//------------------------------// // Chapter 15 - Waterworld // Story: Reforging a Broken Blade // by ElkinFencer10 //------------------------------// Rainbow Dash was awoken by a sharp jab to her ribs. "Wake up, pony. It's time for you to talk." Gilda walked around the pegasus, still held upright to her wooden prison. She gave Rainbow a few more hard nudges until she went from groggy to legitimately conscious. "What defenses does Equestria have along its borders and where are they weakest?" On the surface, Gilda's face showed nothing but blank apathy, but Rainbow Dash could see something deep in her eyes, only barely there. It was the sort of subtle cue that only a friend of many, many years could notice. It was just a spark, and it would have been invisible to anypony else. Regret, maybe? Possibly remorse? Rainbow couldn't be sure exactly what this latent emotion was, but something was there; she was sure of it. "As a pony, you don't deserve this much mercy," Gilda said as she paced back and forth, "but I'll give you a bit of advice that you'd do well to take; answer all of my questions the first time they're asked. If you don't, I will make life very unpleasant for you." Gilda paused after that. She looked at Rainbow Dash with hard, stern eyes. Come on, Dash. I know you're not an idiot. Take the hint. Don't make me do this... After the few seconds of silence that were accompanied by a stern look of defiance, Gilda sighed, her features finally betraying what she was feeling, albeit only for a second - dread. For that fleeting moment, Gilda allowed her facade to falter and exposed her unadulterated dread at what a Gryphonian interrogation would mean for the friend of her youth. With a heavy sigh, Gilda said, "Suit yourself, pony." Gilda raised a clawed forearm and brought it down with immense power and speed against Rainbow's left cheek. A sickening rip could be heard as the razor sharp claws hewed flesh from bone. The ground was immediately speckled with blood from the initial tear, blood which now trickled down Rainbow's cheek in a steady stream, staining the normally vibrant cyan with a deep crimson. The sound of a steady drip could be heard echoing throughout the dungeon as a puddle of pegasus blood pooled on the stone floor. Gilda rushed towards the wounded pegasus and stared deeply into Rainbow's eyes, her beak mere centimeters from Rainbow's nose. "Damn it, Dash, answer the bucking question!" Gilda hissed with more urgency in her voice than she had intended. Her eyes widened ever so slightly when she realized the betrayal of her voice and quickly spun around and walked to the corner of the dark room, pretending to be pacing nonchalantly. Gilda took a deep breath. Get it together. You know what will happen if they suspect you have any sympathy for her, let alone actual regret about this. The gryphon turned around again and walked back towards Rainbow. "I'll ask you one more time. Where are Eque-" "I'm not telling you anything, Gilda. I'll never betray Equestria. Not for you, not for anypony." "Come now, Rainbow Dash. Tell us what we want to know, and we'll let you rot in peace instead of rotting in pieces." Gilda nearly jumped out of her skin at the smooth voice behind her. She spun 180 degrees to see another gryphon - a male, not in armor but in an officer's uniform - standing in the doorway. "Having difficulty with our...guest? You may return to your guard post, Gilda. I'll take it from here. Dismissed." "I can handle this, sir. She's just being-" "I do not like to repeat myself, Gilda," the new gryphon said, all smoothness in his tone replaced with hostility and irritation. "If you are not back at your post in ten seconds, you will share in this one's fate. The king is adamant that I handle this one personally. She's one of the bearers of the Elements of Harmony, you know. By capturing her, we have ensured that the Elements cannot be used to stop our king's...failsafe." "I know she's important. If you'd just give me a chance to prove my-" "Gilda. You will not be dealing with this prisoner. The king does not trust you with her given your previous relationship, and quite frankly, neither do I. Now, are you going to leave, or shall I chain you up in one of the other dungeon chambers?" Gilda swallowed hard, careful not to cast a glance back at Rainbow Dash, both out of fear and shame. "My apologies, General. I'll get out of your feathers," she said. Gilda gave the gryphon a stiff salute before quickly ascending the stairs. The new gryphon paced slowly around Rainbow Dash, sizing her up. "Miss Dash, why must you make this difficult? There's really no need to drag this out. It's quite simple," he said. Bringing his face within a hair's breadth from Rainbow's and looking her straight in the eyes, he continued, "Just tell me what I want to know, and you can save yourself a lot of misery." Rainbow Dash looked at him hard for a few seconds, contemplating her options. She finally settled on what seemed to her to be the most appropriate way to handle the situation - spitting in the gryphon's face. "Go buck yourself," she said, her voice rife with indignation. He stood stunned for a faction of a second before regaining his composure and lashing out at Rainbow Dash with a hard backhand to her uninjured cheek, his claws drawing more blood as they passed. "You think you're brave, pony? You think you can buck with me and just get away with it? You're not brave; you're stupid," he spat, almost snarling. He stared at her with fire in his eyes for a second that felt like an hour. "Fortunately for you, however, I am more merciful and understanding than most of my comrades would be. I will forgive this...mistake...that you just made if you just answer a few simple questions. That doesn't sound too difficult, does it?" Rainbow Dash stared at him, making no effort to mask her hatred. Keep it together, Dash. Ignore the pain; don't give in. "I'm not telling you anything." The gryphon's beak curved upward on either side into a sick grin. "Oh, you'll talk, whether you want to or not." He walked towards her, grabbed the board to which Rainbow Dash was restrained, and pulled it forward from the wall. The board was fixed on a metal bar that slid in and out of the wall with a ball-and-socket style joint that allowed the board to swivel. Once it had been pulled a few feet from the wall, the gryphon general turned the board so that Rainbow was lying horizontally rather than upright. "Last chance, pony; what manner of border defenses has Celestia set up? Where are these defenses the weakest?" "Buck off," Rainbow Dash said defiantly. The general sighed. "I tried to do this the easy way, Miss Dash. I really did. Oh well. Suit yourself." He walked to the opposite end of the room. When he returned, he had a cloth held in his beak and a huge bucket of water grasped in either claw. He set the buckets on the ground and took the cloth from his beak. "Do try not to struggle too much; if you break too many bones, it will be most difficult to get any answers from you through your screaming." He tied the cloth over Rainbow's face, covering her eyes, nose, and mouth completely. He then lifted one of the buckets of water and began to pour the water slowly over the cloth. Rainbow Dash lay unmoving at first. As two seconds dragged into ten and then into twenty, however, her lungs began to burn from the oxygen deprivation. She willed herself to remain still, not to give her assailant the satisfaction of seeing her struggle, but eventually, instinctive panic overpowered conscious desire. As she thrashed against her restraints, she could feel the burn spread from her lungs and through the rest of her body. Mercifully, the steady flow of water to her face relented, and she felt air slowly make its way to her mouth where only water had been a moment ago. As the ache in her chest slowly subsided and she continued to gasp for air, she could hear a sick, satisfied chuckled to her left. "Had enough already, Wonderbolt? I thought certainly that one of Equestria's most elite pegasus soldiers could stand up to a little basic interrogation." Finally catching her breath, Rainbow rebutted, "This isn't interrogation; this is torture. You can do whatever you want to me, though. I'm not telling you shit." The gryphon grinned. "What's that? You want more? As you wish!" Rainbow Dash barely had a chance to take a deep breath before the second bucket of water began to pour slowly over her face, once again cutting off her access to precious air. The water stopped after only a few seconds this time. Rainbow released the breath she had been holding and began to take another when the water suddenly started pouring again, causing her to cough and convulse. "Ah ah ah, Miss Rainbow Dash. That's for falsely accusing Gryphus of something as abhorrent as torture! We are a civilized nation, my dear. We would never condone torture." He watched as Rainbow Dash struggled harder against her restraints as he continued to pour the water slowly over her covered face. She arched her back, pressing her chest hard against the leather strap holding her to the board. A sickening crack echoed throughout the room, followed by a muffled, watery scream. The water stopped. Rainbow simply lay there, twitching and whimpering, though doing neither consciously or voluntarily. She tried to calm herself down, but the pain was too intense even to form a coherent thought. Agony fogged her mind, both from the burning in her lungs and from the unending ache in her chest from the broken rib. The gryphon removed the wet cloth that had been secured to her face. "Rainbow Dash, this can all end right now. You can put a stop to the interrogation. All you have to do is tell us where the defenses are weakest and what to expect." Rainbow's mind was teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. As her eye lids fluttered opened and closed, she struggled to keep awake and stay strong. Her eyes kept rolling towards the back her head, and even when she was able to keep them facing forward, she still found herself unable to muster the strength to focus them on anything. "Ungh...N...Not....guhn....gonna....t..ta..talk..." she said, that one short, broken sentence requiring as much effort as performing her first Sonic Rainboom. "I expected as much. Let me show you something, Miss Dash. It's a favorite toy of mine," the gryphon general said. He walked over to the far end of the room and down a hallway. When the returned a moment later, he noticed that Rainbow had passed out. "Now now, Miss Dash, do stay awake while I have my show and tell. Fortunately, most find my toy much too...intriguing...to stay asleep." He raised his claw which gripped a long iron rod, flattened and glowing a brilliant whitish yellow at the end. He pressed it hard against the middle of Rainbow's left side. The revolting scent of burning hair and roasted flesh immediately filled the dungeon. Rainbow was ripped back to consciousness. Her eyes shot open along with her mouth, though she found herself completely unable to make any sort of noise, her lungs suddenly empty of all air. She didn't know what was happening at first, but she didn't need to; she knew that she was in indescribable pain. As the gryphon pulled the rod away from her blackened flesh, she managed to let out an ear piercing scream. The sound echoed off of the dungeon's stone walls. He dropped the iron rod and picked up a cat o' nine tails. He raised his arm far behind his head and brought the whip down, ripping whole strips of fur and flesh from Rainbow's stomach and flanks. "Are you ready to talk now, pony?" The more pain he inflicted wilder and more demented his visage and tone grew. He continued to beat the bloody and broken pegasus until her screams eventually faded and died. By the time he had finally stopped, he was panting, sweat dripping from the tip of his beak and splashing against the pools of Rainbow Dash's blood that covered the floor around the table. Rainbow had long since lost consciousness. Her heart still beat, but barely; her pulse was dangerously slow. The gryphon slowly walked towards the spiral stone staircase, dropping the cat o' nine tails on a table as he passed by. When he exited into the hallway above, he said to the gryphon grunt guarding the door, "Fetch a medic. Do just enough to keep the pony alive and not a bit more." From her bunk three floors above the dungeon, Gilda could hear Rainbow Dash's screams. Not even three dozen feet of stone could quiet such intense cries of agony. Gods, he's killing her... Gilda thought as rolled over, trying in vain to get some rest. Gilda lay with her eyes closed, trying to drown out the sound of Rainbow's screams. She was torn between feelings of despair at Rainbow's inhumane treatment and, much to her chagrin, relief that she had been forcibly relieved from the duty of having to inflict the torture. Gilda allowed herself to feel the full force of her emotional schism for a few minutes when she felt something his her thigh. She opened an eye, eagerly welcoming the distraction, to see a scroll lying on her bunk. She looked around, but didn't see anyone who could have placed it there; as far as she could tell, she was alone in the barracks. Gilda unrolled the scroll and began to read. I know you and Rainbow Dash were friends when she was a filly. I know you are reluctant to be a willing party to her continued captivity and abuse. I know that you want to help her but are unsure as to how to go about doing so without being caught and getting both of you executed. I can make help you. At 03:47 on the morning of the 12th, relieve the guard standing watch in her dungeon. Do not be late. This parchment is made of sugar. When you have read this message, eat it. Gilda read the small scroll once again to ensure that she hadn't misunderstood. That's...bizarre... she thought. She did want to help Rainbow, however, and if whomever it was who had written the note had a way to help, she'd play along. If worse came to worse and it ended up being one of her superiors' traps to test her loyalty, she could always try to play it off that she was going to apprehend the mysterious writer. Before 4 am, huh? Makes me wish I were a morning gryphon...Oh well. Guess I'll have to suck it up. At least it's tomorrow that this is supposed to go down. She could still hear Rainbow's screams, but knowing that she would soon get the opportunity to help Rainbow - Or die trying, she couldn't help but think - helped her to fall asleep despite the sound of her childhood friend's agony.