The Human In The King

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.