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// Oh Great! 
// Story: Forging a Knight 
// by BeyondElemental 
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It was one of those Texas days when all clouds steered clear of the sun so it could reach that toasty 109° and the air conditioner had suffered a heat stroke when I settled into a hammock in the only shade for miles. I let what little wind there was rock me back and forth while I tried to sleep until the cool night let me escape from the brain frying heat. My eyes closed and I was embraced by sleep for but a second before the hammock was violently thrust to the side. I opened my eyes to find a Hispanic man dressed in an as stereotypical cowboy fashion as was possible. He wore a ten gallon hat, a plaid shirt with a cow spotted vest over it, he wore blue jeans, and a pair of boots with over-sized spurs. His face was long and narrow, he had a long twirled mustache dyed bright pink, and had eyes a peculiar tint of yellow. 

"Hurry boy, we must save Equestria!" he yelled in a voice suspiciously similar to Yosemite Sam . He motioned to my modest home behind him which was now surrounded in a mist of what appeared to be cotton candy.

'Oh it is one of those weird heat dreams.' I thought before deciding to play along. "Aren't humans banned from Equestria, or something similar to that effect?"

"I have all the details worked out! You just need to step through the portal!" He said with a mischievous grin.

'Get whisked away to the land of rainbows, lollipops, and controlled weather? Count me in, even if it is just a dream.' 

We batted through the candy mist and made our way to my door. When I opened it I was not greeted with the familiar couch and old beat up TV, but instead with Stargate Command. The large constellation encrusted ring in the center of the room had wires of all shapes and sizes attached to it and appeared to have been heavily modified beyond even it's previous tangle of cables. In the center of the gate floated the Elements of Harmony being closely circled by a fiery looking rock and a counterpart pale as the moon. The inner ring of the gate began to turn selecting the constellations seemingly at random before falling on a pony shaped group of stars instead of the familiar pyramid shaped home key. Lightning crackled around the ring before forming into a water like membrane that waved as if it where a still lake disturbed by a single drop of water. The vibrations stopped and I turned back towards the door from whence I came only to find it replaced with an observation room. Inside the room I could make out what looked like a smiling samurai with the same likeness of the cowboy before him.

"Just jump on through and start life anew!" he spoke over the intercom now with an accent you would associate with your typical wise sage.

'It's a dream, what's the worse that can happen?' I walked up to the pool and jumped through with my arms flailing wildly. I landed on my feet and stumbled before regaining my composure. For all I could tell I was facing a wall cloaked in shadow. "Oh honorable sensei, I don't think it ..." I was cut short by a blow to the back of my head, my brain switched to the off position, and I was dead to the world.


I woke up, but my eyes refused to open. 'Well it is still hot out and my eyes want me to stay asleep, who am I to deny them?'. That's when I realized that it felt hotter than before.... way hotter. My eyes flew open to see a lava flow just a few inches from my nose. I tried to jump away, but my body did not respond. My head would not turn, but I still tried to locate the source of my paralysis. Somehow I did not notice the problem under my nose, in fact it was my nose. The problem being I did not have one instead a snout protruded from my face. I looked at the strange thing in front of me, it was covered in black scales and under the end of it appeared to be a tuft of golden hair, all of which had simple shading and an outline. I continued to contemplate the thing in front of me before going completely cross eyed to confirm the sight before me. 'Oh, crap I'm a salamander!' My screams echoed around me before I somewhat regained my composure. 'Ok, what do people do in these situations? Oh, I know body check.'

Wiggle my fingers. No dice.
Wiggle my toes. Close, but no cigar.
Move my arms. Some success.
Stretch my legs. Finally a definite check.

My limbs responded slowly, but I managed lift myself off the ground. I looked down to where my hands would have normally been only to discover the cloven hooves of a goat encased in a golden fur. I moved my head to look at my chest and felt a weight on my head. I reached up with my hoof as best I could and felt the general shape of a deer's antler. My chest was covered in the same black scales as before. A twitch caught me eye as I saw the rat like tail ending in a tuft of fur that topped the whole thing off. 'What in the sam hell am I?!' 

The stream of lava in front of me flicked a few embers my way, drawing my attention to the world around me. The sky was a smokey shade of red, the hardened obsidian that I stood on was coated with a layer of almost black ash, in the distance titanic volcanoes angrily spat fire and brimstone into the air daring something to try to get near it. 'Well this is just fan-fucking-tastic! I'm in hell and I'm some sorta goat demon!' My butt greeted the ground which gifted it with a small cloud of ash. I looked around half expecting to see eyeballs with bat wings flying through the air or a tentacle monster of some sort to pop out of the river in front of me. 

After a good solid ten minutes of me and the soft bubbling of the lava in front of me and nothing else I decide I should at least to think of what I had done to get in this situation and my memory finally decided to kicked my ass into gear. "IT'S A DREAM!" I yelled to no one in particular. I strolled over to the stream of lava and partially stuck my hoof in before the fire that engulfed my leg politely told me that I was wrong.

Screaming I fell backwards before rolling in circles on the ground to put the fire out. 'Well, damn. I'm in hell, I'm alone, and there ain't nothing here but lava. Never thought it would look like a cartoon though. Wait, does that mean that bony bastard Skeletor is here? Whatever the case, no use sittin' here and feeling sorry for myself.'

I followed the lava downhill for miles trying to get used to my new body, trying to find anything other than molten rock, and trying to figure out how to get that "I Say Hey" He-Man song out of my head. When I heard, "MYAAH!" From behind me, and rapidly turned to face whatever it was, but since I had yet to become acclimated to my new form I fell, hard. Not to mention it was just my brain being a dickbag and playing the funniest part of the song. 'Well the insanity was not completely unexpected.' As I lifted myself I came face to face with a creature as black as night with a look of anger in it's eyes. I tried to scream, but the flames that erupted from the creature's mouth silenced me. By some miracle I avoided the flames and jumped behind the nearest rock and waited for my doom, but it never came. I peeked around the rock and had to try hard not to hit myself. Before me was a large piece of polished obsidian that had only shown me my own reflection. 'Wait, I just breathed fire!' I took in a deep breath and exhaled a small stream of fire 'Me gusta!'. Looking back at the obsidian I was only confirming what I saw before. My belly and snout looked to be those of a lizard, I had a thick tangled mane and a matching goatee, a deer's horn grew from the middle of my skull, and the rest of me seemed to belong to a goat of some kind.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a single flash of light, to my side was the entrance to a cave that had seemingly not been there before. 'Oh this is definitely not a trap, but it is not like I have anywhere else to go and at this point I don't think safety is a priority.' With small breaths of fire I lit my way through the cave. The walls were smooth and unnatural looking, not a single flaw could be seen in the expanse before me. The cave became twisted and jagged as I advanced further splitting and rejoining at random before ending in one giant cavern full of branches with no logical placement be it on the ceiling or leading backwards at some weird angel. The same flash of light as before caught my attention once again and I followed it down an obscured side tunnel.

I ran forwards hoping for a way out of this infernal place as I came closer to the light I realized that something was wrong. The light formed a wall between me and the rest of the tunnel. For all that could go wrong I was willing to try to forge ahead. I hesitantly placed my hoof against the wall and was sucked through into a what at first glance looked like a forest. A small river ran through the peculiar purple trees and there was no lack of random forest debris. Past all the trees I could see huge walls trapping me in the forest, but I was not exactly in a position to complain about the change in scenery.  Above me was a huge domed ceiling only broken occasionally by what looked like hatches. Was hell like the Greek's Hades, had I found the golden community for the blessed ones? I turned my attention back to the ground to look for a hut, anything.

"What is it?" I heard whispered from somewhere above me.

"A draconequus?" Another voice asked.

"It doesn't matter. Put it to work." A grizzled voice called from above me.

'Draconequus? That only exists in Equestria... ' I looked up just in time to see the diamond dogs closing one of the hatches above me.