Hundreds of small objects that Twilight once considered valuable littered the floor of her basement.  Sunlight began to peek in through the window at the opposite side of the room as her stairs (she had been working all night carving her inscription).  The gorgeous table that she had been carving into, solid oak and beautifully crafted, sat propped up against a wall with the entire surface covered with hundreds of little runes.  Twilight had individually carved these at the direction of her master, and was currently working on the final symbol.  Her scalpel had gone completely dull from overwork and the sharpest point had bent more than a few times, so Twilight had to magically sharpen the thing over and over.  The runes were very organic in their structure, owing to the fact that the unicorn refused to carve them with her magical perfection if only to preserve their whimsey.  

The dull scalpel gouged out the last ribbon of wood from the antique surface and left the whole thing, edge to edge, littered with similar runes.  With a quick flash, she ignited and disposed of the various wood shavings all over her floor, expertly keeping any char from forming anywhere in the library as they curled into tiny black maggots and disappeared.  She stood back and admired her work, though she knew that she was missing something.  Luckily for her, however, Iago was already prepared with a critique.

So, who is meant to be bound to this?  The raspy old voice may have sounded like nails on a chalkboard to many, but Twilight had grown more than comfortable with it in her head.

No one.  This is just a master template that I'm gonna work off of.  You said I have to do this for each one, right?  Twilight didn't hesitate at all, but she was quickly scanning over the engraved tabletop for any errors that she may have missed.

Well if that's the case, mind if I point a few things out?

I'd expect nothing less.

While I respect you, you have no room for expectations.  Iago's temper flared up again.  He seemed to be getting angry at a slightly higher rate than he had before, though Twilight felt that she could have just been jumping to conclusions.

Sorry, Iago...  I didn't mean anything by it.

Iago paused for a minute, gathering his composure and continuing the lesson promptly.  As I was going to say, with round objects like this one you may do the engraving in several different ways.  You've gone with a simple left-to-right pattern, though the issue with this is that a round surface doesn't always make efficient use of space with lateral organization like that.

Good to know, so a spiral would be better?  Concentric circles I think would have too much separation.

That's exactly what would happen, circles of the like can create instability in the binding.  Either way, if you could use something with a natural guide, such as a straight or flat squared surface, that would be best, but otherwise you seem to be doing alright...  Save for a minor error in the fifth line, forty-eighth rune from the left.

What's wrong with it?  Twilight immediately located the rune, being able to follow a spatial matrix with almost no time lost.

You're missing a slash across the base, an easy fix.  Otherwise everything looks just about perfect.  Have you any clue what you'll use to bind Trixie?

Trixie had actually been awake for the past half hour, and Twilight had known this fact.  The light blue unicorn was trying to figure out where she was (and possibly who she was) but had otherwise not tried to escape, which worried Twilight that she may have caused some kind of lasting injury.  Well...  Everything she owned is probably either burned down by now or claimed by the forest.  I think I've got an idea though, she's got literally nothing so I can create value where there was none before.

Brilliant.  I take it we won't be performing this ritual today, then?

I'm sure it'll take a little while, but that doesn't mean I can't 'experiment' a little bit.

What are you planning?

You'll see.  With a devious smile, Twilight moved to her secret bookcase and wrestled it open.  She slipped inside and cast a very basic light spell above her horn, sending out a glow that was so dim that she could barely make out the color on Trixie's coat.  Trixie, however, squinted her eyes and shrunk away from the light, clearly so adapted to the darkness (and obviously still concussed) that her eyes didn't adjust properly.

"Hello, Trixie.  How did you sleep?"  Twilight's question was simply sarcastic and only meant to intimidate poor Trixie.  It worked.

"W-w-who a-are you?"  Trixie had backed away from the open door, pressing herself against the rounded cave wall and shivering in fear.  She was slowly recovering and certainly did recognize the unmistakeable face of her assailant.  

"Oh that's right, I forgot that nopony's ever told you my name...  Well, everyone around here calls me Twilight Sparkle, but you can just call me ma'am or you can keep your little mouth shut.  Your choice."

"You ca-an't do this to me..."  Trixie paused a little to adjust her jaw, the thin bones in her skull seemed to have been badly hurt when Twilight hit her with the iron ball.  Talking must have been painful; a weakness that Twilight found very beneficial and easy to exploit.  "You won't get away wi--"  Amidst her sentence, Twilight slammed Trixie's face into the dirt floor, forcing her fractured jaw against the impacted soil below and grinding it side to side.

"Let's get something straight, Trixie.  Nopony's going to notice you've gone missing, nopony's going to miss you, and nopony's going to come to help you.  You're mine now, so you'll follow my orders."  Twilight forced her victim's face onto its side, letting her look right down into her frightened, tear filled eye.  "If you're a good little filly and do what I say, maybe you can have some luxuries.  We'll start with food and water, which... you won't be getting tonight since you talked back... but I'll give you another chance tomorrow.  Are we clear?"

Trixie defied Twilight by shutting her eyes and refusing to answer.  Twilight, however, was fully prepared to get anything she wanted from Trixie.  She telekinetically grabbed every single hair in Trixie's mane, yanking her up and holding her by the oddly well-maintained strands.  At that, she twisted Trixie's right foreleg back, bending it in an unnatural and very uncomfortable position until she howled in pain.  "I asked you a question."  Twilight dropped her voice from the phony 'motherly' tone that she had been taking into a very adequate reflection of her true colors: a twisted and disturbing castigation that seemed to drip with venomous words.  "Are..."  Twilight twisted the joint around Trixie's wrist a little with this portion of her statement.  "We..."  She then moved to the elbow, listening to the gasps and squeaks of stifled pain from Trixie's mouth.  "Clear?"  At the end of her question, Twilight bent Trixie's shoulder, nearly breaking it and definitely pulling a few muscles.  Trixie couldn't handle this pain and finally gave in, screaming out and struggling futilely against Twilight's grasp.

"Yes!!  Yes! P-please le-et me... Let me go!"  Trixie's words were distorted by her agony, producing more of a whining groan than an actual sentence.  Twilight was satisfied enough with this answer and let her go, though not without kicking Trixie in the stomach and forcibly laying her back down on the floor.  

"Get comfortable, Trixie.  You're going to be here for a while."  Twilight left Trixie cowering in her den, crying like a newborn and curled up in the closest thing she had to a corner.  Twilight closed the bookcase tight and made sure there wasn't any space for Trixie to see through if she were to look out.  Everything was going swimmingly, and she knew that she could easily break Trixie's defiance after just a few days of that kind of treatment.  With any luck, she could even ruin her sleep cycle and hide from her any kind of passage of time: the ultimate psychological torture.  She even entertained the thought of making ice-cold water periodically drip from the ceiling.

Aww.  Why'd you leave?  That was just getting good.  Iago took a sarcastically disappointed tone, though Twilight knew that he was enjoying himself while Trixie was in pain.

If I beat her to a pulp right now then I won't have anything worse I can threaten her with.  She needs to trust me at least a little...  Is there any way for me to make her feel better?

Looking to reward, eh?  Well you could take the direct approach and just shut down her nerves, though that could paralyze her or stop her heart if you're not careful.

Got anything else for me?  I need her alive at least until I get her inscription ready and I'd like to minimize any fatal accidents until then.

Well you can always trick her brain into thinking that she isn't feeling any pain, or physically heal her.

How would I heal her?

A simple flow of energy from your body to hers.  You really only need to make contact for a brief period, but if you put the same focus into yourself as you do to raise the temperature of objects, it should give her a warming and soothing sensation radiating off of you.  It's kind of a proxy effect of your own natural healing ability, only coming off of you since your coil expels excess energy.  After that, you can choose to focus it into any area of her body and it'll heal her up just like you.

I like that idea...  If I'm her only source of comfort she'll have to warm up to me eventually.

You may wish to do that to her jaw before you feed her, if eating is too painful of an experience she may not value food as much without extended periods of starvation.

You're right... and it's hard to threaten basic needs when they're already pushed to the brink.

Now you're thinking like me, Twilight.  I must admit I'm proud.

This is going to take a while, I can tell...

Likely, but that doesn't mean you can't have a little fun with it and be productive at the same time.

Twilight sat back and thought for a moment, simply running ideas through her head.  Trixie wasn't explicitly useful except in that she would provide a platform for her spirit binding experiment.  Until she was sure she'd get everything exactly right, however, Twilight didn't want to risk losing the body.  If nothing else, she decided that she should give that 'healing' a try, just to be sure she could.

Twilight pried the bookcase open once again, curious to see if Trixie had even gotten up in the short time that Twilight was away.  The light blue pony simply stayed huddled in her "corner", stroking her tail and crying; nothing too out of the ordinary.  She must have been in great pain, and Twilight had a point that she needed to make.  Trixie shrunk away from Twilight as she stepped inside, flinching already after her treatment thus far.

"Trixie, come here."  Twilight took a stance in the center of Trixie's little cave, trying to command her prisoner to join her with no avail.  Trixie shook her head and refused to make eye contact, hiding like a child in the corner.  "I said come here, Trixie.  Don't make me force you."

"T-T-T-Trixie d-d-doe-esn't wan-want, to."  Trixie, cowering and sobbing, reverted to her obnoxious use of the third person to talk about herself.  Twilight was in no mood for it: it showed self importance and power, and as far as she was concerned Twilight was the only one that deserved anything of the like.

"Well Twilight doesn't give a fuck what Trixie wants.  I told you to get over here and you will get over here or bad things are going to happen."  Twilight's face dropped into a snarl, she was taking her control over the unicorn way too far, but didn't think it anything out of the ordinary. Twilight deserved respect and obedience, even if she had to force it (so she thought).

Trixie didn't respond this time, but she didn't move either.  The victim simply hid her face in her tail and quivered, leaving the pathetic form for Twilight to exploit.  The lavender unicorn made short work of this disobedience by quickly and aggressively moving into Trixie's corner.  She viciously grabbed Trixie's foreleg and twisted it again, this time bending it behind her back and not stopping until she heard the violent pop and crunch of dislocating bone and tearing muscle.  Trixie's knee had gone backwards and her shoulder had come out of its socket, ripping a tormented howl from her mouth.  Trixie almost whited out from this treatment and already felt nauseous, not believing for a second that she could feel any more pain.  Twilight had pressed her body against the dirt floor and hard walls, keeping her from moving or escaping by completely imposing her presence above the helpless unicorn.

"I can be a source of great pain, Trixie, and I'm more than happy to oblige that."  To make her point even more potent, Twilight twisted Trixie's foreleg again, watching her coat deform with the impossible angle like a leathery balloon.  Trixie retched from the pain, but had nothing in her stomach to vomit up after skipping dinner last night.  She couldn't even see anymore.  "Or I can help you, and I'd be happy to help.  Do you want the pain to go away?"

Twilight's victim's only response was a low moan of anguish; her head was spinning and she was nearing the cusp of passing out, but Twilight knew a few tricks to keep her conscious.  She made sure to give her a violent kick to the tailbone, jarring her reflexes and pulling her just away from the brink.  "Answer me, Trixie.  Do you want the pain to go away?"

Amidst sobs and tortured howls, Trixie managed to speak.  Her words weren't fragmented, rather slurred by delirium from the suffering that she was trying desperately to endure, but all she could muster up was a half-hearted "Yes..."

"Are you going to listen to me?"

"... Y-Yes..."

"Do you understand that I can break you like a toy?  That I own you now?  That I could cut off this foreleg, and any other part of your body that I wanted for... whatever fucking reason I choose?"

"Yes!  By the Princess!  Please don't!"  Trixie started to panic, though her speech had only gotten more frantic and less understandable by this reaction.

"Good, hold still."  Twilight dropped Trixie's foreleg, letting it fall limply next to her body and dangle like the useless sack of meat and lymph that it was.  She kept her hoof pressed against the damaged shoulder, increasing the flow of energy through her own body as she was instructed and feeling a delightful warm tingle within.  She knew that the feeling was radiating out of her just by the sensations dancing over her skin.  Trixie's shoulder crackled some more as the muscles pulled the bone back into its socket, but she didn't make a single sound.  She calmed down during this process, still crying but not howling like a wild animal anymore.  Twilight moved her hoof down along the ruined appendage, repairing it almost miraculously and restoring all of its normal function.  

Trixie's body underwent a very marvelous reaction to this.  The process started as a warming anesthetic radiance pulsing through her shoulder, numbing the horrid pain that she had just suffered.  The bone resetting and muscles gripping onto her skeleton with renewed vigor should have hurt at least a little, but it felt closer to the satisfying crackle of popping your back after a hard day's work (not that she would ever know what that felt like).  Her entire foreleg had gotten loose and limber once it was all over, and actually felt better than new.  She was surprised, but welcoming to the gesture when Twilight reached her glorious hoof up and brought the same feeling to her fractured and displaced jaw.  The pestering pain in Trixie's head and mouth receded and her teeth stopped throbbing, being replaced by a relaxed and comfortable sense of loosened muscle and warming numbness.

Trixie looked up into her captor's eyes, letting her tear-streaked face and matted, filthy fur show a countenance of genuine gratitude.  Twilight had that little blue bitch wrapped around her hoof.  "So now you see.  I can make your life a living hell or a realized paradise, and it's all up to you.  Don't make me hurt you again, Trixie, Just listen to me when I tell you to do something and everything will be okay."  The lavender unicorn was extremely deceptive in her tone, but Trixie was willing to glom onto anything resembling care.

"Trixie won't make you hurt her again...  Please don't...  Trixie wasn't--"  The unicorn tried to speak her mind but was quickly interrupted by her agitated captor.

"Stop talking about yourself like you're not here!  That annoys me to no end and I swear on Celestia's mane that I'll rip your tongue out if you keep doing it."

"Tr-- I...  I'm sorry...  I won't."  Trixie saw the anger in Twilight's eyes almost literally flare up.  She was starting to catch on to Twilight's demands and already learned her place.  Her spirit wasn't dead, but it was certainly beaten down.

"Good.  Now I suggest you get some rest.  If you prove helpful enough I might even give you something to sleep on."  Twilight smiled with a motherly countenance, showing that her emotions were only a means to an end.  Twilight could swap seamlessly between anything she wanted to portray to alter the comfort level of anyone in her presence, and she did so wherever necessary to continue her own agenda.  The only thing real about Twilight now was her anger and desire to rule.  

Twilight moved out of her still-open bookcase, slamming it shut and fixing it down with telekinetic precision and power.  As she left her prisoner (presumably to rot), Twilight heard a somewhat low banging on the doorway leading down to her basement.  She walked slowly up the stairs and answered, finding Spike on the other side with a concerned look on his face, nervously wringing his claws together.

"What is it, Spike?"  Twilight asked with an annoyed undertone in her voice.

"I thought I heard screaming...  I just wanted to make sure you were okay.  I-I've been out here for five minutes and you didn't answer so I just... started to worry."

"I'm sure it was just your imagination, Spike...  Maybe you were having a bad dream.  Everything's fine, I'm just doing a few experiments."

"Oh... Uhm...  Do you need any help?"  Spike tilted his chin away and looked up with his comparatively large eyes.  He had felt so left out of Twilight's life recently that he was eager to do anything he could.

"Hmm...  Actually I do have something that I need done, d'you think you can handle it?"  Twilight got a fantastic idea that could keep Spike both out of her mane and useful at the same time, she just had to be smart about it.

"Oh come on, your number-one-assistant can handle anything you throw at him!"  Spike nearly bounced as Twilight offered him a job; he really would do anything for her at this point.

"Do you have any friends, or know of any ponies around town, that seem like they don't have many... acquaintances or don't really spend much time around other ponies?"

"I don't really know...  This is kind of a small town, Twilight, everypony knows each other here."

"I know they do, Spike, but if you can think of anyone that might be kinda lonely I want you to send them my way.  I'm doing a, uhm...  Psychological experiment on the... relationship between loneliness and..."  Twilight was completely fabricating this out of thin air, and she knew how sloppy it was but figured that Spike was just gullible enough for it to work.  "an-and obsessive item possessiveness!  That's it."

"Obsessive item possessiveness?"

"Yeah, when a pony clings onto something and gives it a really great personal value even if it doesn't seem worth that much.  I theorize that lonely ponies might be more prone to that sort of thing, so if you could turn a few of them my way and tell them to bring their most favorite thing in the world that they own that'd be just... super!"

"You really think anypony's going to agree to that?"

"Tell them I'll pay them."

"Do we have that kind of money?"

"Uhh...  Yeah we do actually.  Remember all those gems I got hold of?"

"I haven't exactly seen them..."

"That's because I hid the ones I didn't want you to eat.  I trust you and all but you're still a dragon."

"Hey, I'm just a victim of circumstance!"

"Hence why I limited the circumstance.  Now go forth my number-one-assistant!  I need your help desperately for this experiment to work, so don't faff about!"  With that, Twilight slammed the door in Spike's face.  While she seemed enthusiastic enough, Spike couldn't shake a pestering bad feeling about that whole thing.  Nevertheless, he went off into the morning sun, figuring he'd start with some of the younger ponies around that he knew were outcast from the cliques of the schoolyard.

Twilight walked back into her basement, glancing around at the disorganized items all over the floor.  With Spike gone to look for some more 'subjects' Twilight had some time to clean up and get ready.  If she could help it, she'd get plenty of practice raising the dead before she committed the only irreplaceable thing that Trixie still had: her body.