You know those scenes in films where the human has been sliced up, their skin splayed out and pinned down, turning them into a still-life that Jeffrey Dahmer would find unsettling? The organs exposed or spilled out around the corpse like presents around the bottom of a grotesque Christmas tree?

  As I lay there, I was grateful that in this case, the medical equestrians didn’t need to do any of that shit. It still hurt, especially when the probes were slid into the tiny cuts in my skin. They squirmed around under my flesh, pushing through muscles and travelling up blood vessels

  “Now, I think we’re ready,” Cornie said softly. “Bob? Are you still with us?”

  I hissed in the affirmative. It was hard to hear with the whirs and clicks of the monitoring equipment they had hooked me up to. The heartbeat tracker whinnied instead of blipped, and the noise was starting to get to me.

  “What does that mean?” Corny asked quietly.

  “I think it means yes,” said the white pony. Her wings fluttered happily as her snout-tenctacles reformed into a regular horse face. “We’re all set. Probes are in place, mana ungulanta are vibrating, and blood loss is minimal. He may be a bit woozy from the vaerpatis injections, but should be lucid enough to answer our questions.”

  I checked my mental menagerie, but regret hadn’t yet manifested as an independent aspect of my psyche. It really should have, given my current predicament. I had no idea what the injections had been meant to do. Bloody great needles attached to pint-sized syringes of cyan liquid, the pain had been fairly intense as the Applejack pushed the plunger while… Rarity! The white one was Rarity! While Rarity held the damn thing in place. The power of teamwork. Yay.

  “Bob, I need you to watch me and listen. Can you do that, please?” Cornie asked. The bench I was strapped down to was composed of various movable pieces, and at that moment, it twisted; my head was forced to turn to the side, my wide eyes locating the purple pony. If I didn’t have a fucking choice, why did she bother to ask?

  I attempted to express my thoughts, but all that came out was a series of mumbles and raspberries. It was probably for the best. I had intended to include a lot of invective and my thoughts on where they could shove the power of friendship.

  “Now pay attention. Spiritus Manus!”

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Spiritus Manus

  A ghostly blue hand appeared next to her. I saw the sigil form in front of her snout, a hand surrounded by squiggly lines that radiated away from it, watched the mana rush through her body from near her heart to her nightmare-face… And I learned the spell even though I was cut off from IMPS and couldn’t see my other system screens.

  “Floaty…” I managed to say. Were the drugs wearing off?

  “He learned it. Selective IMPS dislocation has been successful. If nothing else comes of this, that’s a huge experimental breakthrough,” Applejack said. They hadn’t known what the hell they were doing? I got the feeling these monsters had the same attitude to informed consent for medical procedures as black market organ thieves.

  “Did the ungulata catch the flux separation?” Rarity asked from behind me. I felt some of the cables they had wormed under the skin of my neck shift slightly as she adjusted something.

  “It did,” Applejack replied coolly. “Cornulungum, we need more samples.”

  “Hmm. Let’s keep the spells fairly simple to start with. He’s got ghost hand now. How about a basic banishment? Abiit Mendax!” A sigil, like a square with what looked remarkably like the letters F and O in the middle of it, formed. Mana flowed, and the blue hand that had been floating happily next to her snout vanished with a faint pop.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Abiit Mendax

  “He got that one as well. Probes are detecting some unusual mental activity. Looks like a fear or aggression response. Sternite, perhaps we need to open his skull and get eyes on the problem? Oh, it seems to have vanished; must have been a sensor malfunction.” I was very carefully shelving my plans for these psychos. I could worry about revenge later. Happy thoughts, Bob. Happy thoughts.

  “Falsus Murus!” Cornie declared.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Falsus Murus

  A wall appeared between the purple pony and me. Red bricks, hints of moss and lichen, slightly weathered and old. I blinked.

  “Discuteret Illusio!”

  The wall vanished, and I saw the mana expanding from where the sigil must have been.

  “He needs to see the sigil, it would seem.”

  I could have told them that right at the start without being turned into a goddamn pincushion.

  “Aggression spiking again,” Sternite muttered, and I clamped down on my emotions, much to Wrath’s annoyance.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Could… have… axed dat,” I slurred.

  “Mention of weapons suggests some kind of hardcoded aggression response,” Sternite noted coldly.

  “Noo, do duckwit.”

  “Does that make any sense to you, Ungula?”

  “Some kind of slur?”

  “Jaw no worsh. Have do shlur.”

  “Not that kind of slur, Bob.”

  They were fucking with me. They had to be. I clamped down on Wrath, the Mickey Mouse hand of my willpower wrapped around the increasingly incandescent anthropomorphisation and squeezed.

  “Spiking again.” I fought for control, picturing piles and piles of shinies, gems, and the next auction. I’d have a batch of Immortality Injections to flog, and I’d be rich. Well, even richer. “Stabilising. Much more stable now.”

  “What about his core?” Corny asked.

  “No fluctuations. It’s all in the network. The phenomenon seems to be linked to his perceptions and some automatic response from his mana channels. Give me a moment.” Sternite came round into my field of vision and began to fit something over my face.

  If you have ever fantasised about moving in close to snog a Predator, first of all, you’re a freak, and secondly, you have some idea of the vision that filled my world. A pair of plain-looking spectacles, a shiny metal frame and slightly smoky glass. I approved of the frame. Focus on the shiny.

  As the mouth-tentacles retreated, I blinked cautiously. Nothing looked any different; it was as though I was wearing very weak sunglasses.

  “Discuteret Illusio!” Corny announced. I watched the mana flow through her channels, into her snout, shaping and empowering the sigil… and nothing.

  “Didn’t do nuffin,” I muttered, wiggling my nose to try and settle the glasses more comfortably.

  “He had the same response as before, but didn’t learn the spell,” Ungula muttered. “Fascinating.”

  Corny summoned a wall to one side and tried the spell again.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Discuteret Illusio

  “He got it that time. So the spell has to actually have an effect.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Conjurare Barnaculum

  Invoca Veritatem

  Mutatio Magnitudine

  I now knew how to force people to tell the truth the next time they spoke, change an inanimate object’s size, and conjure barnacles.

  “Shitty shpells. Gib betta”

  “We aren’t here to give you powerful spells, Bob. You’re helping us with our research into IMPS, and in exchange, you’re getting half a dozen of last year's horn. Consider any spells you gain a bonus.”

  “He seems to have a mutation in his core,” Ungula informed me from behind. I rolled my eyes to try and look, but my head, like the rest of me, was strapped in place.

  “Hmm. This… is worrying. His capacity is… that can’t be right. Run those numbers again. The sound of beads on an abacus clicking back and forth echoed from my rear. Couldn’t they just magic up a computer to do the maths? Half the shit I was plugged into looked like it was the product of Tim’s fevered imagination.

  “We aren’t concerned about his growth curve, ladies. Do you have everything you need for this session?”

  “Not yet. We need to stress him and read his responses. There could be some emotional element that’s responsible for the rapid assimilation of spells.”

  “Dragon memmer,” I managed.

  “Memmer?”

  “Memmery,” I tried to snap, and ended up drooling instead.

  “It could be that. His arcane affinity unlocks all the schools; we can demonstrate that with him acquiring conjuration, banishing, shielding and controlling spells equally easily. But the ease of acquisition is still abnormal. Bollingy the Battlemad was a dragon mage, but he only came into his real magical power after centuries of study.”

  “Monthter core,” I added.

  “Not relevant. We’ve got monster cores.”

  “Dibine ebilution.”

  “Hmm. Could that be it? The assumption was always that Bollingy, and lesser examples of dragon mages like Umbraxis, were only operating on a natural affinity and never… Cornie, I think that’s enough. Shall we seal him up? We can’t interview him about his evolution history and activities when he can’t even speak properly.”

  “Yes, Sternite.” Cornie was staring at me. Big dark eyes blinked slowly, and she somehow managed to smile, thankfully without splitting up her face-fingers. “We are going to have a long chat, Bob.”

  My head rotated back to face the wooden ceiling, and I felt the probes begin to worm their way back out of my body. The spectacles were removed by a ghost hand, thankfully. When the heartbeat monitor was finally disconnected and repetitive whinnying finally stopped.

  The straps were removed. Sternite started at my feet, the ankle clamps released, and I wiggled my feet back and forth while she worked on the straps over my knees. I tried to raise my legs, but they wouldn’t respond properly. It was the same with my arms when my wrists were freed.

  Nothing was coordinated properly, nothing reacted as it should. A desire to raise my hand and touch my face resulted in my wrist flopping uselessly on my chest. My left foot slipped off the gurney, and I couldn’t manage to get it back into place. I was forced to let it dangle while the neck and head straps were undone.

  Then I saw Ungula. My head had flopped to the left, and she once again had a giant syringe in her face tentacles. I tried to squirm away, but I just performed a geriatric version of the worm dance, achieving nothing of note. I felt fear run through me. When I was strapped down and helpless, there was nothing I could do. Now I was theoretically unbound, and I was still helpless; how I felt about it changed.

  I was a dragon. I was a mage. I was a wealthy business dragon with a beautiful partner, as well as talented, powerful, and unfortunately generally insane or annoying minions. I was… imasculated isn’t the right word, but it’s the right idea. Imdragonated? Something like that.

  The needle slid closer and slid into the side of my chest. It was nine inches long, and far too much of that length disappeared before Sternite appeared at the far end of the syringe and presented her rump to me, which I felt was simply adding insult to injury.

  I was very focused on not moving. I wasn’t sure if that needle was nestled in my heart or not, but it would have to be close.

  “This needs to be administered quickly, Bob. I’m afraid there will be a little pain,” said Corny gently. Sympathy wasn’t going to butter any buns with me at the moment. Sternite wiggled her ass and flicked her tail back and forth, then leaned forward, her back legs coming off the ground. Then she kicked the plunger.

  “Fuggin’ gormlett shipshugging syphylit’ cunlapping barleyfucking glue factory destined Shergar-looking motherfuckers!” My mouth slammed closed, and I flexed my fingers and toes carefully, ignoring their annoyed looks. They worked. Arms, legs, neck… all functional again.

  “It did hurt,” I muttered, slowly swinging my feet off the edge of the operating table.

  “Now, we need to go through your entire history since you arrived on Helstat, all your major actions, your dietary choices and your evolutions. Everything. IMPS often bases major decisions on seemingly trivial things; we can’t rule out any detail whatsoever.”

  My system was back. I breathed a sigh of relief and produced a bottle of Golden Jack from my Possum Pouch along with four crystal tumblers. I poured a glass for myself, necked it, refilled my glass and held the bottle over the next cup. “Drink? It’s gonna take a while to go through that shit.”

  A boom echoed from outside, loud enough that the wooden walls shook.

  “WHERE IS THE WELP CALLED BOB?” something roared from the sky.

  I sighed, drained my glass and looked at Cornie. “Can I get the horns before I go deal with whatever that was?”