Speaking as someone who's spent his fair share of time face-down in the mud, I think that the mud of the Everfree Forest didn't taste that bad. Maybe it was the magic, or maybe it was all the salt from all the times the local ponies tried to stop the forest from advancing any further, but to me, it didn't taste like just plain wet dirt. It had a flavour. I appreciate that when I get mud in my mouth, as I had done when I first regained consciousness and rolled out of the puddle near the forest's edge.

The story of how I came to be there, lying in a muddy puddle, my clothes covered in filth, is truly a riveting one. Of course, I didn't remember it at the time. This is one of those stories, where it all begins with an amnesiac waking up in the middle of nowhere. But I don't like those stories, so I'm going to save us all some time and tell you how it happened right now.

It all began with that asshole, Discord, because of course it does. If you're an Equestrian reading this, I doubt that you ever expected anything different, and I also should warn you that this won't be the last time I use what your kind would consider exceptionally vulgar language. Now, Discord is always responsible for everything bad that happens, and even when he's not, he probably still is. This is a universal truth that the Equestrian people have accepted for as long as they have known Discord, and the evidence for it is well-documented.

I once had the pleasure of reading the pony equivalent of the Bible, and... wow, that's actually going to be a difficult statement to give context for, but I'll get to that. Anyway, as I was saying, I once read an ancient Celestian holy book, used by ponies back in the time when you guys were still super-religious and actually believed that your princesses were goddesses.

When I read it, I was shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that Discord is also Equestria's biblical Devil. I expected nothing less, because I had already met Discord by the time I learned that information, and Discord is the worst. This is only one of many ways that history has recorded evidence of Discord's dickery, and I'll get to the rest later, but for now, I just want you to remember that Discord is literally the Devil, and that you guys let him run free all over Equestria. If that isn't ponies in a nutshell, I don't know what is.

So, as I understand it, Discord was being his usual self one day, probably stealing candy from foals and torturing small animals, when he happened across the bright idea of visiting the human world. I'm told that he's done this before, although I'm still a little unclear about how many times he's been to my world specifically. Humans are apparently very common in the multiverse, so my home is hardly unique, and Discord says that he's been to several human universes.

For those who picked up this book and didn't bother to read the blurb for some reason, I suppose I should explain that I am a human, one of a species not native to this universe. In fact, I come from a parallel universe, a concept that you should be familiar with through science fiction if not science magazine articles.

Being a parallel universe, my world can best be described as being just like this one, except that everybody is the same species - human. If you think that everybody being the same would make for a more harmonious world with less wars and prejudice and the like, you'd be wrong, but it does make for a greater level of technological progress. Which is nice, because it compensates for the fact that humans don't have any natural channeling points, and thus can't actively use magic like you guys do. Try to restrain your horrified gasps.

But it's precisely humanity's differences from you lot which is why Discord loves us so much. Our technology, our disharmony, and our lack of horse puns in our city names makes us something of a unique delicacy for entities such as Discord who feed on the misery of others. Like an extremely vindictive child whose daddy never hugged him enough, Discord decided one afternoon to come over to the anthill that is my world and take a metaphorical magnifying glass to it. He probably would have burned us all with it, were it not for the fact that I took one for the team, because I'm just such a swell guy.

Now, let me be clear. I did not choose to sacrifice myself for the sake of my world. I am not a hero, nor am I even a good person most of the time. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and in doing so, I caught the attention of the literal Devil.

Before I came here, I worked at a fast food restaurant in a big city that, in simple terms, is a larger, dirtier, and louder version of Manehattan. It was in the middle of my shift during the quiet hours of the early morning that I first met the bane of my existence. He was taking human form at the time, so I didn't know just how deep I was about to get into it, but I already knew that my day was going to suck from the moment I saw him. He was dressed like a clown, armed with a bent golf club, and was riding an unusually fast mobility scooter, a motorised vehicle mostly driven by humans who are too morbidly obese to walk anywhere under their own power, at least in my experience.

I was bewildered for a moment, but before I could even tell this obviously crazy person to leave, he had crashed the mobility scooter into the counter and was climbing over it to get into the kitchen, yelling something about "them" coming for him. I tried to restrain him, expecting the police to show up any minute in pursuit of what was clearly a deranged criminal. Instead, a group of men in black suits appeared, and they immediately opened fire on both of us.

Human technology being what it is, I'm talking about guns here, not crossbows, and your most advanced guns don't touch the capabilities of these things. The flintlock pistol has been obsolete for centuries in the human world. This wasn't like some Canterlot noblestallions' duel, where a shot from a few paces away can still easily miss or do no harm. No, I could have seriously died at any second just then, and I probably would've, if it weren't for the fact that I screamed like a little girl and fell on my back almost immediately.

Discord, as it turned out, was known to the government in my home country. While his existence had been kept a secret from the public, the people in charge knew that he was an alien from another world, knew that he wielded powers beyond their comprehension, and knew that his primary motive when visiting Earth was to screw things up as much as possible. Thus it came to be that my government actually employed a top-secret strike force, ready to be deployed at any time and place, whose sole purpose was to find Discord whenever he showed up on their radar and shoot him on sight.

Now, you may be asking, "What could Discord have possibly done to earn a standing kill order from your government?" And the answer is, of course, "He's Discord." I honestly don't know what specifically he did to warrant that response, but to be honest, after having seen the stuff that he regularly gets away with in Equestria, I'm astounded that more people here aren't trying to kill him. I guess humans are just a lot less forgiving than ponies, but seriously, the guy is a complete dick. I know I've been harping on about that for a while now, but yesterday, he sent me a package in the mail which turned out to be a entire photo album of my parents having sex.

So that's when the adventure began, as Discord and I ran out through the back entrance and into an alleyway to escape from the scary men with guns. On the way, I tried to ask my companion about what the hell was going on. I asked rational questions, such as "Why are we being shot at?" and "Who are these people?" Of course, Discord had no interest in answering me at the time, because he was busy using his magic to transform a garbage can lid he'd found into Captain America's shield.

You don't know who Captain America is, but he's a superhero from human comic books, and he has a pretty iconic shield, which is invulnerable to gunfire, and returns like a boomerang when thown at bad guys. Discord, I've found, is fond of referential humour, and doesn't necessarily care whether other people get the reference. I got the reference, but at the time, I was a little more preoccupied by the fact that this weirdo had just transformed a garbage can lid into a shield before my eyes. Remember, I said before that humans don't have channeling points for our magic. As far as my species are aware, magic doesn't even exist, so my whole worldview was basically turned upside-down in that moment.

The scary men came out of the restaurant that we had just fled from, emerging into the alleyway behind us. Discord threw the shield, and just like in the comic books, it hit them and then came back to him. He cried out something about freedom, and then we emerged onto one of the main streets, where Discord immediately smashed in the window of a nearby vehicle and climbed inside over the broken glass, casually discarding the shield.

This was my first opportunity to abandon Discord, and it's also the point where I made the worst decision of my life and instead climbed in after him. I thought that the government agents were still in pursuit. I thought that they wanted me dead too, when in retrospect I realise that I was probably just caught in the crossfire and that they likely didn't care about me either way. I also thought that Discord was trying to get us both to safety with a getaway vehicle, when in reality, he was probably just thinking about how to continue his rampage. I'm not sure he even realised I was still there.

Of course, after I climbed in and he'd already started to drive away, that's when he noticed me. I was still in a state of panic at the time, out of breath, my heart thumping in my chest, and shouting questions at Discord. Discord responded by opening the car door, while still driving no less, and trying to kick me out. We ended up wrestling as the car veered all over the road. It's hard to steer properly when fighting at the same time, and Discord is a terrible driver even when he actually has his hands on the wheel (there's a glossary in the back if all these humanisms are too confusing), so as you can imagine, this did not end well.

You would probably assume that we crashed. That wouldn't be a bad guess, but it would be wrong in this case. Instead, Discord began levitating the car above the road, and I began freaking out even more than before. He was still trying to kick me out as we flew low, but I was way too terrified to fall out now, because I have a crippling fear of heights (little known fact). I started punching Discord in the face to get him to stop, and while he clearly wasn't happy about it, he eventually relented and let me stay in the car. But just to spite me, he also flew us up to an incredible height and started doing barrel rolls. I was sick everywhere, but naturally, none of it got on him, because need I remind you, Discord is literally the Devil. I can't reiterate that fact enough.

When the human Air Force arrived to shoot us down, that's when Discord decided that enough was enough and that he wanted to go back to Equestria. Whatever plans he had been making to continue having fun on my world, he had attracted too much attention now. Maybe the agents would've been enough for him to deal with, but in the course of trying to screw with me, he had gotten military aircraft on his tail. Knowing now what Discord is capable of, I don't truly believe that the military of my world is a real threat to him, but their involvement seemed to spoil the fun for him nonetheless.

He teleported. And I teleported with him. The car came along too. Discord has since told me that this was intentional, as he didn't want me to fall back down into the city and die, but I don't buy that, for three reasons. One, because there's no reason why he couldn't have safely teleported me back to the restaurant or something before he made his escape to Equestria. Two, because Discord is Discord, and Discord is the worst; abducting me and bringing me to Equestria just to see what would happen is totally in-character for him. And three, because he didn't save me from falling to my potential death. As soon as we were in Equestria again, he stopped levitating the car, and I plummeted down into the Everfree Forest.

That was the last I saw of Discord for a long while afterwards. He didn't try to save me, nor did he come looking to see what happened after I crashed. I'm guessing he knew I survived, because he has magical senses and stuff, but presumably he just shrugged his shoulders and left once he'd confirmed that much.

I had landed deep in the woods. The car had crashed through the canopy and gotten caught in a thick tangle of branches above, while I had fallen out of the car and landed in shallow steam. A nearby manticore came sniffing around to see what the commotion was, which was another freaky sight to see for me, considering that chimeras also do not exist in my world outside of old myths. I started screaming, it started screaming, it was a whole big thing, and then the car fell out of the branches and crushed it to death.

After that, I climbed to my feet and started running in a random direction, still screaming the whole way. By this point, I was strongly convinced that I had either gone completely crazy or had been drugged, and in my state of irrational existential terror, I didn't pay attention to where I was going, and ran head-first into a tree. Then I fell down a small hill and went rolling off a cliff.

I landed in a giant bird's nest. The giant bird tried to feed me to its children. Then a different giant bird killed that giant bird and carried me off across the forest, until eventually it dropped me while fighting off a third giant bird. And let me tell you, that's just a wonderful experience for a guy afraid of heights and also, incidentally, birds. It dropped me near the forest's edge during the fight, and the fall was what gave me amnesia and knocked me unconscious. I also broke several bones in the process. And that's how I came to wake up in an unfamiliar world in incredible pain, with no memories of how I got there, and with the taste of that nice, salty Everfree mud on my tongue.

This pretty neatly set the tone for the next several months of my life.