Notes and warnings (contains spoilers):As with Chapter 4, this chapter contains physical and psychological torture, and rape -- the torture is somewhat less violent than in Chapter 4, and the rape is somewhat more so. It also contains material pertaining to cannibalism and the eating of sapient beings (not vore -- that's a sexual fetish, this is horror). While I do not recommend skipping it -- this chapter contains material that is necessary to the plot -- I will be posting a "what has come before" preface to Chapter 7 to catch readers up, now that this has gotten long, so if you feel you must skip it, the essential plot points will be covered in the preface to the next chapter.
This is not the chapter where the Harmony team come in. I had intended that to happen here, but this chapter got way too long. So the Mane 6 and Spike from Harmony will be crossing over next chapter.
Opposition, 1 AM
Deep breaths. Discord concentrated on breathing slowly and evenly, not hyperventilating, not letting panic take over, as he obeyed Twilight's first and usual order. "Lay down on your back in the circle and spread out your limbs." It hadn't started yet. It hadn't started yet. Don't think about the future. Last night he'd started crying at this point, after enduring torture in the morning, no food he considered remotely edible all day, and an entire day of knowing that this was going to happen to him once night fell, and he'd just been too broken and miserable and weak to stop himself. He wasn't going to break down so easily this time, he promised himself. He was going to make her work for it.
Her magic connected the cuffs and rings on his various limbs to the chains attached to six of the seven posts around the magic circle, and his breath caught. No. Don't think about the future. It hadn't started yet. His tail was pulled out to the edge of the circle, instead of being pulled back behind him as it usually was, and the ring in it was connected directly to a grounding ring on the floor. This was a little unusual, but it wasn't the first time she'd used this particular protocol. His heart felt like it would break his ribcage and he was actually beginning to feel lightheaded with fear. There was a click by his head, and he looked up and to the side. The chain from the post near his head had just connected itself to his collar instead of his tail. That drew another sharp, irregular breath from him. The chains pulled his limbs and his body itself taut, but not yet hard enough to lift him off the ground. His wings ached already from being stretched out like this. Breathe. Deep and even. He couldn't let it make him break down this early. It wasn't even happening yet.
He felt so totally helpless, with every part of his body stretched out tight enough that he could barely move, on the floor, on his back, with Twilight standing over him. How ridiculous. It didn't matter what position he was in, he was always helpless. Stupid to be more afraid when he was exposed like this. Fluttercruel might spread-eagle him like this to rape him or stomp on him or beat him on his belly and between his legs, but Twilight was going to do what she always did and it really didn't matter what position she put him in, the pain was always the same. Still, he had to close his eyes and focus on his breathing.
It was a game he played with himself, since there was nothing else he could control or even affect. How long could he go without screaming? How long could he keep from begging? How quickly could he make himself pass out? There was no prize for beating his previous record and no actual way to tell how long anything was taking, so he really couldn't even figure out how long he was lasting or if it was better or worse than he'd done last time, but the effort of trying to hold out gave him something to do, something to strive for, since he couldn't actually save himself from anything she was going to do.
He looked over at Fluttercruel, pleading with her with his eyes. She cleared her throat. "Um... Twilight? Discord asked if I could stay with him during this session, if that's okay with you?"
"It shouldn't affect anything," Twilight said.
Breathe deeply. Fluttercruel was watching. It wasn't going to save him from much of anything but maybe it would help a little this time, maybe it would make this just a little shorter.
The copper wires descended toward him. He braced himself, his paws clutching at the chains that held them. He knew what came after this; time and time again he'd been here, bound, and the wires had pierced into his limbs and tail, looping and biting in over and over. Then Twilight would attach clamps to his body, sharp enough to bite into his flesh, and then the wires would connect to the clamps, and then those spots would be the first to feel the pulse of white-hot pain before it swept inward to consume all of him.
But this time it didn't happen.
The wires wrapped around his limbs instead, not puncturing his skin and flesh. She took the ends, pushed them under the last loop the wires formed and poked them into him there, which hurt, but she didn't pull them through his body and draw them back out through a different puncture wound like she usually did; they were just sticking into him slightly.
She was varying the pattern. This couldn't be good, could it? She'd already varied it by summoning him early. He looked up at her, not even trying very hard to hide the shock and surprise he felt, but he didn't say anything -- he didn't trust himself to speak without breaking down.
"Today I am going to ask you some questions," she said.
If he could have moved at all he would have sagged with relief. Questions! He could answer questions. If she wanted answers then she wouldn't torture him if he gave her answers and maybe he could get out of this without being hurt very much. Maybe that was why this was off-cycle, because it was an interrogation and not an experiment. And she was hooking him up to the apparatus only partially, and only to make him feel vulnerable so he'd be more frightened and more willing to answer. Well, it'd worked splendidly. He was terrified, and desperately eager to answer anything she might ask in hopes of being spared the pain.
"Is that why I'm here? To answer questions? I can answer questions," he babbled. "Ask me anything. I'll tell you whatever you want to know, you don't have to hurt me, I'm ready to talk. Anything. Please. You don't have to hurt me."
"Very well then," she said. "Where did the letter you gave Spike actually go?"
Oh.
Well, that explained everything. Really, he should have seen this coming.
"I-- I don't know," he said. "It, chaos magic is unpredictable and I had very little of it to spare so I don't even know if it went anywhere. It could have gone into the void for all I know. I don't have any way to find out what happened to it."
She simply looked down at him, coldly, after he finished speaking. Under her pitiless gaze he wanted to start babbling again, to tell her everything he knew. The answer he'd given was honest but very much incomplete, and he had to swallow back nausea.
And then the wires lit up with magic, and he screamed, convulsing.
It lasted only a few seconds, but when it was over he was panting and gasping. If there'd been any wastes left in his body he'd have expelled them. "Tell me where you intended the message to go," Twilight said, her voice and expression unchanging. "And if you attempt to answer a question in a misleading way again, your suffering will last considerably longer than that did."
"I -- I won't, I promise, I'm sorry, please don't--"
"Answer the question, Discord."
"I, I, how did you find out?" He forced the question out in an agonized wail, desperate to buy himself some time and to find out as much as he could about what she already knew, so he could at least try to avoid telling her more than she was going to directly ask him for. "Did Spike tell you?"
"He sent a message to Princess Celestia to confirm her receipt of your document," Twilight said. Inwardly Discord winced. Why hadn't he foreseen that? Well, probably because he was desperate and it had been the only hope he had. "Naturally she was surprised, given that she had received nothing. She informed me this morning. Now answer the question. Where did you intend the message to go?"
He'd kept from telling them of the existence of his universe because he'd feared they wanted him broken for some sort of program of conquest, and if they knew he came from another universe, he'd been afraid that his would be the first they'd go after. He'd believed that, in fact, until about a week and a half ago, when Twilight, verbalizing her notes as she took them, had accidentally revealed to him that she thought he could be used to make ponykind immortal... which had simultaneously reassured him that she probably wouldn't be willing to send him to enslave ponies, and made him recognize that it was pointless to confess his origin to her anyway. If she thought she could use him to make ponies immortal, she was far gone, and wouldn't care in the slightest that he wasn't the Discord she thought he was.
So he could answer this question without betraying his entire homeworld, he thought. But if he answered this, if he revealed that he was from a parallel universe and that he'd called on his Twilight Sparkle for help, and then his Twilight actually came... he might be betraying her. She wouldn't know from his letter that the other Twilight was prepared for her arrival. On the other hand, what were the odds that she was even going to show up? Was it worth it, to try to hold out, to endure agony and nausea and what would probably end up being seizures if he refused to answer for long enough, just on the tiny chance that his Twilight was actually coming?
He didn't always have to answer questions -- the spell on him couldn't compel him to make complex statements any more than it could compel him to perform complex spells, unless he was told in great specificity what to say or do. And this one was vague enough that it fell in that area. He could keep his silence, if he chose, if he was willing to endure nausea and a sense of building pressure that would eventually end in a seizure. But he couldn't lie, and quite aside from what the obedience spell would do to him, this Twilight would torture him if he didn't answer at all...
...who was he fooling? He knew he wouldn't be able to hold out. If he'd ever had the strength to stand up to the kind of torture this Twilight would inflict on him, he'd lost that strength weeks ago. No matter what he resolved this minute, he'd crumple the moment the pain hit. He was better off giving in now, and sparing himself.
"A Twilight Sparkle from a parallel universe," he said, turning his head sideways and laying it against the stone floor in a gesture of defeat, his ears folding down against his head.
"Why?"
"I... I hoped she'd come rescue me. I doubt that she will, but you haven't left me very many other options," he added with a tiny bit of sharpness in his voice.
"Why would any version of myself from any parallel timeline help you?"
There was actually emotion in her voice for once. Disgust, but any emotion was better than the blankness she usually presented him with. "Because she says she's my friend." Even in as dire and horrifying a situation at this, he couldn't help smirking just a tiny bit at the expression on this Twilight's face.
"Discord," Fluttercruel said warningly. "Get that grin off your face. Do you really think now is the appropriate time?"
"No, mistress," he said hastily. He didn't actually have to do anything to stop grinning as she'd told him; the moment he'd heard the tone of her voice, a surge of fear had gone through him and wiped out his smile. "I'm sorry."
"Why would my counterpart claim to be your friend?" Twilight asked, her disgust mixed now with utter bewilderment.
"Maybe because she is. I've never known for certain if she's really my friend or not."
Twilight snorted in frustration. "Is this some sort of parallel timeline where I've turned evil?" she asked in a sarcastic tone. "Straight out of the pages of a comic book or something?"
"No," Discord said, and bit his lip to keep from saying, "That would be this universe." When the urge to provide his opinion had passed enough that he dared speak again, he said, "You're not the difference between the two worlds. I am."
"Consistent with what you claimed to Spike," Twilight murmured. "But implausible all the same." She focused on him again, speaking in a normal tone once more. "Explain yourself. How are you the difference between the two worlds?"
"When we fought the first time, I, I lost to you. You undid my work, you restored your friends and the six of you turned me back to stone. The spell that the me from this world cast on your Elements? That never happened there. I never did that. I'm not even certain how he did it." This wasn't a lie. Discord had a lot of ideas about how his counterpart might have accomplished the task, but while he was denied the use of his own magic to probe the spell, he couldn't know for sure exactly what the other him had done.
"And yet you're not in stone now."
That wasn't actually a question. He fought the urge to volunteer information. A slight touch of nausea churned in his gut, but he knew from experience that the spell wouldn't force him to answer questions that hadn't been asked; it would just make him uncomfortable. The severe nausea only occurred when he avoided answering questions that had been asked.
"Why aren't you?" Fluttercruel asked. "How did you get out?"
"My Princess Celestia. She had the Bearers of the Elements release me."
Twilight face-hooved. "That is so thoroughly implausible I'm going to need to do a spell check."
Terror shot through him. "No, wait, I'm telling the truth! You don't--"
"Be quiet until you're told to speak," Twilight said. Her horn lit up, and his limbs began to burn with pain. It was a much lower intensity than she used in the experiments, but still bad enough that he couldn't stop himself from writhing and whimpering, struggling uselessly against his bonds and squirming like a wounded snake. "I am going to ask some questions. While you are speaking, the pain will cease. Only when you hold your tongue will you feel this pain. You may speak to answer the questions. What is your name?"
"Discord," he gasped, and when he felt that she was telling the truth and the pain eased when he was talking, he added, "Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony, former unruler of Equestria, last of the draconequui, to the best of my knowledge, if you don't count the long-ma, which they--"
"Answer only the questions I ask."
"But then you'll hurt me," he whined. "If I have to keep talking or the pain will start again, then it's not fair for you to tell me not to talk when it's your spell that will hurt me if I don't taaahngh!" The full force of the pain from earlier shot through him again for several seconds.
"I am wholly unconcerned with being fair to you," Twilight said. "You will be silent unless you are answering a question, you will answer only the question that I asked, and if this protocol causes you pain, that's not my problem. Do you understand?"
"Y-yes," he gasped out as the pure agony ended. The lower levels of pain came back as soon as he was finished with the word, but they were far less awful in comparison to what she'd just done.
"It really isn't fair," Fluttercruel pointed out.
"I really don't care," Twilight replied. "Who rules Equestria?"
"Technically speaking both Celestia and Luna, sorry, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, but everyone knows that Luna doesn't really do much of any ruling, since being on the moon for a thousand years doesn't exactly leave one au courant with current legislation and jurisprudence, so honestly it's really just Celestia and she tells Luna she's a co-diarch just to make her happy and not feel left out." He wanted to stretch his answer out even longer but couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't really an answer to a completely different question.
The pain in his limbs started up again. This time he managed not to whimper, but he had to grit his teeth to endure it. "Are you aware that Princess Luna is dead?" Twilight asked, as if she was asking him if he knew the price of bread.
"I -- what? No! No, I didn't, I -- in my world she's not dead, she's just fine, I -- did he kill her, the other--" The five seconds it took for the obedience spell to kick in ended, and Twilight's order not to speak anything except answers to her questions took hold, silencing him. He made a sound halfway between a grunt and a whimper as the pain came back.
"Indirectly," Twilight said. "He turned her to Nightmare Moon again and forced Princess Celestia to have to kill her. What color is Fluttershy's mane?"
"Pink, well, I'm sure Rarity could tell you the exact shade of pink, whether it was salmon pink or nadeshiko pink or orchid pink, I'm not really sure of the gradation precisely, but it's definitely a shade of pink."
"Tell me a lie."
Discord blinked up at her. "What?"
"Tell me something that is not true. This is an order."
Nausea surged. He wasn't capable of speaking words he knew were entirely not true, not under this spell, but he wasn't capable of refusing an order either. "Tell me something that is not true" was maybe vague enough that it wouldn't force him to comply. "I, I, you know the spell you put on me won't allow me to do that, please don't tell me to do that, please--"
Fluttercruel said, "Tell Twilight that she is a seventeen headed gorgon with the wings of a dragonfly."
That was specific enough that he couldn't refuse it. He choked for a moment, nausea overwhelming him as he contemplated telling a lie, and then found himself a way out of the paradox. The nausea eased. "Twilight Sparkle is a seventeen headed gorgon with the wings of a dragonfly, is what my mistress Fluttershy told me to say." He panted, weak with relief at having found a way out of the trap.
"Tell me a lie and do not elaborate to make it no longer a lie," Twilight said. "The pain will intensify until you obey."
"No, please, I can't, please, Twilight, don't, don't do this, please..."
As she'd promised him, the pain slowly grew worse, as well as the nausea as he thought desperately of lies he could tell, only when he tried to say them nothing could come out. A sob caught in his throat. "Twilight, I can't tell you a lie, your spell won't let me, I'm trying, please, I'm trying but I can't, the words won't even come out, please, please, it hurts, please stop, please..."
"You are disobeying an order. Tell me a lie, Discord."
The red-hot pain in his limbs where the wires touched him was joined by agony blossoming in his head, and the objects in the room began to glow with multi-colored coronas around them. "Please, please, I'm going to have a seizure, please stop, I can't, no, please, I'm begging you..." Frantically he searched his mind for some way to satisfy the contradiction. His head hurt badly enough that it was beginning to drown out the pain in his limbs, and the patterns of the world were bleeding together, everything he could see starting to melt like chalk paintings in the rain.
Twilight was pitiless. She wouldn't stop. He looked over at Fluttercruel, hoping against hope that maybe she would save him, but from her intent, hungry expression and the cruel smile on her face, it was obvious that she was enjoying watching him suffer. No help there.
Or was there?
When he squinted, the halos drowned out her expression so he couldn't see it at all. She was a blur of pink and yellow, and he could pretend she was really Fluttershy. Fluttershy, his true friend. Fluttershy, who was the only pony in the universe he could be certain cared about him.
"Fluttershy, I... I love you," he choked out, because if it was his Fluttershy, it was true, and then he could say it.
The pain in his limbs stopped. For a moment the incipient seizure faded, the headache and the halos retreating. And then he saw the look of surprise on Fluttercruel's face, and realized that she thought he was talking to her, which was exactly what he'd meant her (and more importantly Twilight) to think so they'd think he was telling a lie, except he hadn't been telling a lie because he meant his Fluttershy, except he'd been looking at this Fluttershy when he'd said it and he hated her so it was a lie and he'd had to tell a lie to satisfy his orders, but he couldn't tell a lie, but he'd just told a lie...
Every single muscle in his body convulsed wildly, including the ones in his guts. Bile and phlegm and water and blood exploded from his mouth. It was the last physical sensation he felt, as his senses melted into the glorious disorder of pure synesthesia. Pain became bright and clashing colors. He smelled sound and felt light and heard his muscles contracting and expanding arrhythmically as his body thrashed with no more input from his mind whatsoever. It was beautiful, and for a moment, he felt a profound gratitude to the universe at ending his suffering with such a wondrous and incomprehensible blur of chaos. And then there was nothing.
Ice-cold water pouring over his face shocked him back to consciousness.
He gasped and spluttered. Fluttercruel was flapping above him, holding an empty bucket. "...confirmed that the truth spell is holding," Twilight was saying, and when he shook the water out of his eyes and looked at her, he could see she was writing something in a notebook. "While he's capable of telling a lie, it requires extreme duress and it immediately causes vomiting and seizures afterward. Therefore, implausible as it seems, he must be telling the truth." She turned to him. "Are you awake, Discord?"
"Yes," he moaned. She wasn't feeding pain into his limbs anymore, but it didn't matter; every muscle was in agony, after he'd pulled on all of them so hard during his seizure, and the piercings in his tail and wings felt like he'd at least partially torn the flesh they went through. "It hurts, everything hurts, please can this be over? Please, I hurt so much..."
"I haven't yet gotten a sufficient explanation from you," Twilight said. "You said Princess Celestia ordered your release. Why would she do that?"
Discord felt too exhausted to try to drag this out any longer. He'd been answering Twilight's questions as briefly and specifically as possible to avoid betraying useful intelligence she could use against his friends for as long as he could, but he was done. He couldn't push it any further. "She asked my Fluttershy to reform me because she said she had use for my magic. So Fluttershy became my friend. I'd never had a friend before, not really. I... it turned out, I wanted a friend more than I wanted indiscriminate chaos. Fluttershy would be angry with me if I just did whatever I wanted, so... so I had to control it, if I wanted to be her friend. I can't... I don't just spread chaos everywhere like I used to." He looked up at Twilight pleadingly. "I'm reformed. I'm trying to be good now."
Twilight raised an eyebrow. "In your world, do fish raining in Canterlot and ponies stuck on the side of buildings qualify as good?"
Tears welled in his eyes. He closed them tightly so the two mares wouldn't see. Not that they both hadn't seen him cry before, many times, but crying because he was being tortured was different than crying out of genuine guilt and regret. If he'd only done what Fluttershy would have wanted him to do, he would be home, and safe, enjoying the limited chaos she'd allow him to make, instead of being tied up and tortured on the floor of an evil alternate Twilight's workroom. "No... I said I was trying to be good. It was... it was too hard, I couldn't... I needed chaos, and I knew Fluttershy would be angry with me... so I came to an alternate universe to do it. I was just going to play with you for a few days and then go home..." A sob escaped him. He forced it down. "I know I shouldn't have, I know it was wrong, I just... I wanted it so badly, just a little bit of fun and then go home... I just want to go home, please, I won't cause you any more trouble, please just let me go home..."
"I'd have thought you would have realized by now," Twilight said, looking down at him. "You will never go home again. If you didn't devastate your world as the Discord here did to us, then your Princess Celestia does not need your magic to repair the world nearly as much as we do. And as foolish as they are for trusting you, I cannot in all conscience allow you to return to a world where they permit you free reign, and expect to control you with friendship instead of spells. You are the antithesis of friendship; perhaps you do desire it, but you're not capable of it. As proven by the fact that you went behind your supposed 'friend's' back to cause chaos here. Since they will not be ruthless enough with you to truly control you, it would be irresponsible for me to ever let you go."
Another sob escaped him. He'd known it wouldn't work, he'd known she would never be willing to let him go, not when she thought she could use him to grant eternal life to ponykind. But hearing the words crumbled a tiny crystal of hope in his heart to dust. "Then just let me die!" he begged. "If you hate me so much, then just kill me!"
"That would be wasteful."
"I'm not going to let you die," Fluttercruel said sharply. "I've lost you once already. This time I can make you obey, I can make you learn how to be obedient and good. And then you can save our world, and I'll never need to hurt you again, and nopony will kill you or turn you to stone or take you away from me. Ever."
He'd known that wouldn't work either. Fluttercruel's words were disturbing him greatly, though. "Mistress... you know I'm not the same one, right? I'm from another universe. The other--"
"Shut up," Fluttercruel ordered. "Of course I know. I've known all along. But I wasn't going to turn down a second chance." She knelt beside him and stroked his head. "I wanted to hurt you so much," she confessed. "Well, him. But it's the same thing. I'd tell him how much I hated him, when we were together, and he'd laugh and tell me he knew. But I never -- after he broke me and made me this, I never wanted to hate him. I had to hate him because he was evil and he was doing evil things, but... but after he changed me I was so much like him, and he was the only one who understood. Even Pinkie doesn't understand. She's just crazy." She laid her head on his chest, carefully avoiding the vomit that stained his coat, and hugged him with her forelimbs. "I hated him and I loved him," she said. "And I know you were lying when you said you loved me, but someday, you will. Someday, I'll break you, and you'll stop wanting to disobey and be evil, and you'll love me. I can't have that from him now, but I can have it from you, and you're the same."
"What did you say in the letter, Discord?" Twilight asked.
His breathing was ragged as he tried not to cry. "I... I told her what you were doing to me and I begged her for help."
"Why not contact your friend, your Fluttershy?"
"I had to send it to Spike. I... I had almost no power, you've taken almost all of it. The only way I could get it to my world at all is to send it between dragons who are cognates. Counterparts in different universes. I let Spike think I wanted it to go to Celestia but it was supposed to go to the other Spike. But I have no way of knowing if he even got it and if he did I don't know if Twilight is going to do anything about it."
"Do you think she will?"
Despair closed its jaws around him. "No," he admitted. "No, I'm almost sure she won't. Why would she? She says she's my friend but she's not. I know it, she knows it, it's not even a secret really, but she won't admit it because she's afraid I won't stay reformed if I don't have friends, even though we all know my only real friend is Fluttershy." He forced back another sob. "She'll probably be happy that I'm here. Then she doesn't have to worry about what I might do anymore and her world is safe from me."
"What was the nature of the work you were doing for Princess Celestia?"
"Closing the dimensional gates. They're porous. Something could get through."
"Is that true of our world as well?"
"Mostly, yes. My counterpart closed up some of them but he left enough open that I was able to find this world easily."
"Is that why you chose this world?"
"No, I chose it because your Discord is dead. I didn't want my counterpart to interfere with me so I wanted a world where my other self was dead."
"How did you expect your Twilight to be able to find you in this world? Does she have the power to cross between dimensions as well, and if so, how did she acquire it?"
"No, I told her... there's a portal out by the Everfree, I figured that her magic would be sufficient to find it and open it." Her alicorn magic. This Twilight would never be able to find the portal. Even if whatever strange power she had added to her own made her as powerful as an alicorn, and Discord found this doubtful, it was the wrong kind of power. Alicorns were tied into the planetary thaumosphere and the Platonic metaconcepts that were the underpinning of magic, each of them representing some principle or force, as Discord himself represented chaos. Only beings with such a connection had the ability to sense meta-magical disruptions. No alicorn could sense the thaumosphere as closely as he could, of course, but if an alicorn got close to an unbound portal and started actively looking for it, she could find it. A unicorn, however powerful, wouldn't have that ability. There was no way this Twilight could find the portal. He thought. He hoped.
"Describe where."
"I can't, I'd find it myself by feeling for it magically. It's near the edge of the Everfree within a few trots of Ponyville, that's all I can tell you. I'm not good at taking measurements or remembering landmarks with precision, I find things by using my magic." He closed his eyes. "It doesn't matter anyway. She's not coming and you're not going to let me go, so it doesn't matter."
"Don't be so sad," Fluttercruel said. "I know life is hard but if you'd just give in and accept that we own you and stop trying to fight, you could be much happier. I could make you very happy, Discord." She kissed his neck, directly above his collar. "You just need to learn to love me, because I love you and I just want you to be good."
He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling, unmoving. There wasn't any response he wanted to, or dared to, make to that.
"Fluttershy," Twilight said. "Come with me. We need to talk."
"I need to clean him up," Fluttercruel objected. "He threw up before, it's all over him."
"I intended to have Spike do it."
"But we already know he can subvert Spike."
Twilight sighed. "I believe Spike has learned his lesson. But I suspect I know your intention. We need to talk with the others, and then you can come attend to Discord. Clean him up and make sure he's fed; he's growing dangerously thin."
"I'll get him something," Fluttershy said. "I'll just need to stop off quickly at home. I can get my cleaning supplies while I'm there."
"Can I sleep?" Discord whimpered. "Please? Is it over?"
Fluttercruel looked at Twilight. "I have all the information I need," Twilight said.
"Okay, good," Fluttercruel said. "If you could take the wires off him, please... but don't untie him. He'll be easier to clean this way, and besides..." She flushed red. "Well, um, I like seeing him like this."
Twilight sighed. "I suppose it's necessary," she said. "Very well, but make sure you clean up after yourself once you're done."
"Oh, of course." She turned to Discord as the wires started peeling away from him. "Yes, sweetie, go ahead and get a little nap. I'll wake you up when it's time to clean you." She smiled broadly at him and winked.
What she intended to do to him after Twilight let her come back was obvious. But it didn't matter. He was never going to get free. He was going to spend the rest of his life as a slave. So what did it matter what she did to him? Discord closed his eyes. It was very uncomfortable, lying on a cold stone floor with his limbs stretched out and his body pulled taut, and his muscles were still in a great deal of pain from the convulsions, but he'd been exhausted beyond belief when he'd first been brought here, and the torture had taken every last erg of energy he had left. All he had to do was close his eyes and let go. Sleep was the only refuge he would ever have from the horror of his current existence, ever again. Let it swallow him, let it give him a few minutes or hours of respite. He could cry with despair later. Right now all he wanted to do was close his eyes and fall into darkness.
Opposition, 2 AM
"This had better be good, Twilight," Applejack grumbled. "Some of us have real work we've gotta do in the mornin'."
"Yes," Rarity yawned. "It's nearly two in the morning, Twilight, surely whatever this is could have waited until the Princess raises the sun, at least?"
"Not like you'd be up then either," Applejack said.
"It must be super duper important if Twilight's making us wake up in the middle of the night for it!" Pinkie said. "Twilight wouldn't just make us wake up early 'cause she felt like it. Fluttershy might just to be mean and Dashie might for a prank and Applejack might if she thought it would make us too sleepy to think straight and then we'd all agree to something we wouldn't have agreed to do if we were awake--"
"Hay now," Applejack said warningly. "No need to get personal, Pinkie."
"I wouldn't wake you up just to be mean," Fluttershy said. "You're my pony friends. I don't have to be mean to ponies anymore now that I've figured out how to stop."
"You woke up Gummy two weeks ago just to be mean and that woke me up."
"Thought you ate Gummy," Applejack said.
Pinkie giggled. "No way! That was just a prank. I only ate his tail! I'd never eat him all up."
"Oh my Celestia, I hope you didn't try to feed that tail to any ponies," Rarity said. "Your eating habits have only become more disgusting over the years."
Pinkie stuck out her tongue at Rarity. Twilight resisted the urge to face-hoof. What were they all, nine?
"Anyways, Twi, some of us would like to get back to bed, so maybe you could tell us why you called us here? Sometime this week?"
"We're waiting for Rainbow Dash."
"Oh bread me and fry me like a fritter, we will be here all week. Tell you what, I'll just take a nap in your guest room and you can call me when Her Majestic Awesomeness bothers to show her face, which'll probably be Tuesday. If she ain't got some super important autographing session or some bull puckey like that."
"I'm with Applejack," Rarity said. "But since you have to stay up to wait for her anyway, I believe I'll take my nap in your bed."
Twilight's horn flared and grabbed the two mares before they had a chance to trot up the stairs. "We are waiting for Rainbow Dash. She should be here soon."
"I could go get her!" Pinkie said, bouncing up and down. "She always wakes up when I come into the room!"
"Couldn't have anything to do with that prank you pulled where you pretended you were gonna cut her up and make her into cupcakes, could it have?" Applejack snorted.
Pinkie laughed. "The silly filly, she actually believed me. Like I'd put meat into cupcakes! Meat is a savory, cupcakes are sweet! And anyway she's my friend. I only cut up and cook the mean ponies, and I never put them in cupcakes! That'd just be gross!"
"Everything about you is 'gross'," Rarity said, "and by that I mean grotesque."
"You just don't have any sense of humor, Rari-bearity!" Pinkie giggled. "You gotta see the funny side of things. Things that are gross are funny! Like poop! You can't tell me poop isn't funny."
"I most certainly can. There is nothing funny about poop."
Pinkie giggled again. "But it sounds so funny! Especially when you say it!" She imitated Rarity's voice. "Poop poop poop."
"Twilight, is Dash gonna show any time this year or should I make arrangements with Mac that he's gonna need to hire hands to replace me for this year's harvest?"
"I sent Owlowiscious to get her," Twilight said, trying very hard to be patient with her so-called friends. And keep her rage directed where it belonged. Discord had done this to them. Not the one in her workroom, obviously, but he was effectively the same creature. He was the one who deserved her scorn and fury, not her friends. It wasn't their fault what they had become.
"Oh, Twilight, Owlowiscious isn't exactly the fastest bird," Fluttershy said. "I'm sure I could have given you a better candidate."
"Most of the faster birds would be asleep by now."
"Yes, but they'll wake up if I tell them to," Fluttershy said. "None of my animal friends want me to be cross with them."
"I bet my gyrocopter could go faster than Owlowiscious," Pinkie said. "You want me to go wake Dashie up?"
"No," Twilight snapped. "We can just wait a few minutes for her. You will not all keel over from exhaustion."
"Speak for yourself," Rarity said. "I very well might. I was up quite late working on an order--"
"--finding ways to cut corners--" Fluttershy murmured.
"Hard work, that," Applejack agreed with Fluttershy in a loud whisper.
Rarity ignored them. "--And I do not appreciate being woken at this unearthly hour of the morning for no particularly good--"
Rainbow Dash flew in the window and skidded to a halt. "Yo," she said, lifting back up to hover upright. Inexplicably she was wearing sunglasses, despite it being pitch black outside.
"Thank you for finally choosing to join us, Rainbow," Twilight said acidly.
"Hay, you girls are lucky I managed to make time," Rainbow said. "It isn't like I don't have better things to do than hang with you all."
"Yeah, we know," Applejack said. "You're just too awesome for us simple mortal ponies."
"I know you're being sarcastic, but that's the Celestia-honest truth there," Rainbow said. "So hay, for once you're being honest again!"
"Yay! We can have an Applejack is being honest again party!" Pinkie said.
"Shut the buck up, Pinkie, before you end up with a lot less teeth to go rotten from all the sugar you eat," Applejack said.
"Um, if everypony would just be quiet, I think Twilight had something important to tell us?" Fluttershy said.
"Well, it's about time, I simply must get back home and get some beauty rest before the morning," Rarity said, "so I hope this can go quickly."
"Not likely," Twilight said. "You will all, in fact, be staying here overnight. We have a situation."
"What kind of a situation are we talkin' about here?" Applejack asked, scowling.
"Last night, Discord tricked Spike into sending a letter for him. I have now obtained Discord's confession; he's confirmed that he does indeed hail from a different universe."
"That all?" Applejack rolled her eyes. "You told us that a few days after we caught him."
"That really doesn't seem to warrant waking us all up, Twilight," Rarity said sternly.
Twilight sighed. "If you would let me finish... He claims that in his timeline, he is 'friends' with us. Or, specifically at least, with Fluttershy."
Rainbow Dash sniggered. "Yeah, 'friends'. I'll just bet he is. Friends with benefits, more like it!"
Fluttershy glared at Rainbow Dash. "I'm so sorry you had to whore yourself out to the entire team of Wonderbolts so they'd let you join them. I know that must have been rough on you. All I had to do was whore myself out to the spirit of Chaos to save Equestria, but I'm sure you're a much better whore than me."
Rainbow Dash just removed her sunglasses. "Oh, stuff it, Flutters, we all know you wanted him. Look at you now. I'm pretty sure that training him to be obedient doesn't need for you to fuck him twice a day."
"Guys! If we're all gonna insult each other can we at least make it funny?" Pinkie asked. "'Cause this is like, schoolfilly stuff! We can come up with better ones, I'm sure!"
"I was trying to discuss something serious," Twilight snapped. "So if you are all done being foalish--"
"Not me! I'm foalish all the time!"
"Except when you're eating ponies," Rarity muttered.
"Nope! Foalish then too!"
"I am trying to say that Discord has written to our counterparts and asked them to rescue him."
"Ooh! Ooh! Is this one of those alternate universes where we're evil and we all have mustaches?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Pinkie, a mustache would be a travesty on any of our faces," Rarity said.
Twilight ignored the comments about mustaches. "No. He claims that he has 'reformed', that he is 'trying to be good now' because Fluttershy befriended him."
"And you believed him?" Applejack asked skeptically.
"I performed a test on the honesty spell. When ordered to lie, he demonstrated great distress, pleaded with me to release him from the command, and eventually after great effort and under high levels of pain, he came up with something, and then immediately seized. So yes, I believe him, because I've observed for myself that it is enormously difficult for him to lie."
"I wonder if he even was lying," Fluttershy murmured.
Twilight wanted to facehoof. "Fluttershy, he doesn't love you."
"No, I know that, but... what if he loves the other Fluttershy? What if he said it because you would think it was a lie, but it wasn't? After all, we know that his seizures come from contradictory orders that he can't fulfill, but if he tries to lie, well, he can't say something that's completely untrue. So the seizure might have come from failing to fulfill his orders."
"Wait, Discord said he loves somepony? I think I'm gonna barf," Rainbow Dash said.
"Regardless of that, the point is that we are likely to be invaded by our counterparts... who were never corrupted by Discord in the first place, according to him, and therefore still have their original, undamaged Elements of Harmony. This may be a serious threat to us."
"Now wait one minute," Applejack said. "Maybe he really has made friends with Fluttershy and is all 'reformed' and stuff, though you know I don't really believe that for one minute, but sure, he could be foolin' himself. But why in tarnation would the rest of us care? What makes you think we're gonna come rescue Discord?"
"Firstly, they don't know the full extent of his evil," Twilight said. "Their Princess Luna is still alive. The other us sealed Discord in stone the first time we tried it; he didn't leave a statue-shaped balloon in his place in that world. So all they know of what Discord is capable of is that first day. He never negated their gravity and threatened to let them float into space in front of their little sisters and pets if they didn't remove their Elements and toss them to him. He never corrupted Princess Luna. He never tormented the Changelings. He never started riots in Canterlot that may well have killed my brother's fiancée." She had to take a deep breath to get her emotions back under control. Even with the Diadem, she couldn't achieve emotionless perfection all the time, no matter how hard she tried.
"Well, that's all very well, but he was still a perfect brute, even that first day," Rarity said.
"Secondly, I know myself. Discord doesn't believe his version of me will come to his rescue, because he doesn't believe she is truly his friend. I'm quite certain she's not. But she will come to his rescue, because he is of use to their Princess Celestia, who requested that Fluttershy 'reform' him with friendship in the first place, apparently so she could use him to seal the borders of their dimension to keep travelers out... presumably, travelers like he himself is in our dimension. No version of me would ever willingly let Princess Celestia down, and if Discord is useful to her, then she is coming... and she's probably bringing the rest of us as well, because--" She swallowed against a sudden surge of grief that the Diadem hadn't protected her from adequately. "--because if they were never corrupted by Discord, then they still have a powerful, true friendship and they'll follow each other into any sort of danger."
"I'm still your friend, Twilight," Applejack said. "You don't need to make it sound like ain't none of us real friends to each other anymore."
Twilight wondered if Applejack believed her own lies. "That isn't the point. The point is that versions of the six of us who were never corrupted are probably on their way here, or will be here soon, to try to rescue Discord. We must prevent this."
"Why?" Rainbow Dash asked. "I mean, he's fun to kick around, don't get me wrong, but why are we sticking our own necks out to make sure he doesn't get dragged back where he came from? It'd mean we don't have to worry about him here anymore."
Twilight wanted to facehoof, but decided it would be insufficiently dignified. "Rainbow, do you actually remember why we're doing all this? Why we didn't just turn him to stone?"
"'Cause it's more fun to buck him in the face if he can feel it?" Rainbow said, grinning.
Applejack smirked and Pinkie giggled. Twilight sighed. "Princess Celestia is exhausted," she said. "She was never born to raise both the sun and the moon; she did so faithfully for a thousand years, waiting for Princess Luna's return... but now Princess Luna is dead, as is Princess Cadance. There is nopony who can relieve her of her burden." She didn't mention that Chrysalis was as powerful as an alicorn, now, from feeding on her brother for so long. Or that she was trying to tempt Princess Celestia into letting her feed on the Princess' love for her lost sister. Chrysalis wasn't that trustworthy, and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the sun or moon. "If Discord is under our control, he can move the sun and the moon, and allow Princess Celestia to rest. The threats that we have been dealing with, with the Elements or the fear that we might use them, could be dealt with by Discord as well, allowing us to rest." Allowing her to truly help Princess Celestia, to dedicate her time to her Princess instead of the perverse parodies of her friends. "He can repair the damage that our version of him did to our world. For all these reasons, we need him."
Plus, there was the most important reason. Twilight's experiments had revealed a great deal of how Discord's magic worked, how magic itself worked, how chaos and order and harmony interrelated in their world. With his power, the power of the Elements, and the Diadem of Order, Twilight believed she could grant all of ponykind eternal life. Nopony would ever die again. She couldn't say so; she knew for a fact Applejack didn't believe it was possible or even a good idea, and Pinkie's fascination with the concept was very, very unhealthy given Pinkie's new hobbies. But everything else was secondary to that.
"Also, um, there's a lot of good things he could do with his powers, if we could control what he does," Fluttershy said. "I can make him do things that aren't chaotic at all, even the opposite, like rebuild broken things? I've been training him, and he doesn't even try to fight me anymore when I tell him to do things like that. When we first got him he used to say he couldn't do it because it wasn't chaotic, but, well, now he's a lot better."
Applejack rolled her eyes. "We all know what you're trainin' him to do, sugarcube. We don't need the X-rated version."
"I wasn't going to give you the X-rated version," Fluttershy retorted angrily. "But since you're telling me you don't want to hear it, that must mean you do, so fine. I like having sex with him. There, I said it. Okay? You can shut up about it now, I don't talk about all the coltfriends you don't have because they know you're a lying little diamond bitch."
Twilight sighed even more loudly than the last time. "Everypony please stop bringing up Fluttershy's methodology. It frankly nauseates me to think about, but we could never have defeated Discord the first time if she hadn't distracted him long enough so I could unweave the keep-away spell, and judging from the level of defiance Discord demonstrates now in comparison to his initial arrival, her methods are effective. Also, every time any one of you mentions it she feels the need to derail the conversation into vitriolic insults. So I would appreciate it if you would all keep your silence on the matter."
Pinkie shrugged. "I don't see what's wrong with it! Fluttershy deserves to have some fun in her life! If she likes draconequuses, well, at least she's not doing mean things to bunny rabbits anymore!"
"I will slap you," Fluttershy snarled.
"Ooh! With a dead fish? Because I have a dead fish I was saving for a dead fish emergency! I have two in fact, so we could have a fish slapping contest!"
"Could we please try to focus?" Twilight snapped. "Just once?"
"I do not appreciate the turns to the crude that this conversation keeps taking," Rarity said. "Nopony here needs to discuss another's bedroom habits. That is simply uncouth." She turned to Twilight. "Twilight, if you please, I believe you were talking about something important?"
"Yeah, like how big of a suckup you are," Rainbow Dash muttered.
Twilight ignored that, and also ignored Rarity's twitching eyelids. "I want to keep Discord here for several days; I believe that if there is a rescue mission from the other world, it will occur soon, and most likely Discord informed them he was being held prisoner at Fluttershy's. Keeping him here is more defensible. I also intend to have Chrysalis send a patrol of changelings to monitor Fluttershy's home and the nearby regions of the Everfree; Discord could not tell us exactly where the portal is, but we know the pathways between Ponyville and the Everfree, and we can have the changelings stake them out."
"Great. Wonderful. So happy you solved it, sugarcube. Now can we all go back to bed? I got apples to buck in the mornin'."
"Just shut up and listen," Twilight hissed. "All of us need to be ready to mobilize at a moment's notice. They might be coming through tonight, or tomorrow, or within the next few days. We will not be able to afford to send messengers to summon all of us. If the other Elements come through the portal, we may be the only ones who can stand against them. So we must be prepared to be united, as a group, the moment the changelings tell me there is suspicious activity. Therefore I believe that we should stay together, and all of us should sleep here tonight." Memory came back of a sleepover in happier times, of the silly arguments between an Applejack who was pure and honest and a Rarity who was generous and caring, and how they'd all come together in the end. The contrast between then and now had been a constant tearing agony in her heart before she'd found the Diadem of Order. Now she didn't have to feel the pain; she could sense that it was there, she could feel the horror and grief at what her friends and her friendships had become, but it was far away and she was numb to it.
"Oh hay no," Applejack said. "I ain't stayin' here for three days, Twilight. I don't think I can afford to stay here one night; I gotta be up before dawn. You're puttin' a burden on my brother and sister they can't take. You know, it ain't like I got my granny to help out anymore."
"Yeah, I can't stay here overnight either. I got stuff I've gotta do back in Cloudsdale," Rainbow said.
"Um, I'll have to be up early to take care of the animals..."
"And no offense to your charming little library, Twilight, but I do remember what a nightmare it was to spend the night here the last time I tried it. My clients expect me to be at my best; I simply cannot sell if I look like a ragamuffin who hasn't had a night's sleep."
"I'm ok with a sleepover! We could make S'mores, Twilight! Do you like S'mores? Of course you do, everypony likes S'mores!"
Twilight breathed heavily. She could force them all. She spoke with the authority of Princess Celestia; if she made it a royal order by proxy, they would comply. But they would take it out on her, and each other, and run the risk of damaging the very, very fragile bonds that allowed the Elements to harmonize. When they'd been pure Elements of Harmony, and their friendship had been strong, she hadn't had to worry about petty squabbles damaging their ability to come together when it counted. But the new Elements she had to work with, Elements of Harmony and Disharmony combined, were very, very hard to keep focused. The only reason Twilight was still pretending to be friends with any of these mares was to preserve the Elements, because they were all horrible ponies now. To some extent they could all fake it to the outside world – she'd only had to do one memory wipe on the Cakes to keep them from noticing Pinkie's little hobby in their basement, and Pinkie was the most obviously disturbed of all of them – but in their own little circle, they felt safe in being themselves, and who they were now was something nopony would want to befriend if they had a choice.
She had recurring horrible nightmares of finding Discord, collarless, healed and at his full power, standing over her bed, gloating that the Element-powered spells she'd laid on him had failed because she couldn't keep the Elements harmonized enough to work. And then the things he did after that... no, those were nightmares, not reality, and it was nonsensical to dwell on them. Still, that particular nightmare was her mind warning her of a possibility, she felt. She couldn't afford to antagonize her so-called friends. "Very well. Then I suggest an alternative. I will enchant our Elements so that I can send a signal through them. I would require that all of you wear your Elements at all times; I will send a charge through them, which will cause them to vibrate, if you are needed, and if so, we are to regroup at Fluttershy's house immediately. That way I can allow all of you to go home."
"But wait, you want to keep Discord here?" Fluttershy said. "That's... no! That won't work, because... I need to be with him!"
"I believe I can keep him under control," Twilight said dryly.
"You'll ruin everything! You're completely cold; you don't care about him at all. He may be afraid of defying you, but the key to making him obedient isn't just having him afraid. He has to think he'll be treated nicely if he cooperates, and you just don't treat him nicely ever."
Treat nicely a creature of Chaos. Treat nicely disruption and disharmony incarnate. Treat nicely the creature responsible for the most horrifying year of Twilight's life, the death of a princess she respected and the foalsitter she loved, and the breaking of the princess she loved above all. Twilight stared at Fluttershy coldly. "He will remain here. That's final."
"Um... then I need to get somepony to watch the animals, because I'll have to stay here as long as you keep him," Fluttershy said.
Rainbow Dash snickered and nudged Applejack. "She's that addicted to Dick-cord. Can't go without her daily dose even a day."
Before Fluttershy could inevitably come up with an unwarrantedly vicious retort, Twilight said hurriedly, "Very well, you may stay with him. I will send Spike in the morning to tend to your animals."
"Oh, thank you, Twilight," Fluttershy said. "I know you take my work seriously. Are you keeping him in your workroom overnight?"
"I see no reason not to. In fact I would prefer to keep him bound the entire time he is here. It will make any rescue attempts that much more difficult." And her skin crawled at the thought of Discord walking around in her perfectly ordered library, trailing chaos with him. Even now that his magic was bound he still stank of disorder and mayhem, and the thought of flakes of his skin landing all over her floor or on her books sickened her.
"All right. When I go get my cleaning supplies, I'll bring in some blankets and pillows for myself. Would it be okay if I locked the door from the inside?"
"I can open it magically in any case, so I imagine that would be acceptable." She tried not to think about what Fluttershy was going to do to Discord in her workroom. Discord's blood and vomit and bodily waste products had ended up all over the floor in there on multiple occasions; Spike and a bucket of bleach could deal with any secretions of any kind that contaminated the floor after Fluttershy was done, just as he had after Twilight's sessions with Discord, but somehow the thought of Discord's sexual fluids was even more nauseating than the thought of his feces on her floor, and that had been disgusting enough. Still, Twilight couldn't deny that Fluttershy's strategy was getting results. She just... had to go to bed and pretend that Fluttershy was going straight to sleep in there and nothing else. Yes, that would help.
"Well, I'm totally up for kicking another me in the plot," Rainbow Dash said, "but the call better not come when I'm training with the Wonderbolts or doing an autograph session, just saying."
"But what if we made friends with them?" Pinkie said. "They're us, right? So what if we just explain to them that we need to keep Discord to fix up our world and help our Princess Celestia?"
"Their Princess Celestia will command them to retrieve him, because he's of use to her. So that won't work, Pinkie."
"Well." Pinkie contemplated. "I was always kind of curious what you guys would taste like... but you're my friends, so I couldn't find out! Maybe now I'll get a chance!" Her eyes suddenly went wide. "Oh, wow, I wonder what I taste like! I bet I taste great!"
"Pinkie, please," Rarity said. "Some of us have delicate stomachs!"
"We done here? Great. I gotta be gettin' home." Applejack headed for the door without any further discussion.
"Yeah, me too. Outta here." Rainbow zoomed out the window, infuriating Twilight.
"I, um, I have to go home to get cleaning supplies, and those blankets and pillows. Oh, and some food for Discord. That gives me an idea." Fluttershy turned to Pinkie. "Pinkie, do you have any stocks of your... special ingredients, right now?"
"Sure! Got a big freezer full!"
"Would you mind if I picked some up?"
Pinkie whispered something in Fluttershy's ear, and Fluttershy's eyes went wide. "Oh my. M-maybe not the whole thing, but, um... maybe I could take a look at what you have left and see what would work best?"
Twilight decided she didn't want to know exactly what they were talking about. She walked Rarity to the door, since Rarity, as big of a complainer as she was, was at least schooled enough in the social graces to take her leave properly. Pinkie and Fluttershy left together while she was saying goodnight to Rarity. Then it was time for Twilight to retire. And cast a low soundproofing charm around her bedroom, because once Fluttershy came back, if she was able to invoke any particularly loud sounds from Discord, Twilight most assuredly did not want to hear it. His screams of pain didn't disturb her, during the experiments, but she very much did not want to listen to sounds he was making for reasons other than pain.
Opposition, 3 AM
"Wake up, sweetie!"
Blearily Discord opened his eyes. He was still so tired, but his body had to respond to the command to wake up, and his conditioning ensured he was too afraid of Fluttercruel to stay asleep when he heard her voice anyway. All of his muscles still ached horribly. He turned his head to look at Fluttercruel so she could see he was awake, too tired to respond verbally yet.
"I have some nice nutritious food for you, and a special treat," Fluttercruel said. "Twilight thinks you're too thin, so she's asked me to give you a little bit more food than you've been getting every day. Isn't that nice of her? And I've brought you something especially good for you tonight, because you were so good with Twilight."
She knelt down and unlatched the chain attached to his collar. "Something yummy for you to drink!" she caroled. "Lift up your head, sweetie!"
The despair and exhaustion had overwhelmed him so thoroughly he couldn't even feel fear, only dull resignation. He lifted his head obediently, coming as upright as he could with his arms bound – which was more than a pony could have managed, given the length of his neck, but it hurt to do it, with his general weakness and his muscle aches. Whatever she had for him to drink would probably be something awful, and—
She held a tall glass of sweet-smelling brown liquid up where he could see it.
It couldn't be. She would never let him have something like this... would she? It had to be a trick. It must be full of emetics, or laxatives, or some mild poison to make him suffer, or maybe it wasn't what it looked and smelled like and there was a spell on it to trick him. It could not really be chocolate milk.
She put it to his lips, but didn't tip it, so he couldn't drink it. Without his paws or his magic or even his tail, he had no way to tip it himself. "Here you go, it's your favorite. Chocolate milk. Come on, drink up!"
That was an order and he had to obey it. For a moment he still couldn't figure out how. Then he realized that while the glass might be shaped so he could lift and pour into his mouth, like a pony or any other intelligent creature, without his hands and without her tipping it he had to treat it like he would a saucer on the floor. He bent his head down and stuck his tongue out, not daring to believe it would be anything other than something noxious and awful.
Instead what met his tongue was an explosion of delight, the most wonderful taste he'd been permitted to have in his entire two months of hell. Discord's eyes went even wider. It wasn't a trick. He didn't know how or why, but Fluttercruel was really giving him his favorite drink. Maybe it did have poisons in it and he'd suffer for this later, but it wasn't as if he could disobey the order... and quite aside from how wonderful it tasted, he was so very thirsty. He lapped as quickly as he could, his tongue unrolling to touch the bottom of the glass so he could coat as much of it as he could with the delicious liquid.
When Discord had first escaped his stone prison after over a thousand years, the very first thing he'd done had been to teleport to the Everfree, where he'd been thrilled to see that his chaos engines were still working, interfering with the Tree of Harmony – not enough to stop it, but enough to force it to work harder than it would probably prefer – and preventing pony magic from interfering with the chaos of nature. He had then summoned up his favorite comfort foods – chocolate milk, the drink his mother had fed him with for all the time with her that he could remember; fluffy cotton candy, a cloud of contradictory sweetness that looked solid but melted on one's tongue; warm buttered popcorn, like the treats he'd made for himself from corn and butter he'd stolen from ponies, when he was young – and gorged himself on them. While he'd been in stone, he hadn't been hungry – he'd had no bodily urges at all, because he couldn't feel his body – and when he had his powers, he didn't actually need to eat, but he'd missed the taste of food so terribly. Next to chaos and disharmony, food was his favorite thing in the world.
And after filling himself outrageously full with delightful snacks, he'd gone to the place where he'd been turned to stone, the place he'd usually kept returning to as a seat of power even though, being Chaos, he couldn't actually be tied down to one place all the time, the place where he'd planted his plunder seeds before the alicorns had paralyzed him... which had become a small town called Ponyville. And the very first chaos he'd unleashed on them had been inspired by his post-freedom celebratory meal. He'd gifted Ponyville with his favorite foods, not that they'd been grateful.
He hadn't done it since – chaos wasn't chaos if it repeated itself – but, apparently, he'd left enough of an impact on Ponyville that Fluttercruel had guessed this was one of his favorite foods. Either that, or the other Discord had told her at some point.
It was maddening that he had to use his tongue to lap it – both because it was humiliating, and because it was so much slower than tipping the glass back and pouring the whole thing down his throat would have been – but at the same time, it forced him to savor the taste. No matter how fast he lapped, every sip he could pull into his mouth with his tongue required him to dip his tongue fully into the liquid, so he was met with the wondrous taste of the chocolate milk over and over and over. He had to blink away tears. There had to be a trick here; there was no way Fluttercruel could really be giving him such a wonderful reward. Either that or she'd make him pay for it. But he didn't actually care. A few moments of pleasure snatched from the awfulness his life had become were worth almost any future suffering, because the future suffering was inevitable anyway.
When there was nothing left in the glass – literally nothing aside from his own saliva, he had licked the inside of the glass clean – he looked up at Fluttercruel. "Thank you, mistress Fluttershy," he said, and meant it for once, gratitude welling up within him.
"Oh, you're very welcome," she said, smiling. "I brought you some good food, too, since you missed your dinner. Well, good for you, anyway, but I'm sure you'll find it delicious."
There was a very large covered tray on top of a wagon, near the door. Fluttercruel pulled the wagon over and removed the tray, laying it on the floor within reach of his flexible head. He watched, trembling with fear and anticipation – the chocolate milk had been delightful, but there hadn't been enough of it to satisfy his hunger, just enough to quench his thirst. Was she actually going to give him something good to eat? The chocolate milk suggested yes, but all of the rest of his experience with her suggested no. But Twilight had ordered her to give him better food for his health, so surely this wasn't something disgusting and inedible, right?
She lifted the covering, letting the smell waft up to him, and his head reeled. His mind and heart recoiled in horror... but even so, his stomach growled and his mouth watered, making him feel a sudden surge of self-hatred because this wasn't food, he shouldn't look at it like food, he shouldn't think of it as food... but in his starved state, the smell was so good, so enticing, even though at any other time it would have horrified him, or at least made him feel a twinge of regret at the sight of a toy he'd never be able to play with.
It was the carcass of a pony.
The meat had been stripped from the upper body and the legs had been removed, but the head and the flank had been left mostly intact, including mane and tail. It had been a blue pony, probably an earth pony because there were no wingbones and no horn. Her eyes were missing, but enough of her head was intact that he could tell she was a mare. She had had a large diamond – not a stylized parallelogram like Rarity had three of, but something that actually resembled a gem – for a cutie mark. She'd been warmed up to body temperature, though the congealing of the blood on her body suggested that she'd probably been dead at least a day or two.
He'd scavenged corpses like this as a young child, when he'd been starving in the mountains over the winter, driving away the predators or fellow scavengers already feasting with the aid of opposable thumbs, the ability to stand upright, and rocks or sticks. The bodies he'd found and eaten hadn't been ponies, but he was fairly sure one of them had been a deer, and deer were sapient, speaking animals as well. He knew what fresh, raw, warm meat tasted like. He knew he preferred cooked meat if he was going to eat meat at all, but that raw meat would still be delicious if it was killed recently enough.
He knew he wanted to be sick. Nausea churned in his guts at the conflict between what his nose and tongue and stomach were telling him he wanted to do and how they wanted him to feel about it, and his higher mental functions and scant traces of empathy and how they felt about it. This was a dead pony. A murdered pony. A pony who had probably screamed and begged for mercy the same way he had when he'd been in Pinkie Pie's hooves... but who hadn't had the power to regenerate herself, or anyone to tell Pinkie to stop. Having been through exactly what this pony had been through, minus the very ending, even he could feel empathy, compassion, grief for her sake and what she'd suffered, because he knew exactly how she had felt. And yet, he was starving, and his stomach was insisting that she wasn't an unfortunate murder victim he should feel sorry for... she was food, and he should eat her.
He turned his head away. "No."
"No? Are you refusing an order, Discord?"
"You haven't given me an order," he said, his voice too tired and hoarse to convey the emotion he actually felt. "And you're going to have to if you expect me to eat a murdered pony. I may be cruel and chaotic but this is monstrous. I don't eat ponies."
"So you're not very hungry," she said mockingly.
"I'm starving to death. You never feed me anything good, aside from that chocolate milk you just gave me, and even the boring food, you never give me enough. But I'm still not going to eat a pony. I'd rather die of starvation."
"You'll do what I tell you to do," she said warningly. "And if you make me have to order you, you will be punished, Discord."
He didn't have the strength for this. He looked up at her pleadingly. "Fluttershy... please don't make me do this. Please. Pinkie tortured her to death. She's not food. Please don't make me eat a pony."
"She was a criminal, who was handed over to Pinkie after due process," Fluttercruel said, which made him wonder. Had this Equestria re-instituted the death penalty? Or was someone in power just willing to sacrifice the disharmonious ponies to keep Pinkie Pie happy? "And now I'm giving her to you for dinner, and you're going to eat, or you're going to be punished and then you're going to eat." She opened up the saddlebag she'd left on the floor and pulled out the diamond-studded whip. The rope that made its backbone had been an off-white color, once. Now it was stained red. He shuddered. "Make no mistake, Discord, if I have to, I will punish you and then I will order you to eat, so one way or another you're eating the meal I served you, whether you like it or not. If you choose to do it, I won't force you, and I won't punish you. If you refuse, there will be consequences."
He looked back down at the dead pony. He'd wanted Fluttercruel to force him to do it if she wasn't going to let him refuse, because he didn't want it on the tattered fragments of whatever he had left for a conscience that he'd voluntarily eaten a pony. But being threatened with torture if he didn't do it counted as being forced, didn't it? Discord already hurt so much; just thinking of being beaten because he wanted to prove a point made him whimper. But he'd have done it if he was still himself, wouldn't he have? He'd suffered a lot of pain to prove points in the past, including the point that he'd rebel against authority, any authority. If he gave in on this, didn't that say he was already broken, that he could be forced to violate what very few principles he had left just because he was afraid of torture and not even because he was being actively subjected to it?
"I'm waiting, Discord..."
Discord looked up at Fluttercruel again, intending to refuse again, to try in the only way he had left to hang onto his identity and prove he was still truly Discord deep down inside. But when he saw the bloodstained whip again, he lost his nerve. No. He couldn't willingly draw down punishment on himself like that. "I – I'll eat," he said softly, lowering his head, and then twisting it and lowering his whole neck so he could reach the body with his mouth.
He couldn't use his claws, with his paws bound... only his teeth and tongue. But that was all he needed. Sharp carnivore teeth sank easily into warm pony flesh, and the blood, heated back to liquid by whatever Pinkie had done to warm the corpse, ran down over his tongue and down his throat in rivulets of deliciousness. The aching emptiness in his stomach screamed at him to devour faster, to tear more flesh and gulp it and fill his belly; his tongue wanted more of the rich flavor of warm meat; and his mind was recoiling in utter horror the entire time, but it tasted too good for him to still feel nauseated.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to the dead pony. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."
Discord's eyes filled with tears, and an occasional sob escaped him. It didn't prevent him from devouring as much of the carcass as he could reach with his mouth. He'd intended to take a few bites, enough that he could say he was satisfied without it being a complete lie, and stop. But he couldn't. He was so hungry, and now that the taste was in his mouth, he couldn't make himself stop. The thought occurred to him that Fluttercruel had just proven he was broken, that he'd lost the rebellion that was the heart of chaos and now he was no longer who he was anymore. His weeping intensified, sobs racking his body and tears blinding him as he realized the truth: he'd finally lost the battle he'd been fighting for two months, and he had nothing left. But even as he was crying, he still kept ripping at the dead pony with his teeth and swallowing her tortured body down his throat.
When he'd eaten more than half the meat left on her body, he managed to pull his head away, turning it in the opposite direction from the bloody corpse and laying it down on the stone floor. "I'm... I'm done," he said, his voice barely audible even to him. He'd stopped crying somewhere along the way, and now he just felt numb.
"Oh, good," Fluttercruel said. "Let's get you a nice drink to wash that down." She pulled over a bucket of cold water. Possibly the same bucket Spike had given him water in yesterday. Discord didn't care. He stuck his head in and drank as fast and hard as he could, trying to wash away the taste of the blood in his mouth.
Secondarily, this washed the blood off his muzzle. "How nice! Your face is all washed up already! That's wonderful. We can concentrate on cleaning up the rest of you; you're very messy." He was. He'd fallen asleep with his own vomit still on his fur, and now it was caked and hard. If she didn't take this opportunity to torture him more, he had to admit, he would like to be clean.
Discord laid his head back down, his neck beginning to complain of the strain he'd been putting it under, and turned his head away from the corpse again. Fluttercruel re-fastened the chain to his collar, keeping him from lifting his head again, and then began the process of washing him.
She had three buckets of water and an assortment of towels, brushes, combs, shampoos and oils. With a small cup, she'd draw lukewarm water and pour it onto a part of his body, starting with his neck and moving downward. Then she'd rub the appropriate cleanser onto the area, and scrub with a brush or comb designed for that region of his patchwork body, dipped in very hot water. Then she'd rinse with warm water, brush against the grain, towel that part of his body and then brush again with a dry version of the same brush. And then she'd move on to the next section.
It actually felt very good, especially with how badly his muscles ached. The careful attention and soothing touch made him feel as if she genuinely cared about him, though his mind knew that was a lie, especially after the dead pony – no, he didn't want to think about that. He wanted to close his eyes and pretend it was his Fluttershy tending him. The main reasons he'd had to resist doing that were gone now. He was already broken. He didn't have to try to remember that he hated her and wanted to resist her in order to keep her from breaking him, because plainly she'd already done it.
The fur of Discord's neck was thin and satiny, much like pony fur; his "mane" was actually black feathers ever since he'd gone bald somewhere around his fifth century of existence. At one point there had been quite a lot of thick black hair mixed into his mane, but it was all gone now, only his eyebrows and goatee, white with age, remaining. On his body, the fur was thick, brown and coarse; when he'd had his powers he'd kept the outer layer of it soft and silky, because he was vain and he wanted ponies to enjoy touching him, but in his months of captivity it had reverted to its natural state. She brushed it hard and vigorously with a comb and with hard bristles, soothing some of the ache in his muscles. It wasn't all so pleasant – he had three nipples, two on one side and one on the other, up near the top of his ribcage, hidden under the thick fur, and he yelped with pain when the bristles ran roughshod over them. They were as vestigial as any male's nipples, and located in a bizarre place in comparison to ponies, who more logically kept their apparatus for feeding babies right near their organs for making them, but they were very sensitive, both to pleasure and to pain. Of course, he knew that Fluttercruel knew that very well, but she pretended she'd forgotten they were there, and apologized.
When she moved onto his upper limbs, she removed his cuffs, one at a time, to wash underneath. His lion limb's fur had largely fallen out under his cuff there, and what little fur was left was black with dirt, as was his skin. The eagle talon's skin was just as blackened. It had been weeks since she'd cleaned under his cuffs.
She couldn't preen his wings with him on his back, so she just washed the exposed underside of them, using the oils pegasi and griffins used to clean their wings that kept the natural waterproofing on them from washing away. She also put a little bit of a cream salve on them where the rings bit into them, because his guess had been right – he'd torn the flesh there a bit during his seizure.
Then she moved down from his ribcage, across his abdomen and downward, and gave him a sultry smile as she continued to work. Discord tensed slightly, before remembering that he'd broken and there was no point to even getting anxious about this. She was going to rape him; it was a given from the moment they'd arrived. He'd known it would happen when he'd asked her to stay with him; she'd told him she would, after all. There was no reason to get worried, because there was no ambiguity, no possibility that it wouldn't happen. The situation called for resignation, not anxiety. He stared at the wall as she continued to wash and brush him, working her way steadily down his body.
Starting from just below his ribcage, Discord's cylindrical, snake-like body was covered with scales, but from the ribcage down to a bit below his legs, the scales were fine, tiny, and permitted fur growth between them, so they weren't visible under the thick brown fur. They weren't actually as tough as dragon scales were generally, because they were so small and didn't overlap each other, but they gave him some protection. Here, she brushed even more vigorously, refreshing the scales underneath the fur. It felt good, but his breathing grew ragged with fear; if she did what she'd done to his nipples to the sensitive spots he had here, it would hurt considerably more.
Unlike ponies, gryphons or most mammalian creatures, Discord's hips didn't mark a terminus to his body. Pony bodies ended in a rump, where their hips attached to their spine and their muscles formed rounded semi-spheres whose cleavage partially sheltered their anus and genitalia, and their tails were simply bony extensions of their spine, covered with flesh and hair. Discord's hips attached to the sides of his body, and what ponies thought of as his "tail" was really the lower third of what would be their barrel. This was standard for dragons, and many reptiles; Discord's main difference from Western dragons was that his body stayed approximately the same thickness down its length and didn't begin to taper until his fur ran out, and did so very slowly from there. Fluttercruel washed and brushed his legs, slowly and sensually, making him shiver, and occasionally ran a hoof very very lightly over his body between them as he bit his lip and tried not to moan.
She skipped over his sensitive bits entirely, which probably meant she was reserving special attention for them for when she was done washing the rest of him, in order to scrub down his tail with a scrub brush, long, languid, soapy strokes, and very hot water. Much of the underside of his tail was a secondary erogenous zone for him, like his nipples and the sides of his neck, and especially when it was stretched out like this. He had to fight to keep from trying to thrash it in response to the teasing she was giving him as she washed him; it was chained down by the ring in it near its bottom, so trying to move it would hurt. Discord took deep breaths, trying to endure the maddening touch, but the stimulus was doing exactly what she probably intended. He felt pressure against his skin, in the area of his body above the pelvic bone, pressure from within, and the sensation of muscles he normally couldn't even feel, relaxing.
Finally she turned her attention there. Unlike a pony, Discord had no rump; his sex organs and anus were located directly on the underside of his tail -- or more precisely, the top portion of the lower third of his body -- so when he was lying on his stomach, there was no access to them from above without bending his tail up. Conversely when he was on his back, they were right there on the surface of his body. His fur and scales gave him covering, and his anatomy had some of the standard draconic protections... but not enough of them, not right now.
His penis normally lived inside his body, protected by an interior sheath, which opened to a slit on the outside of his body, right where his pelvic bone was. It did not particularly resemble a vagina, as it was narrower and had no lips, but it probably more closely resembled that than any other anatomical feature. As Fluttercruel's touches aroused him and his penis hardened, it pushed against that slit and finally poked its way out of it. Once he was fully erect, all of it would be exposed; she'd taken cruel advantage of that on more than one occasion, arousing him only so she could whip him on that particular target.
Underneath that slit, his testicles were mostly pulled into his body. Dragons kept them entirely on the inside – it was literally impossible to kick a dragon in the balls – but draconequui were part mammal and needed their testicles to be a lower temperature than their bodies, for fertility, like other mammals. Normally they were pulled up into a cavity in his body, the bottoms of them unscaled but lightly furred like the rest of that area of his body, so they were barely visible. A touch, like the hoof Fluttercruel was running over them gently right now, could more easily find them, two slight mounds of distinctly softer skin, hidden under his fur. The muscles holding them in place were relaxing against his will, letting them spill out of his body slowly, the skin on them loosening and the furry spot sliding to the back where they connected to his body. Once they were out all the way, they were very exposed, neither fur nor scales to protect them, nothing but very soft, loose, sensitive skin.
Further down on his body, his anus hid under his fur but had no other protection at all – where ponies had haunches they could clamp together and tails they could hold down to reduce exposure, Discord was either entirely unreachable or fully accessible, depending on whether it was the top or bottom of his tail one was approaching. He whimpered as she stroked him there, and bit his lip to keep from begging her to stop when she got a thicker, more gelatinous substance than any of the soaps or oils she'd used on him, and began to rub it against him gently there, while her feathery wing brushed lightly against his penis and testicles.
"Please, mistress, shouldn't you take me home first?" he pleaded desperately. "I can't imagine Twilight wants you to be doing this in her workroom..."
"Oh, don't worry, Twilight has gone to bed. It's just you and me, alone together. I even locked the door, sweetie." She smiled.
He tried to breathe, deeply and evenly. He'd known this was coming. He just hadn't expected this specific method, that was all. "Are – are you going to use your hoof?" he asked, trembling.
"I'm thinking about it," she said.
"Please don't. Please, it always hurts when you do that."
"I know, sweetie, I know. But sometimes you need some pain."
No, I don't, I really don't, I get plenty of pain, he thought, but managed to keep the babbling voice in his head silent to the outside world.
He closed his eyes. He didn't want to watch this. But even with his eyes closed, memories rose up unbidden, and he couldn't stop them.
The first time she'd raped him had been the first night after he'd been handed over to her.
Despite several days at Twilight's being experimented on to prove out the limits of the obedience spell, and the other spells, and how thoroughly it had been proven to him that he couldn't resist, he'd still been reeling in disbelief that this could happen to him, and still struggling, trying to defy his orders... so she'd tied him up so he couldn't physically escape, rather than just relying on the obedience spell. Much like she had him right now. They hadn't made the diamond-studded whips yet, so she'd beaten him with a flexible wooden switch until he cried and begged for mercy, focusing on the places where his scales didn't protect him -- the thigh of his goat leg, his upper body and neck, his lion arm, and the places between his legs where even protective dragon scales couldn't stop it from hurting so badly he thought he'd rather die than keep enduring this.
Then she'd forced him to satisfy her with his tongue... which, despite the pain he was in and the humiliation he was suffering, had entirely too many similarities to his occasional fantasies of doing the same thing for his friend, and he'd become aroused despite himself. He hadn't yet managed to internalize the difference between Fluttercruel and Fluttershy yet. She'd taken advantage of that, using her mouth to stimulate him until he was achingly hard, then snapping a ring around his base to keep him that way.
And then she'd raped him with her hoof and entire front leg, shoving it into his anus with no warning, no preparation, no lubrication, nothing. He'd taken bigger and enjoyed it, under conditions where he was enthusiastically consenting, with foreplay, preparation, and his magic to deal with any pain or discomfort he didn't want... but that was horribly far from the conditions he'd been in at that moment. He'd screamed himself hoarse, and begged frantically, and struggled as hard as he could, but his bindings were too secure for him to escape, and attempting to tighten himself to force her hoof out of him only made it hurt that much more. The edges of her hoof had scraped him inside, making him feel like she was shredding him, and the width of her leg was tearing him open, and when she pushed the entire leg inside him he'd nearly blacked out from the pain, and she'd done it over and over. The whole time she was doing it, she'd snarled at him that he was hers, that he would learn to obey her, that she owned him and could do anything to any part of his body that she wanted to.
When she was done, she'd petted him and called him a good colt and used her mouth to bring him to orgasm, and he'd been too physically overstimulated to resist her, but he'd been sobbing uncontrollably the entire time. The release hadn't even felt particularly pleasurable, purely a muscular reaction to stimulus, and couldn't begin to compensate for the pain he was still in from the injuries she'd caused, let alone his emotional state from what she'd just put him through.
It hadn't been the last time she'd done that, either. On other occasions she'd been gentler, using toys designed for the purpose, sometimes even giving him pleasure that way -- which he found degrading, but he preferred the degradation of being forced to feel pleasure to the shame of being forced to beg and cry with pain -- or cruel in a different way, making him reshape himself to the proportions of other species and ordering her animal friends to take him. Discord had slept with possibly every sapient species on the planet and certainly every species common in or near Equestria, but he'd never been with non-sapient animals before. It didn't horrify him the way it might a pony -- he was entirely too jaded to be broken by just the idea of being raped by an animal -- but it hurt and it frightened and sickened him, and the fact that he was being forced to use his own magic to cooperate humiliated him utterly, and Angel Bunny in particular was invariably brutal about it.
Penetrating him, whatever she used to do it with, wasn't something she did to him all or even most of the time -- she didn't have the anatomy for the act to directly stimulate her. It was just something she liked to do occasionally, because it apparently got her hot to demonstrate her ownership and dominance in such a visceral way. Recently, now that she'd broken him down far enough that he was too defeated to resist anything she demanded, she hadn't done it in a while, and he'd begun to hope that maybe she'd lost interest in tormenting him that way, that maybe she'd stick to the less painful ways of sexually dominating him.
Obviously that wasn't the case. Her lascivious expression, the possessive way she was rubbing her hoof against him... the fact that she'd thought to bring lube, and was applying it to him liberally -- all told him what she was going to do. At least she seemed to be trying to prepare him somewhat. And there were no animals here. And maybe she had some of her sex toys in that saddlebag, since she seemed to have brought everything else. Maybe she'd use one of them rather than her hoof.
She leaned forward and kissed him gently where she'd just been stroking him with her wing. A whimper escaped him. Let go, he thought. Don't resist, don't tense up, just let her do what she wants and pretend it's Fluttershy doing it. It wasn't as if he had anything left to lose.
The delicate tongue lapping gently at him was driving him insane. He had to move, to thrash his body, but he was still bound. His clawed fingers scraped against the stone floor, unconsciously trying to find something to clutch. The tip of his tail waved frantically. The toes of his dragon foot curled and uncurled. Finally, unable to bear it, he thrashed his head from side to side – and came face to face with the dead body of the pony he'd half-eaten again.
The shock was like ice-cold water to his face. For a few moments he'd almost managed to forget. Rage welled up at the small pony with her head between his legs. Maybe he wasn't completely broken after all. He could be forgiven for cracking temporarily under duress, right? He'd broken temporarily under torture many times before, his mind contorting itself to believe he was bad, he was worthless, he deserved this, he wanted to change and conform, generally because making himself believe those things momentarily was the only way to end the pain. And each time he'd come back from it. If he could still hate her, if he could still feel anger, then he wasn't fully broken, right? He could come back from this.
Which probably wasn't a good idea, because he'd been through this before and he knew where it ended.
The morning after the first rape, some of Discord's natural equilibrium had reasserted itself. He couldn't just keep reeling in horror that any of this was happening; he was the spirit of chaos. He adapted to change. It was what he was. So the night before had been bad, yes, he couldn't have lied to himself about that, very bad, but now, he'd thought, he had a lever he could use. She wanted him. There had to be a way he could use that. He'd seduced his way out of tough situations before... none this bad, no, he'd had to admit that to himself, but his world wasn't going to come to an end just because he had to have sex with a mare that looked like Fluttershy. He'd find a way to make use of this version of Fluttershy's obvious desire for him. She plainly thought she had to hurt him to teach him obedience, and well, she was probably also fairly sadistic if she was an inverted Fluttershy, but at the end, after she'd made him come, she'd petted him and comforted him and held his head in her lap as he cried until he fell asleep, so she was still capable of being something like the original Fluttershy as well. He just had to bring that part out of her.
So for two weeks or so he'd tried to feign interest in her. It had been incredibly hard, because she kept initiating sex after hurting him, when he was least willing and least capable of faking it, but he'd pretended to obedience, he had even offered to please her or taken some slight initiative, because surely she couldn't keep hurting him if she genuinely wanted him, right? Surely lust would eventually lead to her dropping her guard around him or at least beginning to treat him better, didn't it?
When he'd finally figured out the mistake he was making, he'd been horrified -- and ashamed at his own stupidity, because he should have seen it so long ago, he should have recognized it from day one. But he was a sadist, except in the bedroom. And he couldn't count the number of ponies who'd succeeded in getting him to stop tormenting them or their villages because they wanted him, and gave him pleasure, and made him want them in return, and then he grew soft on them (well, metaphorically; literally, the exact opposite tended to happen) and didn't want to make them unhappy anymore. It had taken him a few hundred years to figure out that vulnerability and protect himself from it by tossing his sex partners out of bed in the mornings and demanding they leave, or teleporting them to random places himself, so he wouldn't have time to grow attached to them.
He'd assumed this cruel version of Fluttershy was the same way, that she was cruel in her everyday life, just as he was, but that she saw the bedroom differently, just as he did. He'd wanted desperately to believe that she had the same vulnerability he did, because he wanted to believe that the sex she was forcing him into was giving him leverage over her. It had been hideously embarrassing to realize that he'd had it all wrong, because he should have known, he should have seen, but he hadn't wanted to.
This version of Fluttershy was a sexual sadist. She wasn't like him; she didn't hurt others for fun and amusement, she hurt them for erotic thrills. The fact that she wanted him was the very reason why she wanted to hurt him. So nothing he'd done to soften her toward him could have possibly worked, because the more he made himself sexually appealing to her, the more she wanted to hurt him.
He'd snapped, then. Told her he hated her, told her how much it sickened him to have sex with her, reminded her again and again that this was rape and she was a rapist. She hadn't taken that well. Discord had suffered a great deal, over the span of several days, before the fear and pain had finally overwhelmed the rage and he'd been able to make himself stop telling her the truth about how he felt about her. And even after that, the honesty spell made him slip, sometimes.
She'd eventually worn him back down to voluntarily cooperating with her again, but now it wasn't because he believed he could win better treatment from her or play on her sympathies. Now it was because he knew it was futile to resist and he'd be tormented far worse if he tried, so cooperating was the only thing he could do to lessen his suffering in any way.
If he let the anger overtake him now, she'd make him hurt for it. But if he didn't, if he didn't take strength from it and take back the courage to resist at least in his own mind, then she'd won. He didn't want either outcome. Discord looked back at the dead body and decided to try to walk the line, to poke at what might be a weakness without being insolent enough to provoke her into torturing him. He hoped.
"How could you do this?" he said softly.
She lifted her head. "Do this?" she said in a teasing voice, and stroked him with her wing again. "Um, because you're, um, because I like you?"
"No. How could you cooperate with murdering a pony? How could you desecrate her corpse by feeding her to your prisoner? The real Fluttershy would never have done something so horrible. I know he changed you but can't you even remember how you used to feel?"
She had gone still. "I am the real Fluttershy," she said.
"My Fluttershy, then. Or the Fluttershy you used to be. You know you're not real, you know the other me did this to you. Don't you even want to try to fight it anymore? It's one thing to torture me, but that was an innocent pony."
"She wasn't innocent. She was a criminal."
"Unless she was a cannibal, it's hard to see how she could have deserved this. I can't believe that anypony who used to be Fluttershy would find this—"
"Used to be? I am Fluttershy, Discord, and I'm finding your phrasing disturbing."
She had stopped touching him, at least. He looked up at her wearily, wishing he had the strength to glare. "You used to be Fluttershy. None of you are who you should be anymore."
"And whose fault is that?" she snapped.
"The other me. Not mine. I didn't do this. My friends are still who they really are; I never did this to them." He swallowed. "You've been taking out your hatred of him on me, when I never did anything to you to warrant this."
She shook her head. "I didn't do any of this because I hate you, Discord. Everything I've done, I've done to protect you. I helped the others turn him to stone, because he was evil and it had to be done, and then Spike killed him. I need to make sure that you'll obey and you won't be evil, because then you'll be safe."
"I don't want that kind of safety."
"I don't care what you want. You're mine now. Angel wants to run off into the Everfree where he might get eaten by something. Chickens want to leave their coop and flit off, but then they'll get lost because they're not smart enough to find their way home. I'm the one who tells all of them what to do, for their protection, because I'm the one who knows best. And I know what's best for you too."
His voice cracked. "It's best to keep me locked up, apart from my home and my friends, and torture me? How could that possibly be what's best for me?"
"Oh, you poor silly thing," she said. She scooted herself closer to his head and started petting him again, running her hoof over the fur of his chest, as she looked down at him with false compassion in her eyes. "You actually believe that nonsense she told you, don't you?"
He blinked at her. "Who?"
"The other Fluttershy, of course. She really did a number on you. At least I was honest enough to tell my Discord how much I hated him even though I loved him too. But no, she can't give you that, because Princess Celestia gave her a job."
Discord stared. "No – you're wrong. You're – she's my friend. She was the only one who was kind enough to figure out that I would want one if I knew what it felt like."
"Oh, of course that's true, sweetie, except you may as well replace 'kind' in that sentence with 'manipulative' and it would be more accurate," Fluttercruel said. "But you fell for it, didn't you? You truly believe she's your friend. You love her, don't you." She shook her head. "Poor deluded baby, I almost wish I didn't have to tell you the truth."
"You weren't there. You don't know the truth."
"I know what it's like to be that Fluttershy," Fluttercruel said, just a tiny bite to her voice. "You think I'm not her anymore... that I'm not real. I remember my entire life, Discord. I know who and what I used to be." She ruffled his fur against the grain, hard, and repeated it, petting him but in the direction where it was annoying and slightly painful rather than the direction where it soothed. "I remember how it felt when any creature was hurt, how it felt like their pain was stabbing into me and I had to do whatever I could to make them happy and safe, because it hurt me when they hurt. I didn't have the strength to say so – I couldn't even have borne their hurt feelings – but I hated bullies. I hated mean ponies, and mean creatures of all types. Discord... after what you did to my friends in the maze, even before we went after you the second time and you got away from us, I hated you. You were the most evil, cruelest thing I'd ever seen." She removed her hoof from his fur. "I would never have wanted to be your friend. Ever."
"You – you're not her. She had different life experiences. You have memories of me doing worse things than I ever did, of course you wouldn't have wanted to befriend me, but I never did those things in my world."
"Oh, I know you want to believe that. But ask yourself, Discord: Princess Celestia wanted to reform you, because she needed you, right? How was 'your' Fluttershy ever going to do that without pretending to befriend you?"
Discord shook his head back and forth in the gesture of "no", and couldn't stop doing it. "You're wrong. You're not her, you didn't live her life, you don't know anything about her! You're wrong!"
"I was her until a little less than two years ago. I know your darling Fluttershy, because we were once the same. She lied to you. She has to pretend to be your friend so you'll keep yourself under control... but you're cruelty incarnate. You torment ponies for fun. You're a bully. How could a kind pony not hate you, as cruel as you are?"
"It's not true, it's not, you're – you don't know her, a lot happened to you in those two years to make you different–"
"Poor dear. What you told Applejack is really true sometimes, isn't it? I know a lie would be easier to take, but you deserve to know the truth, at least. 'Your' Fluttershy hates you. She'll never say it, she'll never even show it – anymore than she could have shown Gilda how much she hated her for screaming at her in public when it was Gilda's own fault for bumping into her. She'll never tell anypony she hates them. She'll never show it. But she's seething with it inside. She's just very good at hiding it."
"She doesn't," Discord said weakly, horror welling up inside him and he had to fight it, he had to counter it and turn against it. None of this could be true. Because if it was true... "She's my friend."
"She's very, very good at pretending to be a friend, Discord. I should know. But she hates you. If Twilight told her about that letter, she's probably breathing a big sigh of relief that she doesn't have to pretend to be a cruel bully's friend anymore. Because she was only doing it to protect your Equestria from you."
"It's not true, it's not, it's not, she's my friend, she cares about me. Y-you just want to hurt me."
"Hurt you? I'm trying to help you, sweetie. Because I love you. She hates you because she's nothing but kind, and cruelty hurts her. But you made me into somepony who likes being cruel. Just like you. I'm like you now. How could you think that anypony who wasn't like you could possibly care about you? I'm the only one who will ever love you." She straddled his neck, grabbed his collar, and pulled him up slightly, using all the slack that was left in the chain and choking him. "You broke me, you made me into something that's just like you, and even though I hate you for it, I can't stop loving you. She's pretending because she's a hero, and heroes don't love villains. Heroes don't make friends with then. But you made me into as big a bad guy as you were." Tears spilled from her eyes as she released him. "Both you and I are evil, Discord. That's why I'm the only one who could possibly care about you. And that's why I have to tell you what I know... because I used to be her. And I know I would have hated you, before. I would never have wanted to be your friend."
"But—maybe—maybe she started out faking it and then she—maybe she did start really caring about me? I, I thought it was some kind of ploy to begin with, but she seemed so sincere, and she—and she always treats me well, and she likes my chaos, sometimes..."
"Oh, honestly. Likes chaos? I used to be scared of my own shadow. She doesn't like your chaos, but she's pretending. Because if Princess Celestia needs you free and willing to do a job to protect Equestria, then somepony has to make sure you don't cause trouble. She can act very convincingly when she has to, you know that."
No. No, no, no. He wanted to scream, to sob, to punch Fluttercruel in the face. It couldn't be true... could it?
But Celestia had wanted him reformed. And shortly after that they'd lost the Elements, and the only weapon that could have stopped him if he'd decided to unleash havoc. If Fluttershy had pretended to be his friend to reform him, of course she'd have had to keep up the pretense...
...because if she was really his friend, wouldn't her friends give him the benefit of the doubt, rather than treating him like week-old garbage every time they met? Wouldn't her friends have truly become his friends, because they trusted her judgment? But they hadn't... they accepted all of each other's friends outside the group, all but him. They knew, didn't they? They knew it had never been real...
"It's not—" He tried to deny it again, but he couldn't finish the sentence. "You're l – you're not te – it's not—"
"Can't say something you think isn't true, can you," Fluttercruel said softly. "You know I'm not lying. You know what I'm saying is just the reality of the situation. She hates you; she'll be glad she doesn't have to pretend anymore. I'm the only one who will ever love you."
Discord started to sob, again. How many times had he cried today? Did it matter? Did anything matter?
No one was coming for him. The pony he'd thought was his only friend had been tricking him, playing him to keep him under control. No one would ever want to be his friend, just as he'd thought the first time. Even if he managed to escape this, he'd spend the rest of his life alone.
"Don't cry," Fluttercruel said. She lowered her head and started kissing him, on his cheek, on the top of his head, on the side of his neck. "You still have me. And as soon as you learn to be obedient, I can stop having to punish you. Wouldn't you like that?"
He couldn't bear this. Not now, not with his emotional state in tatters. "Mistress... please don't... not now..."
"Yes now. She was never yours, do you understand? She was lying to you the whole time." She grabbed his antler and pulled his head to hers, kissing him deeply, passionately. "You're mine. Because I'm the only one who will ever want you. And I do, sweetie. I do."
She sat up. "I know what you need. I know just how to make you forget her." Her wings flapped, and she lifted off, landing by the dead body. She covered it again and pulled the wagon away, parking it somewhere behind his head where he couldn't easily see it. As she came back, she picked up her saddlebag and carried it over to him, leaning it against his hip as she climbed onto him, straddled his tail and bent her head down to the place between his legs.
"No... please... not now, not like this, please..."
"Shh. I know what you need. I know what's best for you."
The arousal he'd been feeling before had faded entirely, washed away by his misery. But Fluttercruel knew exactly how to touch him to make his body respond. He pleaded a few more times, uselessly, and cried for quite a while, but in the end she got what she wanted.
Her mouth and tongue sucked and licked him in long, slow strokes. One hoof held him firm at his base, gentle, but with the implied threat of crushing pressure if he didn't cooperate. One wing fluttered up and down the part of his shaft that couldn't fit in her mouth, and the other stroked lightly against his balls, making him whimper and writhe, twisting his hips because he couldn't move anything else, but she was sitting on him so she moved as he did and there was no escape that way either. And with the other hoof, she pressed a well-lubed, knubbly dildo, very large but smaller than her hoof at least, into him in short strokes, going slightly deeper with each one. It hurt, but when it combined with the sensations she was causing nearby, it felt good as well.
He didn't want it to.
It didn't matter what he wanted.
No friends. No rescue. No Fluttershy. She hates you. She's always hated you. She was lying from the beginning.
It was so obvious now that it had been pointed out, so, so obvious. Of course it had all been a lie. When had a pony ever wanted to befriend him? – well, aside from Celestia, but they'd been children then, and that had been thousands of years ago. What was more likely, that Fluttershy saw something no pony in thousands of years had seen in him, or that she was faking it because his belief in her friendship kept him under control?
He'd thrown his life and freedom away to make chaos somewhere she wouldn't see him, and ended up here, and she'd never been his friend in the first place. He'd been stupid, and let himself be tricked, and he was paying the consequences now.
So give up. Let this happen. Let the obscene, hateful pleasure fill him and blot out the keening wail in his mind, no friends no Fluttershy no friends no Fluttershy over and over and he'd do anything to make it stop for a few seconds, even stop trying to resist as the torturer he hated made him feel things he didn't want to feel. Nothing mattered anymore. He was never going home again and he didn't even want to because home was nothing but a lie. They didn't torture him physically there, but they'd set traps in his mind, land mines, and she'd set them off and now he was torn to shreds, his psyche shattered. He had nothing left to resist what she was making him feel, and no reason to fight anymore anyway.
Once she'd worked the toy all the way into him, it took only a few minutes before the combination of her mouth, her feathers, and the slow, deep strokes inside him pushed him over the edge. Right after he came, even before the afterglow faded, she began thrusting it into him harder and faster. Within the first dozen thrusts, it started to hurt, and she steadily increased the pace as she continued. "Yes, sweetie, yes, you're mine," she said, ignoring his whimpers of increasing pain. "I'm never going to let anypony take you away from me again. You're mine. She never wanted you but I do. You're mine, mine, mine."
At some point she switched to using her hoof. He was already gasping in pain by then from the speed and violence of her thrusts. When she pushed her foreleg in, he screamed. But he didn't even bother begging her to stop; he knew she wouldn't listen to him. Even through his screams, he could still hear her voice, viciously snarling "You're mine," again and again.
She was right. This was the only form of affection he'd ever get. He couldn't have friends, but he could have violent sex from a mare who at least thought she loved him and made it good for him at least a small percentage of the time. All he had to do was give up everything he was.
When she was done proving to herself that she owned him, she sat on his neck, her rump in his face, and demanded that he pleasure her with his tongue. He obeyed, feeling as if his mind had gone numb. There was really no way out. No rescue. No friends. No Fluttershy. No freedom, ever again.
Afterward, she kissed him again, touched up the cleaning job she'd done before with a washcloth to remove anything new, and laid out a pile of blankets at his side, so she could curl up into them and cuddle against his body at the same time. Before long, her breathing evened out, the soft, adorable, almost-snore that Fluttershy made when she slept coming out of her mouth. He remembered watching Fluttershy sleep, when he'd been a house guest. How sweet she'd looked, how happy he'd felt to think, this pony voluntarily chooses to be my friend. This pony cares about me.
All a lie.
He began to laugh to himself, quietly so it wouldn't wake his captor. Oh, Fluttercruel, Fluttercruel, you should have read the fine print. You've gotten what you wanted all along. You've convinced me I'll be your possession for the rest of my life. You've broken me. Good job, my dear.
But you should have paid attention to where the fracture lines already were before you set out to break me. Because you're never going to get the result you wanted.
One way or another, you're going to get Chaos. I'm going to take from you the thing you most value, now. And if I can only figure out how to do it... I'll burn your whole world down when I do.
Because I don't want to live anymore. And I could use these claws of mine on my own throat any time. You never ordered me not to kill myself. So you really can't stop me. The only reason I'm not doing it right now is revenge.
I want to find a way to bring you all down with me, first.
And if Twilight wants what I think she wants... then I think I know how to do it.