Celestia just gave me this... look. This whole interrogation thing was starting to feel like Silence of the Lambs or something. I resisted the urge to call her "Clarice." She wouldn't have got the joke. "And so that's what you had young Diamond Tiara doing while you had her as your prisoner," she said, her voice even. "Helping you learn more magic."

"Part of it," I said. "Most of it. But I was doing something more important."

"What?" Celestia said.

I grinned. "Learning to read."

It didn't take long at all to start picking up the Equestrian written language. They spoke English... something I still haven't figured out... but that meant their written language had to use the same sounds. I knew the English language had forty four sounds in it, so that meant it was just a matter of learning what symbols meant what sounds. Hurray for Hooked on Phonics.

Of course there was a catch; Their written language is something of a mish-mosh. There were some English or English-looking letters. There were others that were pictograms, almost like chinese or something. And there were other letters that looked like nothing but rows of short and long strokes, grouped together. It should have been impossible for me to learn... but... I was picking it up. Getting more of it every day, and remembering what I learned the next day, perfectly.  I was soaking it up like a sponge.

I read the books I'd stolen; the dogs brought in more, muddy, spattered, torn, but legible. (I suspected the dogs had been doing raids; so long as they obeyed my orders not to draw attention by killing, I ignored it.)  We went through those as well. By two days I could stumble along through a reading primer, with help. By three I could read at about kindergarten level.

By the seventh day, i was reading fluently on my own.

I realized it had to be the medallion; it must have been opening up the channels in my mind, fiddling with my language centers, making learning easier than it had been since I was a baby... It wanted me to learn as much as I did. My brain felt on fire and I tossed and turned all night with wild, demented dreams, but I learned.

Of course I was killing two or three birds with one stone here. Tiara's little reading sessions were teaching me all about Ponyland... Equestria... its history, how everything worked, and more. At first she was defiant... she'd see me come stalking in and tell me "My Daddy's coming to get me, and you know it." She'd repeat that phrase at any opportunity. I let her.

I kept her chained to my bedpost, with a bucket for a chamber pot, a food dish and a pitcher of water. I gave the Diamond Dogs strict instructions on her care in my absence; they were to only feed her what I told them, to keep her water pitcher full and her chamber pot empty. They were otherwise not to touch her.

The second night, she actually made an escape attempt. The diamond dog in charge of feeding her had made the mistake of giving her a glass pitcher for her water. She'd gotten up on a stool behind the door and waited. I walked in, and she actually managed to smash the thing over my head. Too bad for her I was wearing the helmet. I stood there, water dripping off me, and just looked at her. The terror on her face was palpable.

Funny thing was, I wasn't even mad. I suppose because it was just so pathetic. "And our first mistake was?" I asked. She whimpered while I patiently explained to her that she should have knocked out one of the guards instead, because they generally didn't wear helmets, then used their keys to try and unlock her collar, worn the guard's uniform and sneaked out that way-- not that Diamond Dogs were that dumb; but they used their sense of smell more than their poor eyesight, and they wouldn't have looked too close in the dim light of the cave if she smelled right. She might not have lasted too long out in the Everfree, but she might have managed to survive, given a little luck and swiping a few things on her way out.

She whimpered and cried and promised to be good. I said yes, she would, and gave her back to Big Mama. She spent the next 24 hours on the floor of the kitchen in a cage, with no food or water. I took her back the next morning.

She was good from then on. She kept right on repeating her mantra... "My Daddy's coming to get me..." but now only to herself, when she thought I wasn't listening. At night while she thought I was asleep.

I spent the rest of my time concentrating on upping my surveillance. I had spy-eyes floating all over the Everfree. My range hadn't reached the point where I could get to Canterlot, though I could zoom in with telescope-vision and watch it from outside the walls.

I also sent eyes back into Ponyville. I was flabbergasted when the images I got back from there were of the town going about its business as if nothing had happened. I didn't figure it out till two or three days later, when I saw Diamond Tiara walking to school with Silver Spoon. It was then I noticed that everyone in Ponyville was going through the same routine, over and over again. Son of a gun, Twilight Sparkle had actually gotten one step ahead of me. Instead of just blocking my Eyes from the village, which would've set off alarms with me, she'd cast an illusion over the entire village of a normal Ponyville day, and set it to play over and over again. Like running taped footage over a security camera.  The next day Diamond Tiara was gone, Twilight had obviously spotted her mistake,  but the jig was already up. I knew that she was up to something.

Diamond Tiara saw me watching (by that point I'd graduated up to watching multiple Eyes by way of floating magical screens, instead of just looking at the back of my eyelids) and she begged me to let her see Ponyville, to see her family and friends. I let her watch. She saw what I saw-- all of Ponyville going about their business, fine as you please. Even her Daddy, opening up his store every morning to make those big shiny bits he loved so much, like nothing had happened.

She stopped saying her mantra after that.

I kept the Diamond Dogs busy too. Hunting, mining, building up our fortifications. I tried to add a little animal domestication to things; I caught a couple more of those chicken-lizard-snake things and brought them back I threw them in a chamber full of giant crystals the dogs had told me were inedible, blocked the door and told the dogs guarding it to throw some corn in over the top once in a while. ... I dunno, I figured maybe I could get them to lay eggs or something.

The hydra was kind of a big disappointment. The dogs had dug a huge pit for some project or other and the big brute fell in. I was pretty excited when I heard; According to human legends, if you cut off a hydra's head, two more would grow back in its place. I had visions of endless supplies of meat... whack off a head, grill it up, come back later and you have two more. Too bad it's not true. I went down in the pit, bound it in spectral chains, and sliced off one of the necks at the shoulder, but the hydra didn't grow two new heads, or even one. It just shrieked and wallowed and raised a racket.... after a while of watching it bleed I went back down, sewed up the stump and bandaged it up. I figured maybe it just had to happen real slow, growing back normally like a frog leg. Nothing happened, though Stumpy did take to running to the back corner of his pit and cowering whenever he saw me. I put a note to build a ramp out of the pit at the first opportunity and chase it back into the woods; like heck I was going to feed a hydra on our budget. And who knows, maybe he'd grow a new head after a few months out in the wild.

It was a shame; hydra meat is good. Nice and tender. We sliced it up and stuck it in a chamber I'd magically converted to a deep freeze.  

It took two weeks, by the way, for me to unlock my magic.

I was lying awake in bed, like always, staring at the ceiling, thinking over the half-gibberish instructions I'd been reading in the magic books I'd stolen. I just wasn't getting much sleep anymore, so I had plenty of time to do just that. My magic was improving. But not by much. I was learning how to do this trick and that spell... but it was all piecemeal, what I thought of as "Menu Item Magic." A list of random spells, make your order, instant delivery... but nothing tying it all together. No formula, no system to it. I could almost grasp it... it was so tantalizingly close...

the amulet can unlock my power

I blinked. That half-thought, where had it come from?

The amulet has the answers. just ask

.... It couldn't be that easy, could it? The Alicorn Amulet had just been acting like a point and click interface, in a way. I poked around blindly with my brain until I set something off. Even the new spells I was learning from the books worked that way. Rudimentary. Like a little kid learning whole words instead of learning the alphabet, or working from a bake mix instead of from scratch. But wouldn't something with a point and click interface like that come with a help menu?

It was worth a try. I sighed and lay back on my bed, and let my mind drift down. Focusing on my magic. Tugging at it, pulling at it, following the tendrils of it deeper... like lying there, trying to define exactly where a particular ache or twinge or itch was coming from, tracing it backward like following a single computer cable through the snarl you find under your desk...

I got down through all the little bundles of magic I'd been poking at before, down to the root, down to the core. There, when I felt like I was completely immersed, I opened up visualized the words I wanted to say:

Tell me how you work

Apparently, that was when I went into the seizure.

I woke up to screaming, and large hairy things holding me down. I shook it off... well, actually I stopped shaking and came to. I took in my surroundings. I was lying on my bed. Several large burly Diamond Dogs were holding my arms and legs down. The screaming was apparently Diamond Tiara. Being chained to the bedpost of an Evil Overlord having a grand mal seizure apparently freaked her out.

I groaned and tried to sit up. "Master Vulcan!" Runt yelped. "What happened, Dark Master?"

"Let me up," I growled. The diamond dogs backed off, and I sat up. I clutched my helmeted head. What happened? What was happening? The moment I had made contact with the Amulet, a complete electro-rave lightshow had gone off in my head. It was like... like...

...Like a hundred epiphanies at once. Like every puzzle piece falling into perfect place. Even now ideas were whizzing around in my head like a runaway firework, setting off still others that pinged around my neurons. I rattled my noggin; the sensation finally stopped. And then I felt it:

Satori.

It's a word in Japanese. It means something like a moment of perfect clarity and understanding. Like Keanu Reeves going "Whoa, I know Kung Fu." That was me. All the abstract gibberish I'd been reading finally came together.

I closed my eyes.... and a menu appeared. A menu written in Equestrian. Dozens of categories, arcane terminology. Evocation, Transformation, Illusion, Teleportation, Enchantment... I flicked through the selection; more glowing script unfolded before my mind's eye. I had them all, and the underlying principles were so simple. Simple as the ABCs and 123s. All of the knowledge of thaumaturgy, right at my mental fingertips. Pre-made spells, and instructions on how to vary them-- or create new ones from scratch.

The amulet had been waiting for me to learn to read.

I reached out, and a dozen Eyes of Vulcan sprang into existence, all over the forest. I sent one back to Ponyville; now I could see the matrix of the illusion cast over the town, and adjusted my Eye accordingly. The illusion disappeared, and I got a look into town for the first time in close to two weeks.

I started to chuckle. The Diamond Dogs looked nervous.

"Runt, gather the pack leaders in the war room," I said. "It's time." I snapped my fingers; The end of Diamond Tiara's chain leapt into my hand. With a flash of purple-black light, she and I disappeared.