Rorg tugged at his arcane chains, seething. "Bitch," he murmured, cursing the thrice-blasted daughter of a whore who did this to him, then left him there to rot.

That girl was such a sweet peach, too, he thought, lamenting wistfully over the plunder that was unjustly taken from him. Such an exquisite beauty, that girl was. Those red eyes, her glossy midnight feathers, that perfect little ass of hers; small, yet just ample enough to fill his talons. And the way she screamed when I took her. Such a sweet serenade that was. It inflamed his already frustrated libido just remembering it. He loved it when they screamed. It was like an added spice that made his intimate conquests all the more exhilarating.

But then those pompous holier-than-thou bitches just had to go and ruin my fun ... blasted my club all to pieces, damn them. I cheated my way through a poker game for that club! I swear, I'll kill that purple bitch if I ever see her again. And then I'll find the girl she stole from me. I'll have her again, an' ain't nobody gonna interrupt us this time. Hell, I could even take her back to the ship and share her with the rest o' the lads. Now, there was a fun idea. Betha would like that. She'd probably want to watch. She'll swig her rum and shout ribald jests and bawdy suggestions from that big cushy chair of hers, making her crew laugh as the crew made the girl cry. The captain may even reward him for providing her with such a lively night of amusement. After the girl's been used until she ain't worth usin' no more, I'll pluck one o' them pretty black feathers o' hers before we feed her to the sharks. What a sweet memento that'll make.

A griffon came limping from out of the gloom, the dim, rutty light of the chandelier revealing his haggard form. He was clutching his side as he breathed short, shallow breaths. "Damn bitch!" he wheezed. "Damn near killed me."

"Dagri?" the manacled pirate laughed when he noticed him. "You okay?"

"I think my rib's broke."

"The cute one with the red and yellow hair," smirked Rorg. "The wench walloped you and Kane good, huh?"

Dagri sneered at him. "Shut up, Rorg, you got your ass kicked, too."

Rorg rattled his magical restraints, smiling playfully. "When a girl chains you up it's a sign they want you. Poor thing just didn't know what to do with me afterwards."

Dagri's attempt to deride him with a sarcastic laugh ended with him wincing as he clutched at the blackening blotch in his side, where 'the cute one' had cutely kicked his rib in.

"Look on the bright side," consoled Rorg, "at least you ain't Fieldy."

Dagri and Rorg directed their gazes toward the poor sod, all bent and broken like a twisted up rag doll. He had stopped sobbing some time ago, though he would still twitch every so often.

"He dead?" queried Rorg.

Dagri bent down to inspect him. "Still breathing," he announced. "Probably in shock, poor bastard."

Rorg had thought as much. "He's a liability to us now. Betha would just throw him overboard if we brought him back to her in the shape he's in, and it ain't right just leaving em here like this."

Dagri was already putting their broken comrade out of his misery by the time Rorg could finish the hint. "Rest well, boyo," he said, as he drew the dagger's blade across his throat in one deep slice, the finely-honed edge parting feathers, flesh and arteries like a veiny cheesecloth. "Davy Jones'll be serving you some o' that good spiced rum o' his at his table tonight."

Rorg watched apathetically as the blood gurgled out from the laceration in rhythmic pulses. It made him think of his sweet peaches' red eyes. She was all he could think about. She was his plunder. His. He was eager to have her back. "The deed's been done," he said impatiently. "Now, get me free."

"What about Kane?"

"What about him?" said Rorg.

"He's hurt real bad. He ain't waking up."

"If he ain't waking up, we'll just have to do him like you did Fieldy, there."

"I suppose," conceded Dagri. "But you gotta do it. Bad enough I already had to kill one o' my own today."

"FInd some way to free me, or I'll kill both of..." A sudden movement in the darkness drove a wedge between his thoughts. His eyes narrowed, focusing beyond the faint whisper of light the chandelier provided. He could have sworn he just saw something moving, but it was so dark; a shadow within a shadow. "Bloody hell was that?"

Dagri cocked a bemused eyebrow at him before he turned around... Nothing... He returned to Rorg with a perplexed look. "What are you looking—" his query turned into a scream when a red spike suddenly burst forth from his chest. He clutched at its point, screaming, screaming, screaming madly in anguish as his feet left the ground, hind legs kicking.

The color drained from Rorg's face as he beheld the eldritch demon in all its horror, his hapless mate impaled on its horn, his blood streaming down its black face like flowing rills of red wine. And when it opened its eyes, orbs of jade slashed in sanguine, Rorg's bowels turned to water. Oh, gods...

Dagri howled, every slight jostle of the demon's head evoking shrieks of agony.

Rorg pulled desperately at his chains in an attempt to free himself. I know I've been bad, he prayed, frantic. I've done so many bad things, but I beg you, O merciful gods, have pity! Away this ... this thing, and give me refuge!

With a whip of his head the demon launched poor Dagri screaming into the unyielding wall, next to where the incapacitated Kane was lying. The pirate's gaping wound left a red blot where he careened into the stone barrier with a wet, fleshy smack. Bleeding like a stuck pig, and with more broken bones than he could count on his talons and toes, he somehow managed to find the strength to lift a pleading talon. The last word he ever spoke on this earth came out in a rasp so soft it was barely audible. "Y-yield."

A pulse of light surged from the tip of the demon's blood-slicked horn, a projectile flashed across the chamber, and Dagri and Kane were both engulfed in roaring flames. Two black silhouettes contrasted the conflagration like shadows writhing behind a scarlet curtain, and when it stymied moments later all that remained of them were two charred piles of ash.

Rorg pressed his back against the wall as the demon started toward him, Dagri's blood running down his face in crimson tears, his eyes glowing like pits of starlight set in a visage glowering so implacably the expression might as well have been carved in a block of black marble.

"I've no quarrel with you! Stay back! Get away! I'm chained up! Look at me, I'm chained! I'm no threat to yo—Ach!" His pleas ended in a croak when the monster pulled at him, the phantom chain anchoring him to the wall snapping taught with a high metallic note. His beak split wide in a breathless gasp, eyes watering as the collar around his neck became a garrote. The pirate felt his spine stretching under the force. His paws drummed frantically against the stone floor. Colors began to swim about his vision as his windpipe yielded under the strain.

The last image his mind conjured before the darkness finally enveloped him was a mosaic of all his victims, all those whom he had either killed, or raped, or both. When it panned out to reveal the picture his innumerable sins had collaborated to create, he could see that it was the face of a pale horse, garbed and cowled in white. The ghostly image in the portrait seemed to become lucid as it raised its hoof, and to the pirate named Rorg, it beckoned him to follow.

Standing over the remains of the dreg he had just strangled with The Princess of Friendship's own chains, Sombra reached out with his senses to confirm that all the pirates in his palace had been eliminated, his horn scanning meticulously for the auras that indicated life. He identified the lifeforms of his guards patrolling his halls and those in the throne room. There was one oddity he hadn't expected, but its essence was familiar. Shantae's on the prowl. It was best to leave that one to his own devises. Other than those exclusions his palace seemed to be secure.

His body count up to now numbered in a mere dozen. He had come across more dead pirates than live ones. His wife taking command of his guard had something to do with that, he did not doubt. My lioness, he thought, a fierce pride swelling within his heart. But now was not the time to be sentimental. The pain in his chest was throbbing, the venom in his blood was burning, he had work to do. It was time to meet the enemy on the open battlefield.

Swift, silent and formless he crept. Through a breach in his walls he went, then up to the battlements he crawled. His shade raced along the lofty ramparts, weaving unnoticed and unhindered between the feet of his archers. He scaled the highest tower of his palace, then once again took form when he had arrived at its apex.

With scrutinizing eyes he surveyed the battlefield below, searching amongst the myriad of skirmishes where his enemies would be the thickest. A distant blast suddenly drew his attention, and to his irritation another piece of his palace was blown away. He sneered when he noticed the squad of cannons set up on a far hill. Those had to go.

Sombra's horn began to flicker. His magic lifted him off his perch, and in a sudden burst like a clap of thunder he ripped across the sky, a black bolt of lightening slashing the firmament. A sudden seizure of pain in his chest gripped him in mid flight, and instead of landing where the cannons had been stationed, he slammed with all the subtle grace of a meteor at the base of their hill.

Cursing, he unearthed himself, then looked up to realize he had been noticed. There were three cannons in all, each operated by a team of five griffons: anglers, loaders, packers, lighters, and spotters. Sombra was looking up at them. They were looking down at him.

Move! Sombra rushed them, ignoring the pain in his chest.

Startled spotters frantically shouted commands. Anglers moved to adjust the trajectory of their artillery, pivoting, then lowering. A heavy iron ball fell out of one of the cannons, embedding itself harmlessly in the snow.

"You stupid son of a bitch, you didn't pack the wad!" the spotter admonished to the packer.

"I didn't think I would have to!" the packer shot back defensively. "We've been firing in upward arcs this entire time."

Another team was working feverishly to get their cannon prepped. It's muzzle was still blazing red from its most recent blast. The loader, his talons tremulous with urgency, emptied contents from a powder horn into the breach, whilst the packer fumbled to retrieve a ball from their cache. One cannon, however, was properly loaded, generously powdered, thoroughly packed, and the lighter was lowering the torch, the flame kissing the fuse with a hiss.

Sombra was tearing up the hill like a madman. Despite the hindrance of his heavy armor, he arrived at the cannon's muzzle mere seconds before the sibilating blossom of sparks could ride the fuse all the way to the breach. He drew back, then struck it with a powerful, sweeping blow. The barrel gonged thunderously. Wagon wheels creaked as they were knocked off their chocks. The cogs giving torque to the artillery's locking leaver released under the impact. The cannon rotated, then landed with its business end honed on the other two cannons queued down its side.

Sombra covered his ears, bearing his teeth in a malicious smile. The pirate's befouled the air with expletives as they scurried the hell out of the way. Then the cannon thundered.

Liberated from its chocks and locks, the cannon was sent flying back. The two cannons caught in the blast were decimated, bores and pivots alike sent shattering in a wave of iron shrapnel and wooden splinters. Six members of the two artillery crews were fast enough to get out of the way in time. The other four, however, were not so lucky. There were barely any remains left of the bastards; just blood and feathers.

Sombra found himself surrounded by what remained of the cannon teams, eleven pirates with swords drawn. None of them seemed eager to attack first, so Sombra obliged them. Rushing forward, fast and sudden as the snap of a bowstring, he brained one with a heavy blow, skull and brains yielding beneath the force of his steel shod hoof like a soft boiled egg. While he was doing that, one of the fools had gotten the notion to blindside him with an arcing blow to his head. Sombra caught him by the arm in mid-swing, then snapped it off at the elbow as he would a twig. The pirate fell, howling as he clutched the fountaining stump.

Sparks showered and steel sang as Sombra guarded against blows with his gauntlets, the rapidity of the twanging and banging like a hailstorm of ball bearings battering against a bronze bell. The flurry of the nine who had managed to survive thus far left little margin for error, but at last a gap presented itself. Sombra seized upon it, blasting one of the pirates hard in the gut with such a fiercely powerful under arcing punch it shattered his spine, killing him instantly. The King then managed to put some distance between him and the rest of them with a backwards leap, then dispatched two more in rapid succession with highly condensed slugs of magic, the arcane bullets tunneling through their bodies like searing hot balls of lead.

The expressions on the faces of the six that still remained were beginning to betray the moonings of despair. One of them seemed to remember a pressing engagement elsewhere. "You guys got this," he imparted before he took to the sky.

"Grin, you chicken shit!" one of them shouted after him.

Pouncing upon the distraction, Sombra conjured a spell. "Hey," he said, reclaiming their attention, "what's that?" He indicated the black spiral he had evoked at their feet.

The befuddled pirates looked down at the dark anomaly on the ground. No bigger than their fists, it spiraled in on itself with a mysterious black glow, speckled with bits of white, like a constellation swirling within a black hole. The griffons beheld it with growing disquiet. Then, the fractal assumed the properties of a bristling cocklbur. The griffons screamed and cried and cawed as hundreds of shadowy spikes, like elongated quills protracting from a spring loaded trap, perforated their bodies. With a flick of Sombra's horn, the deadly magical contraption he had devised retracted its long nibs back into itself, and the pirates' lifeless husks buckled like a quintet of puppets with their strings simultaneously cut.

Sombra turned his attention to the fleeing griffon. He charged a spell ... but then he thought better of it. That one could lead me to this Betha I've heard so much about. Then he looked back at the tumult raging throughout his streets. The hilltop from which he surveyed the smoldering battle offered him a grand view of all the carnage. He couldn't just abandon those he as their king was sworn to protect. He looked at the griffon one last time. He was practically a dot on the horizon now, shrinking evermore. Run, coward. Flee. Tell your pirate queen of the nightmare that awaits her. "New Haven," he said, "has room for only one queen."

Turning, Sombra pulled for the magic that would send him crashing down at the center of the battlefield like a falling star, but then another seizure took him. Sombra clutched at his hammering heart, panting, frothing, gasping. His gorge began to rise, and when he finished retching he looked down at the steaming puddle of black blood melting the snow, like balls of white wax disintegrating in a pot of boiling pitch.

His time was nigh, he knew. Nigh—yes—but not just yet.

Steadying himself, Sombra swallowed the pain, pushing it to the farthest reaches of his mind. Once his breathing became regular again, he resolved to abstain from using any spells that would cost exorbitant amounts of magic, for they seemed to be the trigger for his convulsions. That suited him just fine. There was something so viscerally personal about killing an enemy with his own hooves, and for what or whom could he harbor more personal animosity than those who had come to kill his people and queen?

King Sombra began his advance, charging headlong toward the besieged hamlet. Down the hill and across the frozen plain he flew as if endowed with Hermese wings, the snow parting in his wake as he carved a trench to mark his path. Bereft of his magic, a berserker he resolved to be, and a berserker he was, quaking earth and sky with a deafening roar to announce his arrival, a shadow of death ripping into the maw of the melee.

The thundering sound jolted Betha upright from her lacquered wooden chair. Pausing, she waited for it to recede. "Rozo."

Rozo's head parted the flaps of the captain's fur tent. "Ma'am?"

"What was that?" Betha said.

"Not entirely sure, cap'n," said Rozo. "Sounded like it came rolling in from the south."

"Thunder?"

Rozo shook his head. "Ain't no thunderheads in the sky, far as I can see."

Betha seemed to ponder upon that for a moment, but then she shrugged it off. She waved her subordinate away. "I have a guest to entertain. Be sure the barbs on my trident are sharpened by the time we're ready for the attack."

"Ma'am." The first mate's head disappeared, leaving a thin sliver of pale daylight where the fur flaps joined.

"Now, where were we?" She turned to regard Starlight Glimmer with a smile, the golden bells in her drooping feathers gleaming in the light radiating from the oil lamp set upon the trestle table between them.

Starlight Glimmer muttered as a string of spittle bobbed down from the corner of her lips. Her head was foggy from blood loss, the fever burning away at what remained of her wits. And there was the pain. Her arm. Her flank. She never knew anything in all her life could hurt so bad.

Betha placed her talon upon the platter set at the center of the table, then pushed it toward her. "You need your strength," she said. "Eat."

Starlight Glimmer looked down at where her left arm had ended at the elbow. The arm she had broken was no longer there. The stump was wrapped in a cocoon of bandages blotched in rust-colored stains. She looked at the platter of meat that had been offered to her, an equine foreleg seared to a golden brown, dripping with grease. It didn't require a genius to figure out where the meat had come from.

"Well?" Betha said, spreading her hands. "How is it?"

Starlight stared in sullen silence at the cooked hunk of meat that had once been her prominent arm.

Betha rammed the tip of her golden dagger into the table with a heavy thunk. The plates and silverware jarred. "I said, how is it!"

Starlight coward under the sudden display of fury. "It's good!" she proclaimed at once, voice quavering.

"You haven't even taken a bite yet," Betha pointed out.

"Please, don't make me..."

Betha wrapped her talon about the handle of her golden dagger, still firmly embedded into the table. "Perhaps you'd prefer the taste of your eyes instead?"

Starlight, shivering, took the leg off the plate.

Betha's grimace sweetened as she released her grip from the upturned blade. "Go on now," she said. "I cooked that just for you. You're starting to hurt my feelings. You don't want to hurt my feelings ... do you?"

Starlight glimmer lifted the leg so that her mouth would be obscured from her sadistic hostess's line of sight. Her teeth grazed against the meat ever so slightly. Then she said, "It... It's good."

Betha cocked an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

Starlight nodded.

"Well then," said Betha, settling back in her lacquered chair, "don't be shy. Dig in."

Starlight looked at the meat. Just the smell from the wispy tendrils wafting off of it was enough to make her stomach churn. "I'm not hungry," she whimpered, fearing the repercussions of her statement.

"Really?" Betha looked amused. "Well, perhaps a little ... salt ... would stimulate your appetite?"

A sobering surge of terror seized Starlight at the mere mention of the word, the raw weeping eye that was her flayed flank screaming in agony. "No, please... I-I... Please." Unbidden tears began to fill her eyes. "I'll... I'll eat it... Just, please... Not the salt. Anything—anything but that."

"That a girl!" Betha saluted her with a bottle of rum in her talon. She wiped her mouth after taking a generous pull from its mouth, then slammed it back on the table with a thump. "Now, go on. And if the next bite you take doesn't scrape the bone, well..." She drummed her fingers on the table, next to where the jar of salt lay.

Mortified, Starlight parted her lips wide over the flesh, then bit down as deep as she could. The meat ripped away with such a sickening sound, and It had an unpleasantly stringy texture to it. She shuddered as she forced herself to chew.

"How's it taste?" inquired Betha. "Can I barbecue, or what?"

Starlight, grimacing as her cheeks bulged, made herself nod.

"Well?" betha said. "Aren't you going to swallow it?"

Starlight tried, but she couldn't. As an equine meat held no appeal to her, much less chevaline—and even less than that, her own leg. It was an incredibly macabre feeling, eating yourself.

Betha's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Swallow it, bitch."

Starlight tried. Oh, gods, did she try. But she just couldn't make it go down.

Betha grabbed a fistful of salt from the jar, stood, then rounded the table.

Starlight choked as she shook her head in a frantic, pleading manner. She lifted a hoof, as if to fend her away, but Betha swept it aside and slapped the mound of salt hard against her skinless flank. Screams and chunks of chewed meat came flying from her mouth as the finely ground mineral sizzled in a foam against her exposed sinew. She didn't even feel her body colliding with the floor when she fell out of her chair. Nothing but the screaming rent in her flank existed.

"You must be thirsty after all that salt," Betha purred as she reached for the bottle of rum on the table. "Here, let me poor you a drink."

Starlight attempted vainly to cover the wound with the one good hoof she had, but when the rum spilled over it, it was like a drizzle of flaming turpentine. The pain was enough to make her tear her own hair out as she writhed and kicked on the floor.

"Come now, I know this isn't the best rum ever made, but it ain't that bad." She took another swig, then frowned disapprovingly at the bottle. "Ghu, I guess it is pretty shit, innit?"

Starlight, finally over the cusp of her breaking point, began to cry. She did not weep, nor did she sob. She cried, mouth agape in an anguished shriek of distress, like a babe squalling after tumbling over the rungs of her crib, vociferous and piteous.

Betha basked in the symphony of her misery for a moment, then turned her attention toward the seared leg of meat. She snatched it off the plate, flipped it in the air, caught it, then ripped into it with a generous bite. "Keep screaming for me," she mumbled through a mouthful of Starlight's leg. "I like to be serenaded while I dine." Then she walked away, leaving her guest to squirm on the floor.

The captain reclaimed her seat at the table, and made morbid comments as she feasted. "You know," she said, after washing a chunk of mare flesh down with a cup of ale, "you're pretty tasty. I'm looking forward to eating the rest of you after this is all done. That firm little ass of yours'll make some nice stakes." She ripped another mouthful away from the bone. "I'll give your ribs to Rozo. He loves ribs, by the way. Did you know that? The way his eyes light up when he's got a mouthful of rib meat bulging his cheeks, it's adorable." She took another bite. "And your cutie mark, that's going in my collection once the skin's been dried out." She dabbed at the grease running down her beak with a silk napkin, then gave the bone a toss.

Starlight's lamentations of anguish remained unabated as it bounced off her head.

Rozo suddenly burst through the flaps of the tent. "Cap'n!"

Betha was picking gristle out from her beak as she turned to acknowledge him. "Rozo, I was just telling my guest here about your love for—"

"Grin needs to speak with you!"

"Grin?" Replied Betha. "He was part of the first wave. What's he doing back already?" She suddenly stiffened in her seat. "Has the town already fallen?"

"No, quite the opposite. The cannon team was killed, our siege weapons were demolished before they could bring down the palace!"

"What!" Betha shot up from her seat so fast the chair was sent scuttering back. "You told me Sombra's soldiers were up North!"

"They are," Rozo assured her. "But, their town militia is stronger and better organized than we anticipated."

Betha slammed her fists on the table so hard her golden dagger dislodged itself from the wood, then clamored against the floor with a resonant report. "Are you telling me my cannoneers were slaughtered by a ravel of hicks armed with pothelms and pitchforks?"

"No, ma'am," said Rozo, his voice darkening. "They was killed by The King."

"The King killed them himself?"

Rozo drew open the flaps of the tent and beckoned his captain to follow. "Grin knows more about it than I do. He's the only survivor, he says."

Wordlessly the captain followed him outside.

Starlight Glimmer couldn't say how long Betha had been gone. Time seemed to lose all meaning when she was in so much pain; everything lost its meaning; the agony was all her world consisted of now. By sheer chance she turned her head, and through the blur of tears she managed to glimpse Betha's golden dagger. That was when a dark thought entered her mind, an urge to commit an act she never thought she would ever consider. She looked at the blade as a key, a way to unlock the path for her exit from all the pain.

Painstakingly she crawled toward the implement of her freedom, her rent flank dragging broad brushstrokes of red on the floor.

With the dagger finally in her grasp, she pressed the edge to her jugular. She closed her eyes, and felt her heart pounding in her chest as her preservational instincts clashed with her desperation to end her torment. They're just going to kill me anyway, she told herself. Kill me, then eat me; at least this way I'll be going out on my own terms.

The tent flaps suddenly burst open.

Startled, Starlight pulled the dagger from her throat and hid it behind her back.

"I need you to organize the rest of the crews!" Betha blustered. "We're attacking now, while the numbers still favor us."

"What about your plan to attack at noon?"

"The first wave will be eliminated by then, you imbecile! We lost our siege support, and it's not like we have the time to haul more cannons down from the ships. Take the bugle, assemble the crews. Have someone bring me my net and trident. I'm going to start loading my bomb satchel after I do away with—where is that little bitch!"

The table Starlight had crawled under in order to get to the dagger suddenly flipped away to reveal Rozo's cold eyes looking down at her. "Here, Cap'n."

"I don't have time to play with her anymore. Cut that bitch's throat," Betha commanded. "Better yet, just saw her head clean off. I'm going to present it to Sombra before I gore him with my squid sticker and swirl his guts around in his belly like a barrel full of eels."

"Yes, cap'n." The first mate Rozo approached Starlight with dagger drawn.

Starlight thrashed as he pinned her head back by her hair. "Nothin' personal, poppet." He raised his dagger.

There was a sudden voice in Starlight's head. It said to her, Do you really want to die a coward? She couldn't have said what madness possessed her at that moment. "Likewise," she replied, then spit a gelatinous confection of mucus and blood and saliva into his eyes.

Rozo turned his head away in a grunt of surprise, giving Starlight all the time she needed to reach behind her back. Betha's golden dagger flashed, and the first mate fell back with a deep gash across his throat. He thudded on the floor, twisting, writhing, gurgling, choking.

"Rozo!" Betha shrieked, and in a flash she was at his side, clutching his talon against her breast. "Rozo, don't leave me! I already lost Cassius, I can't lose you, too!"

Then the first mate named Rozo was still.

Betha, for the first time, looked at Starlight Glimmer with an expression that wasn't twisted in sadistic amusement or malicious fury. It was that vacant, watery eyed thousand yard stare one might have while listening to a loved one's eulogy. At that moment she almost looked vulnerable. "You killed him... My first mate, he's dead."

Starlight couldn't bring herself to feel remorseful, not after everything that had been done to her. The nothingness she felt after taking her first life surprised even her. "He died like a bitch," she spat, "and so did your precious Cassius."

The air in the tent suddenly felt colder.

Betha's incredulous eyes widened. Twice she tried to speak, but words wouldn't come. Finally she threw her head back and cried a piercing caw so loud it grazed against Starlight's eardrums like a razor blade.

Starlight raised the dagger as the captain came at her, but the griffon snagged the one good arm she had left in her talon and twisted it so hard it cracked audibly at the wrist. The dagger fell from her grasp as Starlight opened her mouth to cry out, then Betha was on her, swiping with her talons, swiping, swiping, swiping, slashing, shredding, ripping, tearing, flecks of her blood flying in sprays, dousing the fur walls, drenching the glass cylinder of the oil lamp, bathing the insides of the tent in a bloody light.

Bellowing, the captain dragged Starlight outside by her hair. "Hang her!" she was screaming, to everyone and no one. "Do it now! Hang her. Hang her up! Hang her high, and bleed her dry!"

Starlight, barely coherent, three quarters and twenty four pennies of the way dead, felt numerous talons grasping at her. No matter what they do to me, I'm not going to scream. I've already screamed enough for one day. I'll die knowing I've denied Betha that satisfaction.

The pirates brought Starlight into the tent that had been setup as a makeshift butchery, the place where her cutie mark had been flayed from her flank.

I won't scream, she told herself again.

They took her to a meat hook dangling high from a chain. Beneath it was a bucket.

I won't scream.

She was hoisted up by numerous talons, then felt the steel driving deep into her back. And then she was screaming.