Bloodshot on the Left

by Dolphy Blue Drake

Chapter 3: Pain, Air and Truth

Rainbow Dash darted after Dye and followed him as he flew back to the shack he’d built and she hid inside it while he set himself down on the clouds outside it.

Dye didn’t notice her following him though. Once he was back on the mass of clouds he’d managed to put together, he levitated the oxygen tank out of his right saddlebag, put the mask on, and waited for the inevitable.

After a few minutes of nothing happening, Dash poked her head out of Dye’s shack and said, “Are you okay? What were you panicking about?”

Dye stiffened at the sound of her voice.

“Go away,” he said firmly.

“But—“

“I said, go away!” Dye growled as the throbbing in his temple started.

“But we can—“

“I'm begging you, please go away!” Dye sobbed as he used his magic to turn on the tank in response to the rapidly building pain.

Nothing happened, though. No air came out. Dye looked at the gauge and saw that his tank was empty. He’d forgotten to get it refilled before leaving for Ponyville.

“No!” he sobbed as the throbbing turned into a piercing sensation. “Of all the stupid things I could’ve done, I forgot to refill my tank!”

“Wait a minute,” Rainbow said as she walked towards him on the clouds. “What’s wrong?”

“The family curse!” Dye snapped as the pain got even worse. He could now feel the dreaded sensation of a super-heated poker stabbing him in the left eye socket. He threw off the mask, kicked the empty tank aside and did the only thing he could: he began to pace while covering his left eye with his left wing and screaming in agony.

Dash watched as the Thestricorn howled in pain, her face painted in an image of complete shock. “Your family’s cursed?” she asked.

“Yes!” Dye sobbed. “Not cursed by magic, but by my grandfather’s heritage! Celestia tried to cure him, but she couldn’t, so that’s why she changed him into a Thestricorn! It was her way of saying sorry!”

Dye’s screams got even louder as the pain got even worse. It had never gotten this bad before, so apparently the assumptions were right: actually consuming one of the three main triggers produced even more agony than just being exposed to them did.

If the pain he’d experienced before could be compared to a super-heated poker, the agony he now felt was more like a molten-hot drill.

By this point, Dye’s screams echoed through all of Ponyville, and everypony in town could hear them.

“Oh Celestia, it hurts!” he screamed as Twilight and Fluttershy landed on the cloud on either side of Rainbow Dash. They stared in complete shock at the stallion who had been happy and lively a half hour before but was now sobbing and screaming as if he was in more pain than anypony had ever felt before.

“Dye, what’s wrong?” Twilight asked.

Dye uncovered his left eye and looked at the three mares with his mismatched eyes: a perfectly normal right eye and a half-shut, tear-filled and bloodshot left eye.

“Being a Thestricorn isn’t as great as it may seem,” Dye said through clenched teeth while he lit up his horn with magic. “Everypony in the Vein clan is either a normal Thestral or a Thestricorn. The ones with horns are the unlucky ones.”

The aura emanating from Dye’s horn enveloped his head as he continued speaking and pacing, breathing like a mare in labor as he tied to reduce the pain with his magic.

“Thestricorn members of the Vein clan all share the clan curse,” Dye said bitterly. “We experience pain greater than anypony should ever have to endure. Take everything you know about headaches and turn that on its head, and you’ve pretty much got what I have to live with.” He stopped pacing long enough to scream, “and I forgot to fill my freaking tank!”

As he resumed pacing, he broke down into tears. “Almost nopony knows what a Cluster Headache is,” Dye sobbed. “Almost no one knew where Grandpa came from, either.”

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Fluttershy squeaked.

Dye stopped pacing and sighed.

“Not unless you could get me on oxygen in the next five minutes,” he told them. “If I don’t start inhaling pure oxygen in the first ten minutes of an attack, it’ll have no effect.”

“Five?” Rainbow repeated. “I can do it in under two!”

Dye’s right eye widened and his left actually managed to fully open in spite of the pain.

“You can get me to a hospital and on oxygen in under two minutes?” he whispered in disbelief.

“No sweat!” Dash told him. “Get on my back and I’ll show you!”

Dye shook his head.

“I’m probably too heavy!” he said, but before he could he could list more reasons, Rainbow threw him onto her back and zipped off towards the Ponyville Hospital.

Dye held on tight, both his eyes wide in shock as everything around them whizzed by like a blur. In under a minute, Dash burst into the hospital and zipped right up to the counter.

“This stallion says he needs oxygen!” Rainbow told the nurse at the counter. The nurse started to hoof them a clipboard, but Dye growled and knocked it away with his magic as he got off Dash’s back.

“I don’t have time for that crap,” he snapped. “I’m in more pain than you’d believe, and only O2 can take care of it, but I need it right now!”

The nurse shrank under the glare of Dye’s mismatched eyes and nodded.

“Follow me, sir,” the nurse said. Dye followed, once again covering his left eye with his wing and trying his best to suppress the need to scream in pain, but only succeeding in groaning instead of screaming.

The nurse led him to a room with hospital beds in it, and he promptly lay down on the bed as the nurse got him on oxygen.

Though lying down made the pain worse, Dye gritted his teeth and started inhaling the pure oxygen through the mask. He took long and deep breaths in through his nose and breathed out quickly though his mouth before inhaling again.

The pain slowly decreased, but it was completely gone after a few minutes. At that point, Dye took off the mask and smiled at the nurse. His eyes matched perfectly again, and that caused the nurse to relax and turn off the air.

“Sir, what happened?” the nurse asked.

“Something almost nopony knows about,” Dye replied as he got off the bed. “Certain members of my family have a medical condition that most ponies haven’t heard of. I just had a run-in with it there.”

The nurse hoofed him the clipboard from earlier, and Dye sighed as he filled out the form on it.

“Normally, I’d just use my own personal oxygen tank,” Dye told the nurse. “Unfortunately, I apparently forgot to refill it before I left for Ponyville, so I was lucky Dash was able to get me here so fast.”

Dye levitated the clipboard back to the nurse after completing the form, and she took it before motioning for him to follow her back to the front desk.

“I admit that I’ve never heard of the condition you wrote down on the form, Mr. Vein,” the nurse said after she’d taken a seat behind the desk again. “However, Dr. Stable might—“

“I doubt it,” Dye Vein cut in. “Very few ponies have heard of Cluster Headaches, and most of them are in my family.”

“Well, Dr. Stable will probably want to see you about them either way,” the nurse told him. “If he does, he’ll be sending you a letter in the mail.”

“I’ll be back here in the morning, anyway,” Dye said. “I’ll need to get my tank filled since it’s empty.”

“Well, I guess we’ll just give you your hospital bill then,” the nurse said.

Dye sighed and turned to leave. Rainbow had been waiting for him, along with Rarity, Twilight, Applejack, Pinkie and Fluttershy.

“Wow, you were all worried about me?” Dye asked as the six mares stood up. “You barely even know me!”

“Almost everypony in town was worried, Dye,” Rainbow told him. “Your screams could be heard all over Ponyville!”

“Well, it did hurt a lot,” Dye said. He wasn’t being defensive, though. He was merely stating fact. “On the bright side, I can let Grandpa know that his suspicions were right.”

“Suspicions?” Twilight asked, tilting her head.

“I’ll tell you later,” Dye promised. “For now, I’ve got to let everypony know I’m okay.”

“While ya were talkin’ ta Nurse Redheart, Pinkie told the crowd of ponies outside that yer fine an’ dandy,” Applejack said. “Sorry ‘bout the cider, Sugarcube. Ah didn’t know that it’d do that ta ya.”

“It’s fine,” Dye chuckled. “It’s my fault for not making sure it was safe before drinking any. Well, all’s well that ends well, right?”

The six mares agreed, and the seven ponies left the hospital and went their separate ways.

All of them, except for Twilight and Dye, that is.

“Can you tell me about your grandfather’s suspicions now?” Twilight asked.

Dye sighed, but nodded.

“I’ll tell you quite a bit more than that, but only because you’re a Princess,” Dye said. “However, other ponies might overhear, so I think we should talk at your place.”

Twilight nodded in understanding, and the two ponies walked to the library.

Once inside, Dye put up a spell to block sound from leaving the library, as well as a spell to prevent magical eavesdropping, just in case.

The two ponies sat down on chairs, and Dye began to explain.

“There’s a reason almost nopony knows about Clusters,” Dye said. “It’s not a condition that’s supposed to be able to affect ponies at all.”

“Wait,” Twilight said in confusion. “If it shouldn’t affect ponies, then how come you have that condition?”

“Before I answer that question, I have to swear you to secrecy,” Dye warned. “Only my family and Princesses Celestia and Luna know what I’m about to tell you.”

“Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye,” Twilight said, making the motions for a Pinkie Pie Promise.

Dye shook his head.

“Not good enough,” he said. “My family has a promise that we see as truly unbreakable, and I need you to use that one. No other promise will do.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow while Dye used a quill pen to write down something on a sheet of paper. He levitated it over to her and said, “Read it in your head first, and then recite it. Be warned, though. Grandpa said that where he came from, breaking this promise would provoke the wrath of angry spirits who would torment the offender for all eternity unless the mistake was corrected.”

Twilight read the words on the sheet. They said:

Cross my heart,
Hope to die,
Stick a needle in my eye.

She gulped, but recited them word for word.

Dye nodded, and then he began his explanation.

“Twilight, have you ever heard of ‘humans’?”

“They’re just a legend,” Twilight said. “Most ponies agree on that. The only pony around here who doesn’t agree with that is Lyra Heartstrings, but it’s just an obsession of hers.”

Dye shook his head.

“That’s not entirely true,” he told her. “Whether they ever actually existed in this world is unknown, but where Grandpa came from, humans were everywhere. It was an entire world full of them. About seven billion, actually.”

“But what does that have to do with your condition?” Twilight asked.

“Grandpa wasn’t always a pony, Twilight,” Dye replied. “He used to be human. An accident tore him from his home world and sent him to this one. Princess Celestia found him, and she turned him into a pony at his request. Clusters aren’t a pony condition, they’re a human condition.”

Twilight stared at Dye in astonishment.

“Why did he want to be a pony?” Twilight asked.

“He thought it’d cure his condition,” Dye replied. “He was suffering from a Cluster at that moment, and Celestia suggested that perhaps turning him into a pony would take it away, since ponies don’t get Clusters.”

“But they were wrong, weren’t they?” Twilight whispered.

“Exactly,” Dye said bitterly. “Grandpa became a Thestral, and the pain ended, but it came back as soon as he was exposed to one of the three main triggers.”

“You mean, like your reaction to the cider?” Twilight guessed.

“Exactly,” Dye replied, nodding. “The very smell of tobacco smoke, alcohol or coffee can force a headache, even out of season. Somepony lit up for a smoke, and Grandpa had another headache almost immediately.”

Twilight’s eyes widened in realization.

“So, the suspicions were…”

Dye nodded grimly. “We’d suspected that directly consuming one of those substances would be even worse than just smelling them, but none of us dared to test that, since the pain is already horrible enough as is.”

“Anyway, Celestia turned Grandpa into a Thestricorn after that as a way of saying sorry,” Dye added. “The Earth Pony strength is to better endure the pain, and the unicorn magic is for reducing it somewhat. The only foals in the clan who get the headaches are also the ones who are born as Thestricorns.”

“When a Thestricorn foal is born into our clan, the parents spend an entire day grieving,” he continued. “I was six years old when my parents had their third Thestricorn foal. My youngest sibling—Blossom Vein—is the Thestricorn in question. Mom and Dad were so heartbroken to have a third child to have to endure the family curse. She started getting them a few months before I moved out.”

“Well, since you’ve sworn me to secrecy, I can’t talk about this to anypony who doesn’t already know,” Twilight said. “However, I think there’s somepony else you should at least divulge the secret about your grandfather being human to.”

“And who’s that?” Dye asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Lyra Heartstrings,” Twilight told him. “I mentioned her before when you first brought up humans. For years, she was the only pony in Ponyville who believed the legends about humans were true. Everypony else treated her like she was crazy.”

“Wow,” Dye said. “Sounds like she really deserves to know.” He smiled a bit and added, “okay, I’ll tell her. It’s only fair.”

At that moment, there was a knock at the door. Twilight motioned for Dye to wait and then trotted over to the door and opened it.

Lyra herself was right outside.