The Human In The King

Chapters

Prologue
Chapter 2: Achievement Unlock
Chapter 3: Denial, and the Grim Consequences Thereof
Chapter 4: Camp Hell
Chapter 1: Where It All Went Wrong

Prologue

My name is Marcus Francowski, and this is not the story of how I died. This is the story of what came after.

Christ, it sounds even more insane when I put it like that. And believe me, there’s plenty of insanity to go around here, so let’s start with a picture of the situation: I’m trying to swallow the massive, ball-shriveling lumps of fear in my throat while hundreds, if not thousands, of voices boom in the air, blasting me with name-calling and insults that would make my retired Marine of an uncle wince. I have a couple nations and a few sapient species relying on me to keep them from falling back into insanity and rape at the weird, clawed hands of the evil shitlord in front of me. All nine feet of him.

The Caribou Lord grins down at me, a feral look of rage and hatred gazing over my puny, squishy, and far-too-small form. He looks like he could crush my head like a grape with a single swipe of his clawed hands. Or hell, he could just grip my head in his palm and squeeze really hard. His beady eyes glare down at me from behind a distended muzzle packed full of yellowed chompers that could easily take my hand off if he so willed it. He raises his arms, and the parts of the crowd that aren’t busy calling me a little cuck cheer while he flexes a rippling set of biceps that look like grapefruits tacked to his arms.

And I’m supposed to fight him. All 220 pounds of me.

Yeah, sounds like a Robot Chicken sketch. “The World’s Most One-Sided Fist Fights,” to be precise. Thing is, I’m it. In my sensible, business-casual wear, with my beginner’s beer gut and two-day-old stubble, I am the only thing standing between this monster and everything he needs to plunge an entire planet into a murder-rape-fest straight out of Ted Bundy’s finest wet dreams.

But no pressure or anything, right?

“Now is the time!” He announces to the crowd, his voice magically amplified to echo over the constant roar within the stadium. “Now is the time where the males take their rightful place! Now is the time when the myth of female strength is destroyed forever, and males can rise up and take their rightful place as the true rulers of this world!”

He throws his head back in practical ecstasy from his own words. “NOW IS THE TIME FOR WOMEN TO REALIZE THEIR PLACE AS OUR COCKSLEEVES! NOW IS THE TIME FOR MALE SUPERIORITY!”

His words boom over the crowd, the roar intensifying. Unfortunately for him, I also have voice-amplifying magic, and an ability to keep my voice steady despite my trembling body and terror-spawned pants-wetting. With his fists raised and his gaze off me, I find it easier to use both: “Jesus Christ dude, you done jerkin’ yourself off yet? I’d like to get this fight started sometime before the heat death of the Universe. Or whenever you manage a decent boner, whatever happens first.”

The crowd doesn’t fall silent, but it sure as hell gets a little quieter. I hear a snicker from behind me, and turn to flash a wide grin at the gorgeous line of anthro mares arrayed behind me. Rainbow Dash, the light-blue honey on the far left with the muscular body of an Amazon and the booty of a goddess suppresses her chortle, then raises a thumb and winks at me. Beside her, a caribou spearman grinds his teeth, his grip tightening around his spear, and even still I can see the lust in his eyes, the way he’s trying to angle himself to peer down her shirt at her admittedly-lackluster but still firm rack. I could rip his eyes out of his skull for the way he’s looking at her. Of course, given how short I am compared to everyone else here, he’d have to kneel in front of me first.

Right, the fight.

I turn back to the tower of muscle in front of me. The bastard glowers down upon my form, his shoulders heaving, his breath wheezing. His fists tense and untense. He looks ready to tear my legs off for daring to interrupt his little speech. Finally, a nice, placid grin crosses his face. “I’m going to enjoy using that smart little mouth of yours later on, monkey.”

I swallow, but like I’ve been getting used to doing these past few weeks, I force the fear down and raise my fists, grateful that they don’t tremble as I do so. “Hmph,” I shrug.

After a few moments, he sneers. “What’s this? No more smart words?”

“Dude, if you want my comeback, you can just wipe it off your chin when I’m finished.” And thank God my voice didn’t tremble then, either.

The caribou’s eyes blaze with fury. He lifts his shaggy head to straight-up roar at the crowd. He raises his fists high over my head, and my balls pull right back up into my ribcage from shriveling in fear. So this is it. This is how I die. Again.

So, if this were a movie, this would be where we'd get the freeze frame and record scratch, and I'd say you were probably wondering how I found myself in this situation. How does a semi-alcoholic engineer from our world wind up fighting a demigod in another one, all while trying to earn the affections of a super-hot, bird-horse-woman thing? Especially when, just a month ago, the most I had to worry about was a bitch supervisor that made it her mission to ensure the misery of every man in her life and the squeakers infesting the Call of Duty servers? Well, to answer that, we're gonna have to go back a ways, to a little clearing in the middle of nowhere, where I woke up already in way over my head and only getting deeper...

Chapter 2: Achievement Unlock

…and waited. You know, I didn’t like to think I was addicted to my smartphone, but shit! This bitch was out and I had nothing! No Facebook, no Youtube, not even Reddit! All I had was the tweeting of the birds and my own imagination, which only conjured up more ways to express how much not having my phone sucked.

This is worse than a Sunday with the girlfriend at an Arts and Crafts store, I thought, then frowned. Good, but I could do better. Worse than…an Arts and Crafts store next to a Pottery Barn? Better, definitely better…

Suddenly, my captive audience turned over and let out a long, contented breath, like someone waking up from a good, long sleep. I saw her massive eyes flutter peacefully, a sigh escaping her nostrils. I grinned. If ever there was a time to lean on the good will earned by a pleasant nap, this was it.

I watched her slowly sit up, wings stretching out as far as they could, then looking down, confused when she realized her arms were pinning them back. Figuring this was as good a time as any, I stood, thrust my chest out, and attempted the most imposing look an electrical engineer from Michigan with no combat background, an alien body, and a consistently-broken promise to himself to “get back to the gym this month” could muster. “Madame!” I bellowed.

At that, the blue lady turned in place, took one look at me, and instantly all that old hatred and anger came blooming back. Screaming once more, she ran at me, hands still bound behind her back but her legs pumping away. With all my bravado leaving my body, I stooped, scooped up the sword, and had it in my hand again and extended outward in a heartbeat, the tip quivering up even while I negotiated with my bladder to not release itself.

She stopped just short of piercing her own throat with her own sword, not an easy feat with your hands behind your back and your balance off. Girl must have been trained, the way she stopped herself practically in mid-air. She clenched her teeth, looking at the blade, then back up at me, a straight-up growl building in her throat, which would’ve sounded ridiculous had I not known she was of the “stab first, ask questions later” camp.

“Okay,” I shouted, still willing my bladder back under control. “Okay, no more of that now, y’hear!? No more! Seriously!”

She remained standing there, her breath heaving angrily, her teeth clenching. I just kept standing there, trying to look like a guy who totally didn’t just let loose with a tiny jet of terror-piss which was now cooling along his inseam. Our staring contest kept up for just a second, and then all of a sudden, something gave up in her. She looked at me, shocked, as if I’d just reached around and pulled the sword out of my own ass. She took a couple steps back, and finally her legs buckled out from underneath her.

“Well?” She said in that weird, raspy voice, her head bowing low and her ears folding down in a way that I totally didn’t find totes adorbs omg! “G’wan, get it over with.”

I sighed in relief, the point of the sword wavering in my grip. Okay, good, alright. Talking was good. “I’m not gonna kill you,” I said, trying to sound reassuring.

“I know,” she whispered, though the hitch in her voice implied this still wasn’t very reassuring.

A bit confused, I shrugged it off and started to lower the sword. “Okay, so no jumping at me or anything like that, alright? No more of that.”

Silence, but she nodded, her head still bowed.

“A-and no stabbing in my sleep either! Basically, what I’m trying to get across is no stabbing, period.”

Another silent nod. Awkward silence.

“Or throttling. Or biting.” I continued, trying to fill the silence somehow. “Basically, please avoid anything that might do me physical damage. Or mental, if you can. Or emotional. Seriously, what I’m trying to get across here is I don’t even want to hear you insult my mother or…”

“Will you just shut up and get it over with already!?” She hissed angrily, though when she looked up, I could see a light film over her eyes, a mild shimmer like a kid on the verge of a tantrum.

I blinked. Okay, she acknowledged I wasn’t here to try and kill her, what could she have been talking about? Rather than run through the checklist of possibilities, I replied with a very intelligent and well-thought-out: “Uhhhhhh…wut?”

“You heard me.” She replied, her voice lower, her eyes glaring at me behind tears. “Know this though: you can take me, you can ravage me, but I won’t break. I will laugh the whole damn time your disgusting cock is inside me, and when you finish with me, I’ll be smiling. You can make me cry, you might even make me scream, but I’m never going to give up and be your bitch. Never again.”

Another long, awkward pause. This was the previous awkward pause’s even more awkward cousin, the one who didn’t get invited to parties anymore ever since that time he got drunk and shit himself while groping some chick in front of everyone. I blinked again, and immediately darted back. “Jesus, lady, the fuck you talking about!?”

“Don’t even deny it! I…”

“That was rhetorical, dammit! We just met, and you immediately assume I’m here to rape the shit out of you!? Fuckin’-A…what kinda ultra-politically-correct, Tumblr-inspired SJW bullshit is that!? How is that in any way fair!?”

She continued watching me with those shimmering eyes, though the tears were fading and rapidly being replaced with confusion.

“If you must know, you’re tied up right now because that is a completely natural reaction for someone to have when someone else tries to stab them repeatedly while screaming like maniacs! It’s not because I have plans to throw you over a rock and take you the next time I feel like it, and in fact, I’m super offended by that!” I knew I was ranting, but I was on a roll and not willing to stop myself. “Yeah, that’s right, two can play this game, bitch! I’m offended by the mere fact that you would just assume that about a guy! I’m offended that the moment you see one, you just see a potential rapist! You don’t know me! You don’t know my story!”

Her eyes locked with mine again, the old anger still there. Her jaw visibly clenched and unclenched. A tear streaked down her cheek. “I don’t care what craziness you try and spit out, you monster, just do as you will.”

Fucking dammit, just what had I landed myself in here? Wait…the war thing, of course! This was a case of propaganda being used on the masses! Her people were probably bombarded with stories of my people’s rapes and the destruction we bring and how our favorite hobbies involve puppy stomping and stealing lollipops out of baby’s hands. This was nothing more than a result of good ol’ fashioned propagandized brainwashing! Like how the North Koreans tell their kids that Americans will eat their faces if they don’t do their math homework or something. But shit, if that was true, odds were this chick hardly knew anything useful. Everything she could tell me about myself would be how I bathed in baby seal blood and had invented guns that specifically targeted blind orphans. I wouldn’t be getting much out of her. So where did that leave me?

I could have just left her tied up on the river bank again, but then she might have gotten loose and thrown together a search party. If her behavior was any indication of how these pony things thought of me, I doubted I wanted to see how they might deal with me when I was captured by a bunch of them. Besides, she might have concussed herself, and I’m pretty sure proper treatment for that didn’t involve tying someone up by a river and leaving them to possibly starve. I knew I sure as hell couldn’t kill her, I didn’t even know how to use her sword, and just picking it up gave me a queasy feeling, like I was about to cut myself for some reason. Besides, back to the whole “introducing yourself to a new world with murder” conundrum, I would be pretty well screwed if someone came upon her body within the next couple days and sent out another search party.

On the plus side, this all pointed to one course of action: adding a new member to my party.

“Achievement unlocked,” I muttered as I raised the sword again. “Alright, here’s what’s gonna happen: we’re gonna start walking and you’re gonna be in front of me. You try any funny business, try to run off or alert one of your companions to what’s going on, and I-I’ll run you through, you hear me?” I had to suppress another cringe. That last part was supposed to sound scary and intimidating, but the mere attempt at making a threat had come out quivering, like a kid with his dad’s switchblade and a flashlight trying to face down the monster under his bed. Still, she nodded, still making eye contact despite the tears streaming down her face. Dang, this chick was way harder than I was, probably lucky she knocked herself out earlier or she probably would have sliced my balls off my dead body to bring back to her people as a trophy.

I motioned in the direction of the woods. “Now, march!” I barked. She maintained that silent glare for a second longer, then turned and slowly walked along the path, her weird, backwards-jointed legs (not too unlike a horse, now that I thought about it) striding along smoothly. Nodding, I followed close behind, sword at the ready, though I still wasn’t sure what I’d do with it if the need actually arose.

You know what’s almost as boring as sitting under a tree with nobody to talk to and nothing to do? Walking in a forest with someone who has all the conversational abilities of a rock.

“Anyway, enough about me, what’s your home like, anyway?” I asked for the umpteenth time, to get no response for the umpteenth time. “Because if you guys are still into swords and metal armor, I’m guessing Wi-Fi and Youtube would be a little much, huh?”

No response. I was speaking to the back of her head, but it might as well have been a rainbow-colored brick wall.

“So, back to my Dad: awesome man, best beef paprikash you’ve ever tasted in your life. Just getting a little senile as time goes on, y’know? Like the time he tried to mail his cat to me for a Christmas present. Thank God the mailman got suspicious of a box that kept yowling and spitting at him, poor bastard would’ve died of thirst before it made it to my doorstep…”

“What’re you doing?” She hissed over her shoulder.

“And she speaks!” I gasped, throwing my hands up in the air. “Can I get an Alleluia from the crowd out there!?”

At that, she stopped, twisted in place, and faced me. The tears were gone, at least, but now she just looked pissed. Still, I called that a step in the right direction. “What. Are. You. Talking. About?” She growled again.

Grinning, I figured the only thing to do here was to amp up the annoyance level by a factor of three. Thus, with little ceremony, I reached over and ‘booped’ her right on the tip of her nose.

She flinched back, wiggled her muzzle like a cat, went cross-eyed to look down at her nose, then her eyes narrowed back at me. “What did you do!?”

“I booped you.”

“Touch me again and I’ll…”

*BOOP*

“Stop that!”

“Don’t wanna.”

“What in Celestia’s name is wrong with you!?”

I deadpanned at that. “If you’d been listening at all for the last half hour, you’d know that I have a growing drinking problem, a propensity to acting bluntly that tends to drive people away, a father suffering from early-onset dementia, and a mother who skipped out on me as a toddler,” I crossed my arms, still meeting her gaze. “But you weren’t listening, were ya?”

She met my glare with one ten times as hot, keeping it on me as she slowly turned back around. Our walk continued in silence, at least for as long as I could bare it, with me stealing a glance back every now and again, because she was an interesting and exotic creature, and not because she had a fine body and an amazing rack and her coat gathered up into a little tuft of fur perched right between her breasts that I couldn’t help but wonder if it tasted as good as it looked…

Fuck. Time to distract myself.

“Anyway, back to my dog from the third grade…”

I noticed her slow down just then, her walk coming to a halt until she was just standing with one, blue foot hovering right in front of the other. Her ears folded down. I saw a shiver race up her spine. Uh-oh…

“What’s up?” I asked.

Her ears perked up silently and swiveled around. Arching an eyebrow, I tilted my head, searching for whatever it was she might have been hearing…and eventually pulling in the sounds of someone carousing in a weird language I didn’t recognize. I mean, I knew it was carousing, the beats were all right, so it was like whenever your super-Irish friend sang a traditional Irish drinking song for you in the original Gaelic. You might recognize the tune, but the words were so much moonspeak to your ears. That, plus the thin trail of smoke from a fire rising into the sky told me someone was camped nearby.

“Caribou,” I heard a harsh whisper from my unwilling travelling companion, and the sudden fear in her voice was more than enough for me to know: these were the guys I’d been looking for! Perfect!

Satisfied in the fact that nothing really shitty was waiting for either of us, I gave my companion a good shove forward. “Alright, c’mon, no lollygagging! That’s where we’re headed, and I’m not gonna hear any bullshit about raping and murdering!”

She stumbled forward with the shove, but quickly straightened herself. She took a quivering step forward, then another, the shaking totally obvious in her every motion, every part of her quivering down to the tips of the feathers on her wings. I sighed. This was going to be difficult, but once I got her to see past the propaganda, I was sure I could forge a new bond across species, perhaps one that could lead to a little more understanding, maybe even end this war!

Naïve, even then I knew it was all so naïve, but at that point I was still working under the assumption that this was my dream, I was the protagonist, and things were meant to work out for everything I did no matter how stupid or pointless they might have seemed. As long as it was all my dream, I might be determined to build a rocket out of sticks and leaves in this forest and journey to that planet from Avatar, and within a few days’ dream time I’d be shacking it up with a blue cat chick. And hey, maybe meeting with these caribou guys was the point of this dream? To bring these pony-things and caribou-things together in mutual agreement, to symbolize me…bringing my…bad side and…my…good side together? Oh shit, I dunno, figured I’d piece it all together as things went on.

“Come along then!” I said cheerily, ignoring the way my companion whimpered and tried to pull away as I tugged her towards the sounds of the singing, and dead-set in my belief that the shitty times would officially be behind me once we reached the encampment.

So stupid. So naïve.

On approaching the tall column of smoke and the jeering voices, I noticed the quivering in my friend’s step, but chose to ignore it on seeing a face not too unlike my own attached to a furry body, drunkenly dancing and carousing around the fire to a tune he was mewling out his drunken mouth. Every now and again, this guy would scoop up a stick from the fire and hold it up and…

…I can smell my own hair burning oh God not like this not like this Jesus God why…

I nearly fell back, my heart racing, my breath wheezing. I clenched a hand to my chest, trying to calm my rapid pulse. What was--

“Your Highness!?”

I blinked at the weird caribou-guy as he stopped dead in his tracks, eyes wide, gaping at me. The tall stein in his hand dropped to the dirt, spilling something that smelt like paint thinner mixed with silly putty. My nose wrinkled. So much for my hopes of a decent beer in this world. I turned back to the weird, antlered thing, still gaping at me.

“Uhhh…hey?” I asked.

Suddenly, a smile cracked his face, and the antlered bugger ran up to me and bowed. “The king has returned!” He enthused, kissing the dirt by my moccasins. “Lord Dainn has returned in our darkest hour to deliver us from the traitors and whores!”

Lord Dainn? Dainn…weird, almost sounded Scandinavian. At the very least, this was a lot better treatment than I got from big blue here. And wait…Lord? Was I a king to this guy!? Hot damn! About time somebody recognized me for my awesomeness!

Speaking of, the caribou guy sat up and looked my unwilling companion up and down, and I swear if I’d never seen a man fuck someone else with just their eyes, I was seeing it now. Felt uncomfortable just being near it. “And what’s this!? Already, you have captured one of the Element Bearers responsible for our downfall!?” He gasped.

The heat from my unwilling travelling companion’s glare was enough to melt steel, so I just smiled and nodded at my new subject. “Sure did! Rise, oh proud…uh…”

“Tomasian, sire,” the caribou enthused, repeating his bow. “Just another lowly soldier expelled by the bitches and traitors that have overrun these righteously conquered lands, though with your return, I am sure we can put things back to rights in no time!”

“Aight, sounds cool,” I replied, eyeing big blue again. “You said she was…what…an ‘Element Bearer’?”

At that, Tomasian’s face scrunched up as if he’d just taken a bite out of a lemon. “The Elements of Harmony, sire: the Sun-Slut’s greatest weapon against us. You don’t recognize her? This is the Bearer of the Element of Loyalty!”

I turned to my blue companion, my big, blank gaze meeting her dark glare. “Oh yeeeeaaaaahhhhhhhh!” I grinned, turning back to Tomasian with a satisfied nod. “Wouldja look at that!” The fuck was he talking about?

“An amazing prize with which to open your triumphant return, m’lord!” Tomasian gasped as he grabbed blue by the shoulder and shoved her in the direction of a group of tents. “We’ll have her ready for you in a second! We can begin just as soon as the others return from their raid!”

“Sounds great!” I exclaimed while giving a thumbs up and doing my best impression of the smiling dad from the end credits of an 80’s sitcom, sans leaping into the air and freeze-framing. All the while, an uneasy feeling began to grow in the pit of my stomach. The way Tomasian shoved big blue along like an uncooperative mule, for instance. I mean, she did look like a horse, one that had tried very hard to kill me, but that didn’t mean I liked watching her get pushed around, knowing she was a sapient creature with thoughts and weird feelings that I didn’t understand. If anything, it was a relief when she and Tomasian disappeared into one of the big, felt tents that comprised the campsite.

Left alone, I was finally able to mull over a couple red flags I probably should have picked up on earlier, like Tomasian’s treatment of big blue and his referring to her country as “traitors” and “bitches.” I didn’t know what “bitches” translated to over here, so maybe that was part of it, but he hardly seemed to be using it in a respectful tone. And traitors? Traitors to what? These guys were fighting for their own country, they could be “enemies” or “others” or “those douchebags what didn’t get born in the same country,” but how were they traitors?

And what the hell did he mean he’d “get her ready for me”?

“That…probably should’ve raised a red flag a lot sooner,” I grumbled to myself, stupid! So stupid! What if these antlered guys were carnivorous!? In that case, ‘get her ready for ya,’ might involve a fine red wine basting with an appropriate honey glaze. “Shit, Tomasian! What didja mean by…”

I was cut off by the sound of approaching hooves on dirt. My ears perked. I turned to the approaching dust cloud just as Tomasian poked his head out.

“The raiding party!” He gasped, stepping outside, notably sans big-blue-chicken-horse-girl. “They’ve already returned, milord! They’ll be so happy to see you alive and well!”

“Heyyy…greeaaattt!” I replied, trying to ignore the little voice in the back of my head screaming that something horribly wrong was going on here.

Chapter 3: Denial, and the Grim Consequences Thereof

Turned out, “happy” was a bit of an understatement. The pack of anthro caribou that returned to the small camp acted like I was the second coming of Jesus. I mean, with bowing, and praising the gods, and nearly-religious jumping around, I was guessing Tomasian’s reaction was just due to his being utterly shitfaced. It got so out of hand I almost didn’t notice the squirming sack they were carrying with them.

“Lord Dainn!” One caribou-guy enthused, jumping around while wearing nothing but a loincloth that just barely covered the largest uncircumcised dick I’d ever seen. Even as I was watching it happen, I knew this would be an image that probably wasn’t going to leave me anytime soon. To my horror, he quickly bounded towards me, legs picking up as high as they would go until the sweet, sweet relief of seeing him come to a stop and bow. “Lord Dainn, your return is our salvation!”

Dear God, it’s like watching two snails fighting over a tapeworm. I grinned at him. “Hey, just glad to be so welcome…uh…”

“Katrakian, oh lord,” he enthused, sitting up to give me one more quick show before bowing again.

“That’s…wonderful, Sir Katrakian,” I said. “Why don’t you stay like that, okay? Just…bowed over, just like that?”

“Oh, of course, Lord!” He enthused. “Whatever pleases you!”

“Lord Dainn,” another caribou gasped, this one thankfully dressed in ornate armor: gold-plated metal studded with flowery designs running all across the breastplate and down the arms, yet with an odd little hinge over the codpiece. Seriously, what was with these guys and having easy access to their dicks? Did they all have bladder control problems? “It’s such an honor to see you in the flesh! When we set out on our desperate raid to stock up on supplies and bitches, we never in a million years would have imagined seeing you upon our return!”

“Truly this is a sign that the dark times are over, and male dominance will return once more!” A third caribou enthused, this one thankfully wearing cotton pants, though that did little to hide the massive bulge underneath.

I managed to tear my eyes away from the swinging wrecking balls practically being presented to my face by sheer force of will, and blinked twice as the words of my new followers processed. Hold the damn phone for a second, ‘male dominance’? ‘Stock up on supplies and bitches’? Shit, it was about time for me to poke an eye into that squirming little sack, wasn’t it?

Okay, no need to panic just yet, this could have all just been a big misunderstanding. “Speaking of,” I said, pointing to the sack. “What’s that you have there?”

The caribou stared at me blankly (except for Katrakian, who thankfully kept his head bowed low and his dick covered up). Then, one of them looked to the squirming sack and practically face-palmed with an expression like: “ain’t I just the most absent-minded stinker?”

“Apologies, Lord,” he said, immediately bowing as he held the sack out to me. “The little slut must have slipped our minds!”

“We weren’t withholding her, of course,” said Sir Breastplate. “If you wished for first fuck, that is, of course, your right as King!”

“Just a refresher, my lord!” Added Sir Cottonpants. “Something to ease your mind, then together we can plot how best to take this land for our own once more!”

Okay, literally everything they just said was setting off alarm bells in my mind. Still, I kept telling myself that this had to be a misunderstanding, maybe “fuck” and “bitches” meant something different here! Had to be! Absolutely had to be! Didn’t matter that literally every other word seemed to translate just fine and no other attempt at finding a difference in semantics had led to some weird cross-cultural difference, this all had to be the result of a big, whacky misunderstanding the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the golden age of 90s sitcoms.

Funny how easy it is to lie to yourself when the truth is too hard to swallow.

Clinging desperately to this hope, I scooped up the proffered sack and held it out in front of me like you would a garbage bag that was leaking juices from God-knows-what. The sack gave another lurch, and before I could react, one of the caribou leapt forward and jammed a fist up into it.

“Shut up, slut! Be still and be grateful for the privilege about to be granted ya!” He screamed, then immediately darted back. “Apologies, Lord, this one hasn’t been shown the true light of male dominance, and so it will likely not react to you appropriately.”

“Right…” I said, still with my big, fake smile plastered on. Shit, if I could keep smiling here, maybe I picked the wrong profession back home. Probably should’ve been a politician. Still grinning, I tossed the sack over my shoulder and strode to the nearest tent. “Welp, no time like the present!”

“Of course, m’lord!” Said Sir Cottonpants.

“Whatever you desire, Lord!” Added Sir Breastplate.

“Show the little slut the truth of male dominance, Lord!” Added Katrakian, who I now dubbed Sir Meatshaft.

I grinned and waved until I made it to the tent, then I made sure to close the hide flap behind me before sinking to my knees. “Oooohhhhhh fuck,” I muttered, a hand pressing to my forehead. “Fuck, fuck, fuck a hairy duck.”

Okay, okayokayokayokay…okay. This looked bad. But…butbutbut…BUT! Looks could be deceiving! That was the thought that kept my hopes up as I undid the ratty knot holding the sack shut and peered inside to drink in the most adorable sight I had ever seen in my life.

Before me sat a tiny, gray-coated creature with a silver mane and massive, deep-gray eyes. I mean, these eyes made big blue’s eyes look normal by comparison. They shimmered as they looked up at me, the muzzle quivering beneath them as a small whimper escaped the creature’s mouth, her tiny body curling up beneath my hands.

All thought processes shut down upon seeing the creature. If a Pokémon and a golden retriever puppy made love, their baby would have been jealous of this tiny anthro horsey. When she stood on two quivering hooves, she barely came up to my knee, and my heart nearly burst with d’awww.

Okay, focus. You’re alone now, she can provide you with answers you desperately need, that should be your first priority. The rational part of me insisted as a squee rose in my throat and my massive arms wrapped around her.

“OMG baby pony!” I gasped while my brain cried out in frustration. “I am gonna kiss you and love you and squeeze you and hug you and call you George…”

She shivered in my grasp, finally snapping me out of my intense case of desu-kawaii for me to notice that A) she was now crying into my chest fur, B) this crying was muffled by something gagging her, and most importantly C) she was naked but for the weird, gray fur God gave her.

“Oh, shit,” I grumbled, setting the little creature down and finally looking her over. Everything that I saw knocked the rose-tint right out of my eyes. That adorable, deep-gray gaze was marred by a blackeye, like I said, but also the luxurious silver coat was mussed up in all the wrong places: around her nonexistent breasts, and above her tiny vulva, which I only managed a peek at before squeezing my eyes shut. Then there was the dirty, tattered rope bound tightly around her wrists and hooves, cutting into her flesh so hard I could see bruising even through that silver-gray coat. A dirty, yellow-stained cloth was shoved into her mouth. I didn’t even want to think about where that yellow had come from.

“Jeez-us Christ,” I grumbled, setting her down gently. Slowly, I undid the rough knot holding the cloth gag in place and eased it out of her mouth. A few audible sobs immediately escaped her mouth as tears ran down her fuzzy cheeks, and the sound damn near broke my heart. Imagine a little girl finding the broken remains of her puppy in the middle of the road and crying over them while a little old man stops by and tells you how this reminds him of his wife, who died of cancer not two weeks ago, all while In the Arms of an Angel plays in the background. It was actually hard to keep a stoic, strong face for her.

“Okay, it’s okay,” I whispered, hugging her close. “Not gonna hurtcha, nobody’s gonna hurtcha. Just go ahead and cry it all out.”

She buried her muzzle in my chest and let out a gut-wrenching sob. My eyes slid shut, even as I reached down and felt for the knot holding her wrists together, which I gently pulled apart. When her hands were free, she immediately wrapped them around my torso, crying into my chest as I ran my claws through her hair, hoping this felt comforting and not like I was just grooming her before eating her.

“Please don’t do it to me too,” she whimpered finally, in a tiny voice like a small angel hugging my waist.

My claws paused in her hair. “Do what, sweetie?”

“What they did to mommy.”

I paused, then slowly sank to one knee until I was at eye level. It took all my strength to keep a straight, non-teary face while I looked her in those wide, terrified eyes, but I managed. “What’s your name?” I asked in the most calming tone I could muster.

“S-Silver Glow.”

I blinked. Seriously? Did pony names match their looks perfectly or something? How in the hell? I managed a quick, warm smile, which faltered as she pulled away and started rubbing at the bruises on her wrists. “Okay, Silver Glow, I need you to tell me what they did to mommy.”

She nodded, her massive eyes tearing up even more. Aww fuck, this was gonna get bad, wasn’t it? “They made her and me get all nakes, a-and then they said I had to watch and his wee-wee was all big, and they took it where mommy pees and she kept telling ‘em to stop an’ I kept telling ‘em to stop and he kept touching me places…”

“Okay…” I held up a hand, my muzzle snarling in disgust. “Okay, I get the picture, alright.”

Yeah, it wasn’t just bad, it was fucking awful. It was Hitler palling it up with Stalin over a pile of dead babies awful. It was Justin Bieber touring with Rebecca Black with posters advertising it in comic sans awful. My fellow caribou-dudes were rapists. Well, that shit wasn’t gonna stand, dream or not.

“Silver Glow, do you know what they did with your mommy?”

She nodded carefully. “They tied her up in the woods an’ then put me in the bag. They s-said she wasn’t gonna last long…”

Alright, standard hero thing here. Good thing this was my dream, or I might be somewhat intimidated by the task in front of me. As it was, I figured the best thing would be to slip into my best LARPer impersonation. “Fear not, young lass! For I, Sir Francowski of the Sixth Street Halfricans, shall fetch thy mother, win her heart, and maybe diddle the blue thing while I’m at it! Whatever! She was pretty hot!”

Silver Glow blinked at me, but nodded, tears still standing in my eyes. “O-okay…”

“So…y’know, just…stay in here, okay? Don’t let nobody in, just hang here and wait,” I nodded to her and strode out, not looking back for fear that her big ol’ eyes would make me grab her up into another hug. Well, my epic voice of super narration didn’t last long. Probably why I never went LARPing. Well, that and a few other reasons, chief among them being that I had a job. And a life.

I stormed out of the tent, flashing a quick smile to Silver Glow, which she returned, thankfully. Okay, tiny pony person set for now. Let’s see about another, slightly larger pony person.

“My Lord?” Katrakian this time, unfortunately sitting up again, dick flopping out once more. “You’ve finished with the little slut already?”

I tore my eyes away from the sandworm of Arrakis being assaulted by a couple Borgan spheres (kudos if you got both those references) long enough to meet his gaze. “Well, no, can’t say I have. See, she enlightened me to a few things.”

At that, Katrakian’s gaze darted away. He turned a little to the side, thankfully covering up Tweedledee and Tweedledum and most of their pet anaconda. “Why, whatever do you mean, Lord?”

“Dude, seriously, if you’re gonna lie, get good at it,” I grumbled, arms crossing. “Don’t look like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar when you’re trying to lie.”

Amazingly, that’s what he looked like just then. He even looked at his feet and gave a little kick at the dust. If he’d been wearing a propeller hat and muttering “Awww, shucks,” it wouldn’t have looked too out of place. Except, you know, for the Gyrados and his two Master balls hanging down under his legs, and for the fact that we were talking about a possible rape-murder spree.

“Jesus Christ…where’s the mother?” I grumbled. “I mean, really, did you not think I’d wonder about that!?”

Katrakian hung his head low, the wrecking balls with their own support cable now dangling limply. He said nothing, even as he sank to his knees, before mumbling a quiet: “I’m sorry, Lord.”

“We’re a bit past ‘sorry,’ dontcha fuckin’ think?” I growled, privately grateful that the two watermelons and their pet banana were now covered up again.

“No, Lord, please!” He gasped. “We were only trying to keep her from Tomasian, not you! Tomasian is so rough with them, and when he gets drunk he always makes himself go first, and he doesn’t leave any for us! We always have to make do with cold meat when he goes first, Lord, I swear! We were going to tell you about her too!”

I blinked at the rant. Holy shit, the line of thinking that would lead to someone treating another person like this was beyond normal subway-groper and shot right on through to fucking Ted Bundy levels. Were they…were all my fucking caribou guys like this!? If so, then I just became Lord of a nation of rapists. Goodie, best title since Leader of Germany, circa April 1945. On the upside, I could use Katrakian’s guilt pretty easily.

“Okay, calm down, just let me know where she is.” I growled.

Still moping, his head bowed, Katrakian levelled a finger at a patch of woods just over a small hill. I didn’t even pause, I took off at a dead run, once again putting those finely-tuned legs to use while praying to God, Allah, Jesus, Buddha, and L. Ron Hubbard that I wasn’t about to find what I thought I was gonna find.

I did.

Just inside the tree line, maybe a few dozen yards from the clearing, I found another pony-woman, naked as her daughter. I…it’s hard to…her breasts were all fucked up. Looked like someone had clawed at them, and then the sheer amount of wetness around her crotch, she’d been raped so many times. Her eyes were rolled back, all red and bleary and looking so hopeless, even in death. I…fuck…her hands were tied behind this tree so rough I could see blood all along the bark, but they’d also thrown this rope around her neck for good measure…I think she…I think she used it to…

She wasn’t breathing, and I think it was because she knew what was about to happen and didn’t want to see it. The rope around her neck was strung up on a branch over her head, it would’ve already been tight, why they did that I’ll never know and I’m glad for that, but it meant all she had to do was…you know…give up. Let it tighten.

I took two steps towards the body and sank to my knees. Back home, this would be where I’d call the cops, and they’d come hauling ass over the hills to setup crime scene tape and take rape kits and do the rest of the shit I’d seen them do on CSI to make sure that whoever did this, he’d be caught, he’d be dragged off in chains, and he’d be put someplace where he’d never get to do it again, and I could go home and sink into my big comfy couch and try to forget what I’d just seen. Except…that wasn’t gonna happen here. I looked into those massive, wide, empty eyes until I couldn’t anymore, then I reached over and closed them.

I wanted to puke really badly, but I couldn’t. Not yet.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” I mumbled, tears stinging my eyes. I wiped furiously at them, grateful for the solitude. “I’m so, so sorry.”

No more fooling myself. No more playing tricks on my own mind. This shit was pure evil. Only question left: what the hell was I gonna do about it?

I stood, my feet shaking, my fists clenching, but a big grin spreading across my face. “Probably something retarded,” I answered my own question, turning and striding back into the clearing. Just had to remember this was all in my head. Why my head would cook up a fucked-up scenario like this was a question for the shrink I’d almost certainly be hiring when I woke up. Right now, I had some dream-shit to mess up. At least I was secure in the knowledge that Silver Glow was safe…

…

And Big Blue isn’t. Aw, shit…welp, at least I knew that “getting her ready for ya” didn’t involve some fava beans and a nice chianti on the side.

I started running again, storming towards the campsite. My three soldiers, the three guys who just raped a woman to the point where she figured taking her own life was a better choice than to keep breathing, were now all gathered around the remnants of the campfire. Wait, no wait, I didn’t just have three guys here…where’d Tomasian been this entire time?

Fuck. A. Duck.

“Your highness?” Katrakian again, and you know what? Right then, I really felt like hitting something as hard as I could, right in the midst of this run too.

I felt like saying something smart-alecky and stupid and awesome all at the same time. Instead, I just screamed at the top of my lungs, my hands clenching into fists. I leapt just before hitting the trio and came down in a devastating haymaker that nailed Katrakian across the jaw. His head twisted with the sheer force of the hit, a wad of bloody spittle flew out of his mouth. As he flopped down, the rattlesnake with its two eggs went limp, practically pulling back up into his stomach.

I usually didn’t like to think of myself as a vengeful person, but shit’s alive, that felt good. Also, always wanted to pull off a flying haymaker. Never thought I could, but here we were. Even if it hurt like hell.

“Ahhh,” I hissed, shaking my hand. “That hurt a lot more than a normal punch does, shit. Jason Statham lied to me.”

“Sir!” I turned to see the other two nameless fuckheads sinking to their knees, hands raised. “Sir, our most sincere apologies!” Gasped Tweedledumbshit.

“We would have let you have the mother too! Honest! We just assumed you’d want the younger, tighter pussy!” Added Tweedledickless.

Okay, every time these guys opened their mouths just made me want to hurt something, but I had bigger priorities. “Can it,” I growled, my fists clenching so hard I could feel blood oozing out around my claws. “The fuck is Tomasian?”

Still with heads bowed, Sir Cottonpants leveled a shaking finger at one of the oversized tents.

I sprinted for the tent, sliding in like a star hitter making the winning homerun. I sprang to my feet, my strange, caribou eyes already adjusting to the dark, and I nearly lost my lunch. There was Big Blue alright, sans cotton stretchy clothing, staked down all spread eagle, her wrists and fetlocks bruised from pulling at the ropes holding her. Tears silently drowned her face even as she glared hatefully up at a grinning Tomasian mounting her, forcing himself in deeper and deeper, claws sinking into her flesh. I could see streaks of blood and scratchmarks all over her. I could see a shiner growing over her eye. I could see the sick, gray gunk marinating his balls just beneath her slit. I could see Tomasian, looking over his shoulder with his eyes widening in surprise, his balls swinging as he forced himself into her with a loud squelch. I could see where he left a bigass club standing upright by the door.

I didn’t even think, I just moved. Some part of me realized I was going to break my already-stressed hand if I just went for another punch, though. The club was in my hands before I could tell what I was doing, and before Tomasian could even ask, I brought it in a high arc down against his forehead, as hard as I could. There was a sickening squelch, a loud crack, and the caribou tumbled backwards, his now-deflating cock poking up like a little flagpole from the rest of his body, his neck bending at a funny angle.

I fell to my knees, gasping for air, and then I went to all fours and puked. No other way around it. I’d heard about rape, and I’d been just as angry as the next guy whenever some high-profile case ended with a guilty verdict and a sentence consisting of a few months’ probation and a stern wrist-slapping, but to hear about it and see it are two very different things. What I saw was so wrong and sickening and disgusting that I just had no choice. It was either puke, or start that laughing fit I’d had when I first woke up all over again.

When I’d finished wiping chunks of apple and stomach acid from around my mouth, I rose to my knees again, still gasping. Big Blue looked at me through her tears, her naked breasts rising and falling, her raggedy, rainbow mane now filled with dust and dirt from beneath her. “I’m sorry,” I muttered, and I reached over and pulled at the knot in the ratty rope around one of her wrists. When I finished with one, I pulled at the other, and when that was free, I worked on her hooves. When one of those was free, it came up in a kick to my schnozz that sent me sprawling.

Yeah, probably should’ve seen that coming. I wound up sprawled on my ass as she leapt up, yanked her remaining hoof free, then backed away, fists raised, teeth clenched. I rubbed my nose where I’d been hit, then sighed and laid back.

“Sorry,” I whispered again.

A long pause, then she asked something most curious: “Who are you?”

Before I could answer, something slammed against the back of my head. I fell on my stomach, wondering what could’ve hit me, then looked up and found a familiar pair of bowling balls with a single pin. “Oh, fuck no,” I whispered.

Katrakian appeared in my field of view, with a massive club in his hands. “Oh, thank God,” I added, as he levelled the club on me.

“D-don’t move sir!” He gasped, his mouth twisted in a combination of rage and fear. “O-obviously the little sluts and traitors have managed to drive you from the Truth, but don’t worry! We’ll help you find it again!”

I looked up at him, darkness creeping in along the edges of my vision. Well shit, I tried. Nobody can say I didn’t. “You’re a bunch of rapist shits,” I grumbled as the two remaining soldiers crowded in behind him.

“W-we’ll save you, sir!” He whispered. “Whatever demon has taken you, we’ll save you and you’ll lead us to…”

He didn’t even get to finish his sentence before a familiar blue fist crashed into his throat, choking off his words. I clung to consciousness and watched in awe as Big Blue ripped the club out of Katrakian’s claws and whipped around in a perfectly-executed tornado kick, bouncing off of Sir Cottonpants’s face before ducking, doing a quick spin to trip up Sir Breastplate, then whipping the club around faster than I even believed someone could move right down on Katrakian’s head. For the next few minutes, she alternated between all three, the club soon bringing up blood and bits of gray matter, some of which flecked onto my robes, most of which splattered the inside of the tent.

When it was all said and done, Big Blue turned to me, panting heavily, her fine breasts heaving, blood running down the sides of her face. I could only grin.

“That was fucking awesome,” I said before the darkness took me.

Chapter 4: Camp Hell

I may not know much, but I do know a lot about World War Two, for all the good that knowledge has done me. See, my Dad had a ton of books on it in his study, and he’d lock me in there as opposed to sending me to my room whenever I’d come home with a shitty report card or try to steal a cookie from the jar up high in our cupboard or get my head caught in the vacant neck of a female mannequin at a Kohl’s trying to see if there was anything supporting the stupidly-massive breasts they gave those things. Just as an aside, there isn’t, it’s just molded plastic, but that’s beside the point.

Now, most people are kinda under the impression that Dubya-Dubya Two only began when America got pulled in after the attack on Pearl Harbor. That’s very far from the truth, and it’s kinda really a consequence of our education system just being all “America Fuck Yeah” all the time. See, the War really got cooking years earlier, with Italy, Germany, and Japan basically doing their best to gobble up every nation they could…

Wake up!

…Italy invaded Abyssinia, modern-day Ethiopia to all you plebs, and Germany supported fascist takeovers in Czechoslovakia and Austria and remilitarized the Rhine River valley completely against the Treaty of Versailles, all in the thirties. But if you really wanna put a date on it, I’d have to say September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, and France and Britain finally realized they were going to have to do something about the dude with the funny mustache that’d been taking over Central Europe for the past decade. That’s when things got cooking and two major powers finally started duking it out, although even that’s debatable since Japan and China sort of qualified as major powers and they’d been going off and on since…

Wake up!

… So, I have heard the rumors that the main reason Poland lost was because they had cavalry charging German Panzers, and I can tell you right now that never happened. The problem was Poland didn’t have much in the way of tanks. They had mechanized battalions, see, but nothing like a formal tank column. Also, they had decided to focus all their defenses around Danzig, this one little town that stuck out towards the sea because after World War 1 the Allies went all “hurr durr, they should have a port” and just took one from Germany even though it made the map look stupid. Plus, the damn thing was basically wedged between Germany and a German enclave, which meant all Germany had to do was circle around and close off one little avenue of escape and any Polacks would be caught. And since the Poles decided to defend their port with pretty much all their guys, you see the problem...

Something smacked me across the face. “Wake up!

“AHHH WE POLES DID PUT UP A FIGHT, YOU BITCH! FUCK YOUR POLACK JOKES!”

I opened my eyes. Big Blue was glaring down at me. “Nope.” I muttered, closing my eyes again. Now, this leads us to the Brits and Frogs finally figuring it's time to do something about the mustache enthusiast fucking Europe up, so they immediately leapt into action and did next to nothing, declaring war and...not much else. Sure, they sent some guys to try and shore up Belgium and Norway and Denmark, but this was like trying to hold back the tides with a drinking straw...

“HEY!” Another smack, followed by a shake.

“Alright, alright! I’m up! Fuck!” I opened my eyes again, this time meeting Big Blue’s gaze. I tried to raise my hands to give her the booping of her life, only to meet with failure, and something straining at my wrists. Oh good, tied up. Swell.

Big Blue nodded at me, then turned to walk away. There was a loud thud, and then the ground started shaking under me. I sighed and turned over on my back, the sun greeting me as the rough wood slid against my face. Walls blocked me off on three sides. I was…in a cart, okay, fine. And we were moving.

“Hey, hey Blue!” I shouted over the walls of my new mobile prison.

There was no response. Still on the silent treatment, okay.

“Hiya, mister!” I heard a familiar voice whisper at me.

I grinned, looking to the side to find Silver Glow’s ever-so-boopable muzzle smiling right into my face. “Hey Silver,” I whispered back. “How ya holdin’ up?”

“Pretty good,” she giggled. “Miss Dash got me something to eat an’ a dress to wear.” She stood back, letting me drink in the wondrous stitching of the plain, burlap dress donning her little purple body. If it wasn’t for the little skirt at the bottom which she spread out in a petite and all-too-adorable curtsy for me, I would think Big Blue had just cut a few holes in a burlap bag for her.

“Oh, how lovely,” I crooned.

“Not as good as my other dresses, but it’s better than being nakes again,” she whispered, kneeling by my head again.

“Uh-huh…Silver, why’re we whispering?”

“Cuz Miss Dash says I’m not s’posed t’talk to you. She says you’re a meanie, and an evil, ‘motherbucking rafist pig who should get his balls cut off,’ but I don’t think she wanted me t’hear that last one.”

“That a fact?” I asked, my legs crossing over li’l Marky-Mark protectively. “Okay…well, thanks for talking to me, anyway.”

She beamed down to me, her grin lighting up her face in a way that matched her name perfectly. “Welcomes!”

Just. Too. Damn. Cute. “So, Silver, you keep calling her Miss Dash, is that Blue’s name over there?” I cocked my head towards the front of the cart, where I could just see the top of a rainbow-colored hairstyle.

“Uh-huh! Rainbow Dash! She’s the fastest flier in all of Equestria!”

“Okay, finally I got a…” I blinked, looked over at Silver Glow, then to the shock of rainbow bobbing in and out of view behind the low wall up front, then back to Silver again. “Rainbow Dash? You kidding me right now? And…Equestria!?”

Silver nodded happily, though she looked at me with an eyebrow raised.

“Silver Glow and Rainbow Dash!? I mean, really!?” I huffed. A bunch of talking ponies named after their most obvious physical attribute!? “Really!?”

“Y-yes, Mister…are you okay?”

“No, I’m not! I’m in a coma and my mind is cooking up some of the most insultingly childish horseshit for me to deal with!” I growled. “Silver Glow and Rainbow Dash!? Really!? That’d be like if I was named ‘Brownhair McDrunkguy’ back home!”

“…Home?”

“Yeah, in reality, of course,” I looked up at her and sighed. “It’s really complicated and I don’t expect you to get it, but all of this isn’t real. This is a dream I’m having.”

Silver Glow blinked at me. “What?”

“None of this is happening, see, I’m in a hospital right now, probably hooked up to a bajillion life support machines with tubes all over me, and I’m…”

“Alright, that does it!” Rainbow screamed, and suddenly the cart jolted to a stop. I propped myself up on an elbow as she stormed around the side and practically materialized behind me: a rainbow-colored storm cloud flashing lightning and spinning tornadoes. I gulped immediately on seeing it. This was a look I knew all too well: the look of a woman when you had just really and totally fucked up.

She reached inside for me. “C’mere!”

“I-I’d rather not…” I replied.

Having none of it, she scooped me up by my robe’s collar as if I were a ragdoll and hauled me out of the cart.

“Woah, and we’re moving!” I gasped. Damn, girl was strong! She had to bench other, weaker dudes to work out! The ones she didn’t just eat for breakfast, that was.

Hauling me into the woods – one-armed, I might add – Rainbow Dash lugged my ass well out of Silver Glow’s sight. “Stay with the cart!” She screamed over her shoulder, and I saw Silver’s little head popping up, giving a tiny nod. Rainbow continued her rampage through the woods until the cart was long out of view, then she dropped me at the base of a massive oak with all the care and gentleness of a five-year-old with a sack of potatoes.

I looked up at her, about to say something smart, but she turned away, her wings twitching spasmodically, her fur coat bristling. I bit my lip instead. Should I…should I say something here anyway? What was I supposed to do? How did you calm down a pissed-off anthro horse thing when you didn’t even really know why she was pissed?

Oh wait, hell…

“Dash, is this about me delivering you to those fucks?” I asked, my stomach doing backflips.

Rainbow shivered, but didn’t turn around and deliver one of those awesome tornado kicks to my jaw, which I mistook for being a good sign.

“Look, Rainbow, I swear to you, I had no idea those guys were immediately gonna default to rape and murder,” I gasped truthfully. “I swear, if I’d had any clue…”

“Drop the act. Right. Now.”

I cringed back. “Look, I dunno what you think I am…”

“Oh, I know what you are, Dainn,” she hissed, and she turned to me, and I was almost knocked back by the anger radiating off of her. Hot tears streamed down her face, her teeth clenching as veins stood out on her neck. “Do you know what you’ve done to me!? Just you personally!? Do you even remember!? Or was I just another one of your whores!?”

Aww hell…I probably should have guessed this, but it sounded like as far as conquerors went, Lord Dainn was less ‘Modern NATO Army under constant supervision of the media,’ and more ‘Genghis Khan, with a dash of Nazi thrown in for taste.’ Keep in mind, Khan raped so many women there’s a 0.2% chance that I myself am related to him (thank you, Snapple facts). Based on the hot tears in Rainbow’s eyes, I could only assume what had happened to her under my body’s previous owner’s care. My eyes drifted away, unable to look into those angry lilac pools. “Rainbow, I…”

“Look at me!” She screamed, storming towards me as my head came around to meet her gaze. She grabbed me by the collar again and held up one of her wings, stretching it out before me.

“You see this?” She hissed, her hand shaking as it held me. “You see where the feathers lay a little flat, and the muscle shakes a little?”

I gulped, looked, and nodded. I saw.

“That’s where the wing binders were. The ones your soldiers forced me to wear for years,” she hissed. “I burned those things when I broke free, but they’ll always be there. I’ll never fly as fast as I did before you. Those damned things were on me too long, the damage is permanent.

“Now, you see this?” She pulled at the collar of her shirt, exposing her neck. I bit my lip: it didn’t take me any time at all to see the band of patchy, scraggly hair forming a band around her neck, revealing the angry, brown scar tissue on the skin beneath. “That’s from the collar we all had to wear. My master would sometimes loop a leash up over a ceiling rafter and leave me slightly suspended for an entire night, just enough where I’d have to stand on my tiptoes just to keep from strangling. All. Night.

“I have so many more I could show you. I could show you the scratch marks on my back where he clawed me and whipped me while he was raping me. I could show you the other scratches on my inner thighs, where I had a spiked dildo shoved in that I had to hold for hours on end, the same one that made sure I could never have kids,” she grimaced. “On the upside, that meant I never wound up as one of the mares you personally selected for the breeding camps, so I guess that worked out, you evil fucker.”

My jaw stood agape. I didn’t know what to say, what could I say? Shit, at least Genghis Khan knew how to treat horses, and I’m pretty sure a lot of women lived alright in the areas he already conquered. Here, it sounded like Dainn turned rape into a goddamned institution. The only thing I could think of that might come close were the Japanese comfort women back in World War Two, and even then they stuck to rape. They didn’t also…shove spiked dildos…up in…they didn’t also…

Aw Jesus…Jesus God…

“Rainbow Dash,” I whispered. “I’m so…”

She punched me across the jaw. Hard. To the point where stars were in my eyes and my head reeled from the blow. I grimaced, went down on my knees as best as the bindings on my ankles would allow. She was having none of it, slamming her knee into my nose in a rising kick. My head spinning with pain, I fell back against the tree.

“I dunno what game you’re playing, but it’s not gonna work!” She bellowed, delivering a kick to my gut that nearly brought a stream of vomit to my mouth. “I’ll die before I see Equestria under your thumb again!”

I looked up at her, my eyes blank, still dazed from the hit. She snarled, reared back for another strike.

“I’m sorry,” was all I managed to croak out.

Rainbow’s arm hovered in place, then she snorted and dropped me, turning around, pacing erratically. I scoured my mind, searching for a way out, a way to defuse this, maybe even a way to make this all feel a little better for her, because shit, she’d been through enough, hadn’t she? And all I could come up with was a stupid joke.

So, being the jackass I am, I told it.

“H-hey Rainbow,” I said, a stupid smile crossing my face. “How is sex like math?”

She turned on me, fuming, eyes still misting with angry tears.

Still grinning, I finished: “Ya add a bed, subtract the clothes, divide the legs, and pray you don’t multiply.”

I almost cringed at my own shit joke, regretting it the instant it had left my mouth. She blinked at me, visibly confused. I lowered my head. “Yeah, I know,” I grumbled. “Go ahead, I deserve it after that one…”

But then something curious reached my ears: a set of low, raspy giggling. I looked up in time to see Rainbow’s hands fly to her mouth, covering it as her shoulders trembled with the laughter. Soon the giggling turned to snickering, then to guffaws. The guffaws became full on laughter until she doubled-over, kneeling on all fours, tears running out her eyes, the laughter slowly changing into something lower and far less hilarious. Tears still streamed out her eyes even as they squeezed shut and her smile faded, her body curling up into a little ball as the hitching laughter turned into pained wailing. She hugged herself close, unable to stop herself, unable to keep the gales of sobs at bay.

Unsure of what to do, I inched along the grass, bringing myself closer until I was kneeling in front of her. I hovered there, indecisive for but a moment, and then I figured what the hell: she looked pony enough. I reached around with my bound hands and stroked her mane, right between the ears, her tears and sobs devolving into a blubbering mess as her raspy screams sent every woodland creature for miles scurrying off.

I let her cry it all out, whatever it was, though just based on what I knew, I could hazard a guess. Even if I didn’t want to.

So, upside, I got my walking privileges back. Downside, I was on a leash. A makeshift one made out of wound-together burlap bags. As unsexy as that sounds, it’s even unsexier than you think. Yes, even with someone with a body like Rainbow Dash’s holding the other end, because knowing what I knew and seeing what I’d seen…well, the undertone was basically shifting between wanting to throw myself at her hooves and apologize on behalf of all men, and wondering if I was going to live through the next hour.

Fortunately, I had a tiny silver pile of adorable to break the tension with.

“So…you just sit an’…watch other people do stuff? Sounds boring.” Silver said, her nose scrunched up in every kid’s universal sign of distaste.

“Well, I’m not good at making it come across how awesome some of these stories are,” I snorted. “Silver, didn’t your mom ever read a storybook to you? One with action and adventure and pirates and shi…and stuff?” Other downside, had to watch my tongue.

“Nuh-uh, papa said reading was for city ponies that had the time, an’ mama…” she stopped suddenly, trailing off. Her head hung low as I grimaced. We may not have told her about finding her mom’s body out in the woods, but she knew something was very wrong. Kids could be pretty intuitive, but I figured it had to be pretty obvious at some point.

“Mama made up stories sometimes,” she said very quietly.

“Alright, well, it was like those stories,” I added, trying desperately to keep her attention on anything but the missing mama in the picture. “Only acted out for real.”

She perked up at that. “Really?”

“Ohhh, not so boring now, huh?” I grinned. “And they were all sorts of stories. About lawmen taming the wild west and knights and swords and dragons and vampires…”

“Wowww…” she mused. “How about The Princess an’ the Frog? Didja guys have that one?”

“Naww, see, that was a movie, which was different from TV ‘cuz…”

“Alright, hang up,” Rainbow paused the cart and hauled on my collar, forcing me to gag as she dragged me off the road. “Mr. Dainn and I have some talkin’ t’do, Silver, you stay right there.”

“Aww, okay,” she squealed, and through my tears, I saw her ears droop. Seriously, like an atomic bomb of adorable. Back in the human world, she’d be able to get anything from any human adult just by looking at them all misty-eyed.

When we were again a good distance away, Rainbow released my collar and let sweet, fresh air back into my lungs. “Fuckin’ damn girl,” I coughed. “There’s gotta be a better way for ya to get my attention…think you almost crushed my larynx with that one.”

“What’re you doing!?” Rainbow hissed at me. “Just what do you think you’re doing, talking about that stupid bullcrap with her!?”

I looked her dead in the eye, my brow arched. For real, girl? For real? “I think I’m distracting her from asking about where her mommy went,” I hissed in reply. “So if you wanna be the one to explain that li’l tidbit, by all means, be my goddamned guest.”

Her nostrils flared in anger, but she stopped short of trying anything else. Her head bowed, her eyes falling in the shadow cast by her hairline. I sighed. Alright, maybe that was a little below the belt…though on the other hand (or weird clawed thing in my case now), this did leave me with a good opportunity to hit her with something I’d been meaning to ask. “Hey, Rainbow, listen, about earlier…”

“Just make sure you both keep up,” Rainbow growled, striding back to the cart. “Seriously, both of ya. We’ve got at least a day until we reach the next settlement.”

I sighed while watching that toned ass sway on its way back to the road (whaddya want from me? I’m only human…well, caribou-thing now, but still). My shoulders gave a good heaving moan, but I followed her, right back to the road, resuming my place at her side as she scooped up the guides for the cart again and got us all back in motion.

We walked on in silence for a good while, nothing but the creak of the cart along the dirt road and the rustling of the wind in the leaves keeping us company. Eventually, of course, Silver Glow had to break the silence. Being a child as young as she was, I’m only surprised she withstood it as long as she did. “Hey, Mister Dainn? What’s wrong with Missus Dash?”

“Oh she…” I grinned wickedly. Time for a bit of payback for my sore throat. “She suffers from an awful medical condition called stick-in-the-ass-itus.”

Beside me, Rainbow turned, her nostrils flaring again as I grinned over at her.

“Oh,” Silver said. “That’s too bad…does she need medicine?”

“Naww Silver,” I replied, returning Rainbow’s glare with a cocky, sideways grin. “She just needs a nice long…”

My smile died at the same time as the joke. In my complete dumbassery, I’d almost said Rainbow needed a nice, hard fuck not two hours after she’d been raped, and then informed me of the years of sexual enslavement she’d had to endure. In case anyone was wondering: yes, I am aware of what an utterly and complete douche I could be.

“…bubble bath,” I completed, and relaxed as I watched the ever-flaring nostrils on Rainbow’s face calm down a little.

Silver Glow tilted her cute little head curiously. “A…bath?”

“Yeah, y’know, all sudsy and warm?”

Silver blinked again, showing that same confusion from my first attempt at explaining television. “Why would a bath be nice?”

I snickered. “You, my dear, are too young to understand.”

“Am not!” She shot back, muzzles scrunching up, fists pounding the rail with tiny, childish rage. “I just don’t get how sitting in a bucket with water is all that great!”

“A bucket!?” I gasped, looking back to her. Oh hell, almost forgotten, dirt-poor farmers! She wasn’t gonna have a proper tub. Shit, I should’ve been surprised if she’d had indoor plumbing. “Oh hon, someday, somehow, I’ve gotta give you a proper bubblebath. In a tub. With soap suds. And a rubber ducky.”

“A what?”

I shook my head. “Truly, yours was a childhood of loss and neglect.”

She pouted angrily, ears flaring back. Unlike Rainbow’s anger though, this was the impotent rage of a cross between an adorable cartoon horse and an equally-adorable preschooler. In other words, more amusing than threatening. “Did not! I had a house! And a mommy and daddy! And two of the best doggies ever!”

“Well, I had a PS2 with Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, so there!” I stuck my tongue out at her playfully, earning another adorable pout and a bristling of fur. “And what’s more, I’ll have you know I captured all of the Deck of 52 most wanted criminals in that game, and completed every contract from every faction!”

“I dunno what any of that means!”

“You would if your childhood was awesome!”

“Shut up!” Rainbow bellowed. I turned to her, ready with another snarky comment about her condition acting up, but the way she looked forward with her ears perked and her wide eyes scanning the woods killed any and all accumulated snark.

In an instant, she ducked down to my ankles and looped a rag around them, binding them tight before giving me a gentle nudge that landed me on my ass.

“What’s this for!?” I shouted.

Without another word, she swooped off deeper into the woods. “You two stay where you are!” She yelled over her shoulder, her blue wings lifting her into the air and out of sight before my pervert senses could even swivel my head up to catch a parting glimpse of her ass.

“Goodbye, my friends,” I whispered, my bottom lip quivering as her rear faded from view. “I wish we could have shared a final kiss…”

“Who’re you talking to?” Silver asked.

“Eh, nobody,” I replied, leaning against the cart as Silver stood up, looking to where Dash had just flown off.

“Where’s she goin’?” She asked, her voice going all high-pitched and worried.

“Probably chasing a falling branch or something,” I shrugged and tried to get comfortable in the dirt. “Ain’t my business.”

“Sh-should we go after her?”

“Why?”

“She might need us!”

I just looked up at her from my spot on the ground. “Kid, she tied me up and left me in the dirt. That’s a pretty sure way of saying ‘I don’t wantcha there’.”

I snuggled in tight and shut my eyes, believing that to be the end of it, and somehow forgetting just how insistent and used to getting their way a little girl with big, adorable eyes could be. There was shuffling and rocking from the cart, then the sound of a couple hooves hitting the ground, followed by shuffling through the dirt and leaves that eventually stopped right at my side.

I grimaced. “Silver, I know what you’re doing.” Nothing but silence responded. “Silver, I know you’re there giving me the sad puppy-dog eyes.”

Still nothing from her end.

“Silver, I’m not gonna look, and we’re not going up there.”

A light whimpering replied from my side, making me shift uncomfortably.

“Silver, I’m an alcoholic techie from another dimension and you’re a little girl with big, bright eyes. She’s a badass warrior babe who can pull off a tornado kick and have three guys on the ground with nothing on her but her birthday suit. Whatever’s up there, there isn’t very much we could do to help that she couldn’t do herself.”

More whimpering. A high-pitched squeaking sound filled my ears. You know the one. The sound a kid makes when they’re trying not to cry, so instead of all-out sobbing, they just stand there with tears on their little faces and whine air out through their vocal cords like leaky scuba tanks.

“Silver, no! You can’t just…”

A loud hitch, an almighty sniffle, and a few tears landed on my cheek. I finally opened my eyes and glared up at her crying, snot-covered face, her eyes bigger than an anime character’s.

“You owe me so big,” I hissed, still glaring. “Get these things off me and we’ll see if we can catch up.”

Brightening up immediately, Silver bent to her knees and I rolled on my side, letting her pull at the wrappings around my wrists until I could wriggle free. I promptly yanked off the ankle bindings and the ratty old collar Dash had left behind and stood up, stretching a bit of soreness out of my shoulders. All the while, I maintained a deep, dark glare into Silver’s bright and shining eyes. Finally, when I was free, I went to my knees so I was eye-level with her, still maintaining the glare.

“Let’s move, you manipulative little harlot,” I hissed. She nodded and skipped off. It was all I could do to keep up.

We stomped through underbrush, snapping twigs and dodging branches with almost no concern for stealth, though I didn’t call for Silver to slow up. At the rate Rainbow Dash had been flying, she could have reached Tijuana and returned to us with cheesy Hawaiian floral print shirts and beef taquitos within the hour. Wait, beef? Would that work? Aren’t ponies herbivorous? In fact, if ponies talk and walk on two legs around here, what’s that say about cows…

And suddenly, I was on the ground, face-first in the dirt. “What the f…” I started, but then a hoof pressed into the back of my skull.

“I knew it,” Rainbow hissed as her hoof pressed into me harder. “I knew you’d talk her into…”

“Miss Dash, wait!” Oh Silver, thank your tiny little voice, I could just wrap you in my arms, even in the midst of my concussion.

But ho, what is this!? Why, where have your tentacle-arms gone, my child? It appears as though you have lost the blessing of Lord Parthinax! But fear not! A journey to the lands of Gondor and proof in combat against the Necromongers will surely restore his favor!

“Silver, stay out of this!” Said she of the deadly blade, her voice warbling through several octaves with each pulse of her ongoing constriction art. “He tricked you into letting him go so that…”

“No, I tricked him!” Shouted she of the many serpents, the force of her voice radiating out in a pulse that bathed the forest in its glow. “I wanted t’make sure you didn’t need help! He just wanted to stay behind!”

She of the blades paused at the insistence of she of the serpents, lifting up my head and allowing blessed gas into my chest, whereupon the illusions stopped and I thought good again. I blinked up at Dash as she turned me on my back, and though I was grateful she was no longer a multi-tentacled servant of a far-off horse god, the glare in her eyes told me I was still on thin ice.

“What’d she do?” Dash growled, her elbow perching on her knee.

“Puppy-dog eyes,” I replied.

Rainbow cocked an eyebrow at me, so I motioned to Silver, who obliged by darting between us, folding her ears down, and giving the most adowable big-ol’ sad widdle puppy-dog eyes she could muster. Even a tough chick like Dash took a step back at the sheer display of adorbs. “Celestia kid, you take lessons from Fluttershy before the Fall?” She scoffed. “Alright, long as you’re both here, I guess I can show you what I found.”

Rainbow mercifully hopped off my chest and strode into the woods, her folded wings pulling up against her back to avoid reaching branches and assorted woods debris. Rubbing the back of my head, and cringing at the knot I felt there, I stood and followed her, my antlers catching on a branch almost immediately and sending a flare of pain through the knot in my skull. Silver meekly ducked around my body, her slim form gliding through the woods like she was a damned forest nymph. I grimaced and jogged to keep up, ignoring the way my ridiculous antlers hung up on every damned thing. Seriously, this guy was the Lord of all Rapists? The terror of this land? Motherfucker probably got hung up in doorways all the time, like those idiot dogs that get a stick that’s a little too long for the door in their little doggy house.

A few minutes of running, cursing as something got hung up on my antlers, and running some more passed, up until I nearly plowed head-first into Rainbow. I slammed on the brakes, hopping along to a stop, when a certain anime trope popped into my head. Grinning, I continued hopping along, waving my hands around as if I were losing balance. “Woah…ohhhh woah there…” I insisted, my eyes upon a pair of targets looming large and just barely covered in stretchy cotton before me. “Can’t keep my…”

“Do it and I’ll rip your balls off,” she growled.

Miraculously, I recovered my balance and paused shoulder-to-shoulder with Silver, who looked up with big wide eyes and folded-down ears. Rainbow glared down at her. “You stay here,” she insisted. “It’s not even close to safe right now.”

“Aww,” Silver whined. “But I wanna…”

“No,” Rainbow spat, earning a cringe from the tiny filly. Sighing, Rainbow sank to a knee, looking her directly in the eye. “There are some things down there. Bad things that you don’t need to see.”

Silver’s ears folded lower in her hair. “Things like they did to mommy?”

Rainbow and I cringed at that. Well, at least we didn’t need to worry about telling Silver about what happened to her ma anymore. Fuckin’ hate dealing with smart kids.

For her credit, Rainbow actually responded, nodding. Silver nodded back and sat down in the leaves, looking up at us with her big, wide eyes. Unable to resist, I sank to my knees and wrapped her up in a hug, taking her shivering little body in against my own.

“We’ll be right back,” I insisted. She only nodded back. When this was all said and done, she was going to need a shrink pretty badly.

I turned and saw the weird, cock-eyed look Rainbow was giving me. “What?” I asked.

“Nothin’,” she replied, though she kept the look up for a good long while without saying another word. Growing annoyed, I crossed my arms and mirrored it as well as I could, tilting my head to the same angle and arching my eyebrows while scrunching up my muzzle as if Silver had just puked all over my legs. She finally shook her head and turned, waving for me to follow.

Over the next hill, we sank to our stomachs and army-crawled through the grass, keeping our heads low until we could just peek over the hilltop. Of course, with my antlers, staying low and out of sight wasn’t really an option, but I doubted if anyone noticed. Thank God they didn’t. What I saw was enough to melt away any arousal I’d gotten from watching Rainbow wiggle her way along above me and make my balls crawl up into my pelvis, like a tortoise trying to hide in its shell.

Below me, a grouping of a half-dozen tents gathered around the remains of a fire pit, still smoking from dinner. A few yards away huddled a humongous group of shivering, anthro-pony women, mostly in rags that barely concealed them, some of them just naked, all covered in mud and something white that shimmered and jiggled in the sun each time one of them flinched. They were surrounded by a bunch more caribou, all armored, all holding weapons, circling them like vultures. On occasion, one of them would deliver a kick with an armored boot to some hapless woman’s ribs; his buddies laughing like her cries of pain were the best joke ever told. After a while, someone ducked out of one of the tents with a satisfied look on his face, strapping on the armored codpiece I’d grown too familiar with. I caught a glimpse of a limp hoof in the tent behind him, and bit the inside of my cheek to keep down a scream.

“What you took me to was just a forward camp, this is probably the main camp here,” Rainbow said.

Drinking the scene in, I started counting. Caught maybe a dozen caribou in all the camp, setting aside a few that might have been in the tents. All that for maybe fifty women of differing shapes, sizes, and colors, huddled in the mud.

“They outnumber them,” I hissed. “It’s obvious they do. Why don’t they fight back? Or run?”

“You’d be amazed at the number of ways the caribou have for breaking a mare’s spirit,” Rainbow replied, her voice low, quivering, and trying desperately to remain neutral. I bit my lip as she ran a finger over the scene. “See the bands around their necks? That’s how the caribou controlled most of us. They can make a mare’s body go limp with a thought, hence why fighting would be useless. They’d be as weak as babies before it even began, and their punishments would be…severe.”

I shut my eyes. I could only guess at the sort of punishments we’d be talking about, all of them involving the worst violations a man could level upon a woman. I prayed we wouldn’t have to see anything like what I was imagining, not now, not ever. As I scanned around, something else caught my eye: “Hey, how come some of ‘em are different colors on the bands? What do the red and black and white bands mean?”

Rainbow gave me that same, cock-eyed look she gave me back in the tent: the one that asked “who are you, really?” I just kept up my blank expression until she felt compelled to explain. Hey, it worked on Earth; it was nice to see it worked here too. “Black collars are still defiant. They’d actually be willing to fight if the collars were gone. Reds and whites are different degrees of broken. Reds might be saved, but whites are utterly gone, broken beyond saving, basically just giant glory holes now. There’s also the purples, who are actually able to fight for the caribou, and the silver, who sympathized with them from the very beginning, but I don’t see any of those here and we can thank Celestia for that.”

I nodded, not even questioning who Celestia was. One thing at a time, Pony-Jesus notwithstanding. That shit could wait for later. “What’s gonna happen to them?” I asked.

“The caribou know their days in Equestria are numbered: they’ve lost the major cities and have almost no formal army presence left but for their defenses down south.” She motioned to the crowd of bound mares. “They’re gonna take what they can and drag them back to their homeland. Maybe they think they can use ‘em as bargaining chips, maybe they think it’s all over and it’s time to start gettin’ while the gettin’s good.”

“Either way, those women are bound for pure hell.”

She shifted her gaze to me and nodded slowly.

“So what do we do?”

“The smart thing would be to hoof it as fast as we can back home, rally the Guard, and hope they can get some hooves on the ground out here before the caribou make it to the border.”

I nodded at that, scratching my chin. That would probably be what I’d do if there was any actual danger here. But this being a coma dream, I instead grinned back at her. “And what would the not-so-smart thing be?”

I saw the flicker of a grin there, and something lit up in those deep, magenta eyes I hadn’t seen before. Finally, she was starting to see the guy inside this skull, the dude who’d stroked her hair while she cried and made a little girl smile again after losing her mommy. Shit, right then and there, I figured if I could make creatures like Rainbow Dash and Silver Glow smile like the way Rainbow was smiling at me, with that warm innocence just bubbling up from somewhere deep inside and lighting up their massive eyes in ways I’d only seen in kids back home, maybe this coma wouldn’t be so bad.

Then the smile faded, and the grizzled old glare came back. “This isn’t gonna be pretty. You’re gonna see some shit.”

I snorted at that. “I’ve already seen plenty of shit.”

“No you haven’t,” she stated firmly, relaying it as a fact and little else. “But you will. Just be ready for it.”

I locked eyes with her and nodded slowly, sparing a glance at the weakened, mud-covered limbs below us, and cringing. Shit, if I was cringing from this far away, how was I even going to get up close?

Welp, no time for even considering that. “What’s the plan?”

She kept her eyes on me, blinking, trying to detect anything even close to deception or a trap being laid. When she didn’t find anything, she turned back to the camp with a sigh. “Just walk down there and do your best to mingle. Distract ‘em. See if you can find a way to distance them from the mares. You’ll know when I’m ready to bring down the pain.”

“Uh-huh, and then?”

At that, she smiled again, but this time it was a predatory smile. I had no idea a pony was even capable of look like that, and I felt like so much vulnerable meat under that glare. It was a minor turn-on, truth be told. “Duck,” she replied simply, then she whipped around and shot down the hill, keeping low until she reached the bottom, then her wings spread and she swooped away, disappearing into the wilderness with a flash of blue feathers.

I turned back, thought about that predatory way she’d looked over me and marveled at the way she filled out those nice little stretchy pants while she flew off, and I sighed as li’l Marky-Mark enthusiastically voiced his support of my opinion that Dash was, anthro or not, one of the hottest women we’d laid eyes on. I waited for the thought of that saucy smile and those tight little cheeks flexing as she took off to fade before I even thought about standing, dusting off my robes, and striding down the hill.

I honestly wish I could say I had a plan here, but really it was all just me walking along a hill and literally striding into a camp filled with rapists and murderers. Looking back, this was dangerously stupid, but again I refer you to my coma theory, which had been shaken at this point but was still a perfectly valid way of dealing with all the shit I’d seen thus far. Therefore, if everything around me was manufactured by the two gallons of turpentine I must have chugged last night for reasons I hoped would eventually be clear, then what danger could there be? Why put in the effort needed to formulate a plan when nothing I did was going to have real consequences? Why not just lean back and enjoy the ride?

Then the smell of the place hit me, and my ride enjoyment took a severe hit. An earthy undertone filled with a smell I knew from far too many lonely nights with just me, lefty, and my Wi-Fi connection. The last smell, though, wasn’t nearly as familiar. It was a heavy, sweet sort of smell that immediately hit my gag reflex and made my gorge rise up. I swallowed, but only managed to keep myself from puking by virtue of having next to nothing to puke. I only barely recognized it from the time I’d left a Tupperware full of half-chewed pork in my car in the July heat. That type of rot, that sort of death, filled your nostrils and burned itself in your memory, and even that could barely get close to what I detected underneath the mud and sweat and semen, and I realized that the limp mare I’d seen earlier likely wasn’t the first these caribou fucks had ended and left without so much as a shallow grave.

I suddenly very much questioned the wisdom of striding down here with no plan. About five minutes after I really should have been questioning it. Excellent timing as always, brain.

The first couple of caribou circling the mares paused, their conversation dying as their widening, shocked eyes turned to face me. The lot of them hefted up pikes that looked like they could skewer buffalo and wore gold-plated armor with ornate floral inlays running all around their bodies, covering their shins, thighs, and torsos. The only thing that killed the actually-nice pattern of their armor was the hinged flaps on the codpieces. I knew now what those hinges were for, and I couldn’t help but wonder if they had to keep them oiled. The image of Katrakian in that armor passed through my skull, and somehow I just knew that if he did have that armor, he wouldn’t have kept it oiled. Jesus, could you imagine? Ooh, you’re gonna get it now bitch…*SQUEAK*…aww shit, you got any WD-40?

A snicker almost wracked my face, but I suppressed it as the caribou gaped at me. In a flash, they were on their knees, their helmeted skulls bowing to me in a way that almost looked cool, almost made me feel like a king. Then a black-collared woman hit the mud: a pretty little thing with deep gray eyes and a purple coat, naked but for the dirt streaking all up and down her body. She looked up at me, and fear clouded her eyes and bowed her head. Her ears folding down, she slowly backed away, trying to meld with the rest of the crowd.

I made the worst mistake of my life watching her, trying to track her, as if her fear held me transfixed. I hardly even noticed when my new caribou servants stood again, their words tripping all over each other in a rush to get out of their mouths.

“Lord Dainn…”

“Been so long…”

“We heard you died at the hands of those traitorous whores!”

“Now we can teach those bitches!”

“Yes, yes, we’ll teach all the bitches,” I insisted, pasting a smile on my face and waving my hands for them to calm down as they bounced in place with glee, beaming up at me. It was almost enough to make me think of them as a couple of kids seeing Santa. You know, if it wasn’t for the small army of naked women sitting in eerie silence behind them, watching me with big, wide eyes, the ones in front visibly trying to scooch away without drawing too much attention to themselves. A knot twisted in my stomach and I shuddered, but I kept up a strong grin for the caribou showering me with praise and adoration. Just had to focus on that, just had to keep my eyes on that and remain focused on the dudes in armor singing my praises.

In a flash, the first couple were joined by the remaining caribou, all sinking to their knees but one. That one beamed into my eyes as a smile crossed his face, as though I was the messiah just waiting to deliver them to their just reward at the end of days. Maybe that’s what I was, all things considered. Too bad my idea of a just reward for a bunch of rapist murderous assholes was a lot different than theirs.

“Sir, it is an honor,” the standing caribou stood ramrod-straight and saluted. Gave me a twinge of excitement, I’m ashamed to say, having a guy in armor salute me like that. “I am Captain Entragian of the First Faithfuls. We thought we were about to see the end of our great crusade into Equestria, but I see now that it was just the end of the beginning!”

I could only smile and nod, my eyes darting to the crowd, finding that woman from earlier. We locked eyes for a second. I tried my best to let her know everything was gonna be okay, as if my royal caribou body somehow also had psychic powers, but all she did was cringe under my gaze and try to shrink back. I sighed. Like a damned idiot, I sighed.

Hearing my sigh, Entragian whirled around, followed my gaze, and spotted the mare with ease. It was like he could smell the increased desperation and fear in a woman. Maybe he could. Maybe the more fear and doubt he could feel, the more turned on he was. I tried not to think about it. All I know is that I was too stupid to look away, and Entragian zeroed on the poor girl in a flash.

“You there! Black collar!” He screamed, barreling towards the huddled crowd. They flinched back, the black collars up front pressing backwards, hooves slipping in the mud, but he was having none of it. Entragian pulled a long, barbed whip off of his belt and stomped through them, the women parting like the tides before Moses. The cute little thing with the purple coat and gray eyes was left, shivering and alone in the middle of a circle in the mud, her head bowed low.

Entragian stopped before her, and I heard a tiny click, followed by a squeak of hinges. A few seconds later, the tip of something long and purple appeared down between his legs. Something impossibly long and painful to look at. Oh, holy shit, so the hinge did squeak. It was…way less funny than I imagined. The girl slowly looked up his body. I could see tears standing in her eyes, and then her gaze drifted back down to the anaconda dangling between his legs. Immediately, she leapt upon it, grasping desperately at his waist as she took it in her mouth. I heard a series of moans intermixed with quick sobs before I closed my eyes.

“Sir?” One of my new lackeys asked. “Is something the matter?”

“Sun…in my eyes,” was all I could manage, even as my fists clenched until my hands shook and blood oozed out around my claws.

I opened my eyes again, and by now Entragian had grabbed the woman by the back of her head and was forcing her down, making her take it all in, adding her gagging to the moans and the sobs. My stomach did a couple more backflips before he mercifully let her up, hauling her up by the hair.

“Why did you shy away from our almighty Lord Dainn, you stupid slut!?” He barked right in her face, still holding her by the hair.

“Ahh…I’m sorry!” She sobbed, clenching at his wrist, trying to pull herself up and ease the yanking on her hair.

He held her up like that while I stood there in stupid, dumbfounded paralysis. Finally, he asked: “Does this hurt you?”

“Yes! Oh Celestia…”

“Who!?” He roared, and even I flinched back as his hand clamped around her throat, right above the collar. The sobbing and gagging started up again as her legs began kicking in the air, her eyes widening as just the barest amount of air tried to squeak past the hands around her throat, desperately trying to drag in a breath. “Who did you say!? Did you just utter that blasphemous whore’s name before your Lord Dainn!?”

“Ahh…no…please…”

“Who owns you?” He hissed, and I watched the hand mercifully loosen. “I wanna hear you say it. Who owns you?”

“Y-you own me…”

The hand squeezed, the woman choked, coughed, sputtered as she was hoisted up even further. “Not sure I heard ya that time,” he whispered. “What was that?”

“Y-you…” she gagged, her hooves kicking. “You own…me…”

The grip stayed as it was for a few seconds longer, long enough for her eyes to roll up, long enough for her panicked breathing to slow, long enough for my stomach to do a few more backflips until, at long last, I finally decided to grow a pair.

“That’s enough, Captain!” I barked.

Entragian turned, surprised, but mercifully his grip released and the woman dropped to her hands and knees in the mud, sobbing in long, gasping breaths. “My Lord, this bitch was disrespecting you with an escape attempt; I saw the way she moved from you when your almighty gaze fell upon her!” He exclaimed. “It was obvious she was in need of reeducation!”

Now even Dainn’s gaze was holy? Shit, motherfucker had a cult of personality to rival the North Koreans’. “Your Lord Dainn can speak for himself,” I hissed, my head starting to spin as I maintained my dark glare. “I can handle my own shit.” There, ha! Let’s see what they had to say about that!

“Lord…you wish to…punish the slut yourself?”

Oh shit. “…yes,” I intoned. Shit shit shit, brain, why must you be such a fuckup? Think fast think fast think fast, how could I unfuck this whole situation!? “We can do it…over there!”

I pointed to the hilltop I’d been watching this camp from not twenty minutes ago. “Up high, where all the bitches can see no matter where they are!” And far away from the others. Ha, I was a genius!

Of course, the caribou were quick to agree: “Brilliant sir!” “Wonderful, simply wonderful!” “I always wanted to see the old master work!” I had to suppress a devious grin. This actually wasn’t too bad of an idea, especially considering I thought it up on the fly. Not bad, me! Not bad at all! Gold star for today!

The mare was forced up, her hands bound behind her back and a rope lashed tightly around her neck to make a leash. Bit overkill, if you ask me. She knew if she ran she’d just go limp after a few steps and her punishment would be even worse. Then, I guess I shouldn’t have been fooling myself that the ropes were there to keep her from running, if the lecherous smiles on the faces around me were any indication. I could almost see the boners popping up behind the codpieces. Oh, what I would have done for a tube of superglue and a hammer big enough to dent the damn things at that point…

Tears poured down the mare’s cheeks as she stood on trembling legs, head bowed, maybe to help her mane cover just some of her naked body. She let out a shivering gasp as the caribou on her leash gave a hard yank, making her stumble. Fuck, the way everyone laughed it was like this was the best visual gag since Chaplin discovered banana peels. Entragian and three others joined us as we made our way towards the hill, leaving two caribou behind to babysit the rest, who I’m guessing were the rookies of the group. Our small group slogged along towards the hill, the caribou on the woman’s leash giving an occasional tug that earned a choked-off gasp from her and a roar of laughter from the rest. Finally, and cursing my stupidity, I realized that I honestly didn’t have to stand for this shit if I didn’t want to.

Without even saying a damn word, I pulled the rope out of the caribou’s hand. He gave a quick cry like a nasty, snot-nosed kid when you took away the stick he’d been using to poke at a defenseless dog through a fence, but just like that nasty little brat, one quick glare was all I needed to shut him up. The laughter didn’t live much longer after that. I think, at some level, they may have all figured they were in some sort of trouble, but couldn’t imagine how or why. Like that feeling you got when you heard your parents screaming up the stairs, and you couldn’t think of anything you’d done recently that might be considered bad, but they’d used your first, middle, andlast names so some shit was definitely going down. I, at least, let a little bit of slack into the rope, trailing a bit behind the others. The girl on the other end stopped her gagging and coughing, but there were still plenty of sobs dropping by for the nice, occasional get-together, just in case I ever felt like things were starting to get easy.

After what felt like an eternity, we reached the summit. I squinted, looking up. Where the hell was Rainbow Dash?

“Your Highness?” I whirled as Entragian grinned reassuringly at me, or maybe he was just trying to reassure himself. Yeah, keep telling yourself that everything’s gonna be okay, fucker. I hope Rainbow Dash takes that whip and shoves it so far up your ass you cough up leather strips and oppression for weeks. Yeah, that whip right there, the one you’re…holding out to me…

“As you said,” he said, grinning with anticipation. “You can speak for yourself. But you’ve always said actions speak louder than words.”

…

Fuck, I did not think this through.

Oh look, my life’s motto.

“Of course!” I enthused, taking the whip up. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

Entragian grinned as two more caribou forced the woman to the ground, pressing on her shoulders until her crying face was in the dirt. “If you get up, you’ll die screaming,” one of them said nonchalantly, as if remarking on the weather or the cloud passing by over our heads that looked remarkably like a puppy. Her response was a choked sob that sent up a puff of dirt. My hands clenched around the whip, wringing it, growing sweaty until the leather stank. I turned, looked down at the crowd gathered at the foot of the hill. I looked at the sad, pinched faces, the faces of women that had been through far too much, all looking so tired, so resigned. Like they knew what was going to happen and at this point they were just so fed up and used to it that they just wanted it to be over. I found a little girl, probably a little older than Silver, with her ears folded down and a pair of big, wide eyes that were half-closed and dull, just like all the others.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to puke. I wanted to run down the hill and tell each and every one of them that it was all gonna be okay, and have it actually be okay. I wanted to be able to snap my fingers and literally yank the dicks off every motherfucker around me. I wanted to ram their own ballsacks down their throats and drag them down to that little girl and hold their heads up as they chewed on themselves, screaming at them, beating them, punching them to make them apologize for just existing. And at the same time, I wanted to throw myself at the hooves of the women around me and scream for them to understand that it was all over, that the bad guys were gone, and that they’d be able to go back to everything they’d had taken away and it’d all be there and it’d be like nothing had even happened and they could just forget about this whole horrible fucking…

A cleared throat brought me back down to Earth. Or Equestria. What the fuck ever. “Sir?” Entragian asked. “You can begin whenever you want, but the sun is setting, and soon it will be too dark for all the whores to see.”

Fuck. Dashie, where are you!? Stall. Stall stall stall stall. Gotta stall.

“Everyone!” I screamed, spreading my hands out like a Southern Evangelist about to lay the good word down on some illiterate rednecks. The whole hillside fell into silence, awaiting my words with bated breath. “Life! Life…is like a box of chocolates! You never know what you’re gonna get!”

Goddammit, brain. Just…goddammit.

“Sometimes, you get a fruit-filled chocolate! Other times, it will be filled with macadamia! And is this the day you find out you’re allergic to macadamia!? Who knows!?”

At this point, I was sure even the crying chick on the ground was looking up at me in confusion. But I’d already gotten started on my own grave. Might as well keep digging until I hit bedrock.

“But in the end, isn’t it still chocolate? No matter the sheer randomness of it all, isn’t it all wonderful goodness that preferably melts in your mouth and, the will of the gods behind you, not your hand? Does it really matter that you don’t know what you’re gonna get, when you’re fully capable of enjoying anything that you wind up getting?”

Total silence. It was impossible to tell if everyone was stunned to be hearing this speech from a guy whose crimes put him up there with history’s greatest monsters, if my words were just so magnificent I had the whole crowd enraptured, or, more likely, everyone was dumbfounded by the sheer stupidity coming out of my mouth. Either way, I was running low on shit to say.

Think think think think…

“So an old Italian dude goes to confession, he says the usual spiel, ‘Forgive me Father for I have sinned,’ all that. Preacher goes all ‘what ails you, my son?’ And the old Italian guy is all…”

Entragian cleared his throat. “My Lord? As…enlightening as your speeches are, perhaps it would be best to save the rest for after we deal with the little slut?”

My hands dropped, the whip unfurling and dangling by my side. I turned to the bound woman on the ground, who took one look up at me, her eyes quivering, and buried her muzzle in the dirt. A few choked sobs wracked her frame. My hands felt numb as my arm started to rise, seemingly of its own accord. It occurred to me that I didn’t even know how to use a whip, and I hoped this would be my saving grace. I unfurled it, raising my hand as my vacant eyes fell on the whimpering, shivering form before me, and rather suddenly, muscle memory took over. Before I even realized what was happening, the whip came down with a flick of my wrist and cracked against the woman’s back, earning a howl of pain from her and a roar of laughter and applause from the caribou around me. My arm rose again, the whip curling around me, and I…I…

I took a look down at the little girl, the one who reminded me of Silver. Those empty eyes were locked on the ground. A tear drifted out from them. Something shattered inside of me, and my fingers went limp, the whip trailing from them. Bit by bit, the laughter died down around me, the caribou all stopping one by one to stare at me. I just stood there, my hands at my side.

“Last night, I played Xbox Live and had takeout Chinese,” I said. It was the only thing I could think of to say. “I like Call of Duty. I’m not really good. I think it might be that I just use the Xbox matches as an excuse to drink, and by the time midnight rolls around I’m so trashed I can barely hold the controller.”

My shoulders rose and fell in a long, heaving sigh. “I would like very much to just go back to that now. Please.”

No response. Nothing moved around me. Then, rather suddenly, the flat of a spear crashed against my temple, sending me sprawling to the ground. I didn’t even try to fight back, I just laid myself out next to the woman I’d just whipped, staring up at the sky.

“Lord Entragian!” I heard a horrified voice start. “What in the…”

“It’s a trick!” The caribou captain screamed as my eyes slowly refocused through the blur of pain and roar of blood in my ears. “It’s not our Lord Dainn! It has to be some sort of impostor!”

In my peripherals, I watched the faces around me morph from wide-eyed stupidity to glaring anger. “Changeling trick!” Someone shouted. “The whores found a way to imitate our magic!”

“Rip ‘im apart!” Two pairs of hands seized my shoulders, hoisting me up.

“No, hold him!” Entragian screamed. “We’ll use him to find out how they’re imitating our magic, we have to figure out how they tricked us!”

My head lolled to the side, rolling back. I was a bit beyond caring about anything at that point, partially from the sheer horrors I’d seen thus far, mostly from the head trauma. I gazed upwards, trying to remember just what I thought I was gonna accomplish here. And that’s how I saw it: a rainbow-colored streak blasting across the sky. I blinked once. Holy shit, was that her? Naw, the only thing that can fly that fast were jet fighters, and unless Rainbow had a rocket engine crammed up her ass, it couldn’t be. No way.

Just in case though, I tracked it with my eyes as suddenly, a titanic burst of rainbow light exploded across the sky with a massive crack. The caribou fell silent and looked up, confused, as two and two came together in their heads.

“Oh fuck, it’s Rainbow Dash!” One screamed as the grip on my shoulders loosened and left me to fall right on my ass.

“Use the whore as a shield! The Element Bearers would never let one of their precious sluts come to harm!” Entragian bellowed.

Even dazed, my reaction was pretty damned near immediate. I scrabbled through the dirt towards the woman, still whimpering and quivering on the ground, and threw myself over her, wrapping my arms around her as the momentum of my desperate crawling carried us both right over the crest of the hill, rolling down it. Now, I know what any dude (or dudettes, I don’t judge) reading this might be thinking: hey hey, Marcus! Getting to wrap yourself tight and close with a pretty little naked chica! This whole adventure is actually ending pretty well! Granted, but keep in mind that we were rolling down a hill. And I was much bigger than her and keeping myself pretty well wrapped around her. Which meant I was taking the full force of pretty much every errant tree, rock, and branch we could possibly run into, and judging by the amount of pain I was in, that was all of them.

“Ow…ow…ow…ow…oh damn, that last one broke skin! …Ow…ow…fuck…ow…shit…dammit…ow…hey, hey! Aaaasss youuuu wiiiisshhhhh…” Princess Bride? Anyone? Anyone at all? Jesus, y’all have no class. “Ow…ow…ow…”

We only came to a stop at the bottom of the hill, my body beaten, scraped, bloodied, and dizzy as all hell, but still breathing. Based on the heaving of the form in my arms, the lady was too. So hey! Double points to me!

I stood on shaking feet, coughing and hacking as my head tried to adjust to the fact that we weren’t spinning like a trailer in Kansas during tornado season anymore. In my dizzying, eye-bouncing haze, I spotted the forms of four armored warriors rushing down the hill. “Stop them!” I heard Entragian scream from somewhere up ahead. Or…maybe behind me. Oh hell, it could’ve been from China for all I knew.

Groaning, I stuck up my fists, suddenly realizing that by throwing away the whip I’d gotten rid of my only weapon. Great. “Gimme your best shot, you rapist pig-fuckers.” I hissed as the roar of my pounding heart grew in my ears.

Wait, that wasn’t my blood pounding, unless an F-18 was taking off directly behind me. Holy shit, what was that?

No sooner had I asked myself this when a blue streak impacted in the dirt between me and the caribou. A rainbow-colored explosion launched streaks of light and clods of dirt into the air, blooming over us in a massive mushroom cloud. I had time to wonder when Rainbow Dash had made herself nuclear-capable before the shockwave hit me. I was sent flying backwards, the ground and sky swapping places once or twice as I careened out of control, unable to stop myself, before coming to a bone-jarring halt, rolling through the dirt.

I laid there for a few minutes, blinking stars out of my eyes until I figured I was coherent enough to stand again. That only came once Percy the Pink Dragon told me I was good. It was so nice to see him! But heavens! Where was his longtime companion, Lady Fluffenstuff?

I shook my head, getting rid of the pink dragons and unicorns until they were replaced with naked anthro pony women. There, much better.

By chance, I had landed right next to the woman bound to be whipped. She cringed away from me, looking at me like I was a rabid dog. I couldn’t blame her. My behavior around her was all over the place. I must have looked like a maniac at that point, no telling what I was gonna do. I raised a hand towards her, and she flinched back. “No no, c’mon,” I whispered gently, figuring I could go for the same approach one might use with a scared deer out in the woods. She bowed her elongated muzzle and slowly scooched my way, a light whimper escaping her throat.

Sighing, I closed the distance and ran my fingers along the back of her head, scratching right between the ears. She looked up at me, startled, her wide eyes blinking as I continued my head scratchies with a contented smile. Finishing that, I wrapped up by pressing my finger to her muzzle. “Boop.”

“…Who are you?” She asked in a high, shaking, but still melodic voice.

“You know, you’re the second person to ask me that today.”

Grinning, I shoved off and leapt to my feet, peering through the rising dust. “Hey, Rainbow?” I asked, looking around, my eyes squinting to block out the dust. I walked along into the cloud until I reached the edge of a scorched crater. “Rainbow?”

In the dust, I spied a figure crouching low, wings fanned out behind them, a fist pressed into the dirt Iron Man-style. Slowly, they rose to their feet, wings folding against their back, fists clenching, as she cocked her head with a loud pop.

I stood there in awe, blinking through the dirt. “Cooooolllll.”

Suddenly, the figure leapt into the air, powering over my head with a single flap of her wings. I caught a flash of rainbow-streaked mane as she landed hooves-first on a figure I hadn’t noticed had been creeping up behind me with a knife drawn. The figure’s head snapped back with a sick crunch as Rainbow snatched the knife out of its limp hands and brought it around in a quick toss. Somewhere in the cloud, I heard a sudden, choked gasp, and the last remaining caribou dropped into view, clutching at the knife handle sprouting out of his neck.

She stood again, joints cracking.

“Oh. My. Fucking. God!” I screamed, barreling through the dust at her. “Rainbow! That was fucking…”

In hindsight, I should have known better than to charge headlong at a rushing shadow of badassery in a cloud, but I was utterly starstruck by the sheer magnitude of awesomeness that had played before me. So I could hardly be blamed for doing what I did, and with all the dust and crap obscuring her vision, Rainbow could hardly be blamed for turning and scissor-kicking me into unconsciousness. But that’s all just my opinion.

Chapter 1: Where It All Went Wrong

Everything that happened to me, everything that I’ve been through that landed me in a medieval world, fighting for the fate of righteousness against an evil as dark as Sauron and Hitler put together and having a baby raised on the teachings of Voldemort, all started one sunny morning in a clearing on an alien world, with the sun peeking through the trees, hitting my closed eyelids, and me waking up. This was a serious mistake I would later come to regret.

I sat up, felt the warmth of the sun on my face and the deep, earthy touch of the grass on my skin, and immediately barfed into the dirt, yakking until my stomach emptied and my throat was as dry as the Sahara.

It was only after the barfing was over and I looked down at my hands gripping the grass while promising to every god I could think of that, okay, for real this time, I was going to give up drinking for good (while already wondering in the back of my mind whether it was free margarita night at the Mexican place around the corner or five-dollar martini night at the bar across the street) that I realized something: these weren’t my hands.

There is very little in the English language that could come close to describing what it feels like to feel with your hands, to sense them at the end of your arms, to know without looking that they are where they’ve always been, then to look down and see four, sausage-like, purple monstrosities ending in claws where your fingers should be. That’s a damn shame, because those same words could also be used to describe what it’s like to roll up your sleeves and find these sinewy, well-muscled anacondas with red-gold pelt covering them, and then to raise your hands to your face and trace your fingers over your cheeks and find more fur, as well as a dog-like distended muzzle, then to trace those weird claws over your now-pointed ears and find a whole bouquet of horns sticking out the top of your head like the world’s worst beer helmet has been super-glued to your hair, which I do have personal experience with, but this went way beyond any of my days as a college frat pledge.

Welp, at least I didn’t also have a bra on, with “PROPERTY OF U OF M CAMPUS ENGINEERS” Sharpie’d into the small of my back. Big improvement right there, but that was small consolation to anybody waking up in a completely alien body.

“Oohhhh, Jesus God, what the fuck is this?” I grumbled, looking over my pelt-covered hands like a couple of hairy spiders latched onto my arms. Good God, how?! Just how!? How did a guy go to sleep in his own bed and wake up…wait…what was the last thing I was doing?

My stomach twisted, and I sank to my knees, ready to hurl again. Obviously, whatever was happening to me did not like me thinking right now, definitely one of the worst hangovers I’d ever experienced.

And that’s when it hit me: a hangover. Yes, it had to be! I must have been drinking again, and this was just some fucked-up dream brought on by a few neurons in my brain finally deciding to teach me a lesson for constantly trying to kill them with booze. Yes, of course! That had to be it! Some sort of coma-dream with ultra-feedback! That thought was such a relief I couldn’t help but laugh, starting with a chortle, building to a guffaw, and cutting off before I reached Joker levels of hysteria. A coma! I finally did that thing dad always worried I’d do to myself! I drank myself into a coma!

“Oh, if he were here right now…” I mumbled, though this being a dream and him being real (as far as I knew), that didn’t seem like a terribly distinct possibility.

Gathering myself under this mental protection, I finally took stock of my surroundings. If I was gonna be trapped in coma-land, best to figure out some base rules for reality, make sure I couldn’t noclip through the Earth on accident and fall out the bottom of the map.

I did a quick spin in place, scanning the trees for any sign of civilization. If this was a coma, my mind would crank out something interesting for me to find, right? Unless this was one of those bullshit, boring comas where I spent eternity wondering around a forest where the trees were all my dad’s erect penis while the wind sighs like my mom when she’s disappointed. If that was the case, I hoped whoever was monitoring me up top pulled the plug.

Thankfully, my quick little spin showed me that this was just a normal forest, not a penis in sight, and a quick sniff and listen informed me that the breeze was just a breeze and that the woods smelled like moist dirt and rotting bark instead of the inside of my locker from that time in sixth grade when Darren Michaelson locked me inside (and as a side note, let it be known that if I die suddenly, my last thoughts were likely along the lines of ‘Fuck you, Darren Michaelson, you’re gay’). So all this was good, except I didn’t see much of anything else. Not a Walmart or a McDonalds in sight. Hell, I would have even settled for a Ted Kaczynski-style cabin, if only that’d give me somebody to talk to, even if said somebody was wearing a tinfoil helmet and was convinced the UN wanted his sperm for a clone army. But no. Nothing of the sort.

“Great,” I grumbled. In real life, the best thing to do now would be to sit down and wait for a search party, but judging by the insanity that was my current face, I was pretty far from real life. Odds were, I wouldn’t be spotting rescue choppers or dudes with dogs and flashlights scouring the woods anytime soon. Besides, this being a dream, it’s not like I could starve to death, the IV almost certainly clipped to my arm by now would see to that.

So, figuring one direction was as good as any other, I put one weird, moccasin-clad foot that I had no intention of looking at just yet in front of the other in the direction that looked the least debris-strewn, thus starting my journey towards having the best coma ever.

After everything that happened, all the shit that went down not even a day after leaving that glen, I think it might have been better if I’d just stayed put and starved.

A few hours later, my “dream” theory was really starting to crack under the strain of reality. I never remembered being thirsty in dreams, or so damn hungry! At the rate I was going, even the twigs and branches nestled in the long grass were starting to look good.

That’s when it hit me: what if I was feeling now what my body was going through in real life? What if I didn’t have an IV drip and a team of paramedics looking after my half-dead ass, but instead was still face-up in a puddle of my own puke, baking in the July sun in some unexplored back alleyway somewhere? Shit, if that was the case, I had to hurry up and get my ass in gear, but seeing to it that the dozens of twigs and half-ton of pebbles I’d had to fish out of my moccasins hadn’t woken me up despite how painful they were, I couldn’t imagine what else I could do. Maybe it was the sheer amount of pain that was supposed to get me up? My mind could only cook up so much, maybe if I put myself through a shitload of pain, like maybe if I climbed one of these bigass trees and threw myself off, or maybe if I built a fire and stuck my arm in…

…oh God, I’m cooking! THAT’S MY FUCKING ARM COOKING OH GOD OH JESUS OH GOD NO PLEASE FUCK NO JESUS GOD IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS IT…

I sank to my knees and retched. My empty stomach only cranked out a few mouthfuls of liquid, thankfully, but that added to the acid taste fermenting in the back of my throat. Jesus, was that…was that a dream within a dream? Was Leonardo Di Caprio actually making us an instruction manual with that movie a few years back, instead of a special effects bonanza doomed to be ignored when Oscar time came around? Whatever that was, I figured it’d be best to avoid anything that might possibly trigger it again, so a fire was definitely out. Maybe I could stab myself with something? Like a sharp stick? That could do the trick. Then again, all this was based on me thinking this was like a normal dream, and if I could fish pebbles out of my shoes and feel them and roll them around in my fingers, then that was probably a shit assumption to make.

Fortunately, something bubbling away in the distance reached my ears. My throat gave a quick clench, reminding me that somewhere and somehow I was dying of thirst, and dream water or not, this shit probably would at least make it hurt a little less. My quiet walk turned into a desperate run as I tried to close the distance between me and whatever hepatitis-infected stream likely ran through this little patch of dreamscape. Bursting through a round of foliage, I came upon it: water. Like, actually clear water, not the muddy crap filled with hypodermic needles and diapers and probably Ebola running out the culvert at the end of my street.

At that moment, I didn’t care that the stuff probably had worms or a million other diseases I hadn’t even heard of, I straight up dunked my head in the stuff and started drawing in, coming up coughing and spitting and drooling long strands of mucus from where it went up my sinuses. I shivered, sneezed, and finally opted to just cup my hands in the stream and guzzle from that. It was so cold that had I owned my regular pair of hands, they would have gone pale white after the first dunking, but the fur coating my weird, purple claws shielded me from the worst of it. The ice-cold water felt like heaven on my aching throat, and soon I’d downed enough of the stuff to even take the edge off the hunger pangs. I rolled over on my back and patted my stomach. I might have been doomed to starve to death in this place, considering my hunting experience consisted of trips to WalMart back home, but at least my thirst was gone for now.

Finally, I paused at seeing my reflection in the near-perfect water. What I saw made my heart give a quick gallop in my chest: the horns towered over my head, punching upwards at least a solid meter. My eyes were beady, brown orbs set back behind the distended muzzle I felt earlier, and my ears perked up in a way that reminded me of one or two nature specials I’d seen during my time in public school. I looked like a weird, anthro version of…an elk? Naw, too big for that, furrier too, I wasn’t an elk. I was something else, something northern, what was it the Canucks had…a…

“A…Caribou?” I realized out loud.

As I sat in my bush, running over my own alien features again and again, I heard the rustle of wings and a loud splash from somewhere upstream. Cocking an eyebrow, I slowly and quietly turned over, ears perked (as in my ears were literally standing up, and let me tell you that is a surreal experience by itself) and swiveling around for the sound again. I picked up another splash, followed by an incredibly effeminate sigh, and my heart jumped into my chest. A person! A lady person! Hopefully, with a cell phone and GPS. And maybe a cooler full of beer. And sandwiches. Italian subs with pepperjack cheese, to be precise. And legs that went all the way up. Hey, can’t blame me for wanting to enjoy my coma, right?

Grinning, I bolted up out of my bush and made my way through the foliage, following the water upstream to where I figured the sound was, never even thinking that whoever this person was, they might mean to do me harm. Kinda naïve on my part, but all I could think about was finding a way back to a place with indoor plumbing and free Wi-Fi.

I was about to go crashing through the last line of foliage like a rhinoceros in the midst of a stampede when a twig stabbed up through the sole of my moccasin, jabbing me right in the pinkie toe. I snarled in pain and dropped to a knee, blinking back tears. Hungry or not, I was not going to appear before this woman crying like a kid who just skinned his knee. So I took a moment and bit my lip, blinking back the tears until the shock was gone and I could stand again. Figuring I could look at the foot later, I wobbled up on two feet and took my time making my way through the woods. I strode up to the last line of brush, most definitely not biting my lip like a little bitch, and cleared the last branch out of the way to gaze upon my salvation. And instantly my heart dropped again, this time making an audible splash in my stomach.

Before me was the most trim, well-toned bottom ever beheld by man. This was the kind of booty you dreamed of as a kid, probably after looking at the younger students in your mom’s yoga class and deciding right then and there that maybe some girls weren’t as icky and cootie-infested as the others. Unable to stop myself, I drank in every curve, every turn of each cheek barely contained in this fine, stretchy cotton, every dimple shown off behind that amazing, multicolored tail…wait, tail?

Holy crap, there was a raggedy, multi-colored tail poking out a hole in this woman’s pants, and before I could think I was hallucinating a rainbow leading to the most well-sculpted booty I’d ever encountered, she stood up, and I realized what my dad meant by me winding up with a horse-faced woman if I didn’t stop drinking.

Again, the muzzle was distended like mine, but more striking was the size of the eyes: these big, purple saucers she had perched just over the muzzle, surrounded by a coat of blue fur. Two big, blue, feathered wings stuck out her back, bizarre as it was, but at least the color scheme was consistent. Speaking of which, she had a pelt that covered her everywhere, even running over her hands, which she ran through her rainbow-colored hair. Mane? I guess a mane was more fitting, since this chick was basically a horse walking around on two hind legs. Well, there was that and a couple other things.

“Damn the torpedoes,” I muttered as she stood up and a decent-sized pair of breasts bounced back at me, barely contained by that tight, stretchy cotton shirt. Definitely not the best I’d seen, but far from the worst. And with the water dribbling down, I could make out every valley, hill, and curve in them, every jiggle they gave with each bounce, even as her eyes darted around and locked with me.

Oh damn, probably shouldn’t have been muttering snide one-liners this close. Now that I’d been caught, I knew my only options were to either scurry off and die in the woods somewhere, or own up and introduce myself as the guy ogling her from the bushes. Based on the wide-eyed look of horror I got the moment we met gazes, both options seemed equally attractive, at least until common sense won through.

Striding out of the bushes, I thought of how best to charm my way out of this situation. Now, given my experience with bar-hopping, I knew I was no slouch with the ladies. At least one or two nights of going home totally blackout drunk had ended the next morning with some decent-looking, totally-not-wookie-like little number curled up beside me, be it in a motel room, my own couch, or under the stairs in the parking garage up by Fifth and Main. Now this was all after I’d been way too drunk to even remember what I’d said to get into that situation by the next morning, but surely sober me could be as much of a playa as drunk me! And since drunk me did have a proven track record, I figured the best thing to do was be as impulsive as possible: I had to stand up, thrust my chest out, and say the first thoughtful thing that came to mind.

“I like your butt!” I screamed instead, honking like a retard.

Granted, this was definitely one of the more autistic moments of my life. Had this been a poorly-lit pub downtown, and she some saucy little number in a tank top boozing it up with the rest of the crowd, I would have slunk away to the other end of the bar to drink away my shame for the rest of the night. Still, I don’t think an appropriate response to a crappy pickup line should be to lunge at me, screaming maniacally with a dagger raised. And yet, here we were, me running through the woods, screaming like a little girl finding a massive spider in the bathroom, her lunging after me with all her strength and a dagger the size of my new forearm raised over her head.

As far as romantic relationships went, this was definitely a rocky start in my book.

The chase wound on through the woods as my pursuer continued to scream at the top of her lungs. However, we were closing in on five minutes since it began and her voice was starting to sound a little bit raggedy around the edges. You know, more than it already did.

Figuring her voice petering out would be the closest I would get to explaining myself, I shouted over my shoulder: “I don’t know what I did to fuck you up, but c’mon! We can talk about this!”

“There’s nothing to talk about, you evil fuck!” She screamed back. Aww, lookit that. She did speak a language besides stabby-stabby-McCrazyBitch, delightful. However, that she was sane and still totally determined to turn me into shish-kabob only made matters worse.

I pumped my alien legs as hard as they would go, which fortunately turned out to be pretty hard. I had to say, whatever gripes this weird, alien-anthro-bird-horse-gay-pride-flag had with whoever I looked like, at least an inability to take care of himself wasn’t one of them. This dude was ripped. Not that I had any illusions that a few extra layers of muscle would really save me from a damned stab wound.

Figuring I should save my breath, I opted to shut up and keep running, the woods whipping by around me, branches and tangles of leaves clawing at my weird feet. I actually figured I was gaining some distance, until I chanced a peek over my shoulder and saw big, blue, and bitchy still just a couple feet behind me. Without even looking winded, damn.

Finally, the sound of burbling drifted to my ears, and my weakening knees almost gave out. The brook! All this damn running and we just circled around right back to where we started!? I’d been I might find a village or someone else who might be able to get this maniac off my tail! But then it hit me: she was obviously real good at running on land, maybe she was just a little crappier at running on water? I was a bit taller than her, so my stride might give me some advantage. And besides, maybe I could swim for it.

I plunged in, slogging along as fast as I could. Confident I had won some time, I turned with a middle finger raised, but my triumphant “fuck you” died in my throat at the sight of big, blue, and bitchy taking to the skies.

Oh right, shit, she had wings. Was hoping she couldn’t actually use those.

Snarling with nearly-manic anger, the blue horsey-lady dove out of the sky, dagger raised, screaming at the top of her lungs. My mind went utterly blank, and that was probably what saved me, because my mind was that of a borderline-alcoholic electrical engineer from Michigan, but my body was some sort of warrior-elk, and he knew when to duck.

I don’t even remember ducking, but suddenly my hands were planted in the mud at the bottom of the creek, and I was coughing and sputtering as I clawed my way back up, forcing myself to my feet just as I heard big blue’s scream of triumph turn into a far less dignified “Woooaahhhhhh…FUCK!” She splashed into the water as a bundle of feathers that flared out everywhere, tensing up and flailing around.

I drank this sight in, then levelled a claw on her as a grin crossed my face. “HA!” I screamed. “And I say again: HA! That’s whatcha get, bitch! That’s whatcha…”

My triumphant victory dance ended abruptly when the wings gave one last spasm, and suddenly went limp, dipping into the water. I gave pause. Of course, my immediate thought was that this was a trick to lure me in, wait until the right moment, then spring up like fucking Jason Voorhees at the end of Friday the Thirteenth. So, keeping my distance, I slowly crept towards her. “Miss Blue Horse-thing?” I asked tentatively. “You okay?”

Silence on her part. An eddy caught the tip of one of her wings and drifted with it, straightening it out. I bit my lip. “Y-you need a…a drink of water?”

I almost face-palmed again, but I still didn’t get any response from her. So upside: she didn’t hear me handling this whole situation like a high school freshman getting to second base for the first time. Downside: that was likely because she was dead.

“Aww, shit,” I moaned as I tromped up to her. Hey, attempted murderer or not, for all I knew, this was a case of mistaken identity. She thought I was some other asshole; she hardly needed to die for that. Besides, if your goal is to get killed by a torch-wielding mob as quickly as possible, introducing yourself to a new world as the guy who murdered a chick in a stream is only a slightly classier method than setting an orphanage on fire, or stabbing a little girl in a wheelchair, or stabbing a little girl in a wheelchair and setting her on fire, then rolling her back to her orphanage.

Splashing up to the body, I felt through the mass of feathers to grab the back of her shirt and haul her up into a sitting position, so at least her face was out of the water. She came up with her mane drenched and water pouring out her mouth and nose, and almost immediately I found the problem: a nice, flat rock just under the water’s surface, with one sharp edge where her face had been. “Great,” I mumbled, peeking over her shoulder (and getting a great view down her soaking-wet shirt at the same time) to find a big, purple bump high up on her forehead, just in front of the temple. I couldn’t help but cringe as I dragged her through the stream, out of the water, towards the shore where I could lay her back.

I pressed my ear up to her mouth…muzzle…whatever, while also jabbing a claw against her neck. I didn’t feel a pulse, but that was probably because I had no clue what I was doing, as I felt her breath wafting shallowly over the tip of my ear. So still breathing, but unconscious, okay, good. My CPR training mostly consisted of episodes of House MD, so I had no clue what the hell I could’ve done if she hadn’t been breathing. Must’ve just knocked her own stupid self out.

I fell back on the shoreline, panting heavily as the adrenaline wore off. Jesus fuck, what was that all about? Probably shouldn’t hang around to find out, I doubted she’d be in any more of a talkative mood when she woke up. I pushed myself up in my muddy, soaked robes, ready to take off for parts unknown, when it hit me: what if it wasn’t just her? What if other assholes were out there, waiting to fuck me up because of how I looked? Shit, it might be as simple as the bigass horns. For all I knew, horns marked you off like a Jew in Nazi Germany. Or a Jew in Soviet Russia. Or a Jew pretty much anywhere in history, really.

Damn. If this chick’s reaction to my face was to immediately try and jam an icepick through it, I’d probably need to know what I was dealing with and just who might have the same reaction. I needed answers, I was obviously playing by a different set of rules here, and coma dream or not, I didn’t wanna find out what happened if you died in anything this vivid. Sounded like it could hurt at the very least, or it might send me deeper into a layer of my own mind, again like that di Caprio movie. But odds were, if she woke up, I’d get much of the same reaction as before. Knocking someone’s pert, blue ass out in a river was not a great way to endear myself to them.

With my resolve steeled, I figured I’d have to do a bit of searching; perhaps she brought something with her that could help me out here? Figuring that was my best bet, I waded upstream until I found a dip in the foliage by the river, marking off what I could assume was her pack. Turning around, I couldn’t help but notice I was only a couple hundred feet from where I’d left my unconscious new friend. For God’s sake, all that running to just wind up where we started…

Grimacing, I knelt by the foliage and pulled out…a chainmail tunic? Yep, a form-fitting bit of chainmail, the sort of thing that would cover her entirely while hugging every curve of her body, every little corner, every little…

“Down boy, bad,” I grumbled, giving my crotch a pat as I tossed the tunic over my shoulder. So, what was this babe, some kinda warrior-horse-bird? I rummaged around, and found gold-plated metal shoulder pads, a chest plate, chainmail sleeves and leggings, and a light sword. Okay, cool, so she was a warrior. Maybe it was as simple as “winged things at war with horned things in this world.” Good ol’ fashioned interracial violence. Glad to know home could still be so close.

Finally, I came upon a little sack, filled with more light, stretchy clothing, and even a few apples. I reached for one, but quickly pulled back with a twinge of guilt. These weren’t my apples, after all, but another twist of hunger from my stomach informed me that dream food or not, it’d be better than nothing. Besides, could a big blue dream warrior technically own anything if they didn’t exist? I thought not, and so scooped the apple up and took a nice, big bite.

Heaven exploded in my mouth. It was the cool graininess of a Golden Delicious, but more with the sugar sweetie goodness of Red Delicious for taste. Hey, I’m from Michigan, of course I know apples. I chomped the whole thing down before I knew what I was doing, no small feat considering the thing was nearly the size of my head. When I’d gorged myself, I let out a contented sigh, and immediately stuffed the remaining apples in the pockets of my robes. Again, she was a construct of a dream-reality, it’s not like she could actually enjoy this shit.

I gathered up the rest of the spare clothes and bundled them up, nodding with satisfaction at the pants I found. I piled in the armor, scooped up the bag and sword in my hand, and waded back to where I’d left sleeping beauty, still resting, her rainbow-colored hair splayed out over her shoulders. Looked pretty cute like that, really, horse face or not. Couldn’t help but smile, even as I turned her over, laced up her spare pair of weird cottony yoga pants, and used them to secure her wrists tightly behind her back.

“Just so you know: yes, this is my kink,” I said, turning her over on her back again. “But that’s not why I’m doing this. I mean, I’m not a perv…much…but I just gotta make sure you don’t go all crazy McStabbyFace again. Plus, I need answers about this place, y’feel me?”

Her only response was to give a contented whinny, followed with a nuzzle into the grass and a smile as her body stretched out, her muscles rippling as she did so, her flat stomach rising and falling peacefully as her breasts rose with each breath…

“Bad boy, bad,” I muttered again, scooping up the pack and sword, walking to the nearest tree, and taking a seat facing her, the sword by my hand. At long last, my stomach full and my thirst slaked, I leaned back. And I waited.

Author's Note

So yeah...this is what's been occupying my time for the past year or so. Didn't intend for it to go down that way, but here we are.