Rainbow Dash awoke in a daze. Her captor had made it quite certain that he wanted his prisoner in good health. For what, she had no idea. She had been stunned with a spell, so he had to be a unicorn, or perhaps an alicorn? Either way, what mattered was that she was suspended by shackles within the very center of a circular room. Her bonds positioned so that her forelegs were held above her head and her hind legs beneath and slightly behind her. They were pulled tight enough keep her from swinging, but loose enough to allow her to move a little. A pony of average height standing in front of her would be looking directly at her stomach.
Her cell was locked by a thick iron door with window slits near the top. A lantern was mounted on each side of it, so at least she could see. Her head became less dizzy so she could focus better now. She wished she couldn’t. The scene before her made her want to vomit, that is, if she had anything in her to vomit. Decaying corpses of ponies hung from the room’s five other shackles. Two were nothing more than bones connected by trace amounts of skin and cartilage, these were earth ponies. Another one was simply a pile of bones beneath the irons, and Rainbow could make out a unicorn horn within the pile. The chains closest to her held not a corpse, but another living, breathing pony. A yellow pegasus with a pink mane and tail.
“Fluttershy?” Her voice was hoarse; the name came out as a croak. The other pony stirred, revealing the cutie mark on her flank: three pink butterflies. This other pegasus next to Rainbow Dash was, without a doubt, Fluttershy. The cyan pony felt sorrowful for her friend, and yet joyful at the same time; she wasn’t going to die alone. But no, it wouldn’t come to that, would it? Rainbow prayed with all her heart that their friends would come to rescue them.
The door swung open, permitting a cloaked and hooded figure, and Rainbow knew that her time was ticking.