The shadowed forest rustled as my dark form rushed between brambles and roots. My silver claws raked the earth, tearing scores into the crumbling surface. The pale moonlight cascaded onto the ferns and bushes down on the forest floor - the place where I ran on all fours. My speed was unimaginable, even to me, and the wind against my coat sent waves of joyous freedom through my whole being. I ran through thorns, fallen branches, and clumps of weeds, but eventually they broke.

I stood alone in a vast field, the green hue of the grasses shown by the white light of the moon. Without a single other thought, I turned to the luminous body above and howled. It was a howl filled with passion, filled with glee, filled with freedom. Unfortunately for me, it ended much too soon. . .

“Wake up, grunt. Work to be done, dogs to do work,” a harsh voice came, along with a swift kick the stomach. I rolled slightly as the pain dissipated before rising to my feet. This was a wake-up I had grown accustomed to, but I never held any less animosity toward it. Next to the grueling torture of watching these simpletons boss us around, it was my least favorite part of the day.

With visions of fresh air and running wild still haunting my mind, I trudged toward the tunnel that led to our site of work. It was going to be another long day. . .

Perhaps I should explain. You see, I am a diamond dog, one by the name of White Claw, to be exact. While I may be of the same species as these. . . Imbeciles, I refused to stoop to their level of complete mediocrity and incompetence. Never before in my life had I met a worse band of beings, although I hadn't met very many beings.

From the day I was born, I was a slave to these beasts. I was born in these caves, I lived in these caves, and they seemed hell-bent on making me die in these caves. I, on the other paw, had places to go, things to see, and a life to live. About the time I turned twelve I hatched an idea. A rather simple one, one that I wasn't even sure was attainable at the time. Freedom. Freedom from slavery, freedom from idiots, and freedom to do as I please. Unfortunately, life would not have it so simple.

I tried escaping one day, such a terrible plan, really, and I was caught and dragged back to my home. In reality, my home was a cell in which my mother and I lived, eating the smallest of grains and gems, and occasionally dirt. When they dragged me back there, I saw my mother bound about the wrists and ankles. I called to her, but the guards stopped me. The pack leader, one called Greyscar, on account of the grey scar that ran though his face, stood over me and grinned his vicious grin.

“Pup needs a lesson. Pup doesn't understand hurt. We teach pup what hurt really mean,” he grumbled, his voice somewhere between a wood chipper filled with rocks and a blender filled with forks. He snapped two of his heavily furred fingers, and I was forced to watch as each guardsman took advantage of my mother. She cried out in pain, sobs racking her whole form, and I had to press my ears to my skull to deaden the screams. It was unbearable to watch, and I knew she was suffering for my crime.

Now any normal diamond dog would have been stupid enough to hate himself after such a punishment, but I was better than that. I was smarter than that. Instead, I grew to hate the stupid, flea-bitten mongrels who savaged my mother in such a manner. With every movement they made, every step, every thrust, every bite, I ground my teeth a bit harder. As Greyscar stepped up to my mother, I bore my eyes into him while I waited for it to come. It never did.

He brought his spear down, the leaf-shaped head cleaving straight down through my poor mother’s skull and into the hard floor beneath. My breath caught, my heart stopped, and my claws extended. Instantly, my blood was filled with the urge to fight, the urge to hunt. The urge to kill. Faster than I had thought possible, I spun on my guards, cutting every tendon and muscle in the fronts of their legs in one swift motion, and their cries of surprise and agony fell on deaf ears. I harbored no more care for these beasts. Claws extending from my hind legs as well, I brought one paw down on a guards skull.

The curved claws cut into his thick skull like butter, leaving a dead mass of blood and mangled facial features. The other guard looked up to me with pleading eyes, and I leaned down to slit his miserable throat with a forefinger as I was seized from behind. Snarling wildly, I attempted to bite at my captor, but Greyscar held fast.

“Pup fight back. No pup ever fight back,” he mused, his tone filled with something akin to disbelief. “This one strong.” He tossed me down on my paws and walked to the door. Without turning around, he snapped his fingers. “Break pup,” he barked, and the guardsmen were on me. I was viciously beaten, my coat torn, my muzzle fractured, ribs bruised -- the injuries were countless. After in immeasurable amount of time, the hitting ceased, and I cracked an eye open. The guards were exiting, leaving only my mother’s savaged and bloodied corpse and myself, a beaten and furious bundle of fur.

I couldn't even bear to look at her in the near darkness, the only light coming from a single torch by the door of our cell, and I pulled myself to bunk. I licked my wounds as I brooded over my new-found hate for the species I was unfortunate enough to call my own. And that was only the beginning.

As I drifted into sleep, I wondered how in the world I would ever finally escape these tunnels, and pondered it as the dark grasp of slumber took me.

In my dream, a stood before a throne, one made of something that appeared to be iron swords melted together, and a disturbing looking creature posing atop it. With mismatching horns, a bird leg and a lion paw for forearms, a scaled dragon leg, a pony hoof, and the scaled tail of a serpent, the patchwork beast eyed me with a grin of malicious intent on his face.

“Welcome, little dog,” he said with a voice somehow silky and deep, despite the air of cruelty to it.

“Who you?” I barked, using standard Diamond Dog speak. I stepped toward him threateningly and my hackles rose.

“My, my, your grammar is simply horrid! We’ll have to do something about that. But to answer your question, I am Discord. Perhaps you've heard of me? Ruling the world with a wake of chaos, making ponies everywhere miserable?” He tweaked his bushy white eyebrows humorously, but the humor was lost on me. At that point, my skull was nearly as dense as that of the guard I’d killed.

“What you want, monster?” I growled back at him, lowering my top half, ready to pounce at him at any moment. He laughed at my threatening display and waved his lion paw. Next thing I knew, I was on the ceiling, and he watched me from his throne now made of tiny, rectangular, multicolored blocks.

He slid through the air and looked directly up at me. I bared my teeth at him, and he did the same, revealing a long, pointed canine on one side. He chuckled at my stunned look and placed a hand on my head, just between my ears. “Me? I want what I always want! I want things to change, and who better to cause it than you, my furry little com padre! I want things to change because ponies can’t handle change. Change for them in bad, evil almost, and it sends them scrambling for stability. Between all their scrambling and all the change, one thing arises, and it delights me so,” he said, grinning evilly again. He leaned in close and whispered a single word into my ear. “Chaos.” The word held a massive weight, despite me only having a vague knowledge of it at the time. The air around us had nearly become electrified, the power of the word and the one speaking it changing the atmosphere completely.

I stared hard at Discord for a few moments, before quietly asking, “What you want with White Claw, monster?” His laughs echoed through the empty space we resided in, and I was suddenly back on the floor as he walked back to his throne. It appeared to be made of gelatin, and it swayed back and forth as he rested himself on it.

“White Claw, I can give you something nobody else but me has,” he told me, being deathly serious. My tail tucked between my legs, and his words came out right in my ear, despite him being at least two body lengths away. “I can give you wisdom. Knowledge beyond your years, beyond your race, beyond your world even! You’d be reborn, a diamond dog like no other! Smart, strong, cynical, cruel, but most importantly. . . Different,” he whispered, and the words echoed through my mind. It didn't take a genius to see that I had always wanted to be better than those other savages, and this being could grant me that power. Still, I was hesitant.

“What monster want FROM White Claw?” I asked, my eyes prying slits by now. He smiled as sweetly as possibly with his horrid looks, and was gone in a POOF of smoke. Instantly, he was behind me, hand around my shoulder.

“Little Diamond Dog, all I want from you is for you to be you. You do that, and change will be change, different will still be different, and best of all, chaos will still be. . .” His words faded off, and he pointed at me.

Finishing his sentence for him, I grumbled, “Chaos will still be chaos.” He jumped with glee and was suddenly back on his ever-changing throne, and it appeared to be made of bones now. The beast in me told me to race forward for those bones, but I pushed it back down. This monster, this man, this. . . Discord, could give me something I desperately needed. Intelligence. I nodded at him.

“I do. Make White Claw smart,” I ordered in my broken language. His eyes narrowed to cruel slits, and his grin one again oozed malice.

“Gladly,” he whispered, and walked across the room to me. Standing at full height, he was still over twice my size. With a swift but fluid movement, he rested his bird claw on the top of my skull. The world flashed, and I was blinded by foreign images.

Bulky tan boxes with glass screens, fat hairless beasts sitting before them, machines of destruction and chaos, wars, books, homes made like those of ponies, strangely shaped machines that fired unseen projectiles at incredible speeds, metal birds that soared through the air carrying those hairless beasts overhead, wagons and carts that moved without anything pulling them, and words. So many words. So many things that I didn't know existed. I could feel my skull being filled with these things, and I could faintly hear Discord cackling beside me. All of the sudden, it stopped and I dropped to my paws and knees.

“Did you enjoy that, little one?” His silky voice asked, and I was helpless to do anything but nod. In my head were images, images of seas of hot sauce, clouds made of cotton candy and chocolate rain, and trees that bent like rubber. I looked up at him and finally recognized him as Discord, the dragonequus, the last of his kind, the harbinger of chaos.

In my head, as I tried to speak, words I never knew existed came to mind, and I recognized them all. Even better, I knew how to use them correctly. “You’re Discord. You’re evil,” I mumbled. In the blink of an eye, I was back on my paws and snarling at him. “Give me one reason I shouldn't kill you now!” I growled, and my claws extended. He just smiled and nodded to me.

“One reason? Look at yourself! Look into yourself! Look at what I've given you,” he told me, and I closed my eyes. I understood things I was sure no other Diamond Dogs did. Grammar, humor, technology, and even a vast world around us. My eyes shot open and I looked inquiringly at Discord.

“You. . . You gave me this? What are these memories you've given me?” I said, my voice hardly reaching a whisper.

“Visions, my friend. Sights and thoughts born of a different world, a new universe. A name, surely you can find it a name,” he said, raising a single eyebrow inquisitively.

I closed my eyes again and sifted through thoughts and memories. I saw nations crumbling, empires growing, conquests failing. I saw a pasty man with slick black hair and a rectangular patch of hair on his upper lip screaming to thousands of onlookers, and they all hailed him as some sort of king. I saw pictures of some sort of massive, dark room as gunshots began and people screamed. I saw a metal pod cruising through space and touching down on the surface of the moon. They planted a single flag, one adorning thirteen stripes of red and white and a blue corner filled with stars. As my eyes slowly opened, I registered all I had seen, and I had a name.

“Earth,” I answered, and Discord nodded. I looked down at my paws and they suddenly seemed unreal. I looked back to him with pleading eyes. His throne had vanished and he was packing garments into a leather box. No, not a leather box. A suitcase. I recognized he was preparing to leave. “Discord, wait!” I called after him, and he stopped in his tracks. He looked genuinely surprised as he met my gaze. My look was that of desperation, and I could tell he was confused by it.

“Yes, White Claw? Are you not happy with your new knowledge?” He asked, and I backed away, eyes wide.

I shook my head furiously. “N-no, that’s not it at all! I love it, but. . . I don’t know what to do with it all. . . I can’t make sense of it all. Help me, please,” I begged, reaching out to him. He attempted to move back, but I caught his wrist in time. He looked down at me, and an idea flashed through my head. I pressed my ears back, shrank my size down, held his arms gingerly, and put on my sweetest look. I could see his resolve melting like ice behind his lopsided eyes. He sighed and hung his head, dropping the suitcase in the process.

“You’re killin’ me, kid. . . Alright. Twice a week, I’ll come to you in your dreams and help you figure it all out. Sound good?” He offered, and I nodded excitedly. My tail even wagged, brushing across the floor. He conjured at hat from the air and set it on his head. Grabbing the suitcase, he gave me a salute. “Until then, auf wiedersehen, sweetheart,” he said, snapping his fingers. With a spiral of smoke, he was gone, and I collapsed to the ground. As the dream world faded, I smiled grimly. I am different. I am smart. I am better. And with those thoughts, the real world came rushing back.

Author's Note

First chapter of what I hope will be many more. I wrote this section quite some time ago, so if this goes over well, there will be more on the way fairly quickly.

As you may have guessed, the idea for this was inspired by Rust's 'Ballad of Echo the Diamond Dog'. If you haven't read it yet and liked this, I highly recommend it. Heck, even if you hated this, I still recommend you check out Rust's stuff. Anyway, let me know what you think in the comments and if you have any corrections to give, don't be afraid to let me know.