and warmly murmured a quiet greeting. "So, how are you doing today, Cozy?"

The filly, crimson eyes wide and trained on the mare's mana-wreathed horn as a pitcher picked itself up from a table at the wall and carried towards the desk, kept her ever-present smile wide and glowing as she perked and cheerily raised her voice to respond. "Thanks for seeing me today, Miss Starlight! I think I've been doing better, lately!"

The mare chuckled wanly, dropping her gaze for a moment as the pitcher she held upturned and filled one mug, then the other. "I tell you every time, Cozy. You don't have to thank me for these meetings." The pitcher flew back to its place as two other drawers at the desk slid open, freeing two spoons from one and two paper packets from another. The mare raised her gaze, lidded with humor, back to the attentive filly. "We're here for you, after all. I should be the one thanking you for opening up to me about what's troubling you."

As one packet then the other ripped open and spilled its crumbly brown contents into their respective mugs, each spoon found itself dipped into the stained water and began to stir while the filly let loose a lilting peal of laughter that she put a hoof to her cheek for. "Aw, I know, but I'm just real glad for everything you've helped me with!"

As the quiet tinkling of metal tapping against ceramic filled the air, the filly swerved her gaze up from the floor as the mare busied herself with stirring their drinks, once again watching the unicorn's horn intently as she breezily went on. "I've been understanding a lot more about the right and wrong ways to help since I started coming to you, and it's helped me to make a lot of new friends!"

The mare flashed her a small smile, and the filly dropped her eyes bashfully. The instinctive giggle rose and died in her throat as there was the quiet sound of mana thrumming to life in the air. She jerked her eyes up with a silent curse, and though it had only been a second, she found the drinks were suddenly steaming.

The spell had been cast and over with before she'd even begun to realize it was happening.

As it always was. That was how the counselor always did it.

The filly's breath quickened as she took a shallow swallow, while the mare looked back down to the mugs of cocoa and the spoons set themselves onto the edge of the nearby plate. She could hear her heart in her ears—loud, yet steady. Her blood was beginning to pump. Her fur was starting to itch.

There would never be a better time than now.

"Actually, speaking of, Miss Starlight, I got something for our cocoa, today!"

~~----------~~ Four days later. ~~----------~~

The library was a cavernous place, three levels high and wide enough to fit the innumerable compendiums of social studies that the Headmare had insisted upon. Ladders and stairs on every railing-bound floor each led to a world of their own; in ink-laden pages and across epics of written words on time-honored shelves spanning yards, for every subject that one wished to learn, one needed only to ask the staff for directions.

Today, the library was not empty. Today, the library only served as a passage.

Today, the ornate brass grate in the very far back corner was open.

But only for the moment after a pale-furred pegasus filly dropped into its depths, and a hoof cautiously slid it back into place.

And the library was empty once more.

As the dark halls of the school's catacombs yawned to swallow the filly whole.

The architecture of the halls beneath the school seemed as overgrown by shining, reflective walls of creeping crystal as a jungle in the deepest reaches of the world might, yet beneath the walls of solid minerals frozen over the forgotten infrastructure like sheets of ice, there remained hoof-made tunnels somehow precisely cut through the mighty internal structures of Equus. They stretched for miles, it seemed, and each circuitous turn to yet darker depths all but threatened to completely rob direction from the poor souls lost within the unknown maze.

The entire understructure had somehow skated past awareness all through the school's construction, and the filly had found that there wasn't a single reference to their existence on any plan anywhere. Official, unofficial, government; nopony had made a note of the caves, and nopony seemed to know they existed at all.

Only six creatures who had sworn never to venture their depths ever again.

As well as one pegasus filly who stalked their depths like a second home.

~~----------~~ Four days earlier. ~~----------~~

As the mare behind the desk began to offer one of the steaming mugs of cocoa forward, the filly whom she intended it for raised her hoof brightly into the air, stopping the mare short with a blink as the grinning foal reached over for her saddlebag.

"Actually, speaking of, Counselor Starlight, I got something for our cocoa, today!" As the mare watched curiously, the filly flipped the flap of her bag open, rifling about its interior for a moment in search of her prize. She brushed aside a cold metal ring and a compact coil of rope before the small baggies rustled against her frog, and she carefully fished them out.

The filly turned from her bag, flaunting the two plastic bags, each full to bursting with a bunch of small, smushed marshmallows. At once, the mare's sagging eyes lit up, nearly seeming energetic for once as she leaned gently over to peer at them. "Oh, Cozy! How thoughtful!"

The mare settled back, tilting her head aside with a warm smile. "I'm so glad you've taken my advice on social awareness and generosity to heart," she spoke as her horn lit, and with the filly holding them confidently forward, she plucked them into the air to bring them closer, turning to nod once more at the filly before she pried the bags open. "This is a very appropriate time for a gift, and since we both benefit, it's very warranted."

The filly stayed silent for a moment, watching intensely as the mare leaned in to sniff at the bags' contents, immediately finding a smile and a disarming giggle as the mare leaned back with a satisfied, if tired, smile. "Aw, gosh, I guess it's really starting to seem obvious to me!"

With the filly making a bashful show of rubbing a hoof behind her head, the mare busied herself with turning the little bags of marshmallows over into each cup of cocoa. One, then the other; continuing to giggle and murmur to herself, the filly watched with wide, crimson eyes as the puffy white sweets bobbed and swirled in the steaming cups.

Waiting with bated breath.

Smiling. Laughing. Watching.

~~----------~~ Four days later. ~~----------~~

Down the first turn into the second slanted hall from the left, past three tunnels on the left side and four on the right, and into the fourth on the left. Into the larger, circular cavern, squint into the dark for the pair of tunnels next to each other and take the right. Up the slope until the floor evened out into a hallway with a low ceiling, then take the first left.

The path opened into a long hallway full of even-spaced, thick wooden doors, each latched and patched with sheets of cold iron. It was the seventh on the left, as innocuous as any faceless door around it.

The door she had specially chosen.

The catacombs were like a maze; they were built and designed like one, with dead ends and pitfalls and things that lurked where she couldn't see that waited to jump out at her if she idled for too long. Those fools that had come before her had said they were just harmless illusions, but she didn't trust them.

Illusions conjured from her mind wouldn't stop at spooking her.

When she traveled the catacombs, she traveled quickly and discreetly. Peering around corners and darting through the halls with wide eyes scanning through the shadow and perked ears straining through the dark. Stopping at the sound of hoofsteps and doubling back to start over when she began to hear her name echoing off the crystal.

Above all, she never stared into the walls, but not for fear that something else would stare back at her.

For fear that she would stare back at herself.

Like a monster's reflection in a pool.

Underneath the most touted institution of virtue in the land, there lurked monsters the likes of which virtues had never dared to smile upon. What lay beneath was a boundless terror that had nearly driven those naïve children mad—a fear that crept on familiar hooves, that spoke in familiar tones, that howled like something out of a nightmare.

All too often, by the time she found herself before that closed wooden door amidst the many, she would discover her mouth drifting open and her throat rubbed raw.

The fading echoes of her own voice trailing across the crystal.

Drowned out by the scrape of wood creaking open, and the quietest sound of whimpers.

~~----------~~ Four days earlier. ~~----------~~

One mug of cocoa lifted into the air before the mare, while the other carried itself forward. The filly reached forward to accept it eagerly, staring unblinkingly as the mare before her returned to stirring her spoon through her drink. She followed every motion unflinchingly, watching unconcernedly as she took the mug between her hooves and sat back.

Around and around. The marshmallows dissolving into the sweet, chocolate drink.

None the wiser.

Smiling, she took a deep breath and focused on the mare's face. "I always like to put these marshmallows I get when I go into town in my cocoa, so I thought you might like to, too!" The mare gave a soft sound of appreciation as the filly hummed giddily, and quickly brought the mug up to her lips for a sip.

The as-yet undissolved marshmallows in her own drink bumped against her face while the hot, untainted cocoa rushed over her tongue, scalding her mouth fast enough that she couldn't pull away in time to stop herself from choking.

Gagging, the filly jerked her head away from the steaming mug, sticking her stinging tongue out in a grimace as the mare across from her sucked in a breath and raised a hoof forward. "Oh, Cozy, I'm sorry! Did I make it too hot?"

Shaking her head at the mare's concern, the filly forced a smile onto her face as she raised her watering eyes back up. "No! I just- golly," Resting her mug against her haunches, she coughed into a hoof, snorting backwash away as she did her best to seem forcefully nonplussed. "I guess I just got too excited. I shouldn't have tried to drink it yet."

Straightening with an apologetic smile, the filly cradled her steaming drink to her barrel. "I think I'll just wait a while so I don't go and burn myself again."

At that, the mare blinked, and a moment later, an easy smile broke out over her face, and she nodded. "I definitely know what that's like, but don't forget to slow down and savor the little things, Cozy." The warning was as lame and easy-going as the mare's smile as she raised her dripping spoon from the cocoa she held, the marshmallows fully dissolved into the drink, as the filly knew she liked it. "I'd be slow with mine too if I didn't know I needed the sugar rush!"

The filly laughed at the poor attempt at humor, while the guidance counselor merrily raised her mug and brought it to her lips.

One, two, three sips, then she set the cup back to her desk, licking her lips with a pleased hum.

And the filly found she no longer had to pretend to smile.

Author's Note

Chapter 1/2!

Both of the chapters of this story make up a greater narrative whole, but either can be enjoyed on their own for what they present! This one, in comparison to the other, is markedly tame, and could be construed for canon events for how Cozy kidnapped Starlight!

...Well, you know, if you disregard the actual method. It's fun to dream, right? :twilightsheepish:

Oh, and last warning: the next chapter is grimdark. Torture. Be warned.

Perpetual Check

The blissful silence of the crystal caverns at solemn rest met its abrupt end as the echoing scrape of heavy wood dragging along the scuffed floor echoed across the walls, drawing the inaudible murmurs from its depths to a whimpering close.

Again, did the silence descend in its wake—a heavy, oppressive silence. It was somehow deafening in its contradictory way; in the sheer and total absence of sound, any noise at all naturally seemed ear-piercing.

A fallacy compounded in a terrifying instant as the displaced portal once again creaked shut with a jarring bang.

Within the room beyond the door, suffused in the faint glow that emanated from an impossible place somewhere beneath the sheets of glass, a short column of pure, impossibly carved crystal jutted from the cave's center, half as tall as the room itself. An ancient wooden table sat a short distance aside it, upon which rested a myriad of gleaming instruments that each sparkled in the dim light of the reflective room.

Somewhere within the faint reflections, a sickly red hue gleamed.

The table and its occupants were not alone in the room; against the pillar in the center sat the hunched from of a ragged, pinkish unicorn. Her short coat was unwashed and grimy, and her head hung low against her upright chest from her odd sitting position with her back pressed to the crystal.

Though many of her features remained hidden in the shadow of her stoop, her coarse, sticky mane matted to either side of her limp head obviously revealed the proudly displayed dull metal ring clamped to the low base of her horn. Though its surface was matte, the red gem set into its socket easily caught the dim light in its every facet.

With her resting head and her haunches laid knees-up before her on the floor, her only indication of life was the absolute subtlest sound of whispered, labored breathing, though even that was impossibly faint.

It did not fall on deaf ears, though neither was it reciprocated.

Although her crimson eyes kept wide and glowing in the near darkness of the room, the smiling pegasus filly standing in front of the closed door had yet to make even the quietest noise in the presence of the unicorn. Not in coming in, nor as she very intensely stared at the creature in front of her did she utter a sound.

Her chest did not rise or fall. Her heart did not beat.

Completely silent.

It was as though a ghost had slipped in. Perhaps the door had opened and shut on its own. If nopony had stepped in, and nopony else had been in the room before, then how could anypony but the unicorn be there?

Yet there she was. As though she'd been there all along.

Unmoving. Silent.

Watching.

~~----------~~ Four days earlier. ~~----------~~

The filly was cautious; in everything she did, the filly remained completely and utterly alert.

In the short time after the mare had drained her mug to its bottom, the filly remained all smiles and sunshine, continuing to talk back and forth in the most amicable way with the mare about this and that and everything in between. What she'd done with her friends lately. What she wanted to do later. How she'd acted. How she'd learned.

Until the mare began to yawn.

That itself wasn't the oddest occurrence for the often-drowsy mare, yet, as the same sentence produced a yawn at its beginning and its end, the filly smiled all the wider. She made no comment on the gesture's possible rudeness, even brushing right past it when the mare mouthily excused herself.

Nor did she raise concern as the mare began to lean more deeply into her cheek, brushing her empty mug away in a half-blind stupor while her eyes fluttered dangerously closer to a close. With every word, and as every word itself grew less and less articulate, the mare seemed to flirt ever nearer to the edge of unconsciousness.

The chat slowed to a crawl. The filly kept smiling.

A smile that lasted until the very moment that the mare trailed off on a thought about harsh honesty, and her forehead ever so gently swayed to rest upon her desk. A few seconds passed in silence, and then, the filly no longer had to smile.

In a cautious, continuous motion, she leaned forward to place her mug on the edge of the desk and stood from the couch. Creeping forward on silent hooves, the filly calmly stepped towards the room's only window, brushing its curtain very gently aside as she levered the closed pane open as much as she felt she had to.

Her intent gaze fell back to her untouched mug as she turned to retrieve it, and with little ceremony, she turned back and tossed its contents through the open window into the bushes below. She moved with precise efficiency, setting the empty mug back down, shutting the window, closing the drapes, and turning to her saddlebag in short order. She upturned the bag without a thought, shaking its contents messily out onto the couch for inspection.

A metal ring adorned with a red stone. Rope. A long, red ribbon. A black cloth. A spool of thread and a needle.

The filly turned to the sleeping mare hunched over her desk with her tools in hoof, simply staring for a moment.

Her face an impassive, unflinching frown.

~~----------~~ Underneath the school. ~~----------~~

The room had barely begun to enjoy its return to silence before it was once more shattered—a cruel, thoughtless death that begat as the filly's smile cracked, and from that horrid crack in her very flesh rose the dread sound of a murmuring hum.

A hum that began to stretch, and warp, and lighten until it came to a head and broke apart into a lilting, pealing giggle. It was a bashfully quiet laugh, yet as the whimsical noise began to trickle out and rebound against the reflective room's cramped walls, the mare its center slightly tensed. A flinch.

Like clockwork.

The filly pushed away from the door and began to merrily skip into the room. An even tempo of two off-beat clops apiece, while all the way along, the merry noise of her giggle only grew louder. As she drew closer, the mare laying on the floor gradually tensed into herself, curling as far as she was able for as little as she could. Closer the filly came, and worse did the mare shake.

Then the filly passed her on one side. The pegasus' path through the room was arrested by a sudden detour, gleefully skipping past and around the mare's side, carving a tight circle around the pillar in seeming foalish irreverence. All the way, her giggle remained constant, spreading the sound like birdseed throughout the chamber that all too eagerly welcomed their multiplying echoes.

It seemed to come from every angle. It was like the filly's laugh propagated from the walls themselves; from their cracks, their reflections, and their depths, a chorus of mocking snickers let loose in a gaggle from their single source.

While the filly kept her eyes low, carefully tracing the unbroken shadow of tied rope around the column's back.

The filly was all smiles when she drew up to the mare's front again, and gradually, the incessant cacophony began to cease. Its circuitous ringing crawled to a choking death over a few, unbearable seconds, and as the room once again grew silent and safe from the perturbing echoes, the mare's form seemed to gently slump.

All throughout, the filly only watched. Still smiling, her chest still fluttering, her sparkling crimson eyes peered down at the hunched form of the mare bound by rope to the pillar, beginning once again to eke out whispered whimpers of pain as the light caught on the many points of messy, sticky red covering her coat.

The same shade that covered the floor under the mare. An especially dark puddle blinding the crystal's reflections that seemed heaviest around the mare's resting hindlegs.

Her smile grew wider.

And Cozy Glow spoke.

"Thanks for seeing me today, Miss Starlight! I think I've been doing better lately!"

It was really too bad that Starlight didn't react to her tease anymore. The first two times she'd done it, parroting out that sickeningly familiar line had made the mare start jerking and thrashing against her binds like some kind of wild animal! The sheer, stupid pointlessness of her desperation had made Cozy howl with laughter, and, of course, that'd just made the mare struggle more!

Cozy's smile dipped down at its end. Now, though... Starlight didn't give her any kind of greeting.

The mare on the floor, splayed hindlegs tied together in much the same way her torso was to the thick pillar of crystal, remained as quiet as death itself. Oh, but of course she wasn't dead, no matter how much she wanted to be. She was still breathing, and the little red gem on the grey ring securely slipped onto her horn was glowing and sparking away. Even then, with how hopeless it must have seemed, Starlight was still trying to cast a spell.

Hoping in vain that something would give way and she'd be miraculously freed from this awful, waking nightmare. She'd run along to find her friends, and they'd have the cruel, maniacal foal carted off and thrown into jail. Just as she deserved.

Cozy's smile slipped into a frown. Her lip began to twitch. Her expression began to darken.

Writhing heat painfully pounding in a steady drum against her ribs; a mute fury rising in her throat and welling behind her stinging eyes; a torrid wave of anger tugging at the ends of her frown and making jagged, empty shapes with her mouth, flashing her teeth as sharp, pointed fangs.

Rage.

Staring down at the prone mare with delusions of rescue, Cozy smiled, though it was a different kind of smile.

Her eye trailed down to the mare's hindlegs just before her, tied together at their pasterns by four tight loops of rope resting just low enough to show the puffy, purple bruise that ran up the side of the mare's thigh. Faintly, beneath the red-smeared swelling, something within the flesh pressed out.

Raising her gaze back to the mare's hung head, Cozy's smile grew wider.

As the glint of wrath in her eye grew hotter.

The foal stepped forward, brushing up to the mare and murmuring out an insincere coo through pursed lips while she kept one hoof in the air. "Aw, I'm sorry Counselor, I didn't know I was interrupting your naptime! I've got something real important to talk to you about, though, so..."

If the mare realized what was happening in advance, she didn't show it. Maybe it would've helped her to brace.

"Wakey..." Cozy's hoof shot down, slamming into the bruised section of Starlight's leg with a wet crunch. "...wakey!"

Starlight's head flew up in a blink, banging against the back of the pillar as Cozy stepped away with a tinkling giggle, the mare's instinctive scream coming out as a desperately muffled murmur. Her lips jerked desperately against their confines in the mock effort of a wail, but the even row of little black thread x's looped through her top lip to the bottom kept her jaw securely shut.

Cozy only laughed. On and on, as the mare's cheeks began to wet, Cozy only laughed.

~~----------~~ Four days earlier. ~~----------~~

The mare was thrashing, beating her tied hindlegs against the floor as she thrust her chest up, then back, then up again. Her wide, purple eyes darted in every direction for a miraculous escape route somewhere in the darkened, crystal room as she furiously mouthed something through her recently stitched lips, still welling with little drops of blood. Smearing it all over her chin, the messy mare.

A voice sounded behind her, cloying with sickly sweet syrup. "Gosh, Miss Starlight, you're not being very considerate!"

The mare jerked her eyes around, pulling at her binds for a moment before she went entirely stiff as a scratchy black cloth folded over her eyes. Pressure pulled at the back of her head as something tied together, and she let out a muted shout as she tried again to pull off from the rope tied around her waist.

With the world darkened to her, all she heard was Cozy's cheery voice as she moved away, to the left. Taunting. "What's wrong? Are you scared? Well, don't worry, Counselor, I think I've got something to help you calm down!"

Wood slid against wood, and Starlight's ears pressed to her head in fear.

How little it helped as the bat came down on her leg. The hollow thud may have been inaudible, but Starlight's lips nearly tore from their new binds as her entire body tensed into itself, then jerked to its limit. The scream would've been deafening if her mouth had been free.

After a while, though, she grew quieter, as Cozy had known she would. Muffled little whimpers. Silent tears of pain.

The bat came down again and again on her leg.

Until something went snap.

And Cozy laughed.

~~----------~~ Underneath the school. ~~----------~~

Cozy kept a hoof-length away, watching with a madly twitching grin as the mare heaved breaths, trying in vain to curl her leg, spouting a new stream of runny red, closer to her. All she was really doing was smearing more blood all over the already stained floor, though, not to mention the pain of bashing her head on the pillar.

Oh, well! A for effort!

Cozy sidled back to Starlight's trembling side with a casual hum, leaving a newly sticky horseshoe mark on the deeply stained floor as the mare's struggles waned, and the filly cheerily raised her voice into her pressed-back ear. "Well, golly! Good morning, Counselor! I'm glad I caught you at a good time!"

Starlight's head, still rocking gently back and forth, lolled to one side, blindly staring rudely away from where Cozy was speaking to her. The filly tutted in response, blowing out a huff and puffing her cheeks as she leaned back. "Hey, that's no way to greet somepony!"

Her mock anger drained away as her smile returned, letting her voice grow sly as she raised a hoof to grasp the mare's ear and force it up. "What would Headmare Twilight say if she could see you now, huh, Counselor?"

Cozy let the violated ear go, allowing Starlight, still struggling for breath beneath her stitched-together mouth, to loll her head forward, otherwise showing no indication that she'd heard Cozy at all.

For a moment... that irked the filly.

But then, Starlight might've been in too much pain to nod. That thought mollified the dark impulse that pressed on the back of her throat to grasp her ear again and bash her head into the pillar. A little.

Instead, Cozy let her infectious, angry energy to bleed out through a charming giggle, turning and skipping away from the captive mare and towards the table at the side of the room. "I guess you've got more important things to worry about, huh?"

Her chatter slowed as she drew up to the table, staring down at the shining tools upon it with glee for a moment before she whirled around, eyes sparkling. "Hey, you know the Headmare asked me about you, today!"

Starlight's head jerked up, and though her blindfold was already darkened in little, dark circles by welling tears, it almost seemed as though a few extra rolled out from beneath the cloth. Her chest heaved with labored breath once more—deeper this time.

There was the reaction she wanted.

The pure, primal feeling of satisfaction that bloomed in Cozy's heart as Starlight so carelessly dangled from her strings manifested as a piercing shriek of laughter that the foal had to lean back into the table to weather. The cavern quickly deafened with the sound before she covered her mouth with a hoof and shook her head, quieting after a moment as the high-pitched sound trailed to a pleased murmur.

Wiping a bad-natured tear away from the corner of her eye, Cozy stood and rolled out her shoulders, beginning to speak in a smooth purr from the pleasure of the physical feeling. "She called me into her office all doom and gloom because I was the last pony on your meeting list the day you disappeared."

She swerved her eyes in a languid roll as she let let out a groan, rearing and pulling herself back to sit on the table's edge. "She thought that just because I was the last pony to see you alive, that I might've had something to do with it!" She shook her head with a snort, kicking her hooves back and forth as she glared at her captive, letting the furious memory of the encounter tinge her voice with resentment. "Ugh, it really makes me mad."

That annoying, know-it-all alicorn who had dared to accuse her with no proof. Nothing but a feeling, and for that, she had yelled at Cozy. She'd looked at her like she was some kind of criminal.

She would regret what she'd said.

Her jaw clenched on its own, hard enough that a tiny flake of a tooth chipped under the pressure. The slight edge of pain helped the foal to ease off as she tongued the bit of bone, glancing down to the table's face beside her with a simmering grimace.

Her eye caught on a particular tool with a black handle, and with the reminder of the activity to come, a familiarly anticipatory smile began to slowly slip over her dimpled cheeks. "Well... I suppose it counts for something that she was right, anyway. It'd be pretty mean not to give her some credit!"

The filly giggled and pushed herself off the table, dragging with her the tool that she had set herself on for the day. She approached the bound and beaten mare with a skip in her step, stopping just short of her with a wide, sparkling grin. "You know," she ventured with a sly tone, peering down at the thoroughly down unicorn as she set her implement to the ground. "I could've erased my name from your book. I knew it was on there."

Slowly, painfully, Starlight's head tilted up, eventually coming to rest her blind gaze a bit to the right of Cozy. Her face may have been covered, and her will may have been beaten, but there still gleamed a small hint of that sleepy, sarcastic mare who had once been a hero in the tense line of her clenched jaw.

A jaw soon covered by two pale-furred hooves that gently crept forward to not-so-gently grasp the mare's face. Standing on her hindlegs, Cozy forced her captive to look directly into her eyes as her face split in a toothless smile, and she whispered to her.

Slowly, clearly, and sweetly.

"But I didn't. Because I don't have anything at all to hide."

~~----------~~ Four days earlier. ~~----------~~

It only took two or three minutes to tie the counselor up, to bind her hooves and tie her legs. The filly was good like that. She'd always had talent with rope, and the extra lessons on knot-tying from the Honesty teacher certainly hadn't hurt.

Nopony but the mare with her hooves tied behind her back, of course.

Her cart was waiting just outside the door, and the burlap sack full of trash bags she'd 'accidentally' forgotten in the adjacent supply closet was ready and waiting for her. It wasn't that hard to position the mare so she didn't make a bulge. With everything the filly had offered to do around the school, it made sense she'd be taking the trash out.

Out the door and down the halls, into the library and beneath the school.

She'd take care of the trash cluttering up her path.

With the perfectly cramped sack secretly containing an entire unconscious mare settled in the small wooden cart, the filly took a moment to look back into the empty room. Immaculate. No signs of a struggle.

But still a few things off.

She trotted back in, crimson eyes carefully darting at every point of minutia. Too many oddities. There were a lot of smart ponies at the school, and they'd all have their eyes scrutinizing every inch of the room in the coming days.

She took the two mugs and threw them in with the mare. The bags of cocoa mix and marshmallows, too, nor did she forget the spoons. She carefully wiped the desk clean of any spilled drops, and threw the rag into the bag as well.

She poured the rest of the pitcher into the plant pot in the room's corner. She rearranged the mare's desk, though she did not clean it. She shuffled through the drawers to find... there it was.

The mare's itinerary. The filly pulled it out and flipped to the last page, which read, in its entirety, the grand total of one name. Hers, in full, incriminating glory.

The filly leaned down to tear it out, but before she'd grasped its corner in her teeth, she stopped.

Their meetings were on a schedule. She'd never missed one.

She flipped the notebook closed, dropped it back into the drawer, and closed it. She took a last glance around the myriad objects of interest before she turned and left, closing the door behind her, leaving the room empty and alone.

Silent and dark.

As she towed the unconscious counselor away.

~~----------~~ Underneath the school. ~~----------~~

Cozy held Starlight's face up for another moment, taking her time to let her tone sink in. Letting the situation sink in. Letting the mare tense her lips, and make her horn ring glow, and cry behind her blindfold.

As the slick trails of smudged tears rolled to bead off her chin, it was clear that she may have understood.

Nopony knew where she was, and nopony was coming to rescue her.

There was no reason to suspect Cozy.

Like a little firefly squished underhoof, the faint light sparking from Starlight's horn ring sputtered and died as her shoulders gradually slumped. Her head went slack in her hooves.

And Cozy smiled.

The filly let the mare's head drop from her hooves, falling limply against her chest as the abused unicorn continued to shiver. In the meantime, Cozy turned with a snickering giggle and stooped to retrieve the utensil she'd left on the floor. She passed it from her mouth to her hoof, and as she turned, her wings unfolded to take her into the air.

The subtle sound of a displaced air made its home in the chamber as the filly leaned through the air to loop her hoof around Starlight's neck, pressing their cheeks together as she began to chatter. "Golly, you don't have to look so sad, Counselor!" The filly paused to take a deep breath, relishing in the saline smell of tears, before she let out a faint sigh of satisfaction and leaned away. "I know things look pretty bad, but if you just tell me what I want to know, I'll set you free!"

Hovering in the air before the nonreactive mare, Cozy hugged the sharp, metal tool to her chest with a delighted hum. "Professor Fluttershy always says that Kindness leads to more Kindness, after all!"

Cozy set her eyes on Starlight, smiling brightly in anticipation of a response. The mare only shuddered, slowly bending her head away as the soft sound of a sigh whistled through her stitched mouth.

The filly's occupied hoof dropped, letting the tool hang limply in the air.

While her frown began to quirk up into a sneer.

She was disrespecting her. She didn't fear her. If she was afraid, then she would buckle, and bend, and break. Why didn't she? What else did Cozy have to do?

Her gleaming crimson gaze fell down to the mare's body, searching out one injury after another.

Her bruised chest.

~~----------~~ Three days earlier. ~~----------~~

The mare's head shook furiously, working her sewn jaw as much as she could through the intense resentment written on her face. Whatever curse she must have been trying to mouth died in her throat with a muffled choke as a pale-furred hindleg shot out to impact the dead center of her chest.

Cozy titled her head back towards the mare behind her, failing to hide the shining smile she wore. "Come on, Counselor Starlight, it's not all that hard! I just want to know this one little thing, and then you can see your friends again!"

The filly's sparkling tone fell on deaf ears, as after a moment of muffled sputtering, the hunched mare soundly shook her head 'no' once more.

Cozy's smile died, and she turned back around. "Golly, I guess your friends just don't mean that much to you," she ground out through a tightly grit grimace. After a moment, she raised her leg and kicked out as hard as she could. The dull thud that rang in her ears only made the feeling of spurned rage in her chest worse, so she kicked out again.

And again. And again. One kick after the other, the mare only grunted in agony, and the foal only grew angrier.

She pushed her weight fully onto her front half and bucked both hooves back out with a furious scream. A piercing screech of unstable rage that tore her voice, and that rang across the walls in endless, mocking echoes long after it had gone silent.

Completely deafening the mare's own muffled shriek as something in her chest audibly cracked.

~~----------~~ Underneath the school. ~~----------~~

The bruises were still shining bright red, though one in particular had began to color an ugly purple. Cozy could only wonder how much it must have hurt just to breathe.

She still remembered her own experience, vaguely. At least Starlight had the luxury of laying around.

Next, the foal's eye fell to the mare's left leg. The bruise there was beginning to blacken where it wasn't a puffy purple, though it was hard to see much from where a deep indentation in the smushed flesh was welling with a spring of fresh, glistening blood.

Her gaze drifted to the mare's other leg, where a bright red ribbon had been tied just above the rope around her pastern. Over top of the ribbon were thick loops of yet more black thread, tied tightly enough that the mare's flesh was crinkling under the ribbon, and her hoof below it had long since grown limp and blue.

Except for her frog. Her frog was barely even visible through the thick layers of coagulated blood that covered it. Even then, days after the wounds had been inflicted, the surface of the grainy, caked-on film still broke with a fresh spurt of runny red every few seconds.

Welling and dripping.

~~----------~~ Two days earlier. ~~----------~~

The mare seemed extra tired today, but that didn't stop the filly from chattering on as she delicately tied a ribbon over the mare's cannon. "I know you must be awful lonely down here all by yourself, Counselor Starlight." Cozy looked up from her work as she pulled the ribbon through its last loop, smiling widely at the blindfolded mare. "So if you tell me what I want to know, I'll let you leave, and you can go home! I bet you must miss it a whole bunch!"

The mare had grown noticeably disheveled since yesterday, and her chest was starting to show a number of angry, red bruises. Though her mane was limp and her head couldn't keep up, she still managed a jerky little shake.

Cozy frowned, turning to grab the spool of thread and a needle beside her as she tightened the sleeve she wore over her pastern. She worked the thread into the needle's head with some frustration, slid the needle into the sleeve with its head up, and lifted the mare's tied hooves with her free limb.

It was difficult to work the needle into and out of the crevice between the mare's hooves over and over, but the work seemed to pass in a flash. By the time she was done, the thread had been looped over the ribbon so tightly that the mare's hoof was already starting to hue with blocked-up red. Perfect!

The filly smiled as she slid the sleeve off, placing it to the side and staring up as she searched out her next implement. "This is your last chance to talk before I do something really mean, Starlight. What do you think? Are you gonna make me be mean?" The mare's head swiveled slowly away at the filly's cheerful tone, and the filly's grip tightened around the gleaming knife she held.

Her mouth worked for a few moments between a twitching sneer and a seething grimace before, like a wave of acid washing over, a skeletal grin rose onto her face. "Aw, I guess you must just like the pain, huh, Counselor?"

Her quiet tone rose into a jaded giggle as she bent forward, bringing the knife up and running it alongside the mare's leg so she could feel the metal, and Cozy could feel her begin to shake.

She didn't take the time to relish it. With her smile widening to its painful edges, Cozy slid the knife down the mare's hoof and into its cleft, pressing the dull side of its tip against the soft flesh for the barest moment before she tilted, and began to press it daringly in.

Blood welled around the weapon's edge, and Cozy continued to tilt the knife, holding it upright a moment before she dragged it agonizingly down. That was when the mare started to buckle, taking deep, huffing breaths as she tried to curl her hoof away, but Cozy kept it steady.

She kept the limb nice and even as she drew the first score across the mare's hoof, and a stream of blood began to well from the flesh in even time with her heartbeat. The mare began to cry out in pain through her stitches, but Cozy smiled on regardless, the gleaming hue of running red reflecting like a mirror in her wide eyes as she moved her knife over and started again from the top.

Slowly. Methodically. Three more times, the mare's delicate frog was scored with four even, identical lines of streaming blood.

Cozy kept her eyes trained on Starlight's face the whole time, wholly embracing the perverted feeling of enjoyment that bubbled in her throat to watch the mare jerk and seethe and weep. The brightly shining gem in her horn ring only illuminated the deep lines of expressive fear on her face, as well as her desperation to make it all stop.

It made the filly giggle. It made her laugh. It made her heart beat fast enough to fool her into thinking she was alive. But when she set the knife down, the wounds were already starting to slow in their bleeding, and the mare was starting to sag. No fun.

That was when Cozy's hoof found the little glass jar.

"Hey, Counselor, I learned the other day in Professor Pinkie's class that salt is actually used in a lot of baking recipes! Isn't that interesting?"

Starlight began to writhe anew.

~~----------~~ Underneath the school. ~~----------~~

The memory brought a smile to Cozy's face, though Starlight still wasn't looking at her. The mare remained defiant and boring, acting like she could have a moment to herself. As Cozy thought back to the long minutes she'd spent slathering the unicorn's fresh wounds with salt, though, a thought occurred to her.

Of course she knew how to get Starlight's attention. Duh.

Cozy's hoof jerked forward, striking the mare's wounded frog and breaking the filmy sheet of caked-on blood over it. The mare's head sprang back, once more banging her head into the pillar behind her as four streams of blood forcefully spurted out through the air, two of them painting Cozy's hoof with fake claws of red.

The unicorn's muffled yelp brought the same warm, fuzzy feelings as it always did, helping the filly to smile widely as she stepped once more into the air. "Maybe you just don't remember what I asked you, is all!" She leaned forward, grinning right into the mare's blindfolded eyes as she rocked back and forth, flaring her nose for deeply unsteady breaths as Cozy let out a condescending coo. "Well, don't worry, Counselor. I didn't forget."

Wherever Starlight's eyes must have been, Cozy abandoned her sight all the same, rising into the air with her tool hanging limply in the crook of her hoof. She let out a peal of mocking laughter as she rose, trailing off into a sigh as she alit on the top of the pillar and kicked her hooves out over its edge.

Her voice rose in a songlike taunt as she knocked her head to one side then the other. "I found out what you did!" She trailed off into a giggle, covering her mouth with her free hoof as she stared down at the exhausted mare. "You traveled back in time to stop Twilight and her friends from meeting, didn't you?"

The mare had been beaten repeatedly. She had been cut and strung up like a doll in progress. She hadn't eaten or drank anything in four days, and the blindfold she was wearing was probably fused to her eyes. Even through all of that, it still seemed as though the accusation had the mare sag especially low.

She must've been very ashamed of herself.

Cozy wouldn't have that problem. Unlike Starlight, Cozy Glow wasn't going to screw it up and fail.

The filly's gaze trailed to the ceiling, her thoughts momentarily consumed by daydreams of the world without the Elements of Harmony. A world thrown into distress and discourse, just ripe for the taking. With everything she'd learned about friendship and Harmony, it wouldn't be hard to rise up when the time came.

She kicked her leg out, then in. Out, and in. A pleasant hum rose in her throat as she began to sway, but before she'd even finished the first verse, the hum bled out into a lilting giggle. Unabashed and excited.

The world needed the Elements of Harmony, and very soon, it was going to need Cozy, too.

Her gaze crept once more to the mare, unmoving in her perpetual place at the column's base. Staring at the powerless unicorn, Cozy's smile began to curl, and darken, and as she kicked forward and descended towards the mare, resting either hindleg on each side of the mare's neck, her smile turned wicked.

Sitting on Starlight's sagging shoulders, she bent down to whisper into her ear. Slowly, quietly, and chidingly. "You're going to stay down here for the rest of your life until you tell me how you did it."

The mare's head began to fall forwards, until the motion was stopped short by Cozy's hoof, and a very pointed tap of metal against exposed bone. Then Starlight went deathly still.

Once, twice, thrice. Cozy tapped the gleaming metal file against the side of Starlight's horn just above its ring, and with a low, taunting giggle, her voice crept down to twist around the unicorn's painfully straining ears.

"Hey, Counselor Starlight. I'm about to do something really mean."

And it was going to be so much fun.

Cozy hooked her legs around Starlight's neck as the mare immediately tried to jerk her off, while the filly only laughed in unrestrainedly twisted delight. "I'm giving you five seconds to agree to tell me how to travel back in time, or else I'm going to saw off your horn, Miss Starlight!" Cozy cried out, her voice bleeding into a shrill cackle of demonic delight. All the while, Starlight pulled and jerked against the ropes holding her tightly, trying desperately to bash her rider back into the pillar.

Cozy began to count out loud, while Starlight began to screech against her sewn-together lips.

"One."

She held fast against the unicorn, bucking her head back and forth for dear life.

"Two."

The fur of Starlight's face was matting with fresh tears.

"Three."

The mare's chest was flush with exerted breath, even through the pain of a broken rib.

"Four."

The hollow banging of flesh on unyielding crystal, the stifled bellowing of a mare fearing the worst, and the shallow tapping of metal on bone were all drowned out at once by the loud, final call of a filly who wore a maniacal, hollow hole in the shape of a smile.

"Five!"

Metal met bone, the bone-tingling sound of grinding began, and the mare jerked her head back with a smothered shriek and enough force to bash Cozy's head against the pillar.

Even through the subtlest feeling of welling red on the back of her head, though, Cozy continued to smile.

A wide smile. A twitching smile.

A mad smile.

The file began to edge back and forth, and the filly began to chatter.

"Golly, Miss Starlight, you must be real attached to your horn, huh?" Each pass was met by a full-body shake from the mare she sat on top of, shivering and jerking and wailing behind her closed mouth while Cozy laughed. "Maybe it's a good thing I'm cutting it off! After all, Professor Rarity taught us all that holding onto things too tightly just ends up hurting!"

Cozy's voice rose cheerily through the mare's din, watching with wild fascination as bone flakes fell to the floor in a growing pile with each and every push, and each time, the mare tried again to fling her head back. Lucky for Cozy, she knew when to brace.

"Don't you think life would be a lot easier if you'd just given in?" The steady motion of her hoof working back and forth to the tune of low scraping seemed almost allegorical as she tilted her head thoughtfully, turning back to the top of Starlight's head with a resounding grin after a moment. "It's almost like your dumb old horn represents your silly, stupid defiance!"

Her filing speed increased for a moment as the mare wailed again, though she slowed after a moment as the glint of frenzied mania wore from her eye, and she giggled to herself bashfully. "Aw, I guess that's just my wishful thinking." She shrugged, continuing to intently file through the base of Starlight's horn. "After all, you might still refuse to tell me even after I saw your horn off!"

Almost halfway through. Cozy's smile slipped down. "I still won't let you go, though," she murmured, her voice suddenly and uncharacteristically quiet.

The thought of it was maddening. She wouldn't allow the mare to hold out hope.

Naivete deserved to be squashed.

But then her voice cheerfully rose again with her smile. "Oh, well! I think I've heard that patience is a virtue, so-"

The mare's struggle suddenly redoubled with a nearly audible squeal as, from behind the file stuck halfway into the mare's horn, a tide of red began to well. Cozy blinked, stopping for a moment as the mare writhed under her haunches and she watched the blood begin to run down into the mats of her purple mane. "Huh," she echoed after a moment of staring. "I didn't know horns bled."

The filly thought about that to herself for a moment, before she shrugged again and continued with her sawing. "Don't worry, Starlight, after I cut all the way through this, I'll stuff some cloth down there so you don't bleed out!" As her efforts grew oddly easier under the grease of the fluid, Cozy giggled indulgently to herself. "I'd hate for you to go and die without my say-so!"

The thought of it set Cozy's heart racing faster and her file grinding quicker. It was hard to say for sure whether it was excitement or anger, though either way, it made her laugh.

Back and forth and back and forth and struggle and jerk and weep and scream and cry and bleed and-

The rhythm grew so intoxicating that, for a moment, Cozy lost track of time. Suddenly, her hoof lost its purchase and swerved to the side, and something thunked to the floor. Suddenly, the mare was quiet and still, as was the cavern. After all the screaming, the silence almost seemed a little creepy.

The filly glanced down at her bloody, somewhat dulled file before she tossed it away, registering the deafening clatter as she peered over the bleeding stump sporting a useless ring. On the mare's lap there sat a pink cone, its base slightly dyed in red.

Cozy's heart skipped a beat at the sight, and she let out a awed gasp. Without thinking much of it, she pushed off the former unicorn's head and fluttered to the ground. Her eyes sparkling, the filly bent to retrieve the rent horn from the newly disabled mare's lap, carefully holding the surprisingly light object in the crook of her hoof for inspection.

All of its circling rings and worn down facets just... stopped at the point it had been cut. It was inert. Useless. Powerless.

As was the mare it belonged to.

No matter how she turned it, Cozy couldn't seem to take her eyes off the former appendage. It was... intoxicating. She'd removed it from a pony. A part of their body cut off so she could hold it.

She couldn't be the only one to see this. It was time for show and tell.

Grinning, Cozy tossed the horn back into Starlight's lap, not bothering to scrutinize the hunched mare for signs of life as she cantered to the table. She scanned over it for a moment before she found the mirror she'd brought down two days ago, taking it between her teeth and trotting back to the bound mare.

She was nearly bent in half, her head once more hung low as she always seemed to be when Cozy entered. It almost made Cozy simper. Did she think they were done? How nauseatingly cute.

She passed the mirror from her mouth to her hoof, leaning low to look at Starlight's face, a scape of pink fur nearly completely marred by innumerable glistening streaks of running red where it wasn't covered by the blindfold. "Hey, Counselor Starlight, you wanna see something cool?"

That made the mare's head rise an inch, though before her tired jaw could clench in confusion, Cozy reached forward to hook her hoof into the blindfold's bottom. She had been right in thinking it may have been sticky; the stained rag practically ripped as she raised it up over the former unicorn's former horn, leaving the cloth to soak in the running blood as, for the first time in days, the mare's eyes were exposed.

Most of her fur had been completely smeared with blood and tears, leaving the areas around her eyes a messy collage of blended, caked in colors. Her left eye was even somewhat blackened, though Cozy couldn't actually remember when she'd hit Starlight in the face hard enough for it.

Her eyes themselves were frosted shut by a foul sludge of grime and hardened fluid, seeming to act as a sort of glue in keeping the mare's eyes shut as her muscles tensed and tried to pry themselves open. Though the sight of her entire, messy face put Cozy off, she still swept her hoof carelessly across one eye and then the other, sending a spray of crumbling gristle to the floor and leaving the mare's face only slightly less disgusting.

It allowed Starlight to open her eyes, at least. One, then the other, fluttering open inches at a time like a newborn, gradually exposing red-hued, bloodshot whites surrounding dull, lifeless purple. Even then, it took a while for her eyes to focus; the mare seemed to stare at nothing for a long period of quiet seconds.

But as the cloth under her horn let a fresh stream of runny red slip down into the corner of her eye, her gaze finally seemed to focus with an unsteady blink.

A gaze that widened, and shrunk as she stared back at her own grisly reflection.

She was quiet, then, even as Cozy leaned in around the side of the mirror with a wide grin. "You've seen better days, huh, Counselor?" Her snicker had Starlight's ear flick once, though otherwise, the unicorn simply continued to stare at herself.

Her bruised eye. Her sewn-together lips. The red smear in every inch of her fur.

Her missing, bleeding horn.

Cozy knew a lot about ponies, she liked to think. Holding the mare's horn in her hoof, she had thought that forcing Starlight to look at herself- her first sight in days- might finally break her. She'd get what she wanted.

She could see the hopelessness in those uncertain eyes. The death of self in her expression as she saw what she'd been reduced to. When her eye glanced slightly to the side and she caught Cozy with a gleaming smile on her face, she knew she saw fear.

But then something began to change. Starlight's brows began to furrow, and while the blood trickle down into her eyes, she did not blink it away. Her nose flared with a deep breath, and as Cozy's smile began to creep down, the mare turned to look her directly in the eyes.

For a moment, they stared at each other. There was something... hard in Starlight's eyes, then.

A look that Cozy didn't understand.

Her jaw began to work up and down. For a few moments, as the mare began to breathe faster, Cozy thought she might've been trying to say something. As the mare's eyes popped, and her mouth twitched and jerked, and she began to hunch and heave, Cozy thought... there may have been something wrong.

Then blood began to well from the mare's mouth, and Cozy knew.

She knew what she'd done.

The mirror fell to the floor and cracked on the crystal, but Cozy could only stare at the mare whose head hung forward once more, letting the welling spurts of blood that gushed from behind her stitches drip in sticky streams to her lap. Long, messy strands making puddles on the floor beneath her.

The filly couldn't move. She made herself.

"What did you do?" Cozy whispered breathlessly. She already knew.

This was wrong. Starlight was choking up too much blood. She did it to herself. She was still bleeding from her horn. She shouldn't have done that. She shouldn't have done that. The puddle was growing larger. Her legs were becoming drenched with red. Cozy hadn't made it happen. Her hooves were getting sticky. Something felt hot.

Cozy was afraid.

Cozy was enraged.

"What did you do, you stupid animal?!" she screamed as something inside of her burst, deafening the cavern for a moment before the filly turned and marched to the discarded file she'd used to cut Starlight's horn off. Nose flaring, gaze reddening, Cozy grabbed the tool in a hoof and fluttered back to the mare's front. Her mouth twitched into a venomous hiss as she slashed the sharp edge of the tool across the mare's face.

She missed half the stitches, but the mare's flesh yielded in a new mouth regardless. Cozy threw the tool aside with a careless clatter as the mare coughed with her newly opened mouth, spraying a tide of blood out in a spattering wave that painted both of their fronts with sickeningly bright red. She coughed again, blood spurt out from her nose as she heaved, and something went splat on the mare's legs.

Cozy didn't need to look to see what it was. She kept the blurry haze of her glare on the mare, feeling her veins in her forehead pop with heat as she jerked forward to smack the mare in the cheek. Her head jerked with the hit, but there was no point, not even as Cozy let her voice tear in a screech. "What's wrong with you?! Is it that bad to just do what I say?! To just tell me one little thing?!"

She gasped for breath, feeling her body shake from the exertion of screaming, but she forced her voice to rise again, bracing and jerking her head down as she stamped her hoof. "Is it that important to defy me?! You'd rather die?! You care about proving me wrong that much?!"

Cozy trailed off as her mouth filled with backwash that she hurriedly spit into the worsening slurry running over the floor. Panting, she forced herself to look up to the mare as her head swayed from one direction to the other, eventually leaning back against the pillar. Her eyes were open, but they were growing glossy. Her chin was a ceaseless stream of visceral blood. So much blood.

Her eye trailed down, and the jagged shape of her torn mouth jerked. One way, then the other.

Her voice. Hollow, gurgled, and broken. A thin whisper. A wet murmur.

"...'ever... 'ell... you.. a-anyfing..."

Her chest shook. Fluttered. An empty laugh.

"...'ever... beshray.. m-my... f-friens..."

And then her lips rose.

Starlight smiled.

Something hurt.

Cozy knew she responded, but she didn't know what she said. All she could hear was the pounding. The rushing. The blood in her ears. On the floor. Everywhere.

She turned from the mare, and suddenly, she was at the table. She blinked, and she was in front of the mare again. Nothing but flashes of black in-between. The dark was full of screaming.

She couldn't control her mouth. When she spoke, it came out in a warbling cross between a hateful hiss and a sorrowful whine.

"I won't let you have the satisfaction."

It had been a long time since Cozy had killed. The phantom feeling of the knife plunging so deeply into the mare's chest that only the handle stuck out was... familiar, yet foreign. It seemed like another life. Another filly.

What was different about the two of them, though?

Neither of them had understood friendship.

With their bodies pressed together, with Cozy's fur beginning to dampen with blood, and as Starlight's heart fluttered to an uneven stop against her hoof, she leaned in to whisper one last thing. A thin, barely spoken whisper.

In the last few moments before Starlight's life left her, she stiffened. As her eyes dulled, her last breath came as a shaking gasp. A final, desperate grimace as her dying peace was stolen from her.

Cozy smiled back.

"I'll make sure you see your friends again, soon."

Starlight Glimmer was dead when Cozy stepped away. Tied to a pillar made of crystal, a knife in her heart with her horn and her tongue sat in her red-stained lap, the diagonally slashed mouth of the pinkish mare's corpse was left in an eternal frown. A hollow, shallow plea for mercy that had never found air.

The puddle was growing larger. The air felt heavier. Dense.

Cozy Glow took a deep, scentless breath. She didn't smell blood anymore. Couldn't.

Her gaze fell to her hooves, and she raised them for inspection. Stained beyond measure. She raised them higher, to her nose, and took a deep whiff.

Nothing.

She stuck her tongue out and dragged it along the side of one of them. Blood and saliva ran together as she slid her tongue back down then up again. She could feel the paste it made in her mouth. She could feel the burn in her throat.

But it tasted like nothing.

She didn't feel anything.

Cozy Glow felt like nothing.

When she stood, she did not give the mare's corpse a second glance. She didn't look at the table, nor at any of the tools she'd left there.

She opened the door, stepped through, and closed it behind her.

She turned left, heading towards the room with a lake she'd been using to clean herself for the past few days. As she walked silently through the dark halls, her mouth stayed firmly shut, yet something began to echo back at her. Hoofsteps began to tread after her in her wake, off-tune with her own. Somepony called her name.

When she came to a fork in the tunnels, she stopped, staring forward at the wall. As it had been when she'd left the room, her expression was impassive, her face was smeared with blood, and her dull eyes were utterly devoid of life.

The filly that stared back at her was smiling. There was laughing in her ears.

When she turned left and walked into the dark hall, she found her throat had begun to ache.

And the laugh was beginning to echo through the tunnels.

Author's Note

I am writing this at nine thirty in the morning, two and a half hours before the deadline.

This is, admittedly, my own fault. I procrastinated. I slacked off, didn't put enough thought into this, and as a result, I have spent the past ten hours writing and editing three fourths of this chapter. Funnily enough, it still didn't come out the way I wanted. I may have even forgotten a few things. Who even knows how many typos are sprinkled throughout.

C'est la vie. I brought this on myself. :twilightsheepish:

So, I wish I could be prouder of this, but as it stands, I'm not able to subject this chapter to the rigorous editing process it needs. As a result, it probably sucks here and there. I know I could do better with making Cozy's fits of laughter more creepy, and making her smiles more off-putting. I guess you just have to imagine that, for whatever reason, it's inherently creepy to laugh while you dismember someone!

Either way, I'm kind of proud of myself for getting this done, even if it should've been done way sooner. I'm glad I wrote for this contest, and I'm glad I wrote this story. I wish it were better, but again, that's my fault.

Thanks to the dobermans and the rest of the bunch involved in the contest for providing me this opportunity, even if I came just shy of spurning it. It was a crunch, but it was a blast. I haven't written with this much fervor in a year.

And now, I will never write again. I am fucking exhausted, h o l y s h i t .

ho my god I just remembered the deadline was noon edt time and I couldn't fucking remember when that was, I am so glad I live where that's accurate.