Rainbow groaned as she began to sit up. Her head pounded like a drum, and her vision flickered. The room appeared to be pretty dark, or was that just her? She shook her head, and her vision cleared up.

She was in a small room, roughly the size of the walk-in pantry at Sugarcube Corner. The walls and ceiling were made of choppy and uneven planks of wood with a stone floor. The room was completely bare, save for a few items. A small table whose top was just out of view. A door with small bronze hinges. The mat she was on. And, looking over at the wall behind her, just out of reach, were several metal brackets, connected to chains. These chains were connected to... Her.

Looking down, the snaking metal links made their way down to her. The connected to several points along her body. A collar around her neck. A pair around her forelegs, just above her hooves. One to a nose ring, with this one looking much less sturdy and more like a leash tied to a bracket. In addition, her wings were bound to her sides by a thick leather strap.

She tried to get up, only for the chains to go taught, keeping her from moving. She jerked and strained against them, yet they held firm. She tugged as hard as she could, yet no slack emerged and no strand of the chain gave way. However, out of nowhere, the chains gave a massive amount of slack, causing her to jerk forward with a massive amount of force. So much so, in fact, that she rammed headfirst into the wall. She slid down it, groaning from the blood leaking out her nose.

Loud, harsh laughter drew her attention to the doorway. A caragor brigand stood there, laughing his flank off, holding onto a large metal chain. "Ha ha ha ha ha!" he barked out. "Oh, dear Damocles, that's always too damn funny! Aha ha ha ha!" With a swift yank of the chain, all the previous slack disappeared, and Rainbow slammed back into the wall, her injured wing and sore back crying out in agony. He then enter the small room, saying, "Well, enough of just waiting around. Let's have some fun, eh?"

Rainbow snarled back, "Well. If it's fun you want, let me out of these chains. I'll take you for a nice fly. It'll be great; you'll even get to feel the sensation of falling off a mountain, but without the mountain."

"Well, that's not nice, now is it. Threatening your host like that?" As he advanced on her, he picked something up off the table. A small, curved and serrated dagger. He said, "I guess I'll just have to teach you some manners."

Rainbows' eyes widened at the sight of the knife and got even bigger as he got closer to it. "H-hey, now. Le-let's not do anything we might--AHHHHHHH!!"

She screamed as he swung down with the knife down onto one of her hind legs. The blade cut through the fur and skin in an instant, blood flowing out immediately. Then, still grinning like a mad pony, he began to saw back and forth. Pain, previously unknown to her, flared through her nervous system. He then stopped, pulling the knife free and stepping back. Rainbow just looked down at the wound. He had sawed down to the bone, blood leaking out like a river with each rapid pounding of her heart. Her stomach flared with a sudden blaze of nausea, and her head swam.

Before she could stop looking at it, her head was jerked away by a heavyweight. Looking up, she saw he was back, this time holding a hammer. From the wet feeling on her forehead and the red stuff on the hammer, that is what he had hit her with. He threw the hammer down, then got up to her. She tried to scramble back, but he was faster and she was still queasy and sluggish from the blood loss. He pulled out a needle and some thread and began to sow up her leg.

He wasn't doing it to be merciful, though. He was rough, and if some of the flares of pain were any indication, the needle was also barbed. It was torture in its own right. "Hold still, now. I don't want to... mess up, now do I? That would be bad for both of us." She didn't want to know how that would be bad for him but tried to hold in the spasms that threatened to possess her body if she let them. Finally, he had finished and then wrapped a bandage the wound to stop the bleeding.

Her breathing began to level out, and she looked over at him. He was distracted, head turned to her as he went to pick up the hammer. She tried to spring off her legs to jump him, hoping to at least get a key or something. Pain flared up in her leg, causing her to jerk to the right, but she still crashed into him. He collapsed under her weight and immediately tried to rise. She bit him in the ear, her flat teeth grinding into the soft flesh of his ear lobe. He howled then swung back with his claws.

Said claws raked over her right eye, digging into them as blood gushed out. She screamed again, and fell back against the wall, clutching the wound to stem the blood. The blood, HER blood, soaked into and began to stain her fur. The brigand stood back up, gripping her ear as he glared at her. "You stupid bitch! Ahhh, my fucking ear!"

Rainbow, despite the pain, couldn't help but smile. "Yeah! Suck on it, you stupid motherbucke-" She was cut off when something hit her ear. Pain once again shot into it as she had to slump against the wall to lessen the pain.

"Charles, Charles, Charles," said a new voice from the door. It was a large Terran mare, clad in armor that didn't look like it wasn't scratch-made. Rainbow became kinda worried about what her cutie mark was: a severed head. Nothing productive could come from that. "I let you indulge yourself once, ONCE, and I have to pin the captive to the wall with a crossbow bolt."

Crossbow? Rainbow thought. She had seen one a few times used by town guards and brigands, but they were generally large ungainly weapons. However, here, this mare was had a small one strapped to her foreleg.

"S-sorry, boss. W-won't happen again," Charles said. "I swear, boss." He flinched a little as she got closer to him, while she just flashed him a wide, almost Pinkie Pie level smile.

"Oh, don't worry. I know you won't." Suddenly, she grabbed something off the table: the knife he used to saw on her leg. She shoved it, with all of her might, into the back of his neck. He screamed, which turned to agonized moaning with a second strike, then to wet gargling with a third, then silence at the fourth. And the fifth, and sixth, and seventh. After shoving it in the eight-time, she stopped and let his body fall to the floor with a wet *smack*. She then turned her sadistic smile on Rainbow.

"Sorry you had to see that. But, well, perils of the job." She then picked up something from the table; a sharp metal stick that looks suspiciously like a scalpel. "Now, ready to get started?"

Next Chapter: 31~The Bosses Second Estimated time remaining: 7 Hours, 29 Minutes