The chalk slid across the floor in a smooth, practiced movement, leaving a bold solid white line. The faint susurrus it made against the smooth stone a counterpoint to the panicked breathing of the Earth Pony mare who lay at the center of the slowly growing infernal diagram. Her peach colored pelt and dark green mane were well brushed and clean, a rarity for a pathetic mud pony. Still, they had their uses. Bound, blindfolded and gagged, she was neither a willing participant to this little ritual, nor of a moment's concern to the unicorn who held the chalk in a bright, blue magical field. His eyes following the creation of the summoning circle with almost fevered interest.

As the perfect circle was closed, it began to glow faintly, gleaming with faint crimson light in the darkened chamber. The chalk never paused as it began to trace the additional glyphs and supporting constructs around the perimeter. As each was completed, it also took on the reddish gleam of the circle, and the light of it grew slightly brighter in response.

This was true art! The stallion's eyes gleaming in the glow of his creation. One couldn’t express one’s personal skill and talent with some uncouth silvered foil circle stamped into the floor by filthy workponies! Only with the infinite expression of chalk and effort did you create something beautiful and ever changing!

His mental rhapsodizing was interrupted as the mare gave a writhing struggle. True her bonds were as secure as any he ever tied, still, couldn’t she just keep quiet and not spoil his enjoyment of this moment?!

Carefully stepping into the circle he wrapped his magic around her braided mane and gave it a savage jerk, arching her head back as she gave a muffled squeal around her gag.

“Listen to me, you little bitch.” The stallion snarled. “I’ve waited for too long to have the time to relax and enjoy myself a little, and you are not going to fuck this up!” His magic snatched a dagger from his work table, pressing the glittering blade against her throat, the mare stiffening in terror. “Yeah, that’s right… you feel that, don’t you?” He pressed a little more firmly, making her whimper as it nicked her skin. “So be a good little bitch, and maybe you keep breathing a little longer, got it?”

Taking the dagger from her throat he released her mane, letting her crumple to the floor in a sobbing little heap. Stupid little cow! Just as carefully he stepped out of the circle, eyes watching for any accidental smudging of its circumference. And as quickly dismissed his victim from his thoughts again. Ultimately, what she did or didn’t do wouldn’t matter in the least. With a huff he tossed the silvered dagger back onto his work surface with a clatter and took some comfort in seeing his victim flinch and tremble.

He ran a soft hoof through his slicked back blue mane, ensuring none had fallen out of place in his unaccustomed haste. A slow smirk crossing his white furred muzzle. In silence he returned to his careful work preparing the circle, now pulsing with lambent light brightly enough to illuminate the chamber far more than the single lamp on his table.

Soon enough the circle was complete, the now bright crimson glow filling the workroom, casting dark shadows on the walls and ceiling. The unicorn's eyes were wide and frenzied with joy as he drank in the light and the deep hum rising from his creation. His horn glowing with soft blue light as he fed his magic into the spell. The pressure built behind his eyes as more and more of his magic flowed down into the matrices, the discomfort drawing a soft, foalish giggle from his throat.

Soon, it will all be worth it.

Letting his neck relax, he lowered his horn towards the circle, closing his eyes and concentrating on feeling the emanations from the spell. The sense of it flowing over him as it reached out passed the veil of the mortal plane and connected with another realm. The thrum of chaotic power sent a slight tremor through the floor beneath his hooves and he grinned. He had what he wanted. Reaching out into the depths of that other realm, he let his arcane sense brush out against the burning aether, groping searchingly for something with sentience.

It mattered not what he found, all that mattered was that the spell would force whatever he snared to do his bidding. And even as that delicious thought passed through his mind, he felt something with substance brush against the questing sense of his magic. Quickly he wrapped his summoning around it and gave a firm ethereal tug through the spell matrix. His grin growing triumphant as he began to murmur the words of summoning. The circle glowing brighter and emanating heat as he drew back his catch through it.

His gaze took in his chosen vessel, now squirming in the increasing heat within the circle. The demonic entity he was pulling into the mortal realms would burn her from the inside out, but she would provide the physical body that would both sustain it upon the mortal plane and the ‘price of admission’ for its entry. The summoning circle would also brand that entity with his will, force it into submission to him, and he would have precisely what he desired… a tamed infernal succubus bound to his service.

Reveling in the delights to come, he blinked as the… ‘weight’ of the entity upon his tether grew. He had caught something old most likely. A demon of depth and complexity and power. Like a fisherpony with a challenging trout on his hook, it made him grin to think of breaking such a being to his will as he strengthened the spell to compensate. And he stifled a mad cackle as he felt the moment of synapse approaching. The single instant when the entity on his line would fill the space sealed in the circle and he would have a slave fitting to show his power and grandeur to his peers.

He shivered as the demon neared the gate, brushed against it…

And stuck fast!

His eyes snapped open as crimson flames swirled into being within the circle, the rumble beneath his hooves growing worse. The spell matrices spurting fire in random belches as he struggled to understand what was happening. The gateway was binary, either you were on one side of it, or you were on the other! So why did it feel like the entity was halfway through it and straining against his tether? That should be impossible! One did not just alter the rules governing the transition between realms at a whim!

Growling, he steadied himself and leaned into his magical effort, his horn blazing with blue fire as bolts of blue magical energy flared out to strike various parts of the circle, enhancing the spell, strengthening the summoning. He was not some two-bit amateur! He was the Summoner! The Master of Demonology of the Canterlot School for Gifted Unicorns! His power and knowledge was unmatched in the empire, and he would be damned before he let some random demon make a mockery of his art.

He would not allow it!

The strengthening spell thrummed with the force of his magic as he clenched his teeth, feeling the tickle of his freshly acquired nosebleed. It would all be worth it, every ache he gathered he would revisit on his bound slave ten fold! He let the thought of that sublime revenge bolster his ragged gasps for breath as the weight upon the tether began once more to move. Impossibly wedged into the gate, he was making progress in hauling it through and his bloodied lips curled into a gleeful snarl of victory. The crimson fire within the barrier, swirling around the struggling, panicked mare grew denser, and hotter.

Almost…. there….

This single summoning would become the foundation of a new series of experiments, once the demon was bound and made to tell him everything, tell him the whys and wherefores of this unprecedented experience. Grunting with strain, nearing the end of his stamina, he gave a final magical pull and the weight upon his tether finally popped free of the gate. The barrier now full of blazing red energy, completely obscuring his offering from view.

Yet at the instant it finally came free, ceasing it’s insufferable dwelling between the two realms, a sudden pulse of power struck the gate from the other side. A blast of purple light flared into eye searing brilliance within the shield, bouncing around the inside of the barrier before bursting into brilliant sparks. His dazzled squinting eyes watched the sparks fall, each one flaring into a tiny strobing flame upon striking the stone. They fell over the area within the circle. The floor… and the mare, who jerked in pain and struggled as he caught the sizzle of flesh and burning hair and… rope?

Time slowed as his eyes widened, the rope binding her tail to her neck was burning hungrily from a spark that had alighted upon it. Her flexing, agonized body straining at the weakening bond before with a sharp snap her tail came free. The braided length of it lashing in her distress… and wiping a section of the circle away with its motion.

Oh Buck.

He didn’t even realize he was screaming as the glow of the summoning circle died. He bolted, wheeling around and heading for the door in panicked retreat. Okay, the mare’s pain and terror should distract it. And any time it spends savouring her will give me time to- He skidded to a stop as he discovered the end of the room where the door should be was blotted out in the darkest shadow he had ever encountered. It was as if the entire other half of the room simply no longer existed.

For a second, the only sounds were the gagged sobbings of the mare behind him and his own harsh gasping breaths.

And then the darkness spoke.

“Well, well, well… Nebulae Gaze. How is your dear father?”

His pupils narrowed to pinpricks… that voice! He knew that voice! And yet he couldn’t place it. His mind running through all the demons he knew by name, all the ones he had ever interacted with as his jaw worked soundlessly.

“What? No welcome? No polite greetings? I’m shocked!”

He staggered back a step, frantically forcing his reeling brain to shape a ward between him and the now visibly writhing blackness. Golden light coalesced into a scintillating barrier between him and his now unwelcome ‘guest’

“Tsk.. tsk.. You haven’t the strength for that.” His addressor chided playfully, before a tendril of inky darkness thumped his shield sharply, causing him to cry out in pain as it cracked and shattered like glass. He slid numbly to the side, his rump dropping to the floor as he sat untidily, trying to clear the jangling bells in his head. “Mmmhmmhmm.. Have you remembered my name yet? I’ll admit, I’ll be rather put out if you’ve pushed it far enough out of your mind to forget entirely.”

The room became dreadfully silent.. A dense, waiting silence broken only by the sounds of two pained ponies. Slowly his mind cleared as he gasped for breath, and in that moment of terrible clarity, a name came to mind to match that voice.

“C-Cadance?” He hazarded with a trembling whisper.

“Awww, you do remember! I was worried for a moment!” He heard the sound of hooves clopping together, applauding his answer. The liquid seeming darkness melted from the air to pool upon the floor of the chamber like a pool of spilled ink that washed out across the stone around his hooves, leaving its occupant finally visible.

Before him sat, at apparent ease, quite possibly the most beautiful mare he had ever seen. Her body young, strong, and in a healthy prime. Her coat was a dark pink, many shades darker than his memory told him it should be. Smokey orange eyes that glowed with their own inner fire, slit pupiled and predatory.

She was bodily a size or two larger than she had been at her banishment, nearly reaching Celestia’s height and adopting a fairly similar pose to her long lost mentor. Her wings were massive now, even tucked against her sides as they were.

He noted all of this in passing, his focus drawn to her horn. No longer a fluted, rounded spiral, it was blade edged and pointed, it’s dull red surface pocked and pitted, as if all the soft edges had been melted or cut away, leaving only this wicked looking core.

Last to come to his attention was her mane and tail, still striped in it’s usual colors, but now waving in an ethereal breeze, undulating and curling in slow but constant motion. Small hearts and arcane symbols floated around in its nebulous depths, along with what looked to be lengths of pink and red chains.

Mouth working without noise, he realized what… no, Who, she had to be. And seeing the mounting horror in his eyes, the infernal alicorn smiled. A terrifying grin of fangs and razor sharp teeth which almost made him piss himself to see.

“Y-you should be d…” Nebulae Gaze trailed off, taking a deep breath as his mind raced.

“Dead? Oh you poor little fool. You stood there and watched us be banished to Tartarus. Not whisked away to the Badlands, or the moon, not imprisoned in the Crystal Empire for a thousand years. Banished. To. Tartarus. You don’t send things you wish to die to Tartarus!” Cadance laughed a crazed little cackle and in that moment Nebulae Gaze took his chance.

The silvered dagger leapt off the table in his desperate magic, a glimmering blur as it was flung towards the archdemon. Silver was harmful to the infernal, it should at least distract her! Even as he released it he forced his aching horn to light again as he summoned the power for a teleport. All he had to do was get away! Just put some distance between him and the corrupted alicorn. Then he could sound the alarm, then he could-

The sudden crushing blow to the back of his head drove him to his knees, his spell fizzling out as he tried to regain his hoofing. Grunting, tasting the coppery foulness of blood in his mouth as he struggled frantically to remain conscious.

“Tut tut my little pony. We can’t have you leaving yet! The fun is only just starting!” The cheerful, malicious voice of the demon taunted him as he crumpled sideways, the floor rushed up to meet him, but he slipped into blackness before he even felt it.

Author's Notes:

Cadance - "Fucking finally I get out of Tartarus again. Muahahahahaha!"