"There are many, many, many worlds branching out at each moment you become aware of your environment and then make a choice."

― Kevin Michel

The strange creature that Pinkie Pie had stumbled across lay sleeping on the hospital bed, albeit restlessly. Twilight had seen humans like him before, but never so badly hurt. She had never set eyes on this particular person during any of her previous journeys through the portal to Canterlot High before. He was most certainly human, but he was strange. There was something subtle about his features - she assumed this judgement was due to his appearance. He had long hair and was not clean shaven - something that humans of a certain age felt obliged to do. This particular human had allowed the hair on his face to grow. He had old scars in places on his body, along with the current injuries.

She pondered whether any of her friends from Canterlot High would know who this person was? The portal to that other dimension was in Canterlot itself - given that, how did this human end up on the trail near to the entrance to the Everfree Forest? How had he become so badly injured? She felt herself torn between her intense academic interest in this subject and the many questions that begged to be asked, and the feelings of sympathy and concern over his horrific injuries.

"So ... erm, Pinkie .... precisely how did you find him?" she asked finally.

Pinkie had been uncharacteristically quiet until that moment. She had followed the paramedics back to the hospital with this human thing Twilight had kept asking about, and she had kept her friend company while Doctor Horse attempted surgery to fix at least some of the worst of the injuries. Whatever anchor chain had been responsible for controlling her verbosity broke at that point - very nearly explosively.

"I don't know, I mean he just sort of appeared and was like POW and there he was out of nowhere, and at least we had no idea what was going on, it was like when somepony gives you a really big surprise but you weren't expecting one and then they prank you and you're all like WOW and ..... ".

Twilight interrupted her friend mid-spiel. "You're saying he came out of nowhere?"

"Yup! Fluttershy and I were outside her cottage playing with Gummy and Angel and then there was this WOOOSH and a bright light, I mean like really bright LIGHTNING and then POW there was this thing lying on the grass moaning, and we were terrified at first, but then I thought it might be hurt so I went over to see what it was and ..."

"Lightning? You're saying there was lightning, and this human just appeared there?"

"..... Human?!?" quizzed Pinkie.

"Ugh. Yes, Pinkie. They're the same creatures that live on the other side of the portal in Canterlot."

"Ooooooh HUMANS!" she exclaimed. "Well, I wouldn't say lightning, but it was as BRIGHT as lightning, like REALLY bright, brighter than fireworks, do humans have fireworks? If they don't we should like really send them some and ...."

"Pinkie! Please try to slow down and try to remember as much as you can. There was a bright light and then from out of nowhere this human appeared on the grass nearby?" she quizzed once more.

"Well, I wouldn't have said that, I would have said that it was like a flash and a bang WITH the bright lights, and then he sort of fell onto the grass and lay there moaning but ..."

"Ugh, thanks Pinkie," Twilight sighed. She at least had some information now to work with. Admittedly none of what she'd been able to glean from Pinkie had been terribly enlightening, but some information was always better than none at all. Once she was back in her library, she would have to consult her collection of texts to see if the phenomenon had been witnessed before. "Fluttershy, did you see all of this happen too?"

"Y-Yes!" the stunned Pegasus stuttered. "It was a light brighter than the sun. There was nothing really unusual at first, just this sudden, gentle crackling noise - only, it ... it grew louder, until suddenly there was .... well, this ball of lightning, and a loud banging noise! I hope we didn't do anything to hurt it?" she asked, genuine concern rising above her own fears.

The ponies conversation was interrupted by the human on the bed. He continued to moan, slowly rocking his head from side to side and muttering something under his breath that none of them could quite make out. Due to his size, the Doctor had been forced to use a heavier dose of anesthesia before commencing surgery to try and help. He had warned Twilight that he knew almost nothing about human anatomy other than what he could ascertain from x-rays. They seemed to have similar organs, albeit in odd places, but how equestrian medications would work, or indeed if they worked at all, meant that such surgery was inherently very dangerous.

The Doctor had described what he had found when this human had arrived at the hospital. "It appears to have a very severe injury to its left lung, which appeared to have collapsed. There were also several marks on the x-rays which indicate very dense debris buried under the skin in several places. I've been able to repair the damage to its lung - and I'm going to attempt to remove as much of the other debris as I can. He has numerous abrasions, lacerations, one or two avulsions. We shall try our utmost, princess, but I cannot make any guarantees!"

The human's moaning intensified.

"Oh my, the poor thing, it must be so awful!" lamented Fluttershy.

The human's eyes suddenly snapped open and he stared unseeing at the ceiling, like he was transfixed in horror by something that was not there. All three ponies gave sudden squeals. His breathing was labored after the injury to his lung, but he seemed to be trying to whisper something. Twilight carefully made her way to the side of the bed and listened a little closer, trying to make out what he was saying.

"Please be careful!" squeaked Fluttershy. Her friend acknowledged this warning with a gentle nod, and slowly leaned in closer to this human to see if she could make out what he was trying to say.

The words, even though whispered and broken, made her suddenly feel very cold and rather frightened. There was regret, pain and a disconcerting amount of dread in his tone.

"Entropy! It will kill us all. Run!" he hissed. With a painful sigh, the human slid back onto the bed and slept once more.

'This does not sound like anyone I met in Canterlot High', thought Twilight to herself. 'But if this human isn't from there - then where did he come from? What happened to him to make him so frightened? And what in Equestria did he mean by entropy killing us all??'

Interspersed with the all too brief periods of lucidity, Karn found himself grappling with the demons that had seemingly seized control of the wheel of his mind. The faces of comrades he had known would appear and reprove him over his current state of affairs, as if his agony and his recent experiences were entirely of his own doing. The apparitions would slide from the back of his mind, accusing him of being responsible for the apocalypse he supposed he had recently witnessed.

So many voices, so many faces, so many dead. Friends blown to pieces, friends cleaved in two, friends burnt alive with adeptic power on battlefields crossing so many now desolate planets. Fields of fire, mud, screams and agony. Fields filled with rotting flesh that had once been ambulatory. Now the apparitions came to him in his unconscious, their faces contorted in rage, a rage that felt personal. Time and again they would rise, like some hideously contorted revelation. All of them with the same, terrifying, angry eyes - eyes that stared at him, dagger like, seeming to cut through his mind.

He tried to explain to them that he didn't understand what had befallen him. His blurred pleas within this dank, hellish dreamscape were met with derisory laughter and taunts from his tormentors. The face of one friend he had known some seventy solar cycles ago came to him, blood flowing from what was left of his mouth and fire within those nightmarish eyes. 'WHY? WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME TO DIE? I SCREAMED FOR YOU! Now you scream to ME for mercy?' it roared.

'No, no, I ... I couldn't ... how could I? I couldn't reach you! I tried!' Karn whispered helplessly. The ghoulish apparition would fade again, but others would take its place. The procession of death passed his mind, an unending line of mutilated bodies rising again - they felt like witnesses at a trial. He'd done so many things, committed so many acts that he felt guilt for.

On and on the ghouls came. They knew of the things he had done, of all the horrors that had haunted his mind that he'd kept buried in the very recesses of his subconscious. His guilt now on full display, his judgement day had come. Some of the demons were of friends he had failed to save, some had partaken in the same acts he was guilty of, some of them were his victims. They all had the same eyes - those staring, mind shattering eyes.

To his horror, the appallingly mangled figure of his friend Coron violently thrust its cadaverous way through the throng of vengeful spirits, seizing Karn by the neck with what was left of the one arm it still retained. 'You bastard!' it hissed. 'You just fucking LEFT me there, didn't you? Why didn't you come back for me?' his former friend raged at him. To Karn's horror, maggots began to slither from Coron's ears as he felt that horrifically torn arm strengthen its grip on his neck. He began to choke and tried to plead for forgiveness once more, but the gruesome visitant threw back its disfigured head and roared laughing.

Suddenly jerking Karn forwards in its grip, it violently met his terrified gaze with its own. Its voice became a low, gravelly, demonic growl; an obscene mixture of a death rattle, insect calls and crepitus - 'I HAVE COME FOR YOU!' it spat. Throwing Karn backwards to arms length, a stake-like tongue shot from its mouth and drove into the left side of Karn's chest, slicing through the flesh.

With a horrified scream, Karn snapped awake. He felt an incredibly sharp pain in the left side of his chest and frantically tried to tear off the sheet he was covered with. Madly feeling across his left side, he could at least make out where a hole in his chest had recently been surgically closed. Seeing it, Karn suddenly felt the overpowering remorse of the loss of his recent friend, as he stared almost uncomprehendingly at the wound in his side.

"Whoa, there, calm down, you're okay! You're safe now!" said a somewhat authoritative voice. Karn slowly turned his head to face the owner of that voice and tried to force his eyes to focus. His eyes grudgingly gave into their owner's demands and the blurry colors before his eyes allowed him a blessed moment of clarity - his first since arriving here, wherever the hell here was.

His still shocked, increasingly feverish mind attempted to grapple with the somehow surreal concept that it found itself confronted by a pony. Not just any pony, this one was carrying some kind of stethoscope around its neck, wore a white jacket and appeared to be the source of the recent reassurance.

"Can you understand me? Do you hear me?" it asked him.

'I am facing a pony, with a medic's gear on - and it is now talking to me' he thought. Somewhere within his befuddled mind the thought came to him that he was still within the confines of the deathscape of his nightmares. No, he had to be awake - he had a certain amount of rationality of thought. He could move, so this wasn't one of the hypnopompic episodes he'd had before, and the physical pain and fever were both all too real. He stared bemusedly back at this medic, if indeed that's what it really was.

It felt like an hour passed. Whatever heinous trick his mind was playing on him, he found himself obliged to follow it. His thoughts were still hazy, and the pain ... the pain made any kind of thought difficult. He'd been under some kind of anesthesia - his having awoken from not only his nightmarish trial, but he was also recovering from whatever medications they'd given him. Words came to him but with difficulty - as if he was attempting to walk through molasses.

"I ... yes," he managed to reply, albeit foggily.

"Good! You've been quite badly hurt, I'm afraid. We've done our best to patch you up. I think you'll be fine, although you are going to have some residual pain for quite a while. These three found you in a very bad state," the pony appeared to say. The medic indicated to something on the other side of the room.

Unblinking, Karn turned his head to the left - cautiously, slowly. His eyes fixed on three other figures on the opposite side of the room. A pink pony with astonishing hair, a strangely nervous pale yellow pegasus and a purple alicorn stood there smiling back at him. Karn stared blankly at this new surprise.

"Doc? I ... I think I ... hallucinating," he whispered.

"Hallucinating?" replied the medic. "In what manner? Visually? Aurally?"

Karn turned himself back to face the equine doctor as best he could to avoid the stabbing pain in his chest to face the medic. "I ... not sure. Both ... maybe?"

"Describe to me what you're experiencing?"

"I see ... I see ponies. They talk. You ... you look like a pony. So ... so do they," he whispered, indicating with his hand across his stomach.

"Ah. I see. Well, I - forgive me, but do you happen to have a name?"

Karn slowly nodded his head, staring at what still appeared to be a talking equine. An equine who was questioning him regarding his present faculties, or rather how they were malfunctioning. "Yes," he replied, after a moment's thought. "I am Karn Rolltagen, secondary master order adept from Alsovia on Chronos IV".

"Ah. Well I had best set you straight about your present situation," the medic responded. "You are in Ponyville Hospital ..."

"... Ponyville," interrupted Karn.

"Yes, Ponyville. It seems you somehow materialized here in some strange kind of ... well, electrical explosion ... and it was at that time you were discovered ... "

"I.... materialized," confirmed Karn.

"It seems so, from the reports we have from your rescuers! It's lucky they found you when you arrived. You did sustain some very serious injuries and ..."

"Excuse me I .... materialized?"

A look comprising a mixture of sympathy and concern seemed to cross the medic's face, if indeed that were possible for a horse. It seemed oddly persistent for what he felt was a figment of his imagination.

"Listen, I ... may I call you Karn?" inquired the medic. Karn slowly and silently nodded his approval.

'I am talking to a mirage,' he thought. He would've laughed, but the pain in his chest was too sharp.

"Okay. Karn, you sustained some serious injuries. Somehow, a sharp piece of metal pierced the left side of your chest and punctured your lung. You also had numerous other small pieces of metal embedded within you. We were able to anesthetize you well enough to extract them and re-inflate your lung. There will be a good deal of pain for a while, but I'm afraid I don't know how much pain relief to give you as your physiology is somewhat of a mystery to me, I'm afraid. We'll start you on a low dose for the pain and slowly increase the dose to a point we can ascertain as being safe."

Karn turned and stared down at the bed, letting this report sink in. Clearly he'd been hit very badly with shrapnel, possibly from whatever initial blast had killed his friends. His friends - what had happened to them? Where were they? Why on earth would his physiology be a mystery to a medic? "If ... if I ... materialized here ... did ... did anyone ... others? Any others?" he implored, hopefully.

The medic sadly shook his head. "I'm sorry, Karn, but no. As near as we can tell, you were the only one to appear here."

"My ... hallucinations."

"Karn, you need to listen to me carefully. We are not sure how you got here, but you are currently in a place called Equestria. The only one of us who has had a great deal of interaction with your species is Princess Twilight here."

Karn turned and raised his gaze slowly to the alicorn once more. It was still there - very persistent for a hallucination. It met his gaze with what would have been a reassuring smile, if not for the fact that it seemed his body had arrived in this place and left his mind behind. Ponyville ... Equestria ... he'd never heard of such places before. What was his mind trying to do to him?

"I've spent some time with humans before, but I don't think you're from the same location as those I have met," she asserted.

"Um ... you ... Twilight?"

"Well yes, that's me! May I call you Karn as well?" she asked. Karn once more nodded his ascent. "Okay, so can you tell us more about how you came to be here? What were you doing at the time?"

Karn stared blearily at the talking pony. His vision began to blur and the agony within his joints grew worse. Moaning in anguish, he lay back onto his bed. He exhaled a slow, heavy sigh.

"I was busy dying," he whispered fatalistically.

Darkness once more.

The four ponies sadly looked upon the now unconscious human resting in the hospital bed. A brief moment of silence followed, broken by Twilight.

"Doctor, he obviously wasn't hallucinating, but he clearly hasn't been to nor heard of Equestria before," she pointed out. The doctor nodded affirmatively. "Can he stay here at the hospital to recuperate under the watch of the guards? I need to inform Princess Celestia of this new information and then do some research to see if I can find any instance of this having happened before, or at least an explanation!"

"That would be fine. At any rate, given his current condition he should not be moved."

"Okay, Pinkie? Fluttershy? We need to go back to precisely where he arrived".

Pinkie commenced bouncing, but Fluttershy wasn't so keen on the idea.

"D-do we have to?" she whispered nervously. "What if it ... it happens again?"

Twilight glanced around at the now muttering Karn. "I don't think that could happen. I have a feeling something very unusual occurred, and only to the one human".

Author's Note

Still filling in for some of the prologue here. I realize at this point most of the story isn't doing a great deal beyond setting the scene, but bare with me. I am intending for this work to be several pages and have a lot of areas of the protagonists psyche I want to explore. Is it possible to make this kind of jarring change in your circumstances and be able to recover? Maybe some do?

I didn't want to go rushing into the romantic side of the story that I have planned. Recovery from what would be in this case 200 years of military trauma isn't going to repair itself with a soft bed. One dips one's hat here to the incredible men and women of the armed services, who have lived and often continue to live with the horrors they've witnessed crawling through their minds on a daily basis.

2017-04-03 POST EDIT:

I've been listening to the Berliner Philharmonic Orchestra playing Mozart's Requiem Mass whilst re-editing this. If you see the album, buy it - it is a beautiful performance. Minor changes, particularly to the dream scape sequence.