“You may find yourself thinking that this is not a wolfhound at all. And you may ask yourself, why it is that this fellow before me is trying to pass off a common garden variety donkey as a wolfhound? And you—” Sir Broderick burped, spewing warm droplets of spiced rum over the bouncer’s grisly chin.

The bouncer’s beady eyes narrowed as he leaned back, his gargantuan head almost bumping against the swinging sign of the Caldonian Kennel Club Exclusive Wine and Dining Hall.

“I’m terribly sorry. I can understand why you might think that he is not a dog. I’m sure most people don’t ride their dogs in on saddles, as you saw me do just moments before. But what you aren’t understanding is that poor Sassafrass has an absolutely dreadful case of snout elongation, ear stretchification, fur shortification and back strengthification. All of which are only possible if your pooch is incredibly well bred. You ought to be rolling out the purple carpet and handing me sham-paggen for presenting to you such a prime specimen.”

HEE HAW HEE HEE HEE HAW

“Shhh!” Sir Broderick thwumped Sassafrass in the behind with an oversized boot, “It’s ‘woof woof woof,’ you idiot! Like we practiced!” he turned back to the bouncer, “Don’t mind that. Poor Sassy here has just caught himself an itsy-bitsy coldsy-woldsy. The, erm, snout elongation does a real number on his poor doggy sinuses.”

A doglike growl emanated from the bouncer’s chapped lips as he flexed his biceps.

“I must say, I do find your arm vascularity mighty impressive my chup,” Sir Broderick smiled, twirled his long black moustache and looked down to admire his spindly limbs, “And while I respect your dedication to physical fitness, I personally like to keep myself rather lean.”

“Get the cluck out of here,” the bouncer grumbled, spitting at Sir Broderick’s feet.

“How dare you. Do you know who I am?”

A well dressed, floral smelling man walked up to the bouncer and wrinkled his nose at Sir Broderick. The bouncer immediately let him pass.

“Wha—what was that?! He didn’t even have a dog!”

“Yes he did.”

“Don’t try to grasslight me! Just let me and my ass—er, my wolfhound inside already!”

“No.”

Sir Broderick produced a leather flask from inside the burlap sack he wore as a shirt and slurped it down in one breath, glaring at the bouncer the entire time. Finished, he tossed it asunder, knocking over the jewel-encrusted stand of a nearby pottery vendor. He glared at the bouncer.

“Look, we’re of the same class, you and I. We’re practically kin. I say we stand up to these rich snobs. Their rules mean nothing to us, they can’t hold us poors down if we stick together!”

“These rich snobs pay me. They also have dogs. They’d let you in too, if you had a dog. Your idea of standing up to them is risking my job by letting you break the rules?”

Sir Broderick huffed in frustration, “You’ll regret this.”

“No I won’t.”

A lady in a long, flowing dress floated up to the bouncer, accompanied by a humongous fluffy cat following her on a bedazzled leash. She was immediately let inside.

“She just came in with a cat!”

“It was on a leash.”

“Sassafrass is on a leash!”

“That’s a rope. And it smells like a dead animal.”

“Oh you smell like a dead animal!”

The bouncer stood tall and stepped forward until he was so close to that his barrel chest was bending Sir Broderick’s incredibly pointy nose into the air.

“Give me a whiff, you miserable little mongoose stuffer.”

Sir Broderick did as instructed, and sighed, “W-well, my apologies, sirrah. It appears you actually smell of sandalwood.”

“That’s what I thought. Now beat it before I beat you.”

“F-fair enough,” he nodded and turned around, only to notice something, “Um, wait a second! What in the chickens is going on? Where’s my ass?”

“Your what now?”

“My ass! My donkey! Sassafrass! Where’d he go?”

“I thought it was a wolfhound.”

“Oh cluck off with that we both know I was lying! Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

Sir Broderick looked around the streets of upper-rich Caldonia, a far cry from the muddy, manure covered streets of middle-poor Caldonia. He felt so out of place here that instead of taking the scenery in he briefly imagined what a town square in his own district might look like. He saw gargantuan, stinky elves selling food at popup stands made out of cheap rotting wood. He saw tiny, beautiful orcs selling food at popup stands made out of cheap rotting wood. He even saw a sentient pile of food selling food at a popup stand made out of cheap rotting wood.

Then Sir Broderick stopped imagining and looked around to see where he truly was. Now was not time for a vision quest, now was time to find his donkey. He saw food stands, but they were covered in gold and jewels. He saw street vendors that did not nag you to buy something. He even saw the pottery vendor crying a single tear after noticing the smashed pottery. He saw plenty of people riding on horses, and he saw plenty of people with much nicer clothes than himself. Burlap sack shirts were not exactly en vogue and neither was the offbrand chainmail bodysuit he’d enclosed himself in as an underlayer. But he didn’t see any donkeys. Then he didn’t see anything.

“AAACK!” Sir Broderick tried to scream as the world went black and a rope tightened around his neck.

“He’s a poor,” murmured a muffled voice, “Middle-poor, to be exact. Send him to their choakie.”

Before he could make sense of what was happening a searing pain shot through his cranium as a fist walloped him in the occipital lobe and his consciousness blew out like a light.

However, Sir Broderick’s lack of consciousness quickly morphed from the state of ‘out-like-a-light’ to ‘having-a-bizarre-hallucination,’ and indeed, hallucinate he did.

“Hello, one and all,” boomed an elderly voice.

“Who the cluck is this guy?” Sir Broderick spat, looking around in the hazy kaleidoscope of his hallucinatory state for a source, “And what’s he doing in my head trauma induced hallucination?!”

“It is I, Croutonius the Great!”

Sir Broderick furrowed his hallucinatory brow, “Well I, mister ‘The Great,’ not that you bothered to ask, am—”

“The Great Interdimensional Philosopher, that is. Can one man be interdimensional, and a philosopher, and great, all at once? Yes, for I am here.”

“Nobody asked, asshole!” Sir Broderick retorted, “Now let me out of this weird hallucinatory state, already!”

“Bah! Hallucinatory! What is a hallucination, indeed, and what is not? What is life itself, but some odd, raw, hallucination?”

Sir Broderick quivered as his entire psyche seemed to fill with the pudgy face of an old man with a long, bushy beard.

“And furthermore,” Croutonius continued, his every pore glistening with detail, saliva spatting forth from his enormous lips and coating Sir Broderick’s entire person, “If a man were to be inserting himself into someone else’s hallucination, what purpose would it serve? Why would a man do such? Would it be but a mere display of his horrible powers, imparted to him by a mystical green gemstone?”

“What in the cluck are you talking about?!” Sir Broderick spat, “What’s with all the questions? Do you expect me to answer them?!”

“What is an expectation but a shadow of a thoughtful idea? What is a question but a shadow of an expectation? And what is a thoughtul idea but a refraction of a questionary expectation?”

“This is clucking ridiculous. This is my clucking hallucination, you know!” Sir Broderick looked around his hallucination, seeing Croutonius’ awful face reflected everywhere in a fractal formation.

Then, Sir Broderick had an idea. He hallucinated a large bat, and a strong arm to hold it, and hallucinatorily hit himself on his hallucinatory head, knocking himself back out of consciousness.