The grand stone hallway was filled with dozens of voices, baying and cheering as the prisoners were brought in. The victorious strike team dragged Phillip, Twilight, Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Flash across the tiled floor behind them. Each of their captured prey was securely bound, blindfolded, and muzzled; they struggled futilely, still shaking with fright as the remnants of the fear toxin raced through their veins.

“Not so tough now, are ya?!” a thestral mare taunted.

“Gonna skin you alive, Finder!” a bulky earth pony snarled, twirling a pair of butterfly knives as he spoke.

“—right up her butthole!” a Scarlet member shouted, pointing at Pinkie. “Make her pay for what she did!”

“—see how long a royalty can last,” a unicorn with wolf-like features hissed, licking his chops as he focused on Twilight.

“Silence!” a voice barked from above. The ponies all fell quiet and drew away from the bound prisoners and looked up at the two figures standing atop the sweeping staircase, leaning over the parapet.

Zugzwang and Scarlet Letter smirked down at their captives. “Well done, doctor,” Zugzwang declared as they both started to descend down the stairs onto the main floor.

A pegasus in a tattered cloak with a flat, wide-brimmed hat emerged from the rear of the group, grinning up at Zugzwang. The henchponies around him drew back as one. “I promised you nothing but the best, Zugzwang,” he hissed in reply.

Zugzwang’s eyes flicked over the prisoners as he walked in front of their line. Each of them was shaking in their ropes with slow, shivering breath. “Where are Daring Do and their escorts?” Zugzwang asked calmly.

The strike team looked at one another with fearful eyes. “They...got away,” one of them admitted slowly, punctuating his confession with a nervous swallow.

The look Zugzwang fixed his underlings with could’ve turned magma into ice. “Then get back out there, find them, and kill them,” he instructed with no change in tone. “They are still a threat, and I will not tolerate any interference. Am I understood?”

“Y-yes, master!” the pony stammered, kneeling. He and the other ponies raced back outside into the snowy streets to resume their search.

“That goes to all of you,” Zugzwang added, raising his voice to address the ensemble of killers, thieves, and worse before him. “We remain on guard. We have not yet won this battle.”

“Yes, sir!” dozens of voices barked back at once.

“Dear, let me have the pink one,” Scarlet Letter cooed into Zugzwang’s ear, her eyes on Pinkie Pie. “I want her to suffer for what she did to me, did to all of us.”

“In time, mein Geliebte,” Zugzwang responded, not looking at her. “There are things we must attend to.” He lit up his horn, summoning clouds of smoke that slithered through the air towards Rarity, Twilight, Flash, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash. The clouds snaked around the bound ponies’ wings and horns. A moment later, the unicorns, pegasi and alicorn start writhing in their bonds, their cries of pain muffled by their muzzles. Black, jagged crystals tore through their flesh, bursting from their horns and wings. They collapsed to the floor, panting in shock.

Zugzwang looked down at Flash, tucking a hoof under his chin and lifting his head up to meet his blindfolded gaze. “You should have died in that coffin, flachwichser,” he spoke calmly, striking Flash across the face with his hoof.

He paused in front of Phillip. A smile spread across the sociopath’s face as he tenderly stroked Phillip’s cheek with the back of his hoof, receiving a muffled snarl in reply.

“Hello, liebling,” he cooed softly. “Bring him up to my dining hall. The rest, bring them with me. Fret not,” he added in answer to faint groans of disappointment from the audience. “You will have your turn when we are done.”

The ponies cheered again and started dragging their struggling prizes away. Zugzwang followed Scarlet out of the room, a new spring in his step.

The cell was six paces long and eight paces wide. Celestia knew because she had paced it over a hundred times in her captivity, memorizing every crevice and irregularity in the stone walls and floor. There were no windows or lights, and the door was always sealed shut, denying her any light to see. However, she could still smell the bucket in the corner that had been provided for her to use to relieve herself, as well as the plate of undercooked straw and small glass of icy water that was her only meal for the day.

Right now, she was huddled up against the corner, focusing on keeping her breathing even. Her normally multicolored, luminescent mane hung dull and limp, fading into a washed out pink color. Her entire body ached from repeated beatings, her throat was raw with thirst, and her stomach rumbled with hunger. Most of all, the crystal shards that were growing from her horn and wing bones burned like a terrible case of frostbite.

And then there was the ache in her foreleg. Several red marks dotted the inner part of the appendage, permanent reminders of her “appointments.” As if the nightmarish visions that came and went on an irregular tide weren’t enough.

The door suddenly crashed open, blinding her with light. She grunted and raised a hoof to shield her eyes, but the incoming sentries were already pouncing on her, binding her hooves and placing a blindfold over her eyes. She tried to fight back, but heavy blows assailed her head and back, bringing her down to her knees and making her aching head ring with fresh pain. Her captors dragged her back to her hooves and started to carry her down the hallway. Her mind blurred with pain, she struggled to keep track of every turn—left, forward, right, left again—but there were too many turns.

Finally, they stopped and she was dropped down onto the stone floor. The blindfold was removed and she blinked in the sudden light. A blue shape dropped down on her left side and she turned to focus upon it. “Luna?” she gasped.

Her little sister looked every bit as terrible as she felt: her limpid pale blue mane clung to her bruised and battered frame, and her bloodshot eyes were wide and terrified. She shivered as she looked up at Celestia, her hooves bound and her horn and wings pierced with crystal shards.

A heavy weight dropped down on Celestia’s right side, and she looked up to see Shining Armor, a prisoner like them. His face was adorned with fresh bruises and cuts and his breathing, drawn through clenched teeth, was marked with an injured hissing. He looked up at the Princesses with his left eye: his right eye was swollen shut. He too had shards protruding from his horn.

“Your Highnesses, I—”

“Shut up!” one of their captors barked, striking Shining in the stomach with a cudgel. He doubled over, coughing and wheezing.

Celestia took the opportunity to observe their surroundings. They were in a long room with a grand chandelier dangling from the ceiling, casting the room in flickering golden light. They knelt in front of a grand pipe organ, the huge golden pipes seeming to tower over them. Celestia looked up and her eyes fell upon the large fresco painted across the opposing wall, which she immediately recognized: The Last Judgement. She studied the horrific, abstract imagery of the twisted, grotesque demons dragging the shrieking damned into pastures dark flames with a chill. Her gaze went up to the top of the painting and she observed the large, haloed figure hovering in the midst of the darkened sky, observing the fate of those beneath with a cold, impassionate expression. The deity’s eyes were black, black as an abyss.

The door opposite them opened and the royalty looked up. Their eyes widened as they recognized the ponies being dragged in. Twilight, Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and Flash were thrown down in front of a group of abductors and their blindfolds were removed to reveal their terrified eyes. Zugzwang appeared, calmly lighting a cigarette as he walked up to the royalty.

“You bastards!” Shining Armor bellowed, thrashing against his bonds. “Let them go!”

Zugzwang smirked at Shining, then turned to the bound prisoners. His horn glowed with energy. A moment later, all seven captured ponies starting writhing in pain, their muffled screeches and howls filling the room.

“No! Stop it!” Celestia cried in panic.

Zugzwang turned off the torture spell, leaving the captives shaking and panting. He turned to the royal ponies, his expression as cold as ice.

“Bow to me,” he ordered.

“I swear I’m going to kill you,” Shining snarled.

Zugzwang lit up his horn again and the captives started writhing once more, shrieking into their gags.

“Bow to me,” he spoke again, with no change in tone or voice.

Luna looked over at the tortured ponies, then glared up at Zugzwang. “No,” she spat.

Zugzwang’s horn grew brighter. The muffled shrieks grew louder as tears ran from the ponies’ eyes.

“I can make it worse. I can also make it stop.” Zugzwang stared imperiously down at the royals, the golden-reddish glow of his magic reflected in his abyssal black eyes. “Bow to me.”

Celestia looked over at Twilight and her friends. Her pupil was laying on the floor, convulsing in agony. She forced her tear-streaked eyes open and looked up at Celestia, silently pleading with her from across the room.

“Stop,” Celestia spoke softly. Zugzwang turned to her, extinguishing his horn. The seven ponies stopped thrashing and laid on the floor, whimpering.

Celestia looked up at Zugzwang, then slowly placed her bound hooves on the floor in front of her. With a long exhalation, hating herself for every inch she moved, she lowered her forehead to the floor in a bow. She felt and heard Luna, then Shining mimicking her movement, bowing to their captor.

Zugzwang let out a long sigh of satisfaction that smelled of Saddle Arabian tobacco and spices and placed his hoof on Celestia’s head, softly stroking her mane.

“And now the gods bend to my will,” he spoke. “Now, let us continue.”

Celestia was roughly seized from behind and the blindfold was fastened over her eyes once more. “No!” she cried out, but received a heavy blow to the back of the head that dazed her.

“Not him,” she heard Zugzwang saying. “The doctor wanted to start with him. Take the others to their cells.”

She heard a chorus of muffled shouts and struggling as she was dragged away, fighting every step. Another blow crashed into the back of her skull, knocking her out.

Her head spun as she came to. She tried to sit up, but found it impossible to move: something was holding her limbs and neck down, and her vision was obscured by something covering her face. It took her a few minutes to realize that she was strapped to a table, her head lower than her legs. She could hear a muffled, regular beeping noise: after a moment, she realized that it was her heartbeat, linked to an EKG.

“I’ve spent many months wondering why my first session with you didn’t take,” a familiar voice hissed in her ear. “I broke you, I know I did, but your friends still put you back together again.”

Celestia struggled to keep her breathing even.

“I suspect that the reason was because I rushed it,” Doctor Nevermore continued, circling around her. “Admittedly, I was under time constraints. But now, I intend to make sure that this time, you stay broken.”

Celestia swallowed.

“I have to focus on another patient right now, but I’ll be back soon,” Nevermore’s voice said, retreating from the room. “Treatment nine. One hour.”

It was at this moment that Celestia suddenly realized what was covering her face: a towel. A trickle of cold water began to pour down onto her covered face: she could feel its icy weight through the towel, teasing her, warning her of what would come.

She thrashed against her bonds, but there was nothing she could do. The trickle became a deluge, soaking the towel and smothering it to her face. Her body betrayed her by instinctively trying to inhale, which sucked the cloth over her face, making it feel as though the air itself was crushing her mouth and nose. Her coughs and chokes were all caught in her throat, and she flailed helplessly in panic. Just when she was on the verge of blacking out, the deluge ceased and she was allowed to breathe again. Celestia only had a moment to catch her breath before the water came back, crushing the air from her face.

The banquet table was loaded with a variety of foods, all of them steaming and fresh from the oven: crispy latkes, potato salad, hay steaks, thick slices of buttered bread. Bottles of chilled beerenauslese and ice water stood ready next to a pair of crystalline glasses. The flickering lights of the candelabras on the table and the crackling flames in the brick fireplace next to him cast the stone room into harsh relief.

The mouthwatering scents made Phillip’s stomach rumble. Shoving his hunger aside, he studied the ropes tying him to his chair at the end of the table: the thick ropes kept him secured to the heavy oak chair, but his hooves were bound in front of him, allowing him to access the plate and cutlery in front of him. His coat, vest, shirt, and trilby had been removed, and now lay in a pile on the floor next to him. No less than four ponies were watching him silently, all of them armed with electric prods to keep him in line if he tried to escape. He offered no resistance, sitting still and silent, not looking at his captors.

The door behind him opened and quick footsteps approached. “Phillip!” Zugzwang sang out joyfully, appearing to his left with a bright smile on his face, wearing a prim black tuxedo. “I apologize for keeping you waiting, liebling, but I had some other business that needed taking care of.”

Phillip just glared at him. He had already made up his mind that whatever Zugzwang’s game was, he wasn’t going to play along.

“First of all, these,” Zugzwang continued, turning to the pile of clothing. “You won’t be needing them anymore.” Casually, he lifted up the entire pile and tossed them all into the fireplace.

Phil’s eyes narrowed and he grit his teeth in rage as he watched his trusty vest and his father’s hat become consumed by the hungry flames, turning into charred husks of cloth in mere moments. He focused on the burning sensation, internalized it and set it aside, and forced himself to meet Zugzwang’s gaze, unflinching as he gazed into the black abyss.

“You may leave us,” Zugzwang bid his bodyguards.

“Are you sure, master?” one of them asked.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for nine years,” Zugzwang said, fixing Phillip with a hungry gaze. “I am in control. You may leave us.”

The bodyguards bowed and exited, closing the door behind them. Zugzwang smiled and began to pour the wine into the two glasses.

“I hope you appreciate the effort I went to for this,” he said to Phillip, placing a glass in front of his guest. “After all, this is all for you.”

Phillip ignored the glass, and continued to display no reaction when his host began piling food onto his plate. “You should eat, liebling, you look famished,” Zugzwang chastised gently with a smile. “I suspect it’s been a while since you’ve had a warm meal.”

“No thanks to you,” Phil grunted. The scent of the foods in front of him made his mouth water, but he swallowed it back.

Zugzwang raised his eyebrows and smirked. “That does not mean that I am not capable of generosity,” he said, placing an extra scoop of potato salad onto Phil’s plate. “Eat, bitte.”

He took up his own cutlery, cut himself a slice of hay steak, and lifted it up to his mouth, swallowing it down with a hum of satisfaction.

“The Blood Plague,” Phil asked. “What did you do with it?”

Zugzwang dabbed at his lips with a napkin before answering. “The late Dr. Mix refined the sample with the assistance of myself and Dr. Nevermore,” he stated. “He has placed it into a bomb of our combined design, and hid it in this city. As to where the bomb is..." He smirked. "That is a puzzle, isn't it?" He turned back to his plate. “But let us not dwell on such unpleasantries. Tonight, right now, this is all about you.”

He paused to consume more food, eating slowly and delicately. Phil’s stomach grumbled louder and his mouth was watering constantly, but he refused to eat, satisfying himself with only a few quick sips of the wine.

“I remember quite clearly the day I first saw you, liebling,” Zugzwang finally said. “Coming in like a thunderbolt and crashing into my life. Changing everything. When I first saw you, I felt a great exhilaration, one that I not felt in many years. You, Phillip, made me feel...alive again, because at last, you gave me what I was missing: a pony to play with.

“So I set myself to learning as much as I could about you, about your origins,” Zugzwang continued, pausing briefly to take a bite of a latke. “Imagine my delight when I realized that the two of us were very similar.”

Phil’s jaw clenched. “We are nothing alike,” he snarled.

Zugzwang’s smirk grew like the Cheshire Cat’s. “Aren’t we?” he asked. “We are both highly intelligent loners, among the elite of our respective fields. We willingly work outside the law; we achieve our goals through whatever means necessary, including force. And if we need to get blood on our hooves to get what we want? So be it.”

Phil scowl deepened, but he could not think up a suitable reply.

“The only true difference between us is that you still clung to a semblance of morality,” Zugzwang continued. “But I maintained hope that you could come to see thing my way. After all, you already had an inkling of the truth.”

“What truth?” Phil snapped.

Zugzwang paused to take a long sip from his wine before answering. “One bad day,” he stated. “That’s the only difference between where we are and where the rest of the world is. Just one bad day. Like the one you had when you were thirteen.”

Phillip’s heartbeat slowed and he felt his blood chilling in his veins.

“You had a bad day, and it changed everything,” Zugzwang continued, unabated. “You caught a glimpse of how the world really was, and once you saw that, you couldn’t look away, even if you spent the rest of your life pretending that you did.” He leaned forward and set his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his hooves. The light from the candles should’ve reflected in his eyes, but the black holes remained empty, fixated on Phillip’s stormcloud gray irides.

“The truth is, the only pony that anypony is truly interested in serving is themselves,” Zugzwang spoke, his voice quiet and intense. “The pony who murdered your father did it because he wanted to find something to sell on the street to get a five-minute high. You chose to become what you are not to avenge your father or to dispense justice, but as an outlet for your rage and guilt. The Princesses sit on the thrones to further their own egos, while the peasants beneath them obey the law out of fear of punishment, not out of love for others.”

“You’re wrong,” Phil said, but his voice sounded weak even to himself. “Ponies do care about others. Friendship, love, hope…”

Zugzwang scoffed and waved a hoof dismissively. “A temporary cure for loneliness, a biological imperative to breed, and a foolish attempt to convince themselves that life has a point.” Zugzwang leaned forward a little more, and Phillip had to force himself not to retreat.

“Phillip, a hundred years after you die, will anything you have done really matter?” Zugzwang asked. “Will ponies even remember your name? We are born, we live for a brief while, and we die. That is all there is to life, and in a morally blank mire such as this, ponies will only be as good as circumstances allow them.

“You’ll see: those ‘civilized ponies’ that you fight so hard to protect from the ‘criminal element?’ When you tear down the veils they put up around themselves so they may participate in society, you’ll see that there is no difference between the two.” He blinked once at Phillip. “You will see,” he repeated with an ominous finality.

A silence extended between the two stallions, punctuated only by the continuing snaps and pops of the fire next to them. The glare they shared across the table was as cold as the winds outside.

“Well?” Zugzwang finally prompted. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

Phillip’s response was to spit at Zugzwang, hocking a loogie directly into the unicorn’s face. Zugzwang merely blinked slowly, and levitated over a napkin, wiping off the gob of saliva.

The next moment, his face twisted into an image of pure rage and he fired off a blast of golden-reddish magic, sending Phillip flying backwards several feet, still bound to the chair. He teleported over to Phillip and began kicking him repeatedly, his hooves pounding into Phillip’s chest and head. All he could do was raise his forelegs and try to absorb the blows as best as possible.

The beating lasted for almost a full minute and ended when Zugzwang finally backed away from his now-bloodied captive, panting. Phillip lay still, groaning faintly as red lines trickled down his forelegs and face.

Zugzwang cleared his throat, adjusted his tie, and turned back to Phillip, a soft smile gracing his face once more. “I apologize, liebling,” he whispered softly. “I lost control of myself for a moment.” He bent down and stroked Phillip’s cheek with his hoof. “Perhaps I can make it up to you.”

He lit up his magic and undid the ropes binding Phillip to the chair, but kept his hooves bound together. Coiling the rope into a short leash, he tied it around Phillip’s neck and lifted him up to his hooves. Still in pain from his beating, Phillip had no choice but to allow himself to be half-dragged, half-marched out of the room and down the hallway. A pair of guards with shotguns stood sentry outside a pair of grand doors carved with a pair of swooping alicorns with long manes. Both of them smirked at the sight of the bound and helpless Phillip Finder as Zugzwang opened the doors and pulled him inside.

They entered a great round bedroom with black and white checkered carpeting on the floor. A four-poster bed with scarlet sheets and black curtains sat in the center. A record player and a glass harmonica stood in a corner next to another door.

Zugzwang hummed happily as he carried Phillip over to the bed and gently lifted him up, setting him down onto the soft silk sheets. He then undid the leash and used the rope he had carried with him to tightly bind all four of Phillip’s hooves to the bedposts, leaving him spread-eagled across the mattress. Turning away for a moment, he used his magic to remove his own clothes, neatly folding them and tucking them on top of a dresser in the corner. His smile widened as he turned on the record player, filling the room with a familiar love song as he crawled up onto the mattress.

Suddenly, what should have been obvious all along became real, thrust directly into Phillip’s face. His heartbeat seemed to stop for a moment, then began to race, as if trying to jump out of his chest. He struggled against his bonds, panting through his teeth. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered a strange, bitter aftertaste in the wine, and realized that it had been more than fermented grapes that he had swallowed.

“Shhh,” Zugzwang hushed, pressing his hoof against Phillip’s lips. “Haben Sie keine Angst, liebling. It won’t hurt.” He set himself down over Phillip’s body, pressing his chest against his prisoner’s heaving torso. “Let me warn you now, Phillip; if you do anything untowards to me, your friends will get ten times worse than what you do to me.”

Phillip swallowed and forced himself to go still. A blanket of ice was crawling up his body. Zugzwang smiled and kissed him on the lips, first gently, then more forcefully as his hooves massaged his ribs.

Moments later, long, desperate cries of pain filled the room, mixing with the love song still crooning out of the record player.

“I used to think that fear was purely biological,” Nevermore admitted, troweling another brick and setting it on top of the wall. “I thought that the properly-aligned chemicals and the perfect marriages of the arcane and the physical could unlock the demons in a pony’s mind, bend them to my will.” He paused in his work for a moment, looking up at his latest patient. “You and your friends proved me wrong.”

Flash Sentry did not reply; his rapid, trembling breath prevented all speech. He was standing in a small alcove, his hooves chained to the wall, forced to watch helplessly as Nevermore built a brick wall in front of him. Already, the stone enclosure was up to his waist, and getting higher with each passing minute.

“Fear is more than just an instinct, more than evolution’s response to danger,” Nevermore continued, taking up another brick and dipping his trowel into the mortar bucket. “Nopony can ever know true fear as long as they have hope. And hope, I have learned, is the sun in the day and the moon at night. It is the shining, polished armor of the Royal Guard, or the spread wings of an alicorn princess and her virtuous, incorruptible friends rushing in to save the day. Hope is the stallion in the green vest and the gray hat who comes to right wrongs.”

“HELP!” Flash shrieked, his voice echoing endlessly against the moisture-licked walls. “SOMEPONY, PLEASE! HELP ME!”

Nevermore sat back and watched in silence as Flash continued to scream out for help that would not come, struggling futilely against his chains. Eventually, his voice gave out into rasps and half-choked sobs and he fell, defeated, against his bonds.

With a sigh, Nevermore took up his tool and continued his work, bricking Flash into the wall. The Guard’s pants and whimpers became increasingly more rapid and desperate as the wall reached up to his chest, then his head, then enveloped him, completely blocking him inside.

Finally, there was only one small gap left in the enclosure, through which Nevermore observed his patient. Tears were running from his shining blue eyes and his every exhalation was a faint bleat of panic. He stared up at Nevermore with an expression of pleading: “For the love of God, doctor!”

“Goodbye, Sergeant,” Nevermore said, and turned and walked away as Flash’s terrified wails began anew.

Author's Notes:

...and now you know why I gave this story a mature rating.

Let's talk about this.