Rusted metal creaked against rusted metal with a screech that sent chills down Cadance’s spine. It was a sound she had grown uncomfortably used to over the past… How long had she been here? Time had no concept in the darkness. How long had it been since the ambush in the woods? How long since the snow and gunfire had hidden her disappearance from the world? It felt like eons in the dark of wherever she was now. She had been moved time and time again. The only thing the princess knew was that she was alive and that she was alone.

At least she had been. The noise that made her shudder was followed by the stomping of hooves across the cold concrete floor. Others were coming. Others had come and gone for as long as she could recall, yet she never saw any of them. The heavy cloth across her eyes made sure she never even saw the light of day. Her body turned, straining against the shackles binding her to the solid wall. She could feel the very metal sapping her strength bit by bit, as it had since she had been incarcerated, the telltale bite of arcanate inhibiting her natural draw of magic. She had spent enough time imprisoned in the Griffon Kingdom to recall the dreaded material by heart.

Something—or someone—was being dragged across the floor. She could hear the sound of skin and flesh sliding across the smooth ground. She could hear voices—the voices of the ponies that had captured her. Over the time she had spent here, she had come to learn each one. Each had their own pitch, their own mannerisms, their own inflections. She also learned which ones to dread more than others.

Cadance listened as they grunted, lifting something heavy into the air. Chains rattled against something metal and hollow. Pipes… she came to realize. Shackles snapped and locked together, the sound like a firecracker in the otherwise silent prison. Cadance turned her head towards the noises. She was desperate to understand what was going on. Were they locking another prisoner up with her?

“Now you just get nice and cozy, amigo,” the voice of one of her captors sneered with a laugh.

The other captured pony didn’t say a word in response. Cadance could hear the chains rattling in slow rhythmic time. The pony must have been suspended from the pipes overhead.

“‘Ey, hombre, can you hear us?” Still no response. “How did you find us, huh? Where’d you get that patch?”

Cadance strained her ears to hear something—anything. A shift of weight, a sigh, anything. The other pony didn’t make a sound. She could hear some whispers in Spanish back and forth in the background.

“Well, it doesn’t matter now, Phantom,” the voice hissed. Cadance heard the captors strike the pony, but not so much as a groan of pain was uttered. Had they killed him already? “You ain’t getting’ outta this mess.”

Another sound of a strike, and then another, and another. Cadance grimaced and recoiled from each. She didn’t dare imagine what they were doing to the poor prisoner no more than ten feet away from her. The sounds faded off into riotous laughter, cruel and unsympathetic.

“Say hola to your new friend, princess,” the pony called out to her. “He won’t be here for long.”

The door squealed open again before slamming it shut with a bang that shook the walls. Cadance waited until the tremors had stopped before turning back to where she could hear the pony swaying in the air, his chains clinking together every couple of seconds.

“Hello…?” she called out. Her voice surprised her. It was weak and cracked from the extended period of disuse. She cleared her throat and licked her dry lips, hoping to recover some of her former strength. “Hello? Are you all right…?”

Nothing but the gentle clinking of the chains responded to her query. Cadance did her best to shift in the direction of the sound. The shackles cut into her legs, keeping her mostly held in place.

“Can you hear me?”

“‘Ey! Silencio!”

Cadance shrank back when a voice from across the room yelled at her. She hadn’t realized there had been one guard left with them. She should have expected it. They never left her alone, ever.

Time passed slow and steady, with only the sound of her own breathing making any sort of noise. The other prisoner was so quiet. Cadance didn’t know how long the stillness lasted. But she wasn’t about to permit it to stay. She had to know what was going on. She needed to have something to grasp onto. There was only one way to do that…

“Please… Please talk to me,” she pleaded with the anonymous prisoner. “Say something. Say anything. Just let me know you’re okay…”

“I said shut up!” the guard snapped. Cadance listened as his hooves clopped across the floor to where the prisoner hung. “He ain’t anypony, chica. Some wanna-be hero that got in waaaay over his cabeza. Ain’t that right, pretty boy?”

Cadance heard the guard smack the pony and chuckle under his breath.

“Whassa matter? Got no more fight in ya? I thought you fantasmas were supposed to be scary? Oooh, big bad pony playin’ by our rules now. What, did it get too tough for you? Hahaha!”

Cadance flinched when she heard another blow land, knocking the prisoner’s air from their lungs. She reacted on instinct. “Leave him alone!”

The guard laughed. “Or what? You gonna kill me with the power of love? Pssh. Princesa de amor… What a joke! And this guy? He’s like a piñata, and just as useless as one too. I’m gonna beat him till the candy comes out.”

So the stallion had come to rescue her… Cadance felt compelled to ask the question. She had to know the answer. She needed to know who her would-be rescuer was.

The guard muttered something in his native tongue and spat, Cadance guessed on the pony he had been assaulting mere moments prior. She listened to his hooves move with a clip-clop back across the room toward where she knew the door was and then stop. Silence made its residence within the room once more. She heard the pony hanging from the ceiling spit something up. Cadance did her best to not imagine him coughing up a mouthful of blood. She could just taste the bitter metallic tang on her tongue from the thought alone.

“Who are you…?” she asked after a minute.

Much to Cadance’s disappointment, the pony didn’t speak. She waited, breath held in, as the seconds slipped by.

“…A friend.”

Cadance’s ears stood up straight on her head. He had spoken. But the words he said weren’t what shocked her. It was the voice. She knew that voice; that low voice filled with confidence and caring.

Her heart rose in her chest. It can’t be…

“I said no speaking! Do I have to beat you till you—”

The guard’s heated words were silenced abruptly with an ear-shattering clatter of metal collapsing against concrete. Cadance all but jumped out of her skin as the cacophony evolved into the sounds of a struggle. Voices grunted and gasped for breath while the soft sounds of blows striking flesh were exchanged back and forth amidst the rattle of metal on metal and stone. She writhed against her shackles, trying in vain to slip free and see what was happening. With no way to free herself or remove her blindfold, Cadance was left at the mercy of her hearing alone.

A body smacked into the wall beside her, and she became acutely aware of the presence of the two fighters very close by. Their sounds of battle were almost right in her ear as they struggled on the floor. Then she heard a cry of pain and something cracked.

There was popping outside the room now, fast and controlled. Cadance realized she recognized those sounds all too well also. Guns were firing somewhere close by. The struggle continued further across the room. The two must have been tumbling about while trying to overpower the other. The lack of details was driving her insane. She had to see what was happening. Was he winning? What if he lost? What was going on?

The door flew open, the metal slamming into the wall with a thunderous smash. Gunfire exploded in the small room six times in rapid succession. Cadance felt her heart leap up into her throat, making it difficult to breathe right. The struggling stopped. Something heavy flopped against the concrete. She strained her ears, listening as hooves shuffled across the floor. Had somepony been killed? Did the guards come back?

Cadance whimpered once, and then blinding light flooded into her eyes as the blindfold was removed.