Days passed. Days became weeks, and weeks flowed into the passing of two months. Twilight and her “Menagerie”, as her staff had becoming known as, became more and more used to each other.

Dashiel and the Twilight Guard trained and sparred across the length and breadth of Ponyville, often stopping at Sugar Cube Corner for refreshments. Some ponies swore to disbelieving friends that they saw the grim warrior pegasus crack a smile once or twice. Dashiel’s only response on being asked, was a hard flat look that could take the cheer out of a clown at ten paces.

143 submitted to weekly sessions of therapy with Cadance, Shaushka, or whichever pony was available to work with her. Some of the mental shackles that had been burned into the bound unicorn’s mind had been lifted, but only some. 143 still found it almost impossible to refuse a command given to her by any other pony.

Instead, progress was found in helping 143 express her own desires. Helping her to make choices, instead of waiting in passive submission while a choice was made for her. One of the choices that 143 made, was that others continue to refer to her as “143.” Much to the dismay of both Twilight and Trixie, who was never more than a few minutes away from her sister.

Derpy continued on as Twilight’s personal servant, and incognito bodyguard. The walleyed mare couldn’t hit a target beyond ten paces, but inside that range she was the equal of any pony with either blade or hooves. Dinky turned out to be even deadlier than her mother, especially after Rarity made Dinky a filly-sized version of her mother’s livery.

Cuteness was a weapon that ignored armor and went straight to the heart.

Alyss continued to learn the benefits of cooperation and friendship under Celestia’s direct tutelage. She remained unconvinced of the long-term benefits of not conquering everyone around her, but remained willing to listen and wait for news of her mother’s fate.

There was only one dark spot in Twilight’s world. One dark cloud that would not go away no matter how brightly the sun shone. A dark cloud by the name of Starlight Glimmer.

No matter how Twilight tried to cheer the unicorn up, Starlight would inevitably revert to into a submissive sexual plaything for her princess. Not that Starlight’s advances were unwelcome. The mare had a gift for giving pleasure that had even impressed Shaushka on one occasion. Prompting the courtesan changeling to offer to take Starlight to her bordello for “advanced training.”

Twilight had almost given in and agreed, when she realized that all she would be doing was pushing Starlight further toward being a copy of 143. A submissive mare that only wanted to do what others asked of her. Things came to a head one night, when Twilight found Starlight Glimmer looking out of a window at the moon. The gleam of a blade on the windowsill in front of her matched the gleam of the symbiotic suit bound to her body.

“Starlight, are you okay?” Twilight asked, stopping several paces away from the mare. “Is something wrong?”

“Princess,” Starlight began, using the same tone of voice 143 would say ‘Mistress’ in,” did you know that a pony’s body can be fully exsanguinated in 8.6 seconds?”

“What?” Twilight asked, shocked.

“Given adequate vacuuming systems, of course,” Starlight continued, one of her hooves sliding along the knife in a gentle caress. “Do I have your permission to demonstrate?”

“Suit, Full Lockdown!” Twilight shouted, panicked. The mass of living latex and magitech circuits responded instantly, flowing over Starlight’s head and face, binding her hooves and her magic at the same time.

For a few moments, Twilight could see Starlight fighting the suit, trying to grasp the knife in front of her. The lines of magic circuitry glowed brightly as the unicorn’s own magic was drawn out of her to power the living sheathe around her body. Slowly, Starlight Glimmer was forced to her knees and then to a lying position as the suit curled her legs under her.

“Suit, 614 status?” Twilight asked the gleaming control collar that was the interface that she, as the suit’s controller, used to command Starlight’s suit.

“614 stable and secure. Airway clear as per modified ‘Lockdown’ protocol,” came the pre-recorded response from the suit collar. “Command?”

“Suit, permit speech,” Twilight said, in a clear voice. “Starlight, are you okay?”

“Yes Princess,” the captive mare replied. “Sorry if I’ve disappointed you.”

“Not disappointed,” Twilight responded, moving to stand beside the gleaming latex cocoon, “more like surprised and scared half to death. Starlight, were you trying to get me to give you permission to kill yourself?”

“I… I don’t know,” Starlight stuttered, her mouth the only part of her body that was visible. The material of the suit remained cupped under her chin, ready to muzzle her in an instant if Twilight commanded. “Maybe you could have Alyss do to me what was done to 143? That way I wouldn’t even be able to consider hurting myself.”

Twilight just stood there for several seconds, trying to process what Starlight was saying to her. Her student, her friend, her slave was asking to have parts of her mind burned away so that she wouldn’t try to kill herself. At that moment, Twilight Sparkle realized three things.

First, that she had failed Starlight. She had failed to notice Starlight’s deteriorating sense of self-worth. She had been mistaken in her belief that becoming Starlight’s mistress had solved the problem of how the other mare felt about herself.

Second, Twilight needed help. She saw that now. Twilight was too close to the problem. She had lost her emotional detachment the first time Starlight’s incredible oral skills had taken Twilight to the height of ecstasy. She needed someone who wasn’t as close to Starlight as she was, someone who had a sense of detachment.

Third, Twilight needed time to find out exactly what was going on and how to fix it. Plus, she had to do it while making sure Starlight didn’t manage to figure out a way around Twilight’s commands, or the suit’s controls and end her life.

“Suit,” Twilight began, then paused as she parsed what she was about to say in her mind. “Continue full lockdown of 614. Initiate full captivity mode until further notice.”

“Acknowledged,” the suit collar replied.

A moan escaped Starlight’s mouth just before a thick plug of suit material invaded it, trapping her tongue and clamping her mouth down around the gag. More groans of pleasure escaped the trapped mare’s living prison as twin shafts of latex invaded both of her intimate openings.

Each of the three lengths now buried in Starlight had their purpose. The flat length in her mouth was hollow, and would allow water and nutrients to be fed to her. The plug in her now gripping and spasming pussy was there to monitor her life signs, providing moment to moment measurements of Starlight’s vital statistics.

Finally, the shaft sunk deeply into her ass would provide enemas for waste removal, and also held the suit’s tail. Which was both an aesthetic feature and functioned as the suit’s transmitter and long range connection to its controller. In this case, Twilight Sparkle.

“I’m sorry, Starlight,” Twilight said gently, as she used her magic to float the bound mare to the bed. “Until I know for sure that you aren’t going to kill yourself, you stay like that.”

Twilight could see the gleam off of Starlight’s suit ripple and undulate as she tried to move. For a full minute, the unicorn struggled against the velvet iron grip of her bondage. A bondage so thorough that only one who had experienced it for themselves could truly appreciate how complete and total it was.

Twilight Sparkle stood there, her hoof resting on Starlight’s shoulder, imagining what it had been like for her during her first desperate hours in that same mass of enslaving latex and magic. How inescapable her captivity had been, and how her total helplessness had come within inches of reducing her to nothing more than a plaything.

“614 Suit,” Twilight said again, in a declarative voice. “Begin training program ‘Cadance One’. Cancel hearing blocks, but do not allow any unauthorized access to 614.”

“Password?” the suit collar asked, as the lines of force on the suit pulsed a deep purple.

Twilight thought for several moments. Whatever password she came up with had to be something that no pony would think of. Something no pony would ever dream would be something that she would say. Something memorable. Nearly a full minute passed, until Twilight snorted with amusement and said,” Password, ‘Celestia is my slave’.”

“Repeat password to confirm,” responded the suit, its lines giving a double flash this time.

“Celestia is my slave,” Twilight repeated, smiling for a moment as she imagined how her old mentor must have looked as a couch slave back in Ancient Roam. Collar gleaming beneath bedroom eyes.

A motion under her hoof drew Twilight’s attention from the pleasant daydream. Starlight’s body was quivering a bit and it took a moment for Twilight to realize her slave was shaking from laughter, having heard Twilight’s password.

Leaning close Twilight could just hear the positive reinforcement talk Cadance had recorded into the suits for the benefit of 143. She waited for a break in the litany that was meant to build a mare up before she breathed into Starlight’s ear, “I’m going to go get help. I’ll be back, and we’ll beat this. Together.”

Twilight took one last moment to make sure that Starlight was going to be safe on the bed and charged out of the room and down the hall. Guards were startled as they saw their princess running past, but resumed their posts at a wave from the hurtling alicorn. Twilight had a particular pony in mind. A pony she knew had entertained her own share of dark thoughts and self-destructive intentions.

“Dashiel!” Twilight shouted, barging into the half-lit quarters of the maimed warrior pegasus. “I need you!”

“Nice to be wanted, Princess,” Dashiel calmly replied, taking a sip of amber liquid from a tumbler. “I didn’t know you liked me that way.”

“What?” Twilight demanded, shaking her head for a moment to clear it of the outrageous suggestion. “Look, I need your help. Come with me, right now.”

“Princess,” Dashiel responded, in that same calm voice. “Whatever it is, it can wait for you to sit down and explain it to me. That way I can finish enjoying this damn awesome zap apple brandy your friend Applejack brought. And before you ask, I know you can take the time because the rest of the Twilight Guard isn’t with you, or charging around like the Crusaders.”

If eyes were lasers Dashiel would have perished on the spot. Luckily for Dashiel though, Twilight did not have that power, and so the pegasus continued to enjoy her drink with a distinct lack of being barbecued. Unfortunately for Dashiel however, Twilight did have magic, and was just beginning to lift the pegasus out of her seat when a commanding voice from the shadows said, “Nay.”

“Who?” Twilight asked, peering into the gloom and setting the pegasus back down to one side of the small card table Dashiel had been at. “Princess Luna?”

“Good evening, Twilight Sparkle,” the lunar princess replied gravely, another tumbler of amber liquid in her hoof. “My Blade is correct. You have time to explain why you have burst into her quarters in such a state. I believe I know why you are come, but Dashiel may not.”

“Starlight tried to off herself, right?” Dashiel commented, knocking back the rest of her drink and grimacing. “She’s been heading that way for a bit.”

“How… how did you know?” Twilight sputtered.

“Puh-lease,” Dashiel replied, waving a hoof. “When you’ve stared into the abyss as many times as I have, you can tell when someone else is trying to horn in on your spot.”

“Okay, if you’re so smart,” Twilight shot back, stung by how perceptive the former soldier was. “Why? I thought she was happy being my—”

“Toy?” Luna asked, her voice reproving. “Plaything? Bound concubine? Slave?”

“What?” Twilight replied, shocked until her rational side kicked in and she replayed recent events in her head. “Oh, oh crap. I’ve been converting her into that, haven’t I?”

“Whether you intended to or not, you have been,” Luna informed her. “You have been making her reliant on you more and more. If you do not reverse things, and soon, she will have no more self-will than poor 143 had when you first brought her here.”

“It’s like this, Princess,” Dashiel spoke up, having recovered her seat and her drink. “When you beat her, you took away her purpose. Her reason for being. Not that that was a bad thing, considering her purpose was to screw with you, your friends, and the whole damn multiverse. But you didn’t replace it with anything, outside of just being your student.”

“But Friendship?” Twilight asked, confused. “Learning Friendship should have been more than enough.”

“And in time, it would have been,” Luna replied, soothingly. “But there has been no time for her to find a new purpose.”

“All you left her was guilt,” Dashiel interjected, ignoring a lifted eyebrow from Luna at the interruption. “And take it from me. You leave a pony with nothing but guilt, and it’s gonna grow until it kills them. Or, you find another purpose for them. Something they can live for.”

“And you’re sure that will work?” Twilight asked, mind already considering possibilities.

“Did for me,” Dashiel assured her. “I mean, I still have some pretty dark days. That’s never going away, but Princess Luna gave me something to do, something to live for. You need to do that for Starlight.”

“Wow! That makes a lot of sense. Thanks Dashiel,” Twilight chirped, impulsively hugging the one-winged pony. “Thank you, Princess. I’ve got an idea. I’ll see you both later.”

Twilight ran from the room, heading back to her own bedroom. She had a plan, and if there was anything Twilight Sparkle was good at, it was making a plan.

“Starlight,” Twilight called, a few minutes later as she re-entered her room. “I think I’ve found a way to help you.” A muffled noise and some twitching from the cocooned figure on the bed was the only response.

“Oh, sorry,” Twilight apologized, before clearing her throat and addressing Starlight’s collar. “614 suit, remove hood. Allow speech and vision.”

Starlight blinked as the black organic sheathe around her head sloughed back into the main body of her suit. She looked around for a moment before orienting on Twilight with a look of sad determination.

“The only thing that is going to help anyone is my not being around anymore,” she said, her voice calm. “I thought that just giving myself to you would be enough. Enough to make me forget what I did. I thought that if I put myself at your mercy every moment of the day it would be punishment enough for all the ponies I hurt.”

“But?” Twilight asked. She had a suspicion what Starlight was about to say and that it was going to be painful to hear, but she had to let Starlight give voice to how she was feeling.

“But it’s not enough, and it’s the wrong thing,” the still bound unicorn looked Twilight directly in the face. “Every moment being yours is wonderful. You’re wonderful. But all it does is reinforce that I don’t deserve to feel happy, or good, or to enjoy myself. Not when ponies across countless worlds are suffering because of what I did.”

“What if you could fix it?” Twilight asked, moving to stand beside the bed. “What if you could save those ponies?”

“That’s impossible,” Starlight replied, dropping her chin down to the bed. “I might be determined to die but that doesn’t make me an idiot. No one could save all those ponies.”

“Impossible?” Twilight scoffed. “Impossible for Starlight Glimmer, the mare who took over an entire town? Impossible for the unicorn that found a way to take cutie marks away from ponies? Impossible for the unicorn who fought an alicorn to a standstill... NO, the mare who fought the Element of MAGIC to a standstill.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” Starlight said, and a slight chuckle escaped her lips. “I guess maybe it isn’t so impossible. Just really, really improbable.”

“As improbable as jumping cross-time to another Equestria in order to save it?” Twilight asked, leaning close until she was muzzle to muzzle with her Starlight. “As impossible as changing the destiny of an entire world?”

“What are you saying, Twilight?” Starlight asked, and Twilight saw something spark in the mare’s persian blue eyes.

“I’m saying that you have the power to change worlds, Starlight Glimmer,” Twilight replied, desperate to fan that spark into a flame of life. “Come with me. Help me save a world.”

“Save a… “ Starlight broke off, shaking her head. “But I can’t. I can’t be trusted with power. I misuse and abuse every bit of power I have. I can’t even be trusted with my own hooves.”

“Starlight,” Twilight supplied, cupping unicorn’s chin and raising it so she could look Starlight in the eyes. “You’re in a suit that has your magic completely locked down and lets me have total control over your body. If you can abuse anything at all while that helpless, you deserve every bit of it.”

“I can’t just follow you around on a leash the whole time,” Starlight argued, and Twilight struggled to keep her face impassive at seeing Starlight’s brilliant mind firing back up to life. “You’ll need to develop some sort of protocol to keep me under limited control while we travel around.”

“Between the two of us, I’m sure we can work something out,” Twilight assured Starlight, even as she felt a delicate shudder inside of her at the word “control”.

“One condition,” Starlight added, drawing Twilight’s attention back outside of herself. “If this fails, and it turns out I can’t help ponies in those other worlds. I want you to promise me that you’ll take this suit off me and let me go my way.”

“You know I can’t let you do that,” Twilight replied, but added at Starlight’s frown, “but I don’t see as I really have much of a choice.”

“Twilight,” Starlight replied, her face once again having that determined look Twilight remembered well. “If this doesn’t work it will mean that there isn’t anything for me to live for. If that happens I’ll either find a way to end myself or find a way to make you turn me into 614 for real.”

“This will work,” Twilight vowed, saying, “Suit 614, cancel lockdown. Remove all restrictions.”

“Ahh,” Starlight gasped, slumping as her limbs were returned to her own control again. “So, where are we going?”

“We’re going to the worst possible place,” Twilight declared, standing tall. “We’re going to the place where you realized that what you were doing was wrong.”

“You mean,” Starlight paused, surprised, “that blasted place we wound up at the end? Where everything was ash and dust in the wind?”

“Yup,” Twilight said, giving Starlight an affectionate nuzzle. “We’re going to start at the beginning again, and this time we’ll get it right.”

“Okay,” Starlight replied, standing up beside the Princess of Friendship. “Just one question.”

“Of course,” Twilight asked, thinking of any of a number of things Starlight was going to ask her.

“Can you please take these plugs out of me?”

Next Chapter: The Blasted Lands, Part 2 Estimated time remaining: 7 Hours, 23 Minutes