Tarhen
Legion Base
Same Day

The waiting is the worst part.

That is the first thought that strikes sergent Dash as she waits in the corridor of the administration block, outside which the entire detachment is assembled. The seconds and minutes flow by like the movement of a glacier. Dash wipes the sweat gathering on her brow, glancing over her shoulder at Smit and Sov, standing at her back. Whiskers is standing behind them. Their faces are expressionless but the tightness of Smit’s eyes and the lashing of Whiskers’ tail gives the lie to their expressions. Adrelana is standing outside the door, and at his knock, the door will open and she'll be led forward into the square.

Outside, she can hear Belial lecturing the company on the importance of ongoing discipline and continued maintenance of high standards, that this is an operational environment rather than messing around back at the Pit, and they'd all do well to remember that.

“What a prick,” Smit growls, and Sov rumbles his agreement, placing one of his heavy meat hook hands upon Dash's shoulder in a gesture of support. Dash takes a deep breath, tugging on one white cotton sleeve.

“Yep,” is the only response that Dash permits herself. Her lips tighten and her fists curl, but then she forces her face back to stillness. Her face is set and her eye hard as she braces herself for what is about to come. If she gives in to any emotion at all, then the quivering terror at the core of her being will overwhelm her. Dash takes a deep breath and not for the first time, she wishes that she had let Smit get Twilight. It's so unfair!- her outraged sense of justice and propriety cries out.

Belial, you are so dead. One of these days, I swear to all the gods that I know, you will find yourself on the tip of my bayonet and you'd better hope I make it quick. White hot fury courses through her veins, and Dash lets it flow out, doing her best to keep it off her face. Smit opens his mouth to say something, but then suddenly there is the scrape of a boot on the gravel outside, and Dash's thoughts dissolve into a haze of terror.

“Good luck boss.” She's dimly aware of Smit’s comforting words. The sharp double knock upon the door makes Dash's knees go weak, and she has to struggle to stand for a moment before she nods slowly and then raps hard upon the door in reply. At once, the doors are opened and Dash squints as the searing rays of the sun catch her eye. Almost without conscious thought, she lifts her arms.

“Detail, by the center, at variable pace, quick march!” A volley of commands is snapped out, and at once, Dash and her soldiers snap their arms upward and set off, moving toward the open door. Dash sets the pace, calmly stepping into the eighty eight beat rhythm of Legion marching. The command ‘at variable pace’ is one of the few luxuries permitted to legionnaires about to face the post or the gallows. At Variable Pace allows them to use the standard marching pace that the regular Equestrian army uses rather than the eighty eight beat Legion marching pace- and Dash snaps her thoughts back into line. She's immersing herself in trivia to prevent herself from thinking about what awaits too hard. That being the case, Belial can go fuck himself if he thinks that I'm going to give him the satisfaction of hot-footing it to the post.

Dash starts to march out, arms up, head back and chest out. As she marches out onto the parade square, she can feel the sidelong glances, but she continues marching, past the silent and still ranks of legionnaires. Her eye narrows as she approaches one of the black iron docking stanchions at the far end of the docking field. Once used to support lines being run up to the airship, the seven foot tall stanchion, with a ring welded to the top, now serves another function.

As they draw near, Dash forces herself not to breathe heavily. Her heart is dancing a jig in her chest and her stomach is tied into knots. Her palms are sweaty and if her legs weren't moving, her knees would damn sure be knocking. Terror gnaws at her guts and fear grips her like a vice, but Dash narrows her eye. She is a soldier of the Legion. She will not break now.

One hundred paces.
The drums are now audible through the pounding in her ears. A steady, rhythmic beat calculated to inspire maximum dread in the approaching victim. The sharp crack and snap of the snare drums as they beat time. In a few moments, they will be beating time of another sort.

Fifty paces.

Though the pounding in her ears has grown to a roar, the world seems somehow sharpened by adrenaline. She can see the post, the black iron stake standing up straight and sharp. Two more wooden poles have been driven into the ground next to it, one on each side. Belial is standing alongside, along with a pair of medical staffers and a drummer.

Dash comes to attention in front of him and snaps up a sharp, contemptuous salute. Fast and precise as a watch-spring uncoiling, and she holds it until Belial returns it with a wave of his hand and a nod to the post. He's unable to quite meet her eye, as though he can feel the raw hate radiating off her.

Three.
Two.
One.

Dash takes her place in front of the whipping post, facing it.

“Sergent, face the compagnie,” Belial growls, and Dash about faces, sharp and precise as the guards on parade in Canterlot Square, turning to face the legionnaires, and she suddenly blinks in surprise. She's aware of Belial talking, and of the legionnaires gazing at her, but she has no eye for them.

Her eye is on the admin block, specifically on the second floor of the admin block, and the balcony thereof. Outside, standing tall and proud as the figurehead on an airship, is Twilight Sparkle. Her blue hair hangs down, the bright purple streak gleaming like a lick of flame as she stands there, her hands upon the balustrade as she gazes down, her expression as hard and statuesque as marble. Dash suddenly feels a small and very unreasonable corner of her mind scream out an entreaty: Help me!

Anyone who didn't know Twilight Sparkle very well wouldn't see the sudden tightening of the skin around her eyes, or the sudden white knuckle grip upon the balustrade.

“See her?” Belial growls to Rainbow Dash. “That's who you failed last night. You could have put all of us, and especially her, in danger.”

“Save your moralizing sir. I'm late for a pressing appointment.”

“Very well. Remove your shirt.”
Dash moves to turn around, but Belial shakes his head.

“Face them,” he growls, and the chorus of voices calling for Belial to die a thousand deaths increases another notch as Dash unbuttons her shirt, her eye remaining locked upon a point just above the heads of the legionnaires. She pulls her shirt off and stands there, feeling the gaze of the hundreds of legionnaires upon her torso and the scars and tattoos that spangle her chest. Only the chest wraps remain to protect her dignity.

“And the wrap,” Belial hisses, and Dash moves to turn around, but Belial's swagger stick strikes the tip of her boot.

“I will not tell you again sergent, you will turn when ordered to, and not before. Now, the wraps,” he rumbles, and Dash summons all the self control that she can bring to bear, before she reaches to the knot in the centre of her chest and tugs at it with shaking fingers.

The knot comes undone, and the wrap tumbles away.

“Comp’naays, about hace!” The order is sudden and unexpected, a quick bark from the super-numary ranks behind the fighting men. At once, three hundred pairs of boots lift and stamp through the sharp crunch crunch crunch of a perfect about face, and three hundred backs are presented to capitaine Belial.

Belial's fur stands on end and Dash hears a low subvocalized growl rumbling from his throat, but then he grunts “S'be't,” and a small corner of Dash's heart feels an unpleasant surge of hot glee at the capitaine’s embarrassment.

“You may assume the position, sergent,” Belial says, and Dash turns on her heel, walking to the stanchion and lifting her arms to the docking ring. Without a word, Smit and Sov silently lash her arms into place above her head, and then her wings to the two posts. Smit then silently slips the folded strip of leather and metal between Dash's teeth to keep her from biting her tongue. Dash closes her eye, pressing herself against the pole and wincing slightly as the black metal sears her skin, and she takes a deep breath as another order comes from the rear ranks.

“Legionnaires, about hace!” The barked command from behind the ranks brings the stamp of three hundred pairs of boots once more and Dash tries not to tremble as the sharp drum-roll starts again, the steady drumbeat counting down the seconds.

“Caporals, pick up the implements.”

The sharp snap of the whips being shaken out makes Dash's stomach tighten. She feels like she's about to throw up.

“Take the positions, by count, twenty five lashes to be administered...”

The drumbeat tumbles into a sudden steady rasp, and the next voice she hears is Zaafan.

“O-”

Barely has the first syllable left the legionnaire's lips than the world suddenly explodes into white fire. Starbursts of colour erupt behind her eyeballs and she moans in agony. No doubt Sov and Smit know that if they lighten it one iota more than they should, Adrelana will take over.

“T-”

Another lash, and Dash's muscles strain, her wings quivering and tugging vainly at the posts in an instinctive bid. Rational thought fades beneath the onslaught of the lash and Dash tries not to scream in pain as the lashes continue to fall. Each stroke strips flesh from her back, and by the fifth stroke, she's dimly aware that she's pissed herself. By the tenth stroke, or possibly the twelfth, or possibly the two hundredth, Dash is moaning from the all consuming pain.

When the next stroke doesn't fall, Dash turns her head to see Belial handing canteens of water to Sov and Smit, both of whom are sweating hard in the mid-morning heat and spattered with her blood. She can barely see them through the white hot shimmering haze of pain.

The two drink swiftly, in steady, disciplined sips, and then hand the canteens back to Belial. Naked hate shines in Smit's face, and Sov's lack of expression conveys his own feelings. Belial points back at her, and Dash can hear the whips being picked up and shaken out once more.

CRACK
The whip comes down with a savage singing snap, and Dash sags against the stanchion, her booted feet unable to hold her weight, her entire bodyweight being supported by the stanchion and her arms being steadily pulled out of their shoulder-sockets. By stroke fifteen, Dash is practically delirious with pain, her head is swimming and her whole body feels like it's on fire. By stroke twenty, reality seems to be getting fuzzy around the edges and words seem to be coming to her mind, words from the Legion discipline and punishment lecture of all places, and she focusses on them, grabbing onto the words like a man clutching at a sinking life-raft.

This is Legion Punishment Implement 21A, also called a slasher, sjambok, or a man killer-
CRACK

The pain is elemental, a force of nature.
It is a bull-hide leather whip between twelve and sixteen inches in length-
CRACK
It turns her brain inside out, her word dissolving into a swirling mass of colour and distorted memory. Dash chokes, bloody spittle bubbling up in her mouth where she’s caught the edge of her toungue with her back teeth.
It will turn your back into a bl… bloody mess in five strokes, it will open your back to the bone in ten.

CRACK
The pain crushes her beneath its stormfront like a tsunami of lightning.
It will ki... you, if you’re lu...cky, in fifteen str...es.
CRACK

Thoughts become disjointed and hazy, even ideas and notions become distant.
If you’re... unlu....cky, it’ll... kill you in thir...ty.
CRACK

She can feel the blackness crawling at the end of her vision, and it's so tempting to give in, to surrender to the darkness. In the haze of pain that clouds her thoughts, she feels the gaze of Belial and the other legionnaires on her, and she lets out a low rumbling growl. No way will she give that fuck the satisfaction of screaming or passing out.

She braces for the next blow, but it does not come. Instead the order comes: “Cut her down... take her away from here and let her rest.” The order seems to come from a great distance, and it seems blurred and indistinct. At once, she feels hands gripping at her wrists, but then the voice speaks again, urgently.

“Not the wrists, yes the wings first!” The voice is deep and authoritative. “You two, grab her wings and hold them up, and if you get feathers in those wounds then I swear that you'll be picking them out! She’s taken twenty five strokes to the back...” The voice snarls angrily, and hands quickly move to support her wing. Dash moans out blearily, and the deep voice growls.

“Don't try and move sergent... we'll get you fixed up,” the deep voice says softly and Dash tries to turn her head, but the voice rumbles tenderly. “Barbarism... absolute barbarism,” she hears the voice muttering, almost under its breath. Hands undo her wrists and she sags into waiting arms, and her feet begin dragging on the parade square.

“wuzz... n- I can walk,” Dash mumbles, feeling her head lolling drunkenly on her shoulder.

“Don't try sergent... I don't want you falling on your face and breaking your nose as well,” the voice mutters, and Dash tries to turn her head again. This time she catches a glimpse of Lieutenant Mayotte, the senior doctor of the detachment, another Khan whose natural colouration gives him an equally natural scowl. He then turns to look around, and his eyes narrow as he looks over his shoulder and speaks hurriedly to someone that Dash can't see through the pain-haze. As the people carry her onward, she feels her head loll forward, and she's suddenly just looking at the gravel of the landing field.

“So she's not going into the normal surgery... have it your way, but I warn you, you fat oaf, if she dies, I will not be held accountable!” Mayotte snaps, and there's a softly worded reply, but now Dash can feel herself being rotated, carried upstairs and through a rapidly opened doorway, and she's suddenly being brought into a darkened, cool room.

She feels herself being lowered into soft sheets, hears a voice softly crooning as it spreads her wings wide upon her bed. The voice is soft and melodic, gentle and very female. It sounds familiar, the edges of it just nudging at Dash’s flickering, dancing consciousness.

“I wish I were on yonder hill. Tis there I’d sit and cry my fill… Till every tear would turn a mill.” The voice whispers in a soft melodic song “I’d sell my rod, I’d sell my reel, I’ll sell my only spinning wheel.. To buy my lover a sword of steel…”
A very old Pegasopalian ballad that Dash’s mother had sung to her….

“Mum?” Dash hisses into the pillow, and the hands working on her back hesitate for just a moment, and then she feels a bowl of water being pushed towards her.

“Drink,” the voice says, a note of authority in its voice “You’ve been badly hurt, and you need water, and to rest…”

Dash tries to turn her head, but the bowl is to her lips now and she is almost forced to sup at the icy cool water. Inhumanly cool, almost impossibly cool for modern science to drop water to this temperature. Modern science… but modern magic…

“Twilight?” Dash breathes, but the hands continue to work briskly.

“Stop worrying and just relax,” the voice says forcefully, “You need to rest and relax. I can’t work if you keep moving around like this.” Those deft fingers continue their slow gentle movements against Dash’s back. She can’t feel a poultice or bandages being applied, but as those fingers spread across her back, she feels a numbness spreading from them, slowly washing the savage pain away.

“They really did a number on you… this is almost down to the bone, you’re lucky you didn’t sustain any nerve damage.” The voice mutters softly and Dash sees a trace of movement out of the corner of her eye, the flicker of a shape moving in the dim coolness of the room.

“Can you fix it?” Dash is startled by how weak and rasping her voice sounds, but the voice that answers remains as soft and gentle as always. Kindly and loving.

“I’ll do my best, it won’t be easy but I’ll… I’ll try,” there is a soft hiss of indrawn breath from between a pair of teeth and the shadows are set to dancing by a steady lavender glow that seems to make the room waver and shimmer in the half-light.

“Trying is enough for me…” Dash tries to make out features of the room, but everything seems so blurry and indistinct… her eyelids seem so heavy....

“Hey, stay with me!” The voice says, suddenly losing some of its ethereal quality. “Focus on me! Please… I’m here for you, it’s all… all fine.” The hands start to shake, and the lavender glow seems to shiver and flicker.

The door suddenly bangs open and the room is enveloped in a hurricane of sound.
“I TOLD YOU TO STAY OUT! THE PRINCESS NEEDS TO CONCENTRATE!”
Holy shit, I never thought that fat bastard could project quite like that… Dash thinks vaguely, trying to turn her head but then a sticky hand grabs her head and rather firmly pushes it back forward.

“And you can go fuck yourself if you think I’m staying out-” The replying voice suddenly cuts off as it takes in the scene. There’s an awed note when the owner speaks next. “Holy shit…”

“Caporal Smit,” The owner of the female voice, Twilight, it must be Twilight, sounds weary, “I understand that you might be worried about Sergeant Dash but… but please… I need to concentrate.”

“She will be alright though? Can you…?” Dash hears a slightly plaintive note in Smit’s voice.

“I’ll do my best. She’s lost quite a bit of blood though, and Pegasopalians have always been more sensitive about injuries to their backs than regular humans.” Twilight’s response is carefully measured as Dash hears her feet moving on the carpeted floor, and then the purple light seems to redouble in strength, flickering like a purple fire.

“You can stay… if you want…” Twilight’s voice becomes a little weaker around the edges, fluctuating slightly. “I may need you to hold her down… this next bit is… going to… hurt.”

More hands grip Dash, holding her on the bed and she tries to summon the energy to move but her body feels so heavy, and her limbs just don’t want to cooperate.

“On three… one, two, three!” Twilight hisses.
Dash’s body suddenly goes rigid as fire leaps up her back and she tastes blood in her mouth as she bites down hard upon her tongue. She struggles, but the hands holding her down grip tightly, holding her in a grip of iron. The pain suddenly dissapears as quickly as it had come, and the purple light suddenly vanishes.

For a second, there is a heavy silence, and then a voice breathes in tones that could almost be awe. “Fuck me” The voice whispers.

“It… it worked.” Twilight says groggily and Dash just manages to turn her head to see the vague form of the Princess, her face shining with sweat. Blood spatters her cheeks and coats her hands and wrists. Her eyes are vague and distant.

Dash has only a moment to see this, before Princess Twilight stumbles forward and collapses onto the bed, her lavender eyes barely focussing.

“So I did it huh?” Twilight whispers softly, and Dash’s hand drifts back to her lower back, hesitates for just a moment and then she touches the flesh. Smooth… unblemished, unmarked skin, as though the whipping had never happened.

“You did.” Dash whispers.

“ ‘s good… I’m… going to pass out now for a bit. I’ll see you later, okay?” Twilight says and Dash nods slowly as those bright lavender eyes close and the tension drains from Twilight’s face. She’s about to move to get up when she feels a warm feathery weight resting across her back. The broad lavender wing is surprisingly strong, and it draws Dash in against Twilight’s warm body.

Dash hesitates for a moment, remembering the last time those long feathers had rested against her back like this, remembering the last time this warm body had lain next to her… but then she sighs. She’s got stuff to do, and as much as she’d like to stay here forever, she can’t.

Dash moves to get up, but then the wing presses against her and Dash blinks in surprise. Since when did you get that strong?

Dash takes another breath, inhaling the warm scent of the body next to her, scenting the coppery infusion of blood… and then she slides backwards, out from under the wing, rising to her feet.

“Sorry pretty lady, maybe next time.” she mutters, looking at the bloodsoaked bedsheets underneath the girl, before she turns and starts rifling through Twilight’s drawers.

“Are you sure you should be doing that?” Smit asks, and Dash shrugs.

“Unless one of you brought my shirt, I don’t have a choice. Besides, she’s a princess, she can afford a new one.” Dash pulls out a white shirt with some elaborate collar ruffle type arrangement and a neckline that would be considered only mildly scandalous in Equestria, looks at herself in the mirror and then tugs it on. “This’ll do, now let’s get going.”

Dash keeps herself formal and businesslike as she buttons up the shirt, waiting till Smit and the others are out of the room before she goes back to the sleeping princess and gently drapes a light blanket over her. “Sleep well Twi… and thanks.”

This one was a real bastard to write, apologies for taking a while with release