Darkness.


Darkness, and the faintest smell of something sweet. Almost floral, like the scent of fresh honeysuckle, but not quite. It was understated, though, and rather pleasantly so at that.


These two things were all that greeted Amaranthine as she woke up, blinking her eyes away from her deep, restful slumber. Being a thestral, it wasn't exactly surprising or disxoncerting to wake up to the dark, but this was different. It wasn't the soft and welcoming cool hues of her Princess' night flooding through her window's blinds, but the pitch black of a room with no light to be found. Something was wrong, that she knew. She knew full well she had fallen to sleep the day prior, in her room, in her bed, as Equestria's majority population began themselves to wake, and although she didn't know where was, she knew she shouldn't be here.


Then she realized, with no small degree of terror, that she couldn't move. She could feel a dull, warm, almost comforting tingle around her wrists and ankles, far unlike the cold and hard shackles she might have expected in this situation. Her eyes narrowed, and as her gaze shifted from.straight ahead to where she should have been able to see, she saw both her arms in full view, held out in what seemed to be a stock of magical nature, with a dull, pink glow that lit up just slightly her body, but nothing beyond. Oddly enough, despite the sight, her body didn't feel as if it were in any real position at all. It almost felt, rather, that her very form were floating in non existence. Nor air. Not even liquid. It was simply ... nothing.


Now she truly began to panic. This clearly wasn't a purely physical restraint. This wasn't something she could break out from. For all her physique and musculature, she was utterly powerless to magic, and so, even as the fear that gripped her heart, digging its wicked, black talons into her mind, she knew all she could do was to wait.


Although it was all but a few minutes, it felt more to Amarantnine like hours had passed. Her mimd was simply awash, swimmimg with innumerable, dark thoughts of what was to come - if anything were to come at all. How long would she even be here? Days, weeks? Months?


... Years?


Why, for what reason could there possibly be for her to be here? Kidnapped, kept in magical stasis, with nothing in sight but an endless black nothing? The only thoughts in her mind were those of horrible, unimaginable things to happen, and the slightest, dimmest flicker of hope of release. There was none of escape. Even a unicorn suppressed by a magic nullification ring could, with time, wear thin magical bonds, but Amaranthine was a thestral, and no amount of time, save the centuries length decay of this spell, would see to her freedom.


And so she waited, deciding it better for her very sanity to simply focus on other thoughts, despite the tug of ever looming dread the endless void reminded her of.


It was then, that she heard a voice. Distimctly feminine, sharp and almost regal in cadance, but soft and sickeningly sweet when it spoke.

From all around it seemed to echo, all the same directorless and from every direction, from both within her mind and without.

"My sincerest of apologies, my dear Amaranthine. I'm sure you must be so confused right now. But do not worry. You will understand in due time."


*God damn right I'm confused.* She roiled. The sheer condensation in the speaker's voice, who she could only assume to be that of a woman's, made the blood in her veins boil with ride, and her lips peel back in a vicious snarl. There was little more s*Fucking cunt.*


"Ah ah ah. Do see to yourself you keep that foul mood of yours under cheek. Such a temperament is so ... unbefitting for one of my future sales."


The response stopped Ama in her tracks. She hasn't spoken that - merely *thought* it. But given the complex magics and arcane mastery needed to create such an extradimensional space as she found herself in, it really shouldn't have surprised her. Whoever this mare was, she was clearly far more powerful than any unicorn she knew of, and such magucal prowess was certainly not to be underestimated, much less trifled with. There was, however, ome thing she didn't understand.


*Sale?^


"Oh yes. I'll make it as simple as I can for you, but you see, I happen to find my living off finding and breaking certain people my clients wish me to. It's a long and arduous process, I'm sure you can imagine, but ponies will pay top dollar for a mindbroken sex slave. There's a whole underground industry for it, really , and well ...'


The voice chuckled.


"I happen to be one of the leading ponies in the business."


Ama's blood ran cold. Sex slave? An entire industry? No, no. This shouldn't be possible. But it was, and there was nothing she could do about it. Not here - not now. Knowing, however, that she could communicate with this person, even if it was through both conscious and unconscious thought, gave her the sense of some small degree of control over the situation. Perhaps, however remote the chance, she could convince whoever this woman was to set her free.


The voice laughed, loud and rapturous, as if it were one od the funniest things she had ever heard.


"Let you go? Oh, my dear, sweet darling. There is nothing you can possibly offer me to grant you your freedom. My client has already offered several thousand for you, and I fully intend to see it through. Besides, what would I tell them were I to show for nothing? That I somehow managed to let a simple bat pony to escape, despite all my magic. Oh no no no. Not only would I be wasting my time on someone like you, with nothing to give but a flimsy promise of secrecy and far less money than I would get otherwise, but I would be absolutely humiliating myself! I would be laughed out of the industry for such incompetence. What a sillymare."