Hey, quick shout-out to everyone who's reviewed and favorited: Thank you so much! You're so supportive and your reviews are so detailed; it makes my day to get one, and I love reading what you think about this abomination I'm writing here. You guys the reason I'm still writing this.
Twilight Sparkle floated in a haze of distant pain and vague horror. Her eyes were open, slightly, the lids drooping, but everything she saw was like a picture in a book. She was unbearably distant from all her senses. She wasn't even aware of specific pain; just that, somewhere, she hurt, but it didn't really bother her. She had read about this in a psychology textbook, years ago, and the name of what was wrong with her floated idly to the top of the shallow sea that was her mind. Disassociation. Ponies withdrew into themselves, sometimes, when they had suffered unspeakable horror or unspeakable pain...and she had suffered both. She was no longer capable of coping with it all.
Twilight was vaguely aware of ancient wood pressing against her back, a rack tilted slightly so that it bore some of her weight, but not much. She was held up mostly by rough iron shackles, looped around the pasterns of her forelegs and holding her hooves over her head and out to the sides, so she couldn't draw them in to protect her vulnerable underside. Her hindlegs hung free and limp, the sticky strands of her tail matted to the one that was still whole and blood dripping steadily from the meat of the mangled one. Blood soaked the hair of her tail, sweat, condensation from the dungeons, waste from her torn bowel, leaking out the holes in her haunches. Her head was bowed, neck feeling all but boneless, chin practically resting on her collarbone. She watched through dull eyes as a worm of glittering red magic lifted a loop of gray-pink intestine up, one with a jagged tear in its lining, so she could see it. Chunky, red-brown slime dribbled out of the wound.
"Just look at what you did to yourself, Twilight." Celestia's voice was disapproving and distant. Twilight panted shallowly through her mouth. She tasted blood and rot in the air. "And you completely destroyed the leg I gave you. I suppose I'll have to fabricate a new one, once I'm done sewing you up."
She felt that her abdomen was flayed open, all the excess skin and muscle gathered up like wet, heavy curtains and pinned back over the ridges of her hips, to expose the innermost parts of her. It was a little strange, to feel the soft, pale coat of her belly against her flanks. Her bowels hung out of her, ropes of quivering meat hanging all the way to her one remaining hindhoof and slapping wetly against her coronet whenever Celestia's magic touched them. She felt that same magic moving inside her, scooping out what her intestines has spilled, fluttering around the edges of the wounds that led to the outside of her, sterilizing. A rough cloth wiped the slime off of the loop of bowel she could see, and a needle and thread, encased in a cloud of red magic, swiftly stitched the two edges of the wound together. The job most definitely wasn't a neat one the soft tissue puckered and tore, but at least it wouldn't leak. Twilight let that small comfort pound through her head as she watched the flesh of the incision, practically dancing in front of her, swell and bruise.
The loop vanished, and she felt magic cradling her intestines, scooping them back into her abdominal cavity. Her mangled leg twitched involuntarily, and she felt something warm splatter against her opposite leg.
"I'll sew you up, Twilight, but then you should really rest," Celestia murmured.
Twilight let out a quiet sob.
Then all sensory information shut off.
Twilight woke slowly. She was confused, at first. Why was the only light an odd red glow? She usually woke just before the sun rose - a habit that had been drummed into her, as the student of the solar princess, and one she had no interest in breaking. Why did her bed feel so cold and hard? It was a mattress stuffed with the molted feathers of local weather pegasi, and it was usually so warm and soft. Why wasn't she covered by a blanket? Why did her stomach hurt? Why were there furious howling, clanging, buzzing noises coming from someplace nearby? Why -
Her eyes fluttered open completely, and she saw iron bars inches from her muzzle, reflecting the red light she had seen through cracked lids. She gasped a little, memory thudding through her brain like corrosive poison. She was sprawled on her side in an iron cage shoved up against a stone wall, mane and tail spread out like indigo puddles and limbs splayed awkwardly. Groaning with the effort, she rolled her upper body, raising her head wearily as she got her forelegs under her and braced her scraped hooves against the floor of the cage. A wave of dizziness threw her, and she retched, abdominal muscles automatically flexing. That prompted a spasm of pain that made her moan, tears coming to her eyes.
Reluctantly, Twilight blinked back the tears and cast a glance at her back half. She cringed. Her ruined hindleg was, once again, encased in magic-though, now, it was completely red, with no gold at all tinging it. The tendrils were all back in their original holes. There were more now. They wrapped up over her croup, spiraling down to coil around the cutie mark on her opposite flank and then twist down that leg. All the way to her hoof. They wrapped around her stomach, and as she rolled onto her back to get a better look at them, they twitched and writhed in the hollow of her back. She saw an ugly, oozing incision beneath the glowing, transparent red tentacles. The sides were purple-black, hairless, bruised and swollen. There were no stitches - the tendrils of magic were the only things keeping her organs inside her.
A sudden loud noise - something hard, like glass or ceramic, striking iron - made Twilight flip over and scramble into the center of her cage, wrapping her filth-matted tail around her hooves. Trembling with fear, tears pricking at the backs of her eyes, she searched for a god to pray to. Celestia was out of the question, and Luna was either dead or close to it. Could she pray to Cadence? She doubted it. Her old foalsitter was a princess with extraordinary powers, but she didn't think she was a goddess, like Celestia and Luna were. She was far too young, and there wasn't the same aura of magic, far beyond a unicorn's grasp, present around her that they had.
Twilight suddenly ached for the youngest of the three Equestrian princesses. She hadn't seen her in years, didn't even know what had happened to her, but she remembered being a foal, and being so scared of the dark and thunderstorms and everything else. When her parents were away on business and her brother was training, Cadence had always been there. To drag a tiny, shivering Twilight out from underneath the bed with gentle hooves, wrap her in her bicolored wings (Cadence's wings had always been soft, not full of razor-sharp feathers), and light up the room with a reassuring blue glow from the tip of her horn. Twilight could, honestly, use Cadence right now. She wondered, in the back of her mind, where she was.
Goddess, she hoped Celestia hadn't gotten her demonic hooves on her.
A dark figure suddenly rebounded off the wall of the cage next to Twilight's with a massive clang and a furious shriek. Twilight shrieked back, terrified, instinct causing her horn to flare to life in a brilliant burst of magenta light - all she could manage, surrounded by iron. The light immediately overshadowed the dull red glow of Celestia's magic, playing off of glossy black chitin, gossamer wings, and amber eyes. Chelicera hissed, exposing the roots of her massive fangs, and shielded her eyes with one desiccated hoof. Twilight's eyes widened. Breathing hard and with adrenalin tracing lace patterns in her flesh as it shot through her veins, she obligingly dimmed the light.
"Chelicera?" she whispered, her voice a hideous rasp from the damp of the dungeon and the fact that she couldn't remember when she had last had a drink. She leaned forward eagerly, her light making the changeling mare's pale-grey crest and tail glow slightly. "You're alive!" She smiled as best she could in relieved disbelief and felt some warm emotion flood her heart as it rose in her chest. So she still had at least one ally down here. Her changeling was still alive.
Chelicera closed her eyes and bowed her head a little, the tip of her horn sputtering with green magic like glowing pollen. It took Twilight a second, and she was about to ask what she was doing, but then she realized that she must be feeding. From her. She had known, vaguely, that changelings drew sustenance from the positive emotions of ponies, but the concept of having one eat her feelings for it wasn't quite as repulsive as she might once have found it. Chelicera needed to be strong, if they were going to get out of here.
"Are you all right?" Twilight asked, rising to her hooves and walking forward until she was directly in front of the iron-bar wall that she shared with the smaller mare. She lowered her haunches to the cold floor as Chelicera opened her eyes and raised her head, the green magic dissipating. She stepped forward, too, and crouched, almost catlike. In answer to Twilight's question, she nodded, whuffing out a little sigh. "Where's Celestia?"
Chelicera growled, faintly, at the mention of the princess, but just twitched her limp, ragged wings in an approximation of a shrug. Twilight flicked an ear. The changeling had seemed rather talkative before, especially when it came to the subject of the 'abomination,' and she had the feeling that this silence hadn't been brought on by anything ordinary. She leaned forward a little.
"Can't you talk?"
The other mare blinked, slowly. Twilight barely had time to notice the bright green blood that pooled on the floor of the cage and streaked her white fangs before she opened her mouth in answer. More blood poured out, cascading over two sets of functionally-sharp fangs and spattering thickly against the iron. A torn stump of tissue and muscle twitched forlornly at the bottom of her mouth, blood pumping weakly from the severed vessels in it. That was all that was left of her tongue.
One of Twilight's forehooves automatically flew to her muzzle as she gasped in horror. Chelicera closed her mouth, eyes impassive but neon blood still leaking from the corners of her mouth.
"I'm so sorry," Twilight whispered. She remembered now: the wet snap of the changeling's jaws closing, the thud of her severed tongue hitting the stone. "Chelicera, I...I'm sorry, I should have asked for help, I should have run..."
Chelicera placed a hoof against the bars of the cage, arranging her stiff features into something that almost resembled a real, equine smile. Tentatively, Twilight set her own hoof directly over the other mare's. The message was clear: I forgive you. It didn't do much to ease her guilt, but she was able to set that guilt on the back burner of her mind for the moment.
"We're going to get out of here," she told her (apparently) new friend. "And you can go back to your Hive, your Queen. I promise."
It was right then that a blazing red glow lite the room, pouring from the eye sockets of the skulls that lined the walls. Chelicera snarled. A tall, regal white figure stalked into view - Celestia. Twilight gaped at the princess, horrified. And not just because of what she'd done to her and Big McIntosh and Chelicera. She'd...changed.
The pale, soft, springtime colors of her mane were gone. Now, her ethereal hair flowed in shades of blood red, rot black, a sickly, desert-sun orange, and rusty gold. Her forelegs were streaked with gore, and it appeared to run from her eyes in a mockery of tears - and her mouth. Her crown and collar were gone, replaced by loops of rotting intestines hung on frames of bone. She turned to Twilight, and smiled at her. As she did, the wings on her back rustled...and split into a bundle of white, insectine wings, glamour magic shimmering into oblivion around them as they did.
She looks just like the statue in the sacrificial chamber, Twilight thought, numb with horror.
"I'm glad you're awake, Twilight," she purred, taking a few steps towards her cage. "I was so hoping you could watch this."
As she stepped closer, Twilight scooted back with a whimper of fear, pressing her back against the bars and drawing her forelegs up to protect her chest and incised stomach. She heard Chelicera hiss, and chitin rang against iron as she pounded her hooves on the bars of her cage, trying to draw the attention of the abomination that was Celestia. It didn't do any good; the princess lowered her head and peered in at Twilight, still smiling.
"There's no need to be afraid, my little pony," she cooed, completely ignoring the racket Chelicera was making one cage over. "When I stay down here long enough, surrounded by all these reminders of the ancient days, my...baser nature tends to shine through." She giggled a little, and, to Twilight, it sounded insane. "I'm sure you'll understand someday. But, right now, there's work to do."
With no warning at all, the lock on Chelicera's cage clicked, and she was dragged out, howling and spitting blood, with a ring of red magic around her neck. Celestia held her aloft and out of reach, upper lip curling in distaste as she examined the flailing changeling held captive by her magic. As Twilight watched, trembling, still crouched in the back of her cage, she sighed deeply and made a beeline for a wooden rack in the center of the room with a roll of her violet eyes. A rack, Twilight saw, that Big McIntosh was still shackled to, his guts spilling out and his head hanging limply. Celestia tsked, shaking her head at him as Chelicera floated and writhed next to her.
"Bled out, poor thing," she murmured. "He could have been so much more useful to us, Twilight, if you hadn't gotten it in your head to run off when you did." She glared at the unicorn, who automatically cowered under her mentor's hostility. "But, I suppose, if you hadn't..." She glanced at Chelicera. "...I never would have caught her." She smiled suddenly, and Chelicera choked, scrabbling at her neck with her forehooves as the magic on her throat apparently tightened its grip. Twilight cried out a little, reaching out with one hoof, as if she could help. The changeling's wings buzzed futilely at the stale air of the dungeon. "Oh, this will be fun."
"Don't hurt her!" Twilight shouted, lunging forward and grabbing the bars of her cage with both forehooves. "Don't hurt her, Celestia, please don't hurt her - please...p-please..." She was dissolving into tears again, as the wound on her stomach howled and stung from her recent exertion and Chelicera's hindhooves kicked desperately at the air. She hated herself for it, but she couldn't help it.
Celestia only raised an eyebrow at her as she magically undid the shackles around Big Mac's pasterns and tossed his body aside. Twilight winced when it hit the floor and the exposed bones of his face clacked against the stone, a pitiful little sob working its way out of her. She let go of Chelicera's throat as she started to affix her to the rack in Big Mac's place. The changeling sucked down a few grateful breaths, barrel heaving and air rattling in whatever passed for her lungs, then started screeching and hissing, blood flying in brilliant green strings from her mouth. Celestia ignored her, looping chains through the holes in her hooves, drawing her limps taut in a star pattern, looping a chain beneath her two largest fangs and yanking her head back cruelly, so she couldn't spit or bite. Once she had well and truly immobilized Chelicera, Celestia shot a glance at Twilight.
"Pay very close attention, Twilight," she instructed, lifting a gore-encrusted scalpel in her magic. "I'm only going to do this once..."
For the record, I totally claim the Hellestia featured in this chapter as mine, in all her glorious goriness. She is miiine, you hear? Not yours!