Red Eye hunched over the broad steel desk in his top-floor office, the one with the cracked panoramic windows overlooking Fillydephia’s smoky sprawl. Chains rattled far below where work gangs hauled scrap into the foundries. His empire was taking shape exactly as he had scripted it: factories belching, slaves marching in neat lines, and the new breeding pits operating around the clock to crank out the next wave of obedient labor. Simple math. Stallions in, foals out, empire up.

A fresh stack of reports landed with a slap. He dragged the top folder closer and started reading.

The first page made his ear flick.  
“Batch 47: zero conceptions. Mares observed refusing to wink. Stallions unable to achieve penetration despite restraints.”

He flipped the page, eye narrowing.

“Batch 48: three conceptions confirmed via ultrasound. All terminated by the mares within forty-eight hours. Overseer note—subjects displayed full voluntary control of uterine contractions.”

Red Eye’s hoof paused mid-turn. Voluntary control. He read the line again. Then the next.

“Stallions report average duration from insertion to withdrawal: nineteen seconds. Mares exhibit no repeated winking, no fluid release consistent with maregasm. Internal temperature registers 102.4 degrees, tissue described as ‘dense velvet cushion’ rather than slick. Entrance highly sensitive; depth stimulation minimal effect.”

He shoved the folder away and opened the next. Sketches. Diagrams. A crude cross-section of a mare’s hindquarters with arrows pointing to something labeled “internal clitoris—exposed only during voluntary winking as signal of receptivity.” Another note: “Subject can telescope vaginal canal and clamp with pressure exceeding 400 psi. Full-sized draft stallion tested; unable to breach unwilling mare.”

Red Eye stared at the numbers until they blurred. He had ordered the pits built on the assumption that biology worked like machinery—input seed, output product. Lock a stallion and mare together long enough and nature would handle the rest. That was how every pre-war breeding manual described it. That was how the raiders did it in the badlands. Simple.

A soft chime announced his head breeder, a gaunt pegasus named Gearshift, stepping in without waiting for permission. The stallion’s wings hung limp at his sides.

“Sir, the morning summary—”

“Explain winking,” Red Eye cut in.

Gearshift’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. “It’s… how they show interest. The clit pops out, kind of flutters. No wink, they’re not in the mood. And even if you get past that, they can just… shut the gate. Muscles back there are stronger than most stallions’ jaws. They don’t stretch out permanent-like either. Use them daily and they snap right back. Elastic as hell, warm as a forge, but they decide when anything gets through. And if a foal does take, they can drop it whenever they want. Just… stop feeding the placenta. Nature’s failsafe.”

Red Eye’s single eye bored into him. “You’re telling me my breeding program is being cock-blocked by anatomy I never bothered to learn.”

Gearshift shifted weight from hoof to hoof. “Pretty much, yeah. The pits are full of mares who’d rather die than wink for a slaver. And the stallions are done before the mares even register the first decent thrust. No maregasm means no big bonding rush, no loyalty spike from the good feelings. Just twenty seconds of grunting and a whole lot of pissed-off fillies who can clench harder than a power-armor gauntlet.”

Silence settled over the office, broken only by the distant clank of slave collars. Red Eye looked down at the reports again. Pages of failure metrics. Zero population growth. Morale in the pits cratering. A footnote on one sheet mentioned the scent of a rare maregasm—thick, yellow, heavy with musty hay and sometimes a sharp urine edge—that could make nearby stallions stupid with want. Not a single occurrence in three weeks of forced pairings.

He had planned for resistance. Whips, shock collars, starvation. He had not planned for biology that let the mares laugh at all of it from the inside.

Gearshift cleared his throat. “We could try aphrodisiacs. Or longer restraint rigs. Or—”

“No.” Red Eye closed the folder with deliberate calm. “We’re not fixing this with more chains. We’re fixing it by admitting I built half my future on a lie about how mares work.”

He stood, wings half-flared, and walked to the window. Below, the breeding pit complex squatted like a wound in the city grid—barbed wire, floodlights, the low murmur of unhappy ponies. All that infrastructure, all those resources, producing exactly nothing but frustration and wasted seed.

The empire would still rise. He would find another way. But right now, in the quiet of his office, Red Eye felt the first cold crack in the flawless machine he had imagined. A crack shaped exactly like the warm, velvet-lined, iron-willed anatomy of a mare who simply refused to wink.

===

The breeding pit reeked of rust, sweat, and the sour edge of fear-sweat that never quite aired out. Floodlights buzzed overhead, throwing harsh shadows across concrete floors stained dark from years of worse things than spilled seed. Thirty mares stood in staggered stalls, hind legs hobbled just enough to keep them from kicking a stallion’s skull in, forelegs chained to rings set low so they couldn’t rear. Most stared straight ahead, jaws tight, ears pinned flat.

A fresh group of stallions got shoved in from the side pen—big brutes from the raider pens, still wearing fresh brands on their flanks. The overseer, a scarred earth pony named Lockjaw, banged his baton against the rail. “Pair ’em up. Standard rotation. You know the drill.”

First stallion picked a slate-gray mare with a jagged scar across her muzzle. She didn’t even look at him when he approached. He circled once, nostrils flaring, then reared up clumsy and heavy, forehooves slamming onto the padded rail in front of her. She felt the blunt heat of him prodding, searching, and her lip curled.

“Hay, big guy,” she drawled, voice low and venomous. “You lost? That thing’s poking my dock, not where it counts.”

He grunted, adjusted, found the right spot. Pushed. Nothing gave. Her tail flicked once, sharp, and she clamped down so hard the stallion’s eyes widened like he’d tried to shove into solid steel.

“What the—come on, you bitch—”

She laughed. Short, ugly, right in his ear. “Bitch? Cute. Keep poking, maybe you’ll find the entrance someday. Or maybe not. I’m feeling real picky tonight.”

He thrust harder. Nineteen seconds later his hips stuttered, he let out a pathetic whinny, and he slid off her back like a sack of wet oats. A thin string of spend dripped onto the floor between her hind legs. She glanced down at it, then back at him, ears finally lifting in pure mockery.

“That’s it? Sweet Celestia, my last heat lasted longer than that. You finished before I even felt warm.”

The stallion’s face burned crimson under the floodlights. He backed away, sheath already shrinking, muttering curses. Lockjaw scribbled on his clipboard and waved the next one forward.

A chestnut mare with wild eyes and a half-missing ear was next. Her assigned stud was younger, nervous, already half-hard from the scent in the air. He mounted quick, desperate. She didn’t wink. Not once. Instead she turned her head just enough to glare back at him.

“Go on then, hero. Give it your best twenty seconds. Make it count.”

He tried. Bucked once, twice, hips slapping loud against her. She stayed perfectly still, breathing steady, like she was waiting for a bus. At seventeen seconds she clenched—not the full telescope, just enough to make him yelp and pull out early, spilling uselessly across her dock.

She snorted, loud and wet. “Look at that. Missed the target, missed the point, missed everything. You stallions really are just walking disappointment machines, huh?”

Laughter rippled down the line of stalls. Not the bright, carefree kind from old Equestria. This was bitter, jagged, the sound of ponies who’d found the one weapon the slavers couldn’t take away. A pale cream mare with freckles across her nose leaned against her chains and called out, “Hey, next one! Bet you last even less. My bits are on twelve seconds!”

The next stallion lasted eleven. She crowed like she’d won the lottery.

Lockjaw’s baton cracked against the rail again. “Shut it! All of you! Keep this up and it’s double shifts tomorrow.”

The cream mare turned her head toward him, eyes glittering with hate and something sharper. “Double shifts? Fine. Means twice as many chances to watch your boys embarrass themselves. Maybe one of ’em will figure out how to make me wink before I die of boredom.”

She didn’t wink for him either when he finally got mounted. Just stood there, muscles locked like iron, laughing under her breath every time he grunted and strained. When he finished—sixteen seconds, gasping—she shook her head slow, almost pitying.

“Pathetic. You feel that? That’s me deciding you don’t get inside. Ever. No matter how many times your boss chains us up, I stay closed. Warm, soft, ready for somepony who actually matters. Not you. Never you.”

Across the pit the laughter built, low and rolling, until even the stallions started flinching at the sound. One mare, a deep bay with a cracked hoof, waited until her turn was over, until the spent stallion had limped away, then she raised her voice so everypony could hear.

“Tell Red Eye something for us, yeah? Tell him his empire’s built on quick draws and wishful thinking. Tell him we can outlast every last one of you. Tell him—” she grinned, teeth bright under the lights “—we’re never winking for slavers.”

Lockjaw’s ears flattened. He wrote another note, hoof shaking just a little. The laughter followed him all the way to the observation deck where Red Eye waited, single eye fixed on the scene below, the reports in his hoof suddenly feeling a lot heavier than steel.

===

Red Eye shoved the latest report across the desk so hard the corner tore. Laughter. Pages and pages of it transcribed by trembling scribes who’d stood on the observation catwalk: mares mocking stallions mid-thrust, fillies barely past their first shed calling out wagers on how many seconds the next idiot would last. The numbers hadn’t changed. Zero sustainable conceptions. Zero loyalty. Only the steady, grinding sound of his own machine eating itself alive.

He pressed the intercom. “Lockjaw. Pits. Now. Bring every mare and filly to the central yard. Unchain them first.”

Ten minutes later the floodlights snapped off one by one. Chains hit concrete in a clatter that echoed off the high walls. Mares stood rubbing their fetlocks, ears still half-pinned, eyes narrowed against the sudden dark. The smaller fillies huddled near the back, manes tangled, coats dull from weeks under the lamps. None of them spoke. They waited for the next order, the next whip, the next joke that always ended with them on the rail.

Red Eye descended the metal stairs alone. His steel wings clicked with every step. The yard fell dead quiet except for the wind scraping across broken glass somewhere above.

He stopped at the edge of the crowd. One scarred gray mare lifted her chin, ready to spit something sharp. He raised a hoof before she could.

“Project’s done,” he said. Voice flat, no theater. “Breeding pits are scrapped. Every last one of you is free of them. No more hobbles, no more rotations, no more stallions unless you choose it.”

A ripple moved through them. Some ears flicked forward. Most stayed flat.

“I built this on bad math,” he continued. “Thought bodies were just another factory line. Input, output, empire grows. Turns out mares decide when that line runs. And you decided never. Fine. I’m not wasting more steel and food on something that laughs at me.”

He swept a wing toward the open gates that led into the rest of Fillydephia’s sprawl—factories, barracks, training yards, the armories where stallions and colts already drilled for better pay and better rations.

“From tonight, you get the same deal every stallion and colt gets. Work the lines, you eat. Train with the enforcers, you carry a rifle. Show brains, you climb. Same contracts, same cut of the spoils, same chance to tell me to buck off if I’m being an idiot. The empire needs bodies that want to be here. Not ones I have to chain to the floor.”

The gray mare snorted first. “This some new game? Let us loose, watch us run, then shoot us for sport?”

Red Eye met her eyes. “If I wanted you dead I’d have done it weeks ago and saved the hay. Run if you want. Gates are open. But if you stay, you work. Same as anypony else.”

A smaller filly near the back—black mane still short from the clippers—piped up, voice cracking but steady. “What about the ones who already popped out a foal in here? They get the same?”

“They get the same,” he answered. “Nursery shifts count as labor. Extra rations. No different from a stallion pulling double in the forge.”

Silence stretched. Then the cream-freckled mare from the night before stepped forward, tail lashing once. “You’re serious. You’re actually scrapping the whole damn thing because we wouldn’t wink for you.”

“Because you couldn’t be forced to,” he corrected. “And I’m not dumb enough to keep betting against that.”

Laughter broke out again, but this time it rolled different—still jagged, still wary, but edged with something that might have been relief. The gray mare shook her head slow, almost smiling despite herself.

“Hay. Never thought I’d see the day Red Eye admits he doesn’t know mare anatomy.”

He didn’t smile back. “Learn fast or I stay stupid. Your choice.”

One by one they started moving. Not running. Walking. Toward the gates, toward the sign-up tables Lockjaw had already dragged out under the nearest lamp. Some glanced back like they expected a trick. None found one.

Red Eye stayed until the last filly had passed the threshold, then turned toward the stairs. The yard felt lighter without the chains. His empire would still rise. Maybe slower. Maybe smarter. Either way, it would rise on ponies who chose the march instead of being dragged.

Behind him, the laughter followed again, softer now, carrying across the night like it finally had somewhere useful to go.