The trial chamber had grown deathly quiet upon the start of the second recess. The Committee of Ponies had taken to silently reading the sheets of talking points and evidence, removing ones that no longer had relevance to the trial, while occasionally whispering to one another about things Sunrise couldn’t hear, but had to assume was about the topic of their next line of questioning. The unicorn mare, on the other hand, was left contemplating to herself, with no one to confer the mess of emotions welling up inside her.
It’s like they are railroading me, while giving me just a glimmer of hope to cling onto. But they have to see that I’m truly innocent in all this, don’t they? They talk about these ‘tenets’, and how I had to know what the red collar meant, but I couldn’t have known that when I was enslaved, and I didn’t go out of my way to harm other ponies.
Going through her thoughts at a rapid pace, Sunrise was trying to find an angle she could approach any future questions from that would keep her head above water, as by this point she felt like she was moments away from drowning.
How did they figure out all that from just my book though? I don't remember putting in any plot holes like that, and yet they still managed to pick them out. Sunrise took a moment to look over the Committee, giving them a bit of scrutiny in return for all of it that they gave her. It had to be their bias against me. The only reason they figured all that out was because they presumed me guilty to begin with. They assumed lies from the beginning, and thus they found them. But I’m on to them now, and I can still come out of this clean. They might have discredited my first book, but my second one is all about me. There is nothing in it they can outright disprove with historical inaccuracies, so they have to listen to me.
“Sunrise Splendor,” Luna said suddenly, “We have given you ten minutes to collect your thoughts. If you are ready, we would like to proceed.”
“About as ready as I can be,” Sunrise answered.
“Then we’d like to talk about your role when it came to evaluating and ‘reforming’ Black Collars.” Luna said, declaring the next topic of the trial. “You claimed to be very good at this task. Is this another embellishment on your part?”
“No, your majesty,” Sunrise said, “I was very good at showing females why taking a red collar was good for them, a fact that I do acknowledge will not do me any favors in this trial.”
“And the main species you worked with were zebra, gryphons, and other mares?”
“Correct,” Sunrise admitted, thinking that she finally cracked the code when it came to answering the questions given to her, “Gryphons were often stubborn, so my results with them were not as good, but I converted many zebra and mares to the will of the caribou.”
No pony in the Committee had any objections to this, confirming to Sunrise what she had come to believe. They just wanted to hear her say what they wanted to hear. If they didn’t get confirmation on what they already believed, then they’d cause a fuss till Sunrise conceded. While they had forced several admissions from her already, they couldn’t press her further if she just agreed with them from the start. And if they didn’t press the mare on a subject, then they couldn’t get more out of her than needed.
“So when you did your evaluations,” Luna continued, “You were the sole decider of the fates of these creatures?”
“No,” Sunrise answered, “I could put in recommendations, but it was up to the caribou to make the final decision.”
“Yet, you boasted about how often you managed to convert females into being Red Collars.” Celestia chimed in, “So are we to take it that your recommendations were seen favorably?”
“If they weren’t,” Sunrise said, “Then I wouldn’t have been allowed to evaluate my fellow slaves. I realize that makes it look like I had more sway in the final decision, but if the caribou didn’t want a mare to red, they wouldn’t be red.”
“This might be an odd question to ask,” Cheerilee said, “But do you think the caribou ever gave a mare a red collar who didn’t show that they earned it?”
“You mean like Applejack?” Sunrise said, having to hold back her displeasure that she had been the one to approve her switch to a red collar, since it meant that she had managed to be tricked by the Element of Honesty. That mistake might have turned out for the best for Equestria, but Sunrise didn’t enjoy that she was fooled so easily.
“What I mean is,” Cheerilee reiterated, “Do you think that the caribou ever put a red collar on a mare they knew was unwilling, just to make it look like more mares supported them, or to cause confusion and division among mares?”
Sunrise hadn’t really thought about that. It wasn’t impossible, but no Red Collar she ever met did anything that would show them to be against caribou rule. Some were timid, nervous, reluctant, or treated their obedience as transactional, but as far as she had ever seen, they were all still obedient to the caribou.
“Aside from Applejack, I’m certain all Red Collars I had met or personally evaluated were truthful in their desire to serve the caribou.” Sunrise said.
As if I’d let my assessments be wrong twice.
Cheerilee seemed to find that answer satisfactory, as she didn’t proceed with any more questioning. Instead, the earth pony stallion on the other side of the bench from her decided to take a turn.
“So, Miss Splendor,” said Braeburn, “Ah have a very sincere question Ah’d like to ask in all this. Do you, after everythin’ that you’ve done durin’ the Fall, see yourself as a good pony?”
What kind of question is that?
To ask if she saw herself as good was like asking if she wanted to incriminate herself. The unicorn mare’s only recourse was to say “I beg your pardon?” in confusion - not because of the question itself, but in how her opinion on herself mattered in the slightest.
“Ah’ll say it to ya plainly,” said Braeburn, “Ya just said that ya think all Red Collars were truthful in their desire to serve the caribou. Well, if we are to take ya at your word, that would imply yourself as well.”
“Not to mention,” Spitfire added, “You’ve done plenty of things to your fellow pony that just seem malicious. Both your books, for starters, have you portraying ponies that were against the caribou in an entirely negative light, often directing verbal, and sometimes physical, threats at you for seemingly little reason”
“And while we don’t really believe most of what’cha put in your first book, your second book seems to be more honest about your personality.” said Braeburn, “With you threatening slaves who don’t bend to your authority, an’ treatin’ anythin’ less than the position of bein’ Vestri’s slave mare as beneath you.”
“A Change of Events was a vast shift in your personality from Sun’s Setting,” said Celestia as she joined in on the subject, “Where once you acted purely as a victim, in it, you were now an oppressor. We find it unlikely, seeing your prior depiction of yourself, that you’d purposefully portray yourself as a dastardly mare, but compared to certain points in your first book, it actually just seems like you were being more candid about yourself.”
“I can explain that,” Sunrise said, seeing that she had written herself in a corner once more, “There might have been times when I let my position as Vestri’s slave go to my head. The story, as you might recall, was about that. Vestri punished me for assuming that I deserved the things I got instead of recognizing that any gift he gave to me was purely at his discretion.”
“I would love to go into how backwards that logic is,” Cheerilee said, “But this does sound like something a caribou would say to make a mare think they were undeserving of anything, so it’s not your fault it's silly.”
“So yes, I got a bit of an ego at one point,” Sunrise went on to say, “Taking my role as red collar evaluator, and the rewards I thought I had earned through it, to heart. I had been a slave for a year and a half at this point, a year longer than most mares, and I believed this was my life. I had to find some sort of happiness in it, and I found it in serving Vestri.”
“How surprisingly forthcoming of you,” said Luna.
“But,” Sunrise added in quickly, “I never saw myself as a bad mare. At my very worst, I was just doing what was expected of me. If I didn’t, I would be the one who would have been suffering, an example of which was set for me in the later part of that book, and I never went out of my way to make the other slaves miserable.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Luna said, responding to the last part of Sunrise’s claim, “But didn’t you have the authority to send any mare you saw fit to caribou re-education facilities?”
“Uuuhhh…” Sunrise replied, her brain stalling as she noted that she had stepped on a landmine, “Yes, I did…”
“And you have enforced this authority, right?” asked Luna.
“I… have,” Sunrise conceded, remembering writing things that implied that she had, “But if I didn’t, then the caribou would have done it anyways.”
“Perhaps,” said Luna, “But with your authority, you could have at least attempted to prevent this. Instead, you went ahead with sending many mares to be tortured into compliance, or even blanked.”
There it is… I’ve been waiting for this one.
“You’re telling me that those mares were-!” Sunrise put her elbows up on the podium, and placed her eyes into her palms. “I didn’t know the re-education facilities were… I sent so many ponies there… and they were…” The mare looked up from her palms, tears now leaking from her eyes. “I swear, I didn’t know!”
The Committee shifted looks to one another, not convinced by the sudden emergence of tears from the mare.
“You’re telling us…” Luna said, “That after boasting about how your position as Vestri’s pet granted you the privilege of sitting in on the meetings between Dainn and his Council, that you had no idea what happened in these facilities?”
“YES!” Sunrise yelled through a series of sobs, wiping the flowing tears into the fur on her arms, “Vestri didn’t let me sit in on every meeting, and it never came up when I was present.”
“What did ya think happened at them?” asked Braeburn, not buying this act for a moment, since a few of his family members had been blanked at such a facility. Even if she had never heard it from the caribou council, one could make an educated guess about what happened in those places.
“I don’t know,” Sunrise replied, “I didn’t think it would be blanking. I might have sent mares there to get them to be more obedient, but I only did it so things would be easier later on.”
Again, the ponies of the Committee looked at each other with suspicion, as the mare’s convenient ignorance in this matter was just impossible to justify.
“You’ve got to believe me,” Sunrise pleaded, “I’d never do anything to purposefully harm a mare.”
“If that is what you believe,” said Luna, “Then I believe it’s time to bring in the witness. Guards, if you would retrieve them.”
Two guards in the room gave a silent nod in return, leaving the room via a door to the side of where the Committee was sitting. The remaining ponies waited quietly for their return for several minutes, until finally the guards came back through the same door, a unicorn mare light fur and a brown mane following them in.
Sunrise Splendor, upon seeing the mare, looked like she had seen a ghost. Of all the mares she could have imagined testifying against her, she didn’t expect this one in particular. Seeing her though, and being well aware of what she had done to this mare, made Sunrise terrified of what she might have to say.
One of the guards brought in with them a small chair, sitting it in front of the Committee, facing Sunrise, before telling the witness to take a seat. The new mare complied quickly, sitting herself down, and once seated, she gave a glare to Sunrise that looked like it could have peeled the skin from her body.
“Would the witness state her name,” said Luna, directly above and behind the mare.
“Fine Line.” she replied.
“And what collar color were you during the Fall?”
“Black.” she answered again.
“Do you know the mare in front of you?”
“Unfortunately, I do,” said the unicorn.
“And how exactly do you know her?”
“Fine Line,” Sunrise cut in, “I’m rea-”
“We would ask that Sunrise Splendor not speak at this time,” Luna cut in herself, raising her voice to convey her seriousness about the matter, “Fine Line, if you would proceed.”
Fine Line sent her death stare to Sunrise for a few seconds, her brow furrowed and arms crossed, before finally saying, “She’s the mare that went out of her way to make my life a nightmare.”
“Could you elaborate,” asked Celestia, speaking in a less stern tone than her sister.
“Certainly,” Fine Line replied, “When the Fall started, I was one of the mares caught in the invasion of Canterlot. I went through the same things many mares trapped there did, including the removal of my horn, and the days of rape that followed. I wasn’t one of the ones they made a spectacle out of, but nonetheless, I was passed around between caribou and stallions, as my own husband allowed anyone to take a turn with me.”
“Not to downplay the tragedy of that event,” said Flash Sentry, “But at what point did Sunrise Splendor come into this story.”
“A few days after,” Fine line answered, cringing as she recalled the moment she met the pony, “The caribou’s victory celebration was winding down, and I had been used so much that I had become a cum-covered mess. My husband had made a comment, which I had thought was a cruel joke, about how I had become so depreciated that he might as well sell for some pocket change. Next thing I know, this mare was coming over to us with her caribou master, and he’s making an arrangement for my purchase, while she kneels down to pet me like I was an animal.”
“I was trying to comfort you!” Sunrise objected, unable to keep herself from speaking.
“By rubbing my ass and tits!?” Fine Line shouted back, reflectively shielding her breast and pressing her thighs together as she did, “You were examining your master’s purchase.” The former Black Collar shook her head slightly, correcting her thoughts back to the topic at hand. “I was traded by my husband for a few caribou cows her master had, and after that things got worse.”
“Could you please explain to us your relationship with Sunrise Splendor after that point?” asked Celestia.
“Past the purchase, her master didn’t want anything to do with me,” Fine Line proceeded, “Apparently I was a gift for her, and she was to make use of me. She started calling me her ‘assistant’, and would spend her free time training me to her preferences. She made me have sex with her on the days her master didn’t give her attention, took me with her when she went to do her errands so I could hold the bags, and dragged me around to watch her decide if mares could get red collars, and often made me participate in the sex she’d have with them too. All this time, she’d tell anyone that would listen that she used to be an important Canterlot mare, which I’d have to collaborate with, else she’d punish me… Severely…”
Sunrise was visibly shaking at this point, as one of her plots was laid bare before those who could be considered the most important ponies in Equestria at the time. No doubt news of this would spread from them, reaching the ears of their peers, and trickling downwards from there. All of the Red Collar’s schemes were whirling in ruin around her, from trying to make herself look more sympathetic in the eyes of history, to her attempts to infiltrate high society. Had she simply been acquitted without all this prying into her background, she might have been able to continue her life as one of the elites she claimed to be, using the chaos created by the caribou as a shroud to hide her past.
There has to be a way to salvage this!
“Fine Line, you can’t be serious with this!” Sunrise protested, “You know who I am. We’ve met plenty of times before the Fall. At social gatherings in Canterlot, and…”
“Sunrise Splendor,” said Luna, “We will ask you again to remain silent.”
“It’s ok, Princess Luna,” said Fine Line, “It might not be part of court procedures, but please let me confront my rapist. I need this.”
The Committee silently conferred with one another, once more giving nods of agreement to Luna.
“Very well,” Luna relented, “You’ll be allowed five minutes. Try to keep it civil.”
“Thank you,” Fine Line said, before granting Sunrise her full attention. “Let me ask you something. Do you even know who I am?”
“Of course,” said Sunrise Splendor, “You’re Fine Line. One of Equestria’s elite mares.”
Fine Line rolled her eyes, “So all you know is my name, and that I was rich.”
“N-No…” Sunrise replied, with a bit of uncertainty, as she found it hard to come up with other details about this particular mare. For all her experience as a gossip, she had to admit that Fine Line was not a mare of interest beyond the details she stated.
“What did I do for a living?” Fine Line asked, further testing the Red Collar’s knowledge of her, “How did I even become rich?”
“Well…” Sunrise said, trying to find some context clues, “You were a… seamstress?” All the mare really had was the mare’s name to work with, thinking that it meant something like hemlines, or something.
“I was a nanny,” Fine Line replied, “I took care of the foals of rich families when I was younger, and at one point I was hired by a stallion who had become a single parent. He saw how good a caregiver I was, and over time we fell in love with one another.”
Wait… you mean that…
“That’s right,” said Fine Line, “I married into money. I might have attended parties with my husband, and wore nice dresses, but I wasn’t some elite mare by any standard outside of that. Perhaps if you didn’t make everything about you all the time, then you might have learned that while you were grooming me into being your secretary sex slave.”
“But I…”
“And when you got bored of me,” Fine Line said, not giving Sunrise the chance to make up some excuse, “You had your master sell me to another one of his council friends, and turn me into a state-owned mare. Even after that, you wouldn’t leave me alone, as you made me read your stories to proofread and edit them, which I had to do in between getting raped and doing paperwork. By the way, the way you portray other mares, including myself, is despicable. You either show them as bitter bitches who toss insults around wildly, or brainless bimbos who don’t have a thought in their heads. Having had time to think about it, those are just traits reflecting yourself, aren’t they?”
“That’s enough,” Luna said, as the mare’s time ran out, “I believe the witness has given enough testimony of her experiences and opinion of Sunrise Splendor. Guards, if you would escort Fine Line out of the trial room.”
The pony guards did just that, and led the unicorn back out the door she came in through.
“As for you,” Luna said, setting her sights on Sunrise, “It seems you’ve done more harm than you care to admit. Perhaps you actually convinced yourself that you were blameless, but seeing as you had sent that mare to work in conditions that you yourself considered unbearable, I find it hard to think you didn’t understand what you had done.”
“You don’t understand,” Sunrise said, “She was a Black Collar. Her life was supposed to be unbe-” The unicorn cut her words short, but she had already said too much.
The Committee recognized that Sunrise held no sympathy for a fellow mare in this situation, but Cheerilee had one more detail to add that made her statement all the worse, “If you believe that her status alone somehow justified her treatment, then who had the power to recommend a collar change for her?”
The Red Collar didn’t have to respond to that question, because everyone in the room already knew it was her. That Fine Line was a Black Collar only meant that she hadn’t made efforts to make her a Red Collar. She could have easily done so, given her position and belief in her own ability to succeed in the task, if she believed it would actually make Fine Line’s life better, but that was never an objective for Sunrise Splendor. Sure, she hinted at it in the endings of one of her books, but had it been her intention, then the mare would have already been a Red Collar long before those events.
As Sunrise stood there, baffled over how things could have gone so wrong, as the ponies of the Committee discussed this new information with one another. She felt like she was done for - like she had been caught, like discovering that a diamond in a four karat gold ring was actually a cubic zirconia. Every lie, every attempt to mislead, had been exposed, and by now, her imprisonment was the only thing she had to look forward to.
“After hearing that line of testimony,” Luna said, as the ponies at the bench reached a decision, “We of the Committee believe that any further testimony from you would be, at best, filled with misleading information, which would serve no purpose other than to delay our verdict further. Thus, we have unanimously decided to bring this hearing to a close.”
“Please!” Sunrise said, her eyes welling up with real tears for the first time of the trial, a guilty verdict being all she could see in her future, “I’m innocent! It was the caribou that made me act that way! I was a good mare! I did everything I was supposed to! You can’t-!”
“Sunrise Splendor!” Luna said, maximizing the volume of her voice, “It would benefit you to act with some form of dignity, and reflect on the error of your actions!” These words hit Sunrise with a tangible force, causing her to wilt before the authoritative might of the princess. Having brought the mare to silence, the alicorn returned her voice to a less intense volume, “All this time, you have refused to see how you brought about your own downfall, and what good would it do you now if you continued down this path?”
“Luna,” Celesita said, looking to her sister, “Do you think it’s time to come to a verdict?”
“Yes,” Luna said, “If each member of the Committee would, please write down whether you find Sunrise Splendor innocent or guilty, and pass your votes to me.”
Sunrise watched in horror through tear filled eyes as each pony took a moment to write on some unseen piece of paper, which to her were the most important slips of paper to ever exist. As they were passed over to the alicorn sitting at the center of them all, Sunrise knew that each one had the word ‘guilty’ written on them.
“Sunrise Splendor,” Luna said, after finishing her review of the votes.
No!
“We of the Committee of Ponies,”
This can’t be happening!
“In light of all the testimonial evidence given,”
I refuse!
“Find you.”
I REFUSE!!!
The mare at the podium heard a loud crash, as if the world was being torn down around her. She knew the next word to come from the alicorn’s mouth would be her condemnation, and it felt like the mare was prolonging the utterance of it for as long as possible to torment her.
“You?!” Luna said, repeating the last word she had said, though with much more intensity, before adding to it, “You’re so brazen as to show up here?!”
Sunrise, still terrified for her future, had no idea what Princess Luna was talking about, though it took her a moment to even recognize that she had said something strange. Once she did, she looked up to the bench, and saw that everypony behind it was now standing, bearing angry looks, but not at her. It looked as if they were looking at something behind her, and so the mare turned to see what it was, only to find something she couldn’t have imagined waiting.
The door to the chamber had been burst open, and within the corridor were several figures, whom Sunrise couldn’t make out due to the fluid obscuring her sight. Understanding that this was some sort of disturbance to her trial, she worked to wipe away her tears, and once they were cleared, she was able to see… caribou.
Several, standing within the corridor leading back to the rest of the castle. Ones she recognized too, as they were each of Dainn’s former council, though not all of them were present. The ones that were there were Ivangir and Durnir, the two largest and muscular members of the caribou council, with a caribou she was quite familiar with.
“Vestri…” She whispered to herself, her heart skipping a beat at the sight of the stag.
Vestri entered the room ahead of the other two, the somewhat smaller and sleeker stag having to step over the body of Gunne, who had been the cause of the noise, as he had been beaten, bruised, and bashed through the door, which now barely hung to its frame by its broken hinges. A few grunts from him told that he was still living, but incapable of doing anything after what his former brethren had done to him.
“Are we interrupting something?” Vestri said, as the two guards that had been standing at attention at the door’s wall came to attack him from behind, only for themselves to get flanked and quickly knocked unconscious by the other caribou. “Looks like you were busy. Too busy to know that we have returned to take back what is ours from you weak ponies.”
“We had heard of your escape from Tartarus,” Celestia said, flapping her wings to take flight, “We just never thought you’d be foolish enough to come back here!”
The white alicorn rushed towards the caribou, Luna calling “Sister, no!” behind her. It was too late to stop her though, as Celestia was dead set to take on these caribou on her own. She stopped herself just as she got past Sunrise, maintaining a slight hover off the floor, and shot several beams of magic at them from her horn, but the caribou were as prepared as ever, and had re-acquired several sets of their anti-magic armor, which absorbed the attacks easily.
“Sunrise Splendor, go to the others,” Celestia said, back turned to the red collared mare, “I’ll hold them off till you get away.”
Sunrise heard the order from the princess, but found that she couldn’t move… or perhaps that she didn’t want to move. At the very least, not in the direction that alicorn instructed her. After all the unicorn had gone through, what reason did she have to listen to her? She was, as far as Celestia and her Committee were concerned, guilty of treason against the kingdom. What loyalty should she have to creatures who didn’t simply believe her, and wished to see her imprisoned for things that were only crimes under their rule.
It took a moment for Sunrise to work up the nerve, but just as Celestia started saying “What are you waiting for?”, she pushed her whole body into the princess’ back, catching her off guard and sending her hurtling to the caribou.
The force was enough that Vestri himself had to sidestep the plummeting mare, and sent her all the way to Ivangir, who had no need to dodge as he let the regal pony slam right into his body. Celestia had hardly a second to look up at the sadistic cervid’s face, before he forced the mare into a headlock, and guided her off balanced form towards the corridor.
“Durnir, why don’t you get the door for this disobedient slut.” he said, the other caribou striding over to the broken door alongside his associate.
The two large caribou aligned the struggling princess’ horn against the corner of the doorframe, with a horrified Committee impotently watching from their spots behind the court bench. The moment the Ivangir got the helpless matriarch the way he wanted her, Durnir took the broken door, and slammed it with all his might. The hard wood crashed into the alicorn’s horn, the force of it cracking it at the base. Seeing that once was not enough, the caribou followed up his first attack by slamming his hoof down on the spot of the door that was closest to his target, applying even more pressure to the damaged magical appendage, till its only recourse was to break off completely.
Celestia let out a yell of agony as her horn left her head, skipping itself down the corridor, each hop against the marble floor making a dreadful tapping sound. Now severely damaged, Celestia dropped to her knees, getting but a second of brevity before receiving a backhanded slap across her face, which knocked her to the ground.
“Sunrise Splendor!” Luna cried out at the mare who had caused this, “How could you?! She was trying to save you!”
“How could I?” Sunrise replied, making her way to the caribou, disrobing the dreadfully plain clothes on her body as she made her way to them. If the The Committee refused to see the innocent side of her, she’d show there was another side to her they couldn’t deny, “After all you figured out about me, you actually think that I’d go against my master?”
At this point, ambition would be the only way to set her free, even if that freedom meant she’d have to serve Vestri for the rest of her life. Not that she saw that as much of a price, as she had already submitted to him long ago, and intended him to be part of her life till the day he died. Better to the most well kept slave, than be free and underappreciated.
The two burly bucks readied their fists as Sunrise approached, but Vestri raised his own to prevent them from attacking, “Stay your hands. This mare isn’t Black. Isn’t that right, my pet?”
“Oh yes, master,” she said, stripping down to complete nudity, as she knelt down aside Vestri, “I am, as before, you’re loyal slave.”
The mare felt a hand settle down on her head, scratching at her ear in approval, and she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Vestri was the creature she would rather serve.
This is where I belong. At my master’s side.
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Princess Luna, replying to the mare’s thought.
It took Sunrise a second to realize that the alicorn’s line didn’t line up with what she had last said. She opened her eyes to see Luna looking at her, though not with some form of indignant glare, or look of worry because of the threat of the caribou. She was smirking, during such a dire situation as this. As she looked on, she watched the other Committee members sit back down, as if they were unaware that there were caribou present in the room.
Do they see Vestri as a joke? After what he had just done to Celestia?
“No, we don’t see any of the caribou as a joke,” said Celestia, picking herself up from the ground, “But Vestri, Durnir, and Ivangir aren’t here.”
Luna lifted her hand, and casually waved it to the side, an action that caused the caribou in the room to dissipate like pillars of loose sand in the wind. All save for Gunne, who was currently refusing a helping hand from Celestia as he got up by his own power.
Having picked up this time that Celestia directly answered something she had thought, Sunrise stared in shock, watching Celestia’s horn reform on her head in the span of a few seconds, and the bruises Gunne had gotten from the other caribou vanish completely.
“What the fuck is going on here!?!” she screamed, still knelt down in the submissive pose she had done for Vestri.
“Sunrise Splendor,” Luna said calmly, all anger removed from her tone, “Do you recall what the guards suggested you do on your way to your trial?”
“You expect me to think of something like that with all this weirdness going on?!” Sunrise replied, past whatever game was being played here, “Everything is so crazy it’s like I’m in-” The mare gasped, it dawning upon her what was going on.
“A dream?” Luna said, confirming Sunrise’s assumptions, “We have the guards fly ponies around long enough till the pony they are transporting passes out, and prepare a dream world for them ahead of time in which we can hold their trial. It’s a much safer way for us to conduct things, since some pony might try something foolish in person.”
“It also allows the Committee to use a unique method of figuring out who is a traitor or not,” said Gunne, “You might be unaware, since we have taken efforts to keep Red Town isolated from all outside information, but the ponies didn’t just send my brethren to Tartarus. They also had them switched into females, to remove the strength and magic they once wielded. You will not be receiving some miraculous rescue from your former master, or any caribou at that.”
Sunrise turned to the caribou, hoping that he was joking, but his stern, deadpan glare told her that he didn’t have the capability to make light of any situation, not even one such as this.
“I warned before,” he added, “You should have been a better mare by the time you saw me next.”
Sunrise’s world shattered. She had been duped from the start. Not only was everything leading to this moment where she would betray Equestria again, but the Committee, assuming they were all the actual ponies in what appeared to be a shared dream, had been listening in on her thoughts this whole time.
“How could you?” Sunrise said, enraged, “How could you trespass into another pony’s mind?!”
“How could we not?” Luna replied, “We noticed how often you went into your own head in your stories, and thus we allowed you to project whatever surface level thoughts you believed were important enough to think to yourself. It wasn’t till just now that you said something we could use against you, and that was an outright admittance that you would betray Equestria again, if given the chance. An admittance not coerced out of you, or said in fear, but one of complete conviction.”
Sunrise’s teeth clenched down, her lower jaw applying so much pressure that she risked chipping them, as the pace of her breathing became more and more rapid. All sorrow at her predicament was gone, as she discarded the victim mentality that she had used for so long, and went into a full-on rage. Her eyes practically bulged out of their sockets, making her look like some wild beast as she made her way back to her hooves, as the room itself shook with her rage.
This was a dream, afterall, thus the mare had some degree of control over the world around her, not that she recognized that in her mental state, and as her fury grew, small parts of the floor around her broke apart, and started levitating upwards. The mare raised her hands up to her collar, gripping it at opposite sides of the runes that adorned the front of it, and started pulling with all her might.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
The mare screamed as she forced the two halves of her seamless collar to separate from one another, splitting from the top, and traveling through the caribou runes upon it. If this were the waking world, this would have been an impossible feat for her to perform, but as it was just a mental projection of the collar she wore, the object could not stand up to the power of her tantrum. By the end of it, the front half of her collar had been ripped in two, loosely held together by the metal ring at its center.
The Committee watched this, unafraid of what the mare was doing. They were in a dream, where nothing the Red Collar could do would harm them. They were all just witnessing the last, futile cry of a mare at the end of her rope. The Red Collar unicorn couldn’t keep up her rage at such an intensity forever, and eventually it petered out, leaving her tired, panting, but overall, defeated.
“Sunrise Splendor,” Luna said, addressing the mare one last time, “For your crimes against your fellow pony, and treason to the kingdom of Equestria, we, the Committee of Ponies, find you… Guilty.”
“Ha… hahaha… HAHAHAHAHA!!!” The unicorn burst out laughing, becoming hysteric at the announcement of her verdict. “Haha… ha… haaaaaa… You say that like this would have ended up any other way.”
“Sunrise…” Celestia said, “I don’t know if you are aware, but Equestria has a long history of forgiving and reforming creatures that have done worse than yourself. All we wanted from you was some sign of remorse. Some indication that you understood that what you did was wrong. At the very least, we wanted to make sure you wouldn’t side with the next threat to come after Equestria. Had you done anything less than pushing me to the enemy, like cower in fear at the thought that the caribou were back, then we would have considered a lighter sentence than the one we are going to give you.”
The unicorn made her way back to the podium, since there was little she could do to escape the trap Luna had put her in. “Yeah, yeah, you say that, but I know better. I know exactly what you ‘elite’ ponies think of those lower on the food chain than yourself.”
“Sunrise, please…” Celestia replied, “Try to have some dignity.”
“No!” Sunrise refused, “I’ve TRIED to have some dignity for long enough. I’ve done everything I was supposed to in order to be respected, appreciated, and known by the ponies of Equestria, but it never works! Fine! Fine… You made it an issue that you wanted to know who I am. Let’s talk about me for once. How about this for starters? A question I was given earlier: Do you all know what it is I do?”
The ponies thought about the details in the mare’s books, and of them all, Cheerilee was the one to give an answer first. “You said you were a jeweler.”
“We have a winner,” Sunrise said, “Gold star. At a young age I found out my special talent was to make jewelry. Oh, how proud I was of myself, to be a filly born in a low class area like Fillydelphia, with the talent to take the natural beauty of gems, and amplify it with the right ring or necklace to display it in. It’s the kind of thing that catered to the rich, sophisticated ponies of Canterlot, who admired and appreciated the beautiful things in life. Not like some mud pony talent, like carpentry or growing plants. I was destined to be part of the ponies who were somepony.”
Sunrise leaned forward, pressing the weight of her upper body onto her elbow, while using the pointer finger of that hand to play with the ring keeping her collar together.
“At least… That’s what I thought. Unfortunately, while I was born talented, I wasn’t given the right talent to stand out to the ponies I wanted to associate with. It’s not like being a pegasus who’s really fast, or a stallion who is strong enough to be captain of the royal guard.”
Many of the ponies of the Committee were growing weary of what they saw as either a long-winded rant, or an attempt to filibuster to delay the unicorn’s sentencing. Celestia, however, was incredibly curious about what had led this mare so far astray. “What are you trying to say?”
“Like you’d understand,” Sunrise said, turning to face away from the group of ponies, placing her other elbow on the podium to lean back on, “You were destined for greatness from the start. You and your sister, born princesses. Two of a kind, leagues above the rest of us. Me on the other hand, I had to contend with dozens of other jewelry ponies, each trying to make a place for themselves in the world. Thing is, I was fairly good at what I did. I just had a few things standing in my way.”
“Where you grew up?” Flash Sentry said, unsure of his answer, but recalling that was an issue of contention for the mare.
“That was part of it,” Sunrise said, “No rich ponies care about jewelry made by some random mare from the city, especially not one with a forgettable name like ‘Sunny’. Heh, ‘Sunny’... Sounds like a dirt pony name, doesn’t it?” The mare took a moment to look down at her broken collar, barely able to see the runes printed on it, “So I changed my name a couple times. Once I was a mare called ‘Morning Glory’, and that seemed to get me some attention. That, and a little make up, and I was able to get into my first Canterlot soirée as some stallion’s date. Some rich bitch’s wedding, can’t remember whose - which I guess is fine, cause no one remembered me either.”
“That’s unfortunate,” said Cheerilee, “But it hardly gives you the right to-”
“I’m not done,” Sunrise interrupted, “Cause you know what else was a problem? Come on, you’ve all done so well so far. What else would be an issue for a mare in her twenties, looking to get into the upper echelons of society, as a famous maker of fine jewelry.”
The Committee members looked to one another, but none of them could come up with an answer.
Hearing nothing but silence, the mare leaned backwards so far that she was looking at the group upside-down, her bangs draping off her head to reveal the stump of her horn. “Do you know what the difference between a famous clothing designer and a famous jewelry designer is? About thirty years…”
“Thirty years?” Braeburn said, not understanding in the slightest what the mare was implying.
“When it comes to cutting edge fashion,” Sunrise said with a smile, “The rich like to have things made by bold, fresh new faces. Young, talented ponies who can make a gown or suit that draws in the eye.” The mare’s smile turned deadpanned, as she went on to say, “But when it comes to a horn ring, or a brooch, or a lapel pin, they want some old, wrinkly pony with gray hair, who's spent the better part of their life staring into a magnifying glass with a pair of tweezers in hand.”
The mare flipped herself around, an irate discontent reflecting in her eyes. “The problem is that I’m too young for anypony to care about my talent. Oh, sure, I can go and be somepony’s apprentice, help make something really nice to display in their shop, which will be credited to them when somepony decides to buy it. Met my first lover that way, the selfish bastard… But you don’t get three separate lovers by having your first one be perfect. At least it taught me that my age was good for something.”
Nearing the end of her recap on her life, the mare stood herself upright again, the smile on her face hiding behind it the sorrow of a mare who had suffered in her own ways, and learned to adapt to the feeling that came with each new disappointment in it.
“I used every tactic I could think of to get where I belonged. I tried being good at my special talent. I tried distancing myself from my parents. I tried prettying myself up. I tried hooking up with a few ponies who were already popular. I tried resorting to gossip. I tried changing my name so it sounded similar to a more famous mare. I did everything I was supposed to, and more, but I was never noticed.”
“It sounds like you’ve had a very troubled life,” Celestia said, “But you act as if all these things were promised to you.”
“Weren’t they?” Sunrise rebutted, “I was told that anypony could succeed if they tried hard enough, but the one thing I wanted to succeed at was always out of reach, because when I was a foal, I liked making necklaces out of plastic beads more than I liked dressing up my dollies. We’re always told about our destinies, and how we should follow them, but what we aren’t told is that some of us are destined to fail.”
Celestia felt like she should say something, but she didn’t know how to approach a mare like this. She would have never expected one so cynical, so far down a different path than what she had planned for her ponies, to be within her kingdom of peace and light.
“You know what’s nice about the caribou?” Sunrise said, seeing an opening to go on, “At least their system was fair. They treat all mares equally like dirt, and actually reward you when you do what they tell you. I was adored more than any other slave in Equestria, because I did the things I was supposed to. To tell the truth, I found the change quite refreshing.”
“That’s enough,” Luna said, reaching her limit when it came to this mare’s insolence, “You say that you have suffered because of the system my sister put in place for the kingdom, but all I am hearing is that you had unreasonably high expectations for a group of ponies who didn’t appreciate you for who you were, or who you changed yourself into in order to fit in with them. Not only does that sound shallow on your part, but it still doesn’t excuse anything you have done. You could have been banished to the moon for one thousand years, and that would still not validate the resentment you hold simply because there are ponies out there in a better position than you. You have allowed all your failures to guide and warp you into the mare you are now, but your past should not define you, cause your past is not today.”
Sunrise's face turned glower at Luna’s lecture, finding it hard to dispute the argument that the night princess made from experience, but the unicorn refused to actually learn anything from it. She was too deep into her own beliefs to see herself at fault, unwilling to take any blame she couldn’t bestow on others.
“Fine,” said Sunrise, “I’ll accept that I’ve become a terrible mare by your standards, but can Celestia admit the same?”
“Excuse me?” Luna said, standing up for her sister.
“Well we all know what I’d do if the caribou returned,” Sunrise said, “But are any of you willing to admit that your beloved ruler was also a red collar? That if put in the same situation, she’d end up the same? Or are you all going to hide behind that memory-erasing spell you cast on her to make her forget that she’s just as despicable as me.”
“We’ve tolerated this enough.” Shining Armor said, taking Sunrise’s words personally, which to the mare was probably a form of small victory. “Declare her sentence, and call this court to a close.”
Luna agreed with this sentiment, “Sunrise Splendor, we sentence you to life in Tartarus. There you can spend the rest of your days dwelling on the misdeeds you have done. We would hope that one day you would come to terms with the darker part of yourself, just as I had to, but we doubt that will ever come to pass.”
Before the Red Collar could say another word, Luna used her magic to eject Sunrise Splendor from the dream. She would wake up in the waking world, and find herself at the gates of Tartarus, having been taken there ahead of time, in preparation of a possible guilty verdict.
“Another pony we couldn’t reach,” Cheerilee said, not enjoying the way things went down, “True Red Collars might still be in the minority, but I hate that any exist to begin with.”
“It’s bound to happen,” Spitfire said, “You get one bad apple in every bunch, and Equestria is like a thousand bunches put all together.”
“Perhaps,” Celestia said, “But I wish that I could have done more for that mare.”
“You wish you could have done more for every traitor pony,” said Luna, “You take far too much of this burden on yourself. I know she made it sound like there was a point where she could have been saved, but everything she said was just another attempt to make you feel bad for her.”
“I know,” Celestia said, “But it is possible for me to think she was justly imprisoned while thinking I could have done more.”
Luna shook her head, knowing that Celestia was relating this to another pony the white alicorn knew, whom she had felt guilty over punishing for hundreds of years. To the dark alicorn though, Sunrise Splendor only reminded her of a certain unicorn who desired power above all else.
Without another word, Luna brought the shared dream to an end, bringing yet another Red Collar hearing to a close.
When Sunrise Splendor awoke, she found herself back in the carriage, in a land far away from Canterlot, her surroundings being not the pristine white buildings of the kingdom’s capital, but dark, rocky crags and black clouds that blocked all signs of the sun. The unicorn looked around for any other kind of structure, hoping beyond hope that what she had experienced was just a bad dream, but when she laid eyes on a large, black door with mystical scribings on it, she knew where she was.
“Finally awake, I see.” said one of the pegasi guards, who was standing at the door to the transport, “And by the look on your face, your trial didn’t go well.” As the pegasus finished his sentence, the markings of the black door lit up, and the doors started to part open, “And here comes the guide to your new home now.”
From the other side of the imposing barrier came a familiar caribou, that being the traitor stag, Gunne. He strode to the door of the carriage, which was opened for him once he got near, and stuck his head inside to greet the newest addition to Tartarus, who had lost all her bravado now that she was face to face with her destiny. The one she so rightfully deserved.
“Are you going to face your sentence with some dignity?” he asked politely, “Or do I have to show you one last time the might of a caribou?”
The mare couldn’t muster up the will to leave the cart of her own accord, incapable of facing this terrible fate with humility. So, as the caribou had promised, he reached in, grabbed her by the collar that Vestri had made customly for her so long ago, and pulled her out by it.
Forcing the mare upright, he directed her to walk to the gates of Tartarus with just his might alone, not needing to give a single instruction when his arm did more than words could ever do for this particular prisoner. Together, they passed the threshold, and once through, the doors shut behind them, to act eternally as an impassable divider for the mare from the world beyond them.
Inside, there was little more than rock walls lined with cages, and the feeling of heat from a source of fire that Sunrise could only see the light of from over the side of a steep cliffs that went deep into the earth. The cages were each filled with prisoners, stallions and mares, who Sunrise could only assume were co-conspirators and other Red Collars who proved themselves loyal to the caribou. None of them made so much as a comment to the mare as she passed by, their will to do anything but sit there seemingly sucked out of them by the bleakness of this place. If they were condemned to a lifetime in this place, just as she was, then it might have been a greater mercy to have been sentenced to death.
Gunne dragged the mare deeper and deeper into the prison, only to find that the cages seemingly never ended, packed one on top of the other, all the way to the ceiling, making the innards of this stoney structure appear oppressively cramped. There were still cells that were empty among them, which caused the mare to wonder two things; if they really felt that they needed all of them to keep those who had sided with the caribou, and how deeply they intended to take her into this wretched place.
She got her answer when the caribou descended a set of steps, making her aware that there were separate levels to this place, which must have meant that more serious offenders were taken beyond the cells at the first floor. Perhaps the prisoners on the first floor still had a chance to be released one day, unlike herself.
As they went down further, a sound slowly began to reach Sunrise’s ears, the sound of moaning, desperate and longing. It made the mare assume that this floor was one where they tortured their prisoneers, and that she was being delivered to some cruel pony who would deliver physical punishment upon her, if the caribou guiding her didn’t take to the task himself. Upon reaching the bottom landing of the steps, she found that what was awaiting her was much worse.
The floor, though not as well lit as the floor prior, shared many similarities with it’s predecessor, with cages stacked on one another, lining the walls from one side to another, except that these caged were spaced two feet apart from each other. Despite their need for space, this was a necessary feature, due to the prisoners the cages of this floor held. For not a single pony could be found as far as the eye could see, as each cage instead occupied a single caribou cow.
The captive female caribou rubbed their naked bodies up against their bars of their cells, unless they decided that their hands were effective enough to satisfy their lustful urges, as they each let out a horrid symphony of moans that exclaimed their inability to touch one another, as they were held just out of reach of any meaningful contact.
Of course, Sunrise knew that these where not normal cows, though they acted like any other she had encountered in the past, sex-guided creatures barely above the intellect of a foal as she perceived them. These were clearly the sex-switched caribou stags Gunne had mentioned in her dream, trapped in forms they would have been utterly humiliated to be transformed into, had they retained the brain power their previous forms held. From the looks of it, there was no sign that any of them recognized the state they were in, too busy seeking pleasure by grinding against what little they hand.
Gunne walked the mare past many of these defeated caribou, all once soldiers loyal to the caribou king, now merely horny caribou cows reaching out to the only stag they’ve seen in months in the hopes that he may stop and relieve them of their pent up lust, until the stag and the mare made it to an area near the back of it that still had a single empty cell. With nary a word, Gunne pushed the mare inside, and then closed the door behind her.
“You’re lucky,” Gunne said, “This floor is supposed to be for caribou prisoners only, but in anticipation for your arrival, I pulled some strings and put you in a place I’m sure you’ll appreciate. Consider it a reward for being the most loyal female this kingdom ever produced.” With that, the stag left, his duty complete.
With the stag gone, there was little more the unicorn mare could do save for observing the other prisoners around her. The caribou were once a species driven by an ambitious goal to make all civilizations bow to their power and follow their ideals, now reduced to pathetic creatures who could focus on nothing else but to satiate the lustful urges their species celebrated.
Seeing their condition, and not finding the same arousal in the situation as all of them, Sunrise took a seat at the part of her cage that was pushed against the wall. For a moment, she was glad that in this room full of naked former males, her wardens had the decency to let her keep her clothing, as plain as they were. After thinking on the matter, having nothing else to do in her position, she figured that each cow might have been given the same, only for them to discard them of their own accord.
Aside from the lewd antics of her former masters, the only other thing in the room of note were a few pony guards stationed in areas out of reach of the deer, all male, as if to taunt them further with the temptation of something they could never have. However, watching them a little longer, Sunrise did see that they would occasional deliver food and water to a prisoner, or literally hose them and their cells down once the occupant made too much of a mess via their efforts to find sexual gratification.
And with that, the mare had seen the entirety of what there was to take in of her new home. It was a dismal site, indeed, with nothing to look forward to but watching the greatest threat Equestria had ever faced be the very stereotype they had believed all females to be. It was ironic how in this small part of Equestria, the caribou’s ideals were more true than they had ever been, as the males present dominated the females, who were creatures guided purely by their sex drive. The only one not following this rule was the mare herself, as this oversexualized environment had the opposite effect on her from her fellow prisoners, turning her off completely, the inherently erotic nature of these living conditions only serving to disgust the mare.
For a moment, she made a valiant attempt to simply ignore all the things that displeased her, a skill she had become very adept at over the years, but before Sunrise could rescind into her own mind, she heard a voice call to her through the sea of moans.
“Hey!” it called out to her. The unicorn didn’t want to respond, not even thinking it was her to begin with, but then she heard the voice say, “You! The pretty pony!”
Sunrise figured, since it was a female’s voice speaking, that it was one of her fellow prisoners, noticing that they had a new roommate that was much different than the rest. Turn her head around the room, she found the culprit, a caribow cow that had pulled herself away from her masturbation long enough to go up the the closest bars of her own cage to the unicorn, her breasts slipping through them as she sat in a kneel, a wide smile on her face.
“Are you going to be staying here with us?” the cow asked with excited curiosity, “I never thought a girl pony would be kept with us.”
Sunrise sighed, “I suppose so…” she didn’t really want to make friends with, or even associate with, something as lowly as a cow, even if they had been a stag prior. However, in this place, her options were woefully small. “And who might you be?”
The female caribou bounced up and down, her breasts jiggling between the bars, “I’m Vestra! Nice to meet you.”
At first, Sunrise treated the reveal of the cow’s name as she would have the name of any random, unimportant pony she would have met, but just before she could shove it into the back of her mind, the name snagged on a sudden correlation she made in her consciousness. She had to look at the deer again, and while there were few recognizable features to compare her to the stag she was thinking of, she noticed that the doe had a particular fur pattern that she had become very intimate with.
No fucking way…
“Wait a minute…” the female version of her former master said, tilting her head, “You’re a red collar! I haven’t seen one for a long time.”
The cow shifted her body more and more to get a better look at the collar, while Sunrise did her best to keep it hidden. That traitorous caribou stag had placed her right beside Vestri, or Vestra as she called herself now. It was like their destinies ran together, like two rivers that had met, and could never be distinct again. It infuriated the mare that Gunne had forced her to share an eternity with the one who had gotten her into this mess, a constant reminder of what she had thrown away everything for.
“Hey… don’t I know you?” Vestra asked, managing to make out more details in the dark, as while the mare did what she could to hide her collar, she did little to cover her face.
“You must be mistaken,” the unicorn objected, hoping against hope that she could keep the reason for her punishment from learning who she was for the rest of her life, if only to prevent a certain thing from coming with that recognition.
“Oh! I got it!” Vestra said.
No…
“I do remember you.” Vestra continued, “You’re…”
No, no, no!
“Sunny!”
NOOOOOOO!!!