"...And they chose to follow you." Celestia said. "Just like that."

I shrugged. "They're dogs," I said. "They follow an Alpha. Put on a dominance display and they'll follow you wherever you lead. That much doesn't change from world to world, apparently."

"Anyway, I had a few things to stew over..."

I had my new flunkies make camp. They found a decent sized cave, made a fire, gathered some bedding, all with a minimal amount of squabbling, punching, and biting one another. When they started grumbling about being hungry, I started to order them to just shut up and go find something-- then I recalled that these guys were idiots, and told them I'd find something myself. I was lucky; five minutes of marching into the brush and I heard clucking. Doggone if it wasn't a chicken, sticking its head out of the bushes. Instead of running off, the darn thing reared up and glared at me, with little beady red eyes.

I froze, afraid to move for fear it would bolt. We stood there for several seconds, the bird glaring into my eyes, me glaring back. It was weird but, the longer we stood there the more agitated the bird seemed to get.

"Niiiice chickie... gooood chickie..." Okay, fresh chicken, how to catch? On a whim, I lashed my hand out and made the classic Darth Vader choke-a-b@%# gesture. A black, smoky hand shot out of my fingertips, flew across the intervening distance, and gripped the bird around the neck with a choking grasp. Son of a gun. The bird started to flap and struggle; I twisted my wrist and it's neck snapped. The light behind its eyes went out. I ripped its head off and dragged it out of the bush... nearly crapped myself when the long snake tail came out after it. For a second I thought a python had sneaked up and grabbed my chicken by the butt, and I was going to have to tug-of-war with it...

Celestia made a sound. I stopped. "What?"

"That... you do realize now that was a cockatrice," she said.

"A cockawha?"

"It's a dangerous reptile that lives in the Everfree," she said faintly. "It kills by locking gazes with its enemies. Anypony who looks into its eyes is turned to stone." She stared at me. "How is it that you are not a statue even now?"

I mulled it over. "Probably couldn't lock eyes with me through my mask," I guessed. "Eye lenses." I pondered a moment. "No wonder they all looked so awestruck when I brought it back..."

After I realized I was holding one really large creature instead of one small dead one and one angry live one, I shrugged, threw it over my shoulder and dragged it back to camp. Skank skinned it and cleaned it, and we cooked it in chunks over the fire...

"You ATE it??"

"Well yeah, counting the tail that was a lot of meat..."

There was a long pause. Curiosity got the best of her. "So how did it taste?"

"I dunno, snakey-chickeny. Look, are you going to interrupt a lot?"

"Never mind. Continue."

Anyway, we ate our hearty meal of chicken-snake-on-a-stick. I made a point of eating mine out of sight of the others... They hadn't seen my face and I wanted to keep up the mystique a bit... and mulled things over.

Okay, I went off a little ways by myself and started playing with my new Dark Force powers. Blasting stumps and logs, throwing around boulders with my spectral ghost-y hands, whooping and giggling like a loon.

Oh, like you wouldn't. This was freaking awesome!

I even got a little constructive; I tore up some boulders and logs and stacked them up in a crude wall around our little cave entrance. It wasn't Fort Sumter or anything, but it was better than nothing. I got bored with that eventually, plunked my butt on a rock overlooking our camp and went back to brooding.

To start off with, I spent some time pondering my situation, and why I wasn't in freaking hysterics.

Okay, I mean, I'm not the most introspective guy in the world, but I knew myself well enough. Something seemed off. I mean, not 24 hours ago I was going ballistic because I thought I'd stuck girly jewelry on my costume by mistake and a pony-cuddling weirdo was hanging all over me. Then I'd been sucked into another world, run into talking mutant pony things, nearly been mugged by talking mutant dog-troll things, nearly been eaten by piles of wood that thought they were a pack of wolves (they made a lovely fire by the way), and I'd shot black, deathmetal-looking FIRE out of my freaking hands. And now I was sitting here, looking up at the sky and digesting my dinner of demon-eyed snake-chicken, as calm as you please.

And that wasn't all of it. Okay, you know what the Uncanny Valley is? It's sort of this thing that explains why creepy dolls are creepy. What it is, is that they look almost right, almost normal... but just not quite.  It's enough to set off your weird-o-meter and give you the heebie jeebies. Right?

Well it doesn't just apply to people or animals or.. animal-people. Everything has an uncanny valley. And everywhere I looked there were things sitting right square in the middle of it. The trees, the grass, the leaves, the clouds... almost looked normal. But just not quite. Even the sky, the color was off. A touch too vivid, a little too... something. I knew for a fact it should be making me spazz out, or putting me off my feed the more I looked at it. But whenever I tried to focus on that feeling, it sort of slipped away. I was upset, angry, honked off, and yeah a little scared, but I wasn't completely off my hinges like a normal person would be.

That by itself was unsettling me. It felt more and more like I was slipping into some sort of unreality....

Okay, time to reflect on a bigger issue. How I got here and how to get back. Same answer, as far as I could figure. It obviously had something to do with the medallion. And it was just as obvious that the medallion was what gave me these funky powers.  But what was the connection? Who made this thing? How did I end up with it? Was it some sort of plan on someone's part? I obviously had to find whoever or whatever dragged me here and make them take me home. So the question was, how to go about finding out who they were and where?

I didn't get much thinking time in before Runt and Mange were fawning all over me. (Skank, it seems, was busy hammering the dent out of his crappy breastplate.) I swear, Diamond Dogs must have perfected the art of suck-up. They came cringing up to my makeshift throne and simpered at me. "Great Dark Master Vulcan is tired yes? Must want cushion for poor feet."

"No, I--" One of them picked up my feet while the other stuffed a wadded-up satchel under them, dropping my feet unceremoniously on it.

"Rub back?" Mange offered.

I considered his filthy paws. "No."

"Maybe want refreshing drink?" Runt offered, pulling out a canteen. He licked his slobbery lips.

"Not without a course of penicillin," I growled.

"Don't be stupid, Runt," Mange said. "He can't drink with his mask on!" He reached over to flip my helmet up.

"Hey!" I batted his paws away.

"Yeah, why you wear helmet all the time, Mighty Dark One? You burn your face or something--?" While I was batting Mange's hands away, Runt reached over and flipped my face mask up. He took one look and shrieked in terror, covering his eyes. "AAAAH! IT HORRIBLE! IT TERRIBLE!" Mange looked too and fell to the ground, ki-yi'ing and covering his eyes.

"What?? What what??" I yelped, feeling my face. Had that Dark Force stuff I'd done been literal, had it done an Emperor Palpatine to my face? I dug around in my cloak pockets and found a hand mirror and held it up. My own regular, perfectly normal and totally non-mutated face looked back. I sort of thought I saw a purply glow at the corners of my eyes, but shrugged it off as my imagination. "Oh hah hah, very funny," I snarled, slapping my mask back down.

"Who said that was funny?" Runt whimpered. "It awful! Look like boiled monkey!"

I started to ask, but decided the better of it. I really didn't want to know how they knew what a boiled monkey looked like. "That's my normal face, you idiot. It's just hairless."

"But, but it covered with horrible pocks and boils," Mange whimpered.

"Those are called ZITS, you hairy retard," I snarled. I barely held back the urge to pummel them with my staff. They cringed down at my feet, whimpering. I looked at them in disgust. All the minions in two worlds, and I end up with the Three Stooges with fleas.

"All right, you lot," I said, unconsciously trying to rub my temples through my helmet. "Who around here does magic?"

They looked up at me. "Magic?" Mange said.

"Yeah, Magic. Like I do. Who's the big abra cadabra hocus pocus heavyweight around here? The big league wizard? The Sorcerer Supreme, the Big Magical Enchilada, last of the red hot Swamis, who?"

"Diamond Dogs don't do magic, Master," Runt said unnecessarily. "It the ponies who do all magic."

"Ponies." I said. Like the ones I saw last night. Like the ones...

Yes, it was only right then that I realized that the ponies I saw the night before were the same ones as that stupid cartoon show back on earth. It was probably my mind trying to protect itself from burning out. I was in a cartoon show?? I looked around again. It certainly didn't look like a cartoon. I mean, everything looked real, nothing looked cel shaded or anything. But yeah, talking pastel colored ponies with big heads and huge honkin' eyes, with cutesie pootsie names and going on tricks or treats and holy crap I was in a cartoon--

"I need to lie down a minute," I said. I walked down into the camp and back into the cave. Mange and Runt hastily made a bed for me out of dead leaves and gunnysacks. I lay down on it while the world spun.

Skank made a reappearance. "What wrong with him?" he asked as he picked at the banged-out dent on his chest. The others shrugged.

"I'm meditating," I snapped. "Sit." They sat around me. I tried to remember everything I knew about the My Little Pony cartoon. "Okay, I'm going to ask some questions," I said. "Answer everything I ask. Don't ask any questions, just tell me what I want to know.

"What is this land called, and who rules it?"

After a couple hours of methodical questioning, I managed to piece together the basics. What they told me pretty well meshed with what I knew; this was the magical land of Equestria, run by magical pony princesses, one who raised the sun, one who raised the moon, and... a couple others, the dogs weren't sure what they did. The land was full of unicorn ponies, pegasus ponies, and, well, pony ponies. Other than the Princesses, the unicorns were the ones who did all the magic, the pegasi handled the weather, pushing clouds around and stuff, and the regular ponies did all the farming. (I snorted at that; three guesses who the peasant class were.) They lived in a peaceful kingdom that ran on Friendship and Harmony, and (from what my flunkies told me about the nearest town) solved all their differences with warm hugs and parties. The unicorns were also apparently really loud and whiny.

As I listened, I slowly calmed down. The world stopped spinning. I guess after a certain level of crazy gets thrown at you, you can't help but acclimate. So I was stuck in a little girl's cartoon land. A cartoon land full of sugar-coated, bambi-eyed effeminate pastel mini-horses with pixy-dust magical powers. This was weirder than any dream or drug trip I could imagine....

I started getting mad. I'd seen enough crappy saturday morning cartoons to know how this had probably gone down. Some ninny pony with cotton candy for brains named Poopsy Candybutt or whatever had gone playing about with some magic MacGuffin and accidentally summoned me to this world. Or, on second thought, it was probably a villain. Yeah, some villain about as scary as a sofa cushion who wanted to steal all the world's smiles or something gay like that.... and had probably tried to fiddle faddle about with some magic mirror or something and accidentally yanked my butt over here.

And here I was. With minions at my disposal and the powers of Darth Vader at my command. In a world where the natives probably thought Gargamel from the Smurfs was an epic level villain.

"Wait'll they get a load of me," I said.

I started to chuckle to myself. The dogs shot looks at each other. I sat up suddenly, making them jump. "You said there was a Princess in Ponyville?" I asked.

Skank nodded. "Purple pony, with wings and a horn," he said. "She lives in a tree."

What I said next made their faces drop.

"Well," I said. "It's time I got a few answers. Saddle up, boys, we're going to town."

It was a bit of a walk. We had to trudge along for well over an hour before we came to the first road, and then an hour after that of trudging along an empty dirt road. Note to self: get a magic carpet or a Diamond Dog pulled chariot or something. Walking everywhere was lame. Already things were looking twee; the fallen leaves were vivid, glowing shades of red and orange, pretty birds were chirping and cheeping everywhere, and there were flowers still in bloom alongside the road with petals as large as my thumb. Even the grass was a rich vibrant green. The sides of the road soon began showing quaint little split-rail fences, and off over the hills were checkerboard fields, with perfect golden bundles of cornstalks like I hadn't seen anywhere outside of a grade school coloring book.

The more we walked, the more nervous the Diamond Dogs got. They were obviously not comfortable this close to a pony town.  They had armed themselves with wooden cudgels, and were trooping along behind me, looking back and forth nervously as we saw more and more signs of civilization.

I didn't give a crap. If they were such wusses that candy-colored ponies intimidated them, then maybe it was time for a human to show them the light.

As for me, I was in a mood. I'd started out just irritated. Getting abducted by a magic vortex and dumped in a forest will do that to you. But the longer I walked, and the more signs of sugarbowl cuteness I saw (cute puffy clouds, ridiculously large fluttery butterflies),  and the more I brooded on what had happened, the angrier I got. It was like the world was rubbing its cloying sweetness in my face. Even the air smelled too sweet...

No, wait, that was the smell of a bakery.  

We topped the last hill and Ponyville came into view. I literally reeled back a step. It was like getting smote in the eyeballs with a fistful of melted skittles. It was just... so... treacly. Cute little lopsided houses with thatched roofs, shops made up to look like carousels and jester hats and-- yes, there was the bakery I'd smelled earlier, good gawds it was a giant gingerbread building--  hearts and flowers and pink thises and thats and all of it in bright sugary pastel colors and ARGH!

Set it on fire, purge the world of it!

And trotting about in the streets were ponies. Waist-high colts and mares, knee-high colts and fillies, some of them wearing cute little clothes, all of them in bright eye-hurting colors, over there a flying pony ever so cutely pushing a puffy little cloud into just the right position in the sky...

"It looks like Walt Disney threw up," I said. The diamond dogs looked at each other and said nothing.

Time to go put the fear of God into the natives. I marched down the hill, thumping the butt of my staff on the ground, my not-so-loyal minions trailing reluctantly along behind me.

All of a sudden I went from angry to seething. At this cloying syrupy world, at all these insipid cartoon ponies. It was just too much. It was bad enough in my world, but there you could turn it off. You could change channels, or go to a different movie theatre, or just stay away from the store aisles or the amusement parks or anywhere else they tried to throw this saccharine sweetness at you. Here it was everywhere, surrounding you, emasculating you. It was like chewing sand.

All the ponies in the street saw me. They  stopped in their tracks and gaped at us... gaped at me...  as we strode into town.

I choked down my bile, marched to what I figured was the town square, cranked up the volume on my voice changer, and banged my staff on the ground. "ATTENTION!" I said. "I AM DARTH VULCAN! WHERE IS YOUR PRINCESS? II WANT TO SEE HER RIGHT NOW!!"

Then the screaming started.

All of them, every last pony, started shrieking like Satan himself had planted his cloven hoof in their town square, and ran off in every direction.  Some of them ran into buildings and slammed the doors. Others just seemed to be running in random directions. Three mares running flower stands started shrieking and just-- passed out. Just boom, over like someone tipping cattle.

Cheezy Cripes. These ponies were wussies! "Oh for f--" I started to say, then gave it up for a lost cause. The three amigos huddled together behind me, clutching their cudgels and looking scared. "What now, Dark Master?" Runt said.

"Gimme a minute," I grumbled. I would have said more but a rainbow streak suddenly hit me in the head. I went sprawling; helmet or no, that had rung my bell. "The fuh?"

"HAH! That'll teach ya to mess with Ponyville!"

I looked up. Hovering over me was a bright blue pegasus mare with a rainbow-striped mane. "What the hell was that for?"

She flew down and got in my face. "I'M asking the questions around here, pal!" she shouted in her squeaky voice. "You're gonna tell me who you are, and then you're gonna come quietly or--"

I saw red. Then I saw purple. This overgrown plush toy was going to talk smack to me? I lashed out; black crackling energy wrapped around her, pinning her wings to her side and dragging her out of the sky. "I am Darth Vulcan," I vader-growled in her face, "and I am nobody to mess with." I stood up and rattled her like a maraca in my energy-grip. "NOW WHERE IS YOUR PRINCESS? I think I got a BONE to pick with her!"

She was tougher than her neighbors, I'll give her that. "In Canterlot, if it's any of your business," she said, scowling at me. "What's it to--" She looked at my neck and her eyes went round...er. Impressive, considering how honkin' huge they already were. "W-where did you get that amulet??" she yelped.

"Pawn shop, if it's any of your business," I retorted. "What do you know about it?"

She got a triumphant look on her face. "Look it up in a book, you wanna find out," she said. "You're getting nothing out of me, Dork Vulcan." She smirked in my helmet's face.

That tore it. I went from angry to psycho. Everything went purple-greeny-black again. "Too bad," I said. I swung her overhead on a strand of dark energy like a ball on a tether and brought her down square on the peak of the nearest roof. She smashed through the thatch and and disappeared from view. Oughta bring the building down on top of her!

Okay, that may have been a bit much. The screams and panic redoubled.

I threw another spectral hand out and snared a pony running by. I dragged the struggling colt to me and bent over so I was face to face with him. "Now for the last time, WHERE IS YOUR PRINCESS?"

"Princess Twilight? Sh-sh-she lives in the library, she practices her magic there--" the piebald colt stammered. He pointed down the street. I tossed him aside, sending him tumbling through the dust. He got to his hooves and ran for his life. I was already ignoring him. I saw an enormous oak tree at the end of the road, where he had pointed. It had windows, balconies, a door--

Huh. Lives in a tree. Literally.

"Come on, you lot," I said. The Diamond dogs obediently huddled around me. I looked back and flung a fireball at a couple of rooftops. Might as well keep the civil authorities busy when they arrived. I headed for the library-tree. I had a lead, at least. All this had something to do with the medallion stuck around my neck. Hopefully, failing an actual magic princess, there would be a book explaining this mess...

As I drew closer I suddenly had a brainstorm. A magic library... where she practiced her spells and magic... crap. I bet there were a ton of spellbooks in there. I could learn how to really use this thing. I could learn real magic...

I looked back. The town was in an uproar. I could see pegasi pushing clouds in and making them rain on the burning thatch (oy, even their fire department was whimsical.) I had time. "Guard the door," I told the threesome, and kicked it open.

I stepped inside and found myself in... a library. Books, shelves, et cetera. I shrugged mentally to myself. What had I been expecting? Standing in the middle of the room was a pudgy baby, I supposed dragon. he was scribbling something frantically in a roll of paper. My guess proved right when he blew out a puff of flame, burning the letter he'd just written to ash. He looked up and saw me just as the smoke vanished out the window. He nearly jumped out of his scaly skin. "What're you doing here??" he yelped.

I ignored the question. "Show me your grimoires," I said, looming over him. I did not have time for him to be giving me grief.

"Our wha?"

"Your spellbooks, your books of magic," I shouted, exasperated. Scared, he jumped to it and scurried to a shelf, pointing and then backing out of the way. I grabbed the largest one, that had to be a more comprehensive volume, and opened it up. I turned to the first page.

Nothing.

I stared at the page for a minute. I couldn't read it. It was in some almost-English-looking alphabet that looked like something a toddler would scribble out when he was pretending to write like a grownup. It was gibberish.

I tried the next one. Same story. The one after that... different font, but same arghlebargle alphabet. I saw one with a picture on the cover, maybe I could figure something out from the pictures... nothing. The pictures were clear enough, but they meant nothing without the captions. Still more gobbledigook.  It wasn't written in English, none of them were written in English, never mind that was what everybody in this stupid world spoke, of course it wouldn't be written in English.

"AARRRRGGGH!!" I shouted, sending the midget dragon running for its life. Skank, Mange and Runt came crashing in at my shout. I had a sudden flash of hope; I held the open book out to them. "Can you read this?" I demanded. "Any of you?"

The three shook their heads. My hopes were immediately dashed. I growled in frustration. No princess, no magic books... I had to salvage something from this--! "Get your bags," I said. "Take the books off this shelf. All of them."  The three looked at each other. "They're magic books, @#$^ it, we'll figure out how to translate them later! Move it!" They hustled to obey.

"Hey, you can't take those--" the dragonling shouted, emerging from under the writing table. I scorched the wall over his head with a blast of black fire. "Then again this is a lending library..." he said, disappearing back into his hiding place.

We left the library with bags laden with books. It was time to make ourselves scarce. Maybe we should loot a couple more places for supplies on our way out, I reflected--

Who should we meet outside but six mares, among them the pegasus I'd body-slammed into a house. She was looking a little worse for wear. They were led by none other than the very purple winged unicorn I'd been looking for. She did not look to be in a talking mood. "HALT, EVILDOER!" she shouted, her horn glowing.

The orange one wearing a cowboy hat was standing there, twirling a lasso overhead. How did she do that with no hands? That had to be putting a crick in her neck. Wow, was my brain off on rabbit trails or what. "Just stay down, feller, and we won't have to hurt ya," she said. A texas accent?

"Much," the rainbow one snarled.

"Be careful, darling, he certainly isn't going to surrender easily!" ...aaaand an upper crust New England accent, of course. Why not?

Nope, not in a talking mood. "Get back," I thundered (my volume was still on full. I'd forgotten to turn it down.) "I'm in no mood for this!" I brandished my staff. Black lightning crackled around the skull.

"He's attacking!" the blue pegasus yelled. "Let's blast him, guys!"

Blast?

The six of them-- even the ones without wings-- rose into the air. I noticed then that they were all wearing necklaces with glowing gems in them. From the same maker as the alicorn amulet maybe? Oh this was not good.

"We're going to anyway, Rainbow Dash," the purple princess one said. "The Alicorn Amulet has corrupted him. Don't worry, strange creature; the Elements of Harmony will purge your body and mind of the Amulet's dark power--"

Purge my mind...? Oh crap. I remembered something about the show just then from 4chan. The Elements of Harmony, some sort of happiness-and-sunshine magical doodads, the "Orbital Friendship Beam" that purged all the darkness inside the bad guys and filled them full of friendship and tolerance. A brainwash machine with a high-pressure hose.

F@#$. I was about to get a high speed candy-powered frontal lobotomy.

The necklaces and tiara blazed with light. The winged unicorn's eyes turned white. A rainbow like God's finger arced up from the six and came smashing down on me....

I think I wet myself. I know I screamed.

Did you ever bite down with a rotten tooth on something cold and sweet? Or get real dumb as a kid, try to sniff at your mom's perfume, and get a snort of it right up your nose? Or eat a whole can of buttercream frosting at one go? When that rainbow of harmony hit me, it felt/tasted/smelled like that through my whole body. Every tissue in my body was gagging on the glurge of it. I could feel it scouring away my brain, leaving nothing behind but smoothed off corners and vapid, empty thoughts. This was it, I would be left a drooling, smiling simpleton, propped up in a corner, staring at the happy butterfly pattern on the wallpaper....

"Did it work?"

"I don't know.."

"Be careful!"

Then it stopped. I came to my senses. I was on my knees in front of them, holding onto the grass to keep from falling off the surface of the planet. Slowly my fluffed-up brain squeezed itself back down to the size of my skull. The first clear thought in my head was:

Blind, murderous rage.

"You... little... VERMIN!" I screamed. Purple-black energy just exploded out of me in every direction. The six of them went flying in every direction, only stopping when they smacked into something immobile. They slumped to the ground, dazed.

The princess was the first one on her feet. "It didn't work!" she said.

"Well no s@#$," I said, and hurled a fireball at her.

She threw up a force field before it reached her, stopping it cold. But it felt good to see her flinch when it hit. The little turds had tried to turn me into a pablum-sucking baby because I scared them!

Break their necks, burn them, crush them, leave nothing but ashes!

I did not want to stick around for another blast. I had to get out of there, and like five minutes ago.

"The Elements didn't work! We have to take him down ourselves!"

Hah, a bit of good news. At least I wouldn't get blasted like that again.There was no way these bambi-eyed blobs of moe fluff could--

A purple ray hit me square in the chest and launched me down the street. I hit the dirt fifty yards from where I'd been standing. Ow. "Stay down and don't move!" Princess Purple shouted, flying up and landing a few yards away, her horn still glowing.

Definitely time to leave. I fumbled in the pockets lining the inside of my cloak, hurting for an idea. A smoke bomb? No, these little things wouldn't even conceal me, much less cover my retreat. Wait, what if I magically boosted them somehow? Could I do that? Nothing lost if I tried, I figured. I used darkfire to light the fuse and then poured all the black energy I could into them.

"He's up to something, blast him again, Twi!" The rainbow one yelled. I was really starting to hate that one personally.

I let the fuses burn down to the last centimeter, then threw the smokebombs at their feet. My trick worked. Holy cow did it work. The four little smoke bombs burst with a FOOMP, and billowing clouds of purple-black smoke covered... everything. I mean everything; I think half the town filled with roiling evil looking black clouds, clear up to the rooftops. Man, if I ever got home with this amulet I was going to have a field day.

Everyone started choking and gagging. Except me. Hurray, mask filters. For a second I panicked, wondering how I'd find the trio in all this billowing black fog, then I realized that I could still see through it. It was like looking through a lens filter, but I could still more or less see. I found the three, still huddled together where I left them, still holding our 'loot.' I grabbed them by the collars (actual dog collars, go figure) and tried to figure out our escape.

There was no way we could escape on foot. The smoke screen wouldn't last forever and I seriously doubted we could outrun horses on foot, even short little pony ones, and never mind the ones with wings. Magic time again. I mentally crossed my fingers. Whirlwind. I swept my cloak around in a circle, focusing hard. No dark energy this time. Not much anyway, just a few dark sparkles. But a whirlwind formed around the four of us, driving the smoke back, and hurtled us into the sky.

Woohoo!

I had no idea what I was doing, I just hoped I wasn't screwing up some cosmic balance or racking up some sort of magical credit card debt I wouldn't be able to pay. I remember what happened to Facilier in the Princess and the Frog, after all.

More immediately I hoped I could steer this crazy thing. We raced away from Ponyville in a funnel of wind, the town shrinking behind us in seconds. I looked behind me to see how the diamond dogs were holding up, and nearly laughed. They were flying with their arms out, their tongues hanging out in the roaring wind and big goofy dog-grins on their faces. It must have been like driving in a car with their head out the window. They were having the time of their life.

I brought us down into the woods, close to where our campsite had been. Reentry was kind of a bitch. I lost control when we hit the treetops; we crashed through, landing in a shower of dead leaves, branches, books and diamond dogs in the mossy turf. We all lay there groaning.

Runt spoke up. "That was fun! Can we do that again, Dark Master?"

I chose to ignore him.