//------------------------------//
// Raisins 
// Story: The Taste Of Madness 
// by naturalbornderpy 
//------------------------------//

Glisten Glow could hear the screams the moment he was led past the second set of heavily locked doors. His new superior—Sharp Sword—pushed past each level of thicker and thicker security with a stoic expression of grim determination. He must’ve been used to the sounds by now. Not Glisten Glow, though. Not when it was his first day as guard.
                
When Sharp Sword locked the latest steel door behind them, he stopped in front of Glisten Glow and sighed. “The only place left is Sombra’s cell—the only cell in the whole place, actually.”
                
“A whole prison built for only one inmate?” Glisten Glow questioned lightly.
                
“Pinkie Pie’s the one that set this place up,” Sharp Sword replied dryly, “and I don’t think any of us want Sombra back out on the streets—especially her. She’s also set up a few house rules while keeping Sombra under lock and key.” He eyed up Glisten Glow’s pointy horn for a moment. “Having a horn might make things a bit more difficult for you; I thought I should warn you now.”
                
Glisten Glow was taken back by that. “Why? Does Sombra have some effect on unicorns not publicly known about?”
                
“Not exactly,” Sharp Sword said bluntly, before another round of screams pulled at their attention.
                
“Does it taste like pizza sauce? Or… watermelon? IS IT WATERMELON!? Someone give me an answer before I put a curse on you all!”
                
Glisten Glow couldn’t help but tremble where he stood. “Is that… is that him?”
                
Sharp Sword nodded solemnly. “The one and only—driven stark raving mad by this point in time. All he’s done in the past year is scream at guards and beg us to come talk to him.”
                
“Talk to him about what?”
                
“What his horn tastes like,” Sharp Sword replied, as if it was the simplest notion in the land.
                
Slowly, Glisten Glow broke out into a goofy grin. “Oh, I get it! Test out the rookie. I understand. I’ll play along.”
                
Sharp Sword shook his head. “Nothing to play along to, I’m afraid. Close to a year ago—when this whole war came to a close—Pinkie Pie met with Sombra a single time and told him the various flavors of other unicorn and alicorn horns. Then, without warning, she gave Sombra’s horn a lick, nodded a single time and then left, never to speak to him again. At first Sombra laughed it off, thinking it to be a trick, but it’s become clear that Pinkie Pie messed him up something fierce. Now he needs to know what his horn tastes like. And above all, we’re not supposed to help him answer that question.”
                
He pointed at Glisten Glow. “Here’s the rules: keep your tongue to yourself. I don’t just mean while speaking to guards above you, either. Sombra will try his very best to have you lick his horn and tell him what it tastes like. Final rule: no matter what—even if you do accidentally lick his horn for some reason—don’t tell him what it tastes like. Sombra thinks Pinkie Pie filled us in before she left, but that just isn’t the truth. Only she knows Sombra’s true flavor… and I think she plans on keeping it that way.”
                
Sharp Sword made to continue down the hall, but Glisten Glow stopped him with a hoof. “You said all unicorn horns have a flavor?”
                
Sharp Sword gave a nod. “Yep. Pinkie Pie basically wrote the book on the subject—‘Horn Flavors Of The Rich And Famous’. Even had Queen Chrysalis in there.”
                
Glisten Glow’s eyes widened.
                
“Black licorice,” Sharp Sword informed him before he even asked. “Some say Pinkie Pie cut her tongue learning that little, juicy tidbit.”
                
Suddenly, Glisten Glow’s cheeks reddened. “I’ve never been into the whole horn licking thing before… it’s all so new to me, really, but… now that I know each horn has a different flavor…” He let the sentence hang in the air between them awkwardly.
                
Sharp Sword furrowed his brows at that. “You want me to lick your horn, don’t you?”
                
Glisten Glow gulped dryly. “Well… I mean…”
                
Sharp Sword grinned good-naturedly. “Why didn’t you say so earlier?” Then he leaned forward to give Glisten Glow’s horn a dainty lick, returning his tongue to his mouth to figure out its precise flavor. “Coconut,” he informed him.
                
“Really?”
                
Sharp Sword chewed on his tongue a moment. “Wait… actually, it’s toasted coconut.”
                
Glisten Glow smiled brightly. “Awesome! I love coconut!”
                
Sombra continued to shriek from the cell up ahead.

“Apples? Chili peppers? Those little cinnamon heart candies they give out around Heart and Hooves day? I KNOW someone can hear me!”
                
“Ready to go meet him?” Sharp Sword asked.
                
Glisten Glow nodded, even if by that moment he felt like turning tail and running for it.
                
They walked the last few meters down the hall in silence, stopping a few solid feet in front of the bars. Sombra’s cell was only a little wider than a child’s bedroom, with a thin mattress and cot, and a stainless steel toilet and sink. At the moment, the disheveled and wildly erratic ex-King was in the process of trying to stretch his tongue out as far as he could before slapping it onto his face in an effort to reach his horn. Sadly, the tip of his tongue barely even reached his nostrils.
                
When he caught sight of the two guards outside his cell, he halted what he was doing in an instant and rushed towards them. Without pause, he slammed into the bars and reached out with both forelegs; his reach still several feet short from where the two guards stood.
                
“Dude! Bro! Pal! Friend! Buddy! Cohort! Chum! Comrade!” Sombra exclaimed loudly. “Help a stallion out, okay? I just need you to—”
                
Sharp Sword knocked his baton against the bars, cutting Sombra’s sentence short. He growled at him, “For the last time, Sombra, not a single guard in this place is your dude or bro or pal or friend or buddy or cohort or however else you want to put it!”
                
Eyes whirling frantically, Sombra eventually caught sight of the new guard. “Hey! Hey, you! Unicorn! Let me borrow your tongue! Just for a moment! I promise I’ll give it right back after I’m done with it!”
                
Glisten Glow surprised them with a snicker. “Oh, I’d better not. The last time someone asked to borrow my tongue, I didn’t think I’d ever hear the end of it.”
                 
Sombra gripped the bars tightly, shoving his head through them as far as it would go. “I promise I won’t make it weird,” he whispered to him eerily. “I’ll just close my eyes… and you’ll close your eyes… and you’ll stick out your tongue and—”
                
Sharp Sword gave the bars another sharp smack with his baton. “Knock it off, Sombra.”
                
Sombra continued on unperturbed. “I know what I’ll do! I’ll whistle while you do it! No one does anything weird while they’re whistling! Just two consensual adults giving each others’ horns a quick lick—nothing weird about that! No, sir!”
                
“It’s still kinda weird,” Glisten Glow explained delicately. “You gotta admit.”
                
Sombra shot a hoof into the air. “But my horn might taste delicious! You’d really want to miss out on that?”
                
“But what happens if it tastes like raisins?”
                
Growling deep within his throat, Sombra spat a wad of phlegm onto the floor. “Do not go besmirching my good name! The great King Sombra tasting like raisins? How you wound me, sir. I’m sure my horn tastes like something far grander—like red velvet cake! Everyone likes red velvet cake!”
                
Glisten Glow shook his head at the poor creature. “Why is it so important that you know? It’s driven you mad; can’t you see that by now?”
                
Sombra took a step back into his cell, facing the walls filled from floor to ceiling with scratch marks spelling out his anguish and misery: “WHAT DOES IT TASTE LIKE?” “RED PEPPERS?” “TOMATOES?” “RED ONIONS?” “TABASCO SAUCE?” they read in jagged print.
                
Then, with tears in the corner of his eyes, he turned back to them, his voice merely a whisper. “Can you possibly imagine having a part of your body that might taste like anything in the world, but one that you couldn’t reach yourself? A limb of your own you’d love to just give a little lick, but have to rely on others to do it for you? Everyday I can’t help but think about it. Everyday I see my horn out of the corner of my eyes. Is it sweet? Salty? I don’t know. I can’t know.”
                
He raised a jittering hoof to point at them sharply. “I’m not the monster here! Oh, don’t you dare think of me as that! It is all of you that are the monsters! All of you sick, twisted guards that refuse to give my horn a lick and then tell me how it tastes!” He started to shriek, “It’s inhumane, I tell you! Inhumane!”
                
“And yet you wouldn’t consider slavery and murder as inhumane?”
                
Pinkie Pie surprised all three of them by appearing out of nowhere outside of his cell. She was clad in her usual black-and-grey uniform with her mane and tail styled in short, flat curves. She eyed up Sombra with little enthusiasm.
                
“Open his cell,” she spoke softly.
                
Sharp Sword grimaced. “But… we were told never to—”
                
“I was the one that gave that original order,” Pinkie Pie told him, “and now I’m giving you a new order. Open his cell and be prepared to react should something go awry.”
                
Finding nothing left to say, Sharp Sword snatched a ring of keys from his belt to shove into the lock on Sombra’s cell. The rusted bars shoved aside noisily; Pinkie Pie took a step inside his cell as Sombra took two steps back.
                
Now Sombra appeared more nervous than insane.
                
“What are you… what do you—” was as far as he got, before Pinkie Pie slammed two hard hooves onto the sides of his muzzle to hold his head still. Then bouncing like a spring, Pinkie Pie leapt upwards and slid her tongue along the tip of his horn, seemingly getting no satisfaction from the act.
                
Once she was done, she let him fall to the floor as she flicked a bit of dirt off her shoulders. “Just as I remembered it…” she muttered to herself.
                
Sombra crawled on his knees towards her. “Remember what? What did it taste like? Tell me! Oh, for the love of Celestia, just tell me what I taste like!”
                
“Disappointment,” Pinkie Pie whispered to him. “Utter disappointment.”
                
“What?” Sombra moaned aloud, his jaw going slack. “No… no!”
                
Pinkie Pie stared at him unmoving. “It’s been one year to the day that I first licked your horn—and even today it still tastes the same.”
                
Sombra was now visibly blubbering all over himself. “No! You’re wrong! Give it another lick! Try it again! That can’t be! That’s not fair! That’s just not fair!”
                
Pinkie Pie shook her head gravely. “Bitter… hateful… sour. Most of all… disappointing. What did you honestly think you’d taste like, Sombra? Most of the unicorns I’ve met in my life have been very sweet ponies, so it only made sense their horns matched the pony inside. But you? You’re evil—plain and simple. And that evilness has now infused itself onto your horn for all time.”
                
Sprawled out on the floor, Sombra hitched in a breath, his eyes swimming with tears. “But I wanted to taste good! It isn’t fair! Why does everything bad have to happen to me!?”
                
Pinkie Pie showed her back to him and left his cell. Only once the doors slammed shut behind her, did she turn back around and hang a hoof on the bars.
                
“Actually,” she spoke, “I lied. You taste like fresh cut strawberries. Now stop asking my guards to lick you.”
                
After hearing the news, Sombra rushed towards the bars to grip Pinkie Pie’s hoof. “You speak the truth? Honestly?”
                
Pinkie Pie answered with a nod.
                
The next moment, Sombra leapt up into the air, cheering to himself. “I knew it! I just knew that deep down the great King Sombra was a little bit fruity!” He dried his eyes and faced Pinkie Pie again. “Could we dip my horn in water and see if it could make fruit punch?”
                
Pinkie Pie shrugged absently. “Sure. Why not. Not like this prison does all that much having only one inmate to look after and a hundred and twenty full time guards.”
                
Again, Sombra cheered, pumping his hooves into the air. Meanwhile, Sharp Sword and Glisten Glow continued to watch on gamely, in a mixture of both wonder and unease. Later, they would both enjoy an ice-cold glass of Sombra’s very own “Crystal Empire Punch”, which would go down in history as being even better than Luna’s very own, “Electric Blue Raspberry Blast.”
                
Pinkie Pie’s prison has been lick-free ever since.