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Her Maze Game

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Thatguyintherobes

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"Tick-tock, clip-clop..."

The equine hurled herself down the corridor, hooves pounding the worn carpet as swiftly as her heart struggled against her ribcage, beating so forcibly that every pulse rocked painfully through her torso. Not too long ago, the mansion may have been beautiful, but now it was a decrepit wreck, tapestries torn and strewn across the hallways in a sad remnant of the splendour that had once been. But that had been before and this was now. This was her present and this was her hell.

She could only suppose that Alexia had gotten her paws on it and, well...that had been the end of that. Pinning her ears down to her skull, the black mare wheezed as she whipped around a corner and tumbled through a doorway into a living room filled to the brim with what could only be described as clutter. The smell of musty antique furniture, deep-set rot and mouse droppings crowded in on her from all sides. The wood of the chairs and side tables, framing the yawning fireplace, had been chipped away in places, snarling scars screaming from dark knots in the natural grain. The mare clamped her paw over her muzzle and screamed into it, muffling the noise the best she could as the whites of her eyes showed, fear ruling her mind.

Not the exit. Still no way out. The main staircase - where was the goddamned main staircase?

"Tick-tock, clip-clop... Are you still running from me, my darling?"

How the accursed red panda, the twisted mind behind the whole ordeal and the programme itself, had wound speakers into the entire mansion, she would never know. She wasn't even sure she'd care to know. It didn't matter. None of it mattered besides escaping.

Fear seized her heart, clutching and wrenching it viciously as if to tear it clean and bloodied from her chest. She should never have signed those papers. Was the extra money worth the terror? Was any of it worth the fear and anxiety and the sleepless nights that were sure to follow the experience? The equine growled and thumped her paw into the wall, hanging her head as the dull thump echoed through the room without carpet or curtains to cushion the noise.

Night gleamed through the dirtied window panes, but she didn't pay them any mind. She'd already tried every window she'd come across and found them impossible to open and futile to even attempt breaking, despite initial impressions. Their fragile appearance was all a farce intended to make her increasingly desperate.

Money... Was that what everything came down to these days? Yet she needed a place to sleep too and the testing programme had offered her exactly that. A night of terror to experience what this psychotic new drug, combined with a state of the art virtual reality game, could do to her. Was it even safe? Mary whimpered. She was starting to doubt even that. Who would ever find her in the mansion in the middle of nowhere if she was to die there of a heart attack from sheer fright alone?

Well, they wouldn't be able to sell their game, at least, so that would be something. The equine's breath raked sorely through her lungs and she leaned over, wheezing harshly. If she even managed to get to the doors, wouldn't they be locked? If she got into too much danger, would they drag her from the mansion by her tail? She had a word she could scream if it all got too much for her, but that niggling voice in the back of her mind told her nobody was coming for her - that there was no one who cared to hear her scream. That her shrieks had become entertainment for whatever audience was watching her at that very moment.

Were they even orchestrating her demise? The speakers crackled.

"Don't you want to play, Mary? Because I so very much want to play with you."

"No. No, I don't."

Her whisper came out in a hiss and Mary dug her hoofed fingertips into her palm until they bit, paw shaking. The sliver of pain grounded her, however, reminding her of what she needed to do, what she had to do if she wanted to survive.

Clenching her jaw, the equine darted to the other side of the room, scrambling over a chest that rocked hollowly as if filled with nothing but air. She snorted. Was everything in the mansion just left there for show? If they really wanted to make a go of the horror game, they should have at least given it some weight. Leaving it empty just made it so...

She paused, her back to the wall, staring at the chest. Would her body fit in there? Her eyes bulged. They could lock her up in the chest and dump her body out in the lake, right in the middle of nowhere. Mary pressed her fetlocks together, white feather flowing down raggedly over her hooves, all torn up from fleeing through the mansion. How long as she even been in there? One thought after the other whirled through her mind as the chest seemed to grow larger and larger before her, yawning open as if it yearned to swallow her up, never to be found again.

No one knew where she was. It would be so easy to end her life. Sinking down, she half-squatted with her back pressed to the wall, as if protecting one side of her body could make her situation somehow less of a dead-end predicament. There was no way. It was all an elaborate scheme to kill her - it had to be! Mary whimpered, teeth chattering as a deep chill set into her bones.

It was hopeless. She closed her eyes.

No... No! She had to get up - stand up! She had to keep running! The equine snapped at thin air, steeling herself as her legs shook nearly too badly to even stand in place. It was the only way!

Now!

"I'm coming for you, Mary... You can run, but those little hooves of yours can't hide from me." Alexia chuckled, a disembodied voice wrapping itself around Mary's throat, forcing her to listen. "I am everywhere. And this game of cat and mouse is coming to an end, my dearest one."

The voice echoed down the hallway, bouncing eerily off the walls as Mary threw her body back into motion, leaving the room that had been nothing more than a place to catch her breath. Pain ached up her legs - how long had she been running? - but she couldn't stop again, wouldn't stop again. Only lit by lanterns spaced at intervals, shadows flickered and jumped around the hallway, casting only half of it into light at any one time. She shied from the shadows, nickering fearfully before she could even stop herself from letting the sound out.

"I know everything, Mary," the voice crooned, rolling seductively through the long, empty halls of the mansion as if she was everywhere at once. "I hear you... I smell you. Your fear... It is delicious. Every drop better than a fine wine."

Mary threw herself into the open, the main staircase pouring down into a darkness as deep as her black coat before her very hooves. Her heart leapt.

"I can't wait to taste your blood on my lips."

The voice didn't come from the speaker system.

Mary didn't look - couldn't look. An arm swung around her chest and something soft pressed to the side of her muzzle, smelling strongly of chemical that she could not place in her terror. She wrenched her body back and forth, using her greater size - or so she seemed to have the upper hand - to swing the red panda from side to side, even as her arm tightened around Mary's chest. She snorted and ducked her head, throwing her hooves back in a buck like what her ancestors could demonstrate in four-legged fashion, bringing them both to the scratchy carpet.

It pressed her muzzle, the rag in Alexia's paw flung out to the side, and she shrieked in premature triumph, sparing the panda a glance back over her shoulder as she leapt to her hooves. Alexia rolled onto her back, gasping for lost breath, but the wicked little smile never once left her lips.

Mary didn't wait to see how long it took for the red panda to get up, bushy tail crushed beneath her body. Squealing wildly, she plummeted down the stairs, tumbling head over hooves in her haste to flee the being that was surely about to nip at her hooves once more, desperate for a taste of her blood. She snorted, time seeming to slow around her as she lay there in a crumpled heap halfway down, chest wracked with coughs and wheezes, nostrils flaring viciously. Would the programme allow them to take blood from her, cause her bodily harm? She really should have read those papers at least a little more thoroughly. Signing a name could be done by absolutely anyone.

Even a fool.

"Oh,Mary, you really should look where you're going. Someone may think you're in trouble."

There she was again - standing over her like the cliché angel of death. Alexia grasped Mary by her mane and, not without a throaty grunt, hauled her to her hooves, ripping hair from its roots. The mare shuddered reflexively, though it was not from the pain - her mane had no nerve endings, like any other equine - but the humiliation of the situation. She was not to be manhandled like a foal! Or bossed around like one either. She clenched her jaw, a muscle twitching right at the corner of her lips. She'd win the game and get out with a smile on her muzzle too.

Alexia smirked, oblivious to Mary's flickering thoughts and inner monologue. As much as she controlled the equine in the bounds of the psychotic game, she had no idea what really made the equine tick. And perhaps that was where Mary could gain the true upper hand and make good her escape.

She could not give up hope just yet.

"And we wouldn't want anyone to think that you're in trouble now, would we? That would spoil our game."

"What game do you call this? This isn't fun - not anymore. Get the hell off me!" Mary screamed, flinging her fists at the red panda who giggled and held her at arm's reach, easily holding the tired equine at bay. "I don't want any fucking part in this - not anymore! Get me the hell out of here! I want to leave!"

Alexia grinned, her violet eyes narrowing.

"Mary, Mary, Mary..."

Muscles tensing, she thrust the horse backwards down the final few stairs, off-balance and hopelessly teetering. She screamed shrilly as she fell, cracking her arm on a stair and landing in a tangled heap of her own limbs at the bottom.

Alexia followed at a leisurely stroll, taking her time as Mary groaned and picked herself up, blood staining her lips from where she'd bitten her tongue. The red panda smirked and shook her head slowly back and forth, like a parent disappointed with an unruly cub. Mary growled under her breath and faced the panda head-on, paws trembling and clenched into fists that she wasn't even sure she'd have the stomach to sink into that bitch's grinning muzzle.

"You're not going anywhere."

Mary spat.

"Go to hell."

Even though she knew it was hopeless, she raced for the double doors at the entrance, crashing into them with the full force of her body weight. She hammered and pounded on them with her bare fists, screaming and hollering with all the breath left in her lungs that she wanted to leave, that she was signing off the trial, that she had to get the hell out of there right now. But no one was there to listen and, as the voice in the back of her mind had claimed when she had first gone for the door, the knobs refused to turn, locked from the outside. She sobbed and whirled to flee, only to crash straight into the panda with blood mingling with saliva on her teeth.

"Too late, little pony."

An arm pressed over her throat as Alexia held Mary to her chest, lifting her hooves from the floor. She was only off the carpet for the briefest of moments, but it was long enough for panic to set in and for Alexia to press the silken rag over her nose and lips. She struggled, sucking in a deep breath before she realised that the arm wasn't crushing her windpipe at all, but the rag was the true threat.

In the last moments before she lost consciousness, she noticed every detail about that rag. Unfolded, it tickled the edges of her flaring nostrils, wrinkled as if it had been screwed up into a ball for some time, perhaps shoved into the red panda's pocket. Silken like the cover of a bed all made up for an intimate affair, the crimson sheen burned into her eyes as her vision wavered, room tilting sickening to the side as she was borne down, down, down to the floor. The panda's knee pressed between her shoulder blades.

And then everything went dark.

"Nighty-night, sweetie-hooves."

*

When Mary swam back to consciousness, everything had changed. Her head pounded as if she had the worst hangover of her life and, for the briefest of moments, she thought she was home in her own bed. A mattress and blanket were certainly behind her back, warming her from one side, even as a cool breeze played over her bare breasts.

She stiffened. She was naked. She wouldn't have been lying on her bed at home without any clothes on. Not now. Not after what she remembered. Mary ground her teeth together, unwilling to open her eyes. If only she could have been home, safe and sound for once in her sorry life... But that would have been too easy. That would have meant that the nightmare had ended. And it was far from over.

"Rise and shine, darling. We have so many games to play."

The equine struggled, arms and legs splayed out uncomfortably in a position she would never have been caught sleeping in. Steel cuffs clinked against the chains holding her lips stretched out as she thrashed - or at least tried to. Fastened to O-rings in the wall - she could just about catch a glimpse of them when she tilted her head all the way back - above a forlorn, plain mattress, they spoke of her doom. Of course, she was naked, her bare breasts exposed to the air of the windowless room, pussy lips hopelessly vulnerable with her legs in such a position.

There was little the mare could do, words her only weapon. Grinding her teeth, the mare pinned her ears back and threw a look with all the poison she could muster at the smirking red panda.

"You've played your fucking games with me - now let me go! Haven't I made it clear that I want out of this game already? You knocked me out! What did you even use on me?"

Alexia's eyes darkened and she latched onto a handful of the equine's hair, yanking her head up cruelly. The mare squealed as it was nearly ripped from her skull, skin pulling and muscles shooting through with pain as she was manhandled like nothing more than a rag doll.

"Shut up," Alexia hissed, tail stiff and spiky. "I've had just about enough of your bullshit and that fat gob of yours mouthing off. We play by my fucking rules, if you're gonna still think this is a game. You're clearly stupid enough to not realise that there is no goddamn escape for you now."

Mary shook her head, refusing to hear what she should have already understood.

"Didn't you hear me? Get away from me!"

She didn't see the paw coming, only felt the flat of Alexia's palm as it cracked into the side of her face. Snapping her head neatly to the side, the equine's head rang, a low groan rolling from her lips.

"Didn't like that much now, did you, bitch?" Alexia snarled, disappearing from sight as Mary fought to regain her senses, nausea flipping her stomach over and over. "Maybe now you'll fucking see some sense and play with me. Not that you have a choice, but it'll make it easier on you if you give in to what's happening, every bit that I'm going to draw from you, slowly and painfully. You're going to feel everything."

She smirked, collecting a knife from the foot of the mattress and twirling it between her palm and the fingers of the opposite hand.

"Don't get me wrong now, dearie. I prefer when they fight. You'll probably still fight me every step, won't you? That'll be...fun."

Closing her eyes, Mary tried to take herself away, pretend it wasn't happening. Maybe if she fell unconscious again, she wouldn't have to go through whatever that sick bitch had planned for her. The line between reality and fantasy had blurred far earlier in the night and she was starting to believe her tormentor.

Maybe she wasn't actually going to get out of the mansion.

Maybe she was going to die there.

Maybe she was another name on a paper denoting failed test subjects.

The equine gnawed her lip until it bled, crimson beads trickling down her bottom lip and over her chin.

"How sweet of you... You're making yourself bleed for me."

Mary bounced on the balls of her hind paws, knife falling with a loud clatter to the floor.

"Don't mind if I do, do you?"

Diving on top of the bound mare, she lunged for her face, grabbing it in one paw to hold her still as she sucked the blood from her bottom lip with the thirst of a vampire. Struggling weakly against her, there was little Mary could do, but subject herself to the humiliation as Alexia slipped her tongue into her mouth, kissing her deeply even if it was not returned. Closing her eyes, Mary ignored the tears on her own cheeks, thinking of anything but the shameful heat of her tormentor pinning her down. Alexia pulled back, eyes half-lidded with a combination of sick lust and...something more that churned the pit of Mary's stomach. Something so dark that she didn't want to give a name to it herself.

There was something very wrong with the red panda's psyche. Something broken inside her that could not be fixed.

"You have so much bark, once I tie you down... You're all the same. Fucking whores, good for nothing but the games of someone with more intelligence than them."

Alexia grimaced, pinching a nipple between her finger and thumb as if curious to see what the equine's reaction would be. Mary groaned and twisted her head away as the bite of pain deepened into an aching throb, not wanting to give the vicious female the satisfaction of seeing her vocalise her pain. She couldn't give in - she had to fight it. She had to fight her every step of the way.

No matter how hopeless it seemed. Alexia smirked, though the twisted mirth did not reach her eyes.

"You think that this is the end of it, that, once you're unconscious, that's it, game over - you can go home. Honey-whore, I'll tell you now that that's not how it goes. That's not how it goes one bit."

She pushed back, grabbing something from the bottom of the mattress that Mary could not see; even though she craned her neck she wasn't even sure she wanted to see. Secreting it away, out of sight, the red panda crawled between her whorishly spread thighs and sat back on her haunches, eyes glittering.

Something cool and rounded touched her pussy and she reflexively jerked away from it, legs straining as she struggled against the chains to try to close them. The chains locking her fetlocks down, however, were sunk into the floor and the dildo slammed brutally into her cunt as Alexia drove it deep with the flat of her paw. The red panda laughed, holding her stomach, as the equine howled, fists clenched and head twisting back and forth on the bare mattress.

Sweat darkened patches on her coat and her nostrils flared for breath that would not come as she wanted it to, Alexia taking obvious pleasure in her distress as she worked the dildo crudely in and out of her pussy without any semblance of finesse. Layered with tiny knobs and ridges, it pulled at her unprepared passage, forcing her body to become aroused even as her mind screamed and thrashed. Mary cried openly, tears streaking her muzzle as she struggled, knowing how hopeless it was, to get her hooves beneath her body - to push away, somehow.

"You can enjoy it too," Alexia whispered, her voice taking on a feverish tone. "But you play my game the way I want to play it. Maybe you'll come back to me for more games."

"I don't want anything...unff...to do with your games."

Mary's voice wavered, the panda's thumb brushing her clit, engorged with blood as she was almost clinically stimulated.

"What were you going to use the money for anyway, whoring yourself out? Drugs? All of you are the fucking same when it comes right down to the fucking bare bones of it."

The panda's expression darkened and she struck the equine across the face again, snapping her head to the side. Ears ringing, Mary tried to regain herself, only to find her muzzle flung back to the other side of the mattress. And so the cycle continued, spittle flying across her muzzle as the red panda's lungs expanded with screams, eyes flashing, wild and unhinged.

"And when I get you in here, what do you do? You fucking think you're better than me! You think you call all the fucking shots, don't you?"

Alexia's lips twisted, nose wrinkling as if there was a foul smell before it, digging her fingers into the corners of the equine's mouth to force her to gape. Mary's chest heaved, nipples pert in the cold air as she gasped, eyes rimmed with white. The dildo shifted in her pussy, held in to the hilt with the panda's knee. Alexia leaned in close and spat in her mouth.

"Well, you fucking crack-whore, you ain't nothing in here, except mine. You can count that yours - but that's all you'll ever again be getting! My toy! Mine to use and abuse in here! You think anyone's gonna come looking for a cunt like you? Of course fucking not. You're useless. No one cares that you're gone."

Her nails raked down the flat top of the equine's muzzle and Mary hissed as three red lines opened up, blood trickling down the side of her face. It took a several further blows, each more vicious than the last, to satisfy the red panda, at least for the moment as Mary's head lolled on the mattress, rolling senselessly from side to side as if she didn't even have the strength anymore to hold up her own head. Her ears rang, twitching madly to catch noises that weren't even there, and Alexia ran her claws - sharpened, the mare dully realised - down her stomach, opening fresh lines of oozing blood. Her life force spilled out, staining her fur, yet the sting of pain gave her something else to focus on besides the throbbing in her skull.

"Making you cry was too easy, bitch."

Yanking the dildo from the mare's sore cunt in a splatter of ill-gained sexual juices, the red panda grinned, hair a tangled mess around her matted muzzle. Mary barely moved, one eye closed as a bruise the colour of old blood swelled, puffing out her eyelids. Her upper lip was swollen and a tooth clearly loose at the side of her mouth, tongue streaked with blood from where she had bitten it.

Alexia purred at her handiwork, sparing a quick, sharp slap for the equine's flushed cunt. Mary grunted, breath hitching as her shoulders shuddered. It was lighter than the blows that had rained down on her head and muzzle and she bore it well, every muscle in her body hard with tension as the red panda giggled madly.

"Let's hear you wail for me."

Digging her paw beneath the mare's buttocks, Alexia hauled her half up from the bed, pressing the somewhat slickened dildo to her anal ring. Mary twisted a moment too late - the knobbly rod was already ramming into her tail hole. She howled and, as the red panda had wanted, wailed for her to stop, words blending into tears, blubbering for anything, anything to end the torment. The game wasn't fun anymore, had never been fun. And she'd do anything - anything! - for everything to just stop.

Only, Alexia wasn't interested in letting her victim go just yet. She had too many games left to play. Perhaps the equine would realise, at some point, that the only game she was in anymore was Alexia's. Or perhaps she would be slow like all the others. The thick ones never lasted very long.

Alexia frowned, shaking her head slowly as if in disappointment.

"Huh, tight fit. Maybe you're not so much of a whore as you made yourself out to be," Alexia taunted her, working the dildo roughly into her tail hole.

The dildo was not the end of it - that would have been too easy. As the equine screamed and pleaded for her to stop, her virgin tail hole plundered and stretched for progressively larger, cruder toys, Alexia only seemed to enjoy herself more. Swaying between barefaced anger and wicked glee, her voice rose to meet Mary's in pitch as the mare cried and sobbed and begged to be set free, although her needs would never be taken into account. She was only there to serve the twisted needs of the game trial, to see just how much a creature could take - maybe before they were driven mad.

As jagged-edged clamps bit into her nipples, Mary knew she was already far beyond that limit of madness that would have been acceptable as she arched and shrieked for her captor. Tightened beyond anything she would have borne under normal arousal, the mare hurled her body back and worth, sending the chains shaking and dancing, screaming until her throat was raw and she had no more tears left to give.

All through her torture, the red panda smiled serenely. That was, if she wasn't spitting in her face and hurling abuse. The two sides of Alexia blended together into one monster as Mary failed to tell one moment from the next, pain and humiliation rolling on and on and on into the depths of night and morning. How long had it been? There was no way to tell. There was no way to escape what had captured her.

She was lost to all.

Only when the mare finally lay broken and mumbling incoherently on the mattress, flinching from the next imagined torture, did Alexia sit back, drinking in the sight of her with a bounce that could only have been pure, unadulterated glee.

"You've been fun, Mary... Time to wake up now."

The rag pressed to her face again and her world was nothing but silk, the cloth swamping her senses until darkness claimed her once more.

*

"I'm not sure I can give you any positive feedback as to how trialling the game went."

Mary shifted uncomfortably in her seat, crossing one fetlock over the other in the debriefing room, clinically white with only one window directly opposite the door. A grey day groaned outside, dark clouds threatening rain. The trial had been deemed a success by the team, though she could. When she'd woken, not a hair on her body had appeared harmed, the torture of her experience wiped from her physical being if not her mind.

Those scars burned deep.

"Why? What happened?"

Alexia sat poised behind a wooden desk, pen held at the ready. Her crisp, white blouse had clearly only been laundered that morning and her hair was neatly pinned back in a bun. Mary shuddered. The red panda was a far cry from the dissociative apparition of torture she'd been in the mansion, yet still struck fear into the equine's heart, curling despair sending her stomach sinking right down to her hooves.

Screw virtual reality. The real world was sadistic enough as it was.

"It's just..." She struggled to find the words. "Who would even like that sort of game? You didn't explain it properly to me in the briefing. If I'd known that's what you were going for... Well, I'd've never fucking signed up for that shit, I tell you!"

Breathing heavily, she folded her arms and turned away, muzzle heated and the insides of her ears darker from embarrassment. Had others been able to bear the torture? Would they have wanted to? She did not know and, if she was completely honest with herself, didn't want to know either.

Alexia straightened, removing the glasses from her muzzle and setting them down on the desk before her with a sharp clack of metal on wood.

"Oh, honey. Did you think our little game was done?"

Her lips curved up into that familiar smirk.

Mary froze, heart missing a beat for all the wrong reasons. The light in the room seemed to take on a darker tint still, birdsong suddenly dying in the grey beyond the window. She sucked in a breath, pushing down the fear that threatened, once again, to claim her.

"Yes... I completed the game. I went through your torture. I'm done with it...aren't I?"

Alexia grinned and shook her head slowly, eyes taking a look of abject pity.

"There was no game. There has never been a game." Her eyes narrowed, fingers pressed together in a steeple beneath her chin. "There's only you and me, filly. And that's all there's going to be in your life now. You and me. Together."

One by one, the little pains of her torture came back, the biting ache of her nipples, nearly wrenched from her chest, the pounding headache, her puffy eye and lip and the unforgivable soreness in her cunt and tail hole. Mary held onto the chair, fingers digging into the hard wood as if it would be her salvation. Yet there was no escape for her - there never had been. Her gaze swung instinctively to the doorway, but Alexia merely laughed, the sound hollow and without any semblance of true mirth.

"Oh, you don't want to be doing that now. You're going to love everything we're going to do together, trust me."

The red panda tapped a claw on the table as the equine's heart pounded, leaping for the door regardless of the fact that she knew in her gut that it would be locked. There was no one to rescue her as the virtual and real world overlapped, intertwined inexplicable in endless torture.

"Everything's a game, sweetie. My game. Always mine."

She stood, sliding a large knife from the underside of the table with a 'shick' of metal being unsheathed. Mary slammed her fists into the door, blood roaring in her ears, but the gesture was futile, even if it felt better to make a pretence at escape.

The red panda smirked, touching the blade to the corner of her own lips.

"Or, at least, I'm going to love every second of what I'm going to do to you."

The equine teetered, suddenly off-balance as the room lurched beneath her hooves. Alexia giggled and followed, the blade in one paw and that beautifully silken rag in the other, as the mare crashed to the floor, cheek pressed to the coarse, office-brand carpet. Mary blinked, fingers twitching, but otherwise no sign of life rising to her limbs. As softly as a lover's first kiss, the rag pressed over her nostrils, forcing her to inhale as the silk tickle her lips. She lipped it as her struggles grew weaker, head spinning from the truth as the panda wound her fingers into her mane. Her eyes closed, breathing slowing as blissful unconsciousness swarmed her senses, making her know no more.

"Goodnight, Mary. We're going to have so much fun together!"