Fluttershy wandered through the corridors searching for the young alicorn. She'd seen him run off in this direction and she could only guess he'd run in a straight line, so she poked her head into every room she saw that was unlocked. Finally, after a long descent down a frighteningly tall staircase, she saw the room they had slept in the night before. The door was open and she could hear somepony inside sobbing. With some hesitation, she pushed it open to find Seamus on one of the beds, his head covered by a large goose feather pillow.

Stepping lightly as to not scare him, she went over to the colt.

"I'm sorry Luna was so mean to you." She whispered.

He stopped and looked up at her. His eyelids were so raw and bruised from crying the skin looked thinner than tissue paper.

"Why are you sorry? I never did anything for you." He said his voice was cracked and high.

"I'm sorry that Luna won't help your friend, but Celestia will. She said she'll try to bargain for him tomorrow."

He looked relieved, but not greatly so. "Melody won't give him up. We were her show ponies; we were the ones who looked pretty while the others slaved away at whatever she had them do. With me gone it's just him. Alone… forever."

Fluttershy looked at the small colt and felt so much pity for him it nearly choked her. Seamus blinked and fresh tears rolled down his mare-ish face.

"And the last things I said to him were… awful. I feel like I killed him with my own hooves."

"What did you say?"

Seamus hung his head and bit his tongue so hard it nearly bled. Breathe came to him in shaky bursts that were unsteady and sporadic. A long pause lingered in the air and Fluttershy moved on.

"What was it like… there, I mean? Where did you stay?

He looked at her and sighed. "It's a long story."

In the northern spire of Melody's castle, Seamus lay in his bed and grimly looked at the roof of the canopy bed. It was an enormous bed, to be sure. But Seamus's eight hoof wingspan covered half the sixteen hoof wide bed and the silk sheets were amazingly comfortable. He lay there pondering what would happen to him, it was the first day of his enslavement and the auction had been awful.

The heavily advertised public slave auction located in the northern countryside four years ago was a hotbed of the rich and the curious that day. All the royals wanted to have their hooves on an alicorn that afternoon and were more than willing to spend half their fortunes on such a novelty. All had gasped as the curtain was pulled back and the crowd saw Seamus standing there. He'd felt exposed, like an exotic animal at a petting zoo. The bidding began in the hundreds of thousands and worked its way into the millions.

Most had left by the time the hundred-million bidding started, but finally Melody had been victorious and bought him for a massive fee of two-hundred-million bits. The curtain was drawn and two huge mares had knocked him out and thrown him into Melody's tent, which she had set up just for the occasion. Jakben and The Lady of the North sat there, observing the beaten young colt as he lay on the dirt floor, unconscious with a burlap sack over his head. Finally she got up and kicked him brutally in the side.

"Jakben, fetch some wranglers to help me." She'd ordered. Melody knelt to his height and smiled. "You are handsome aren't you? I spent my money well."

Jakben returned with a mare just Macintosh's height, with the monstrously muscular build to match.

"Now look, boy. I'll tell you what you should do and you should trust me to do it. Understand?"

Seamus nodded his head feebly.

"Now stand up and hold still, we have to get your measurements."

She levitated a heavily decorated bag of fabric and multiple measuring tools over to her side and pulled out a long strand of measuring tape. She ran it up his front legs first, and then his back and soon she'd measured his neck, tail length and the length of his horn. After she was done measuring his horn, she went behind him.

"Hold still" she commanded.

She ran the tape up the inside of his back leg slowly until Seamus yelped and jumped away.

"Why are yo-" The alicorn began.

The massive hoof of the wrangler had picked him up by his mane and shook him until his skull rattled. Then he was dropped and Melody ordered him to be still again. He felt her hoof run up his back leg and soon run up his flanks. He cringed at the sensation but held still just enough for her to finish.

"Why did you need to do that?" He asked once she was done.

"Because I need to know how to tailor your clothes." She replied.

"Do they need fit me that well?" He asked again, feeling alienated.

She looked at him like it was a stupid question. She retrieved a small cylinder with notches ingrained in the surface to mark centimeters from her bag and fit it around his horn. She narrowed the tool until it fit around his horn tightly, then threw it away and got out a measuring placard. She moved behind him looked at his rear with a critical eye.

"Hm, you have a good frock, your posture is amazing and your legs are long and muscular, but I need to ask you to bend over."

"Why?" Seamus asked, feeling increasingly uncomfortable.

"I need to measure your underside." She replied like it was a totally normal, non-invasive situation.

"Why?" He asked loudly, his voice giving a slight crack.

Melody looked increasingly annoyed at the young alicorn. "Because! Bend over!" She ordered. He stood stock still, rebelliously defying her.

The wrangler back hoofed him and pushed his head down until his horn sank into the fresh spring dirt. His eyes watered from the blow and a rainbow of pastel colors were dancing in his vision. He felt the measuring placard pressed to his rear and then slip down against his most private area. Melody growled, annoyed.

"If you could make this a bit easier, please." She brushed the side of his flank delicately; the meaning of the sentence immediatly dawned upon him. Embarrassment and shame scorched his pride.

"No!" He refused to do anything that demeaning, especially with another pony and a vampire looking at him.

"Jakben, fetch the chemicals, would you?"

Seamus tried to move, but the ridiculously powerful hoof pressing his forehead into the dirt was far too strong for the small alicorn.

"If you won't show me yourself, I'll make you." Melody growled into his ear. "One more chance."

He shook his head proudly and fought against the massive wrangler holding him down. An explosion of pure, molten agony ripped from his genitals to the tips of his hooves and reverbrated between the two as Jakben stabbed a needle into his flank. Soon the feeling turned into numbness, a total lack of sensation in his loins.

A very long, awkward silence filled the room until it was broken by an amused Jakben."That's it?" He said mockingly. "That is honestly all you have on you?" He guffawed loudly and laughed so hard his sides hurt.

"It's just so…" before he could finish he broke into another fit of laughter.

Seamus was scarred by how shamelessly he was being bent over and examined, then judged by ponies he didn't even know. He vaguely felt the placard being pushed to his full length and Melody holding in her own cruel bursts of laughter.

"Seven-and-a-half inches." She confirmed, her lewd, insensensitive laughter poorly concealed behind her mask of mock empathy.

Seamus felt something hot and wet running down his cheeks when he realized in shock that they were actually tears, he was crying right in front of them. This made Jakben laugh harder.

Seamus couldn't do anything but sit there and take their soul-crushing insults. Nothing he had ever experienced so far came close to the pain he felt at that moment. Melody saw his distress and stopped laughing just long enough to say.

"Oh, don't get too torn up about it, I know ways to fix that… condition." She said. It didn't lessen the embarrassment.

Finally they stopped and he was let up. He wanted to curl up and die right there In the tent, but soon she was asking tons of questions to the wrangler, who answered them all.

"Has he been nulled?" She asked. "What about the 'pulverum nueterus'? "

Each question was a no and soon she became angrier and angrier with the wrangler. After a huge rant about how dangerous a non-nulled alicorn could be, she reached into a large suitcase and retrieved a case designed to fit over the horn. She poured some form of sticky resin into the case and summoned Seamus over to her side.

"Hold still or this will burn your skin off forever." She warned.

She tightened the device to his horn and then ordered him over to a center space in the massive tent. Five loops of rope lay on the floor and a painfully bright light was wired overhead the restraints. She motioned for him to stand in the middle of the pool of harsh, white light. He obeyed hesitantly, expecting somthing awful to happen at any moment.

The ropes sprang up with a flash of magic and fastened around his legs and neck. He tried to kick them off, but the more he moved his limbs away from his body, the less he could pull them back in. Soon his legs were stuck spread wide and Melody smiled a sweet, mocking and contemptuous smirk.

"I'll make this as painless and fast as possible." She grinned.

She pulled out what looked like a tattoo stencil and needle, and then pressed it neatly to his underside. He tried to close his legs, but the ropes prevented him. She turned on the machine and began to whistle absentmindedly as she stabbed the needle into the skin around his genitals. He yelled and kicked in agony, but she just kept working and whistling. She made a ring of runes around him, a neatly done charm permanently burnt into the fabric of his skin.

"There, now you won't have any silly ideas from there." She smiled sweetly.

Melody unclasped the horn case and set it aside. She smiled more broadly now.

"Perfect! Now you can't perform any of that silly magic! Was that hard? I wouldn't think so."

Seamus was exhausted from the pain of the tattoo and felt violated by the mare, but reached up to feel his head. His horn felt the same as before, but something was covering it with a thin, slick film.

"We're leaving for your new home now." She stated. "Come on."

He hatefully glared at her,endeavoring to not move any farther.

Suddenly her horn flashed and his limbs began to move to their own accord. Melody laughed in her own dark, tasteless mirth and grinned.

"You don't have that normal magical protection around you anymore. If you don't want to do something, I can make you." She chirped menacingly.

He looked at her in horror and fear. She had him walk outside of the tent and then up to a pair of oxen waiting a yard away from the extravegant tent. They departed and Seamus cast one last, longing look at the countryside. His last glimpse of anything that Melody didn't own or could steal from him.

The carriage they took was spacious and the entire interior was basically a lounging bed. The 'floor' of the carriage was so plush Melody's hoof sunk into it a centimeter or so as she stepped onto the red 'floor'. Seamus found it hard to stand on the plush material and actually fell over once the oxen lurched forward. Melody was already lounging confortably with a pillow tucked neatly underneath her neck. Seamus wouldn't have been surprised if he'd torn the material to find feather down filling the entire 10x12 space beneath.

Melody laughed when he fell over again from trying to stand up in the seatless carriage. With all the sleek grace of a tiger, she worked her way over to him. He tried to crawl away, but she pulled him close and cruelly dug her knee into his crotch. He expected it to knock the wind out of him and make his eyes smart, but he felt nothing at all. He looked at her in complete shock, she had her back legs crossed seductively now and was pressed right against him, but he wasn't even remotely excited. That curse of a tattoo had worked.

She ran her hoof down his mare-ish cheek, lingering on his neck, and then began to run it over his long, sleek side. His nether may not have betrayed his emotions, but his wings were trying to spread wide as they twitched madly at his sides.

"Nice, soft jaw structure, quite the set of wings… a smooth, silky mane." She drew her hoof through his soft hair; she was still pressed to his side.

He pushed her away in terror and began to cast a spell to defend himself, but was stopped by whatever she'd done to his horn. She barred her teeth and pulled him so close their horns nearly touched.

"I don't care what you want, do what I want and probably I won't kill you." She hissed.

He tried to escape from her iron grip again, but she was far stronger than him and held the young colt close. They stayed like that for the remainder of the five-hour journey, pressed to one other. Neither would dare say a word. One was too afraid to speak; the other was lost in the countless number of ways she could get off on torturing him. The entire time Melody looked down on him. She had a ravenous, sadistic look in her eyes the entire ride. With her new toy clutched to her, the carriage made a final turn down a sparsely traveled path into the pine forest surrounding the Lady of the North's massive estate.

Next Chapter: Solitary Estimated time remaining: 5 Hours, 7 Minutes