//------------------------------//
// Differential Diagnosis and Equuish Lessons 
// Story: In the Company of Night 
// by Mitch H 
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SBMS022

I ran my hooves over the Captain's head, checking for wounds or knots or signs of blunt trauma.  Nothing.  I reached out for the nearby lamp, and peeled his right eyelid open,  from the bottom up. That had taken some getting used to, as did the nictating membrane, although since griffins shared those with pegasi, it didn't take me all that long while I was training with the Company.   They were the core of the Company, after all.  I waved the lamp back and forth, trying to identify any lack of focus or reaction to light.  No point in checking for uneven pupils, griffins have independent eye control, they're uneven by design.  Well, if you subscribe to the theory that griffins are designed; the evidence for that is clearer than for some other thinking creatures.  Then I checked the old griffin's core temperature, and was disappointed again.  As normal as griffins got.

"Well, I'm stumped.  I don't see any reason why he's not biting my head off for taking advantage like this.  He's not responding, or else I'd be ducking right now. " The old bird always did hate his checkups…  "When did he keel over?"

"We were talking over the night's operations, and discussing a planned ambush the aerials and the Lieutenant were going to spring on a returning column of the rebel.  One that should be kicking off right now, I need to get back to operations, they need me!" Broken Sigil was still agitated, but with my presence his focus had shifted from the Captain to that unicorn's usual duties.  He was a unicorn of peculiar narrowness, and the whole experience was well outside of his comfort and his competence, and it showed, badly.  His eyes twitched back and forth nervously, and if I hadn't known him relatively well, I would have started checking for poison or other such mischief.  Perhaps I ought to anyways on general principles?

"When was this?  How long ago?"

"Hah?  Ah, an hour ago, just after twilight.  Maybe ten minutes after it got really dark?  I don't know!  What's that part of the evening even called?"  He started breathing erratically.  

"No, nevermind.  I understand.  And I think I can pinpoint the timing if it's what just occurred to me.  Was there anything off about his eyes, or his behavior before he went down?"

"No, no different than it has been for weeks now.  He's had the Company eyes off and on since Rime, or maybe that damn port I can never remember the name of.  More on than off recently.  They suddenly cleared, though, just before he collapse, he was his usual brown-eyed self for like three seconds before they rolled down and he went over.  Almost took the sand table with him, I can't imagine how long that would have taken to clean up and reset.  Hours of work… oh, Tartarus, the work! "

"I'd worry more about your commanding officer laying insensate on two of my infirmary cots!  The Lieutenant is in the field?  Can she be contacted?  We need her back here if the Captain doesn't regain his senses in the next couple hours.  That might not be a problem, I have some idea of what it could be, but I need to talk to at least some of the warlocks.   Who's on base tonight?  Are they all out?"

"Otonashi's out with the Beloit column, they're on the way back, but they're also being used as the bait for the Lieutenant's ambush, don't expect her until morning at the earliest.  Goiter and Languid are in the witch-coven's quarters, they're supposed to be working on refreshing gear enchantments and manufacturing.  Shorthorn and the Crow are out with the Lieutenant, she didn't want to pull her punches after we got so lucky last night.  It's always the day after a success that everypony gets sloppy and ponies get hurt.  I have no idea where Gibblets is."

"I know where he is.  Languid it is, I'll send for her.  Please, go ahead and go back to operations.  See if you can get word to the Lieutenant if it won't distract her in the middle of a fight.  We had something spooky go down at an impromptu apprenticing ceremony in the mess hall, warlock-type spooky.  Well, sort of, I think this was out of our crew's range of competency.  I'll send word if the Captain regains consciousness, and doubly so if he's coherent when he comes to."

The spectacled sergeant clopped out of my infirmary, his head held high again.  He was really quite simple once you recognized his priorities.  It wasn't ponies, or the success of the Company, or curiosity, or anything else like that.  His passion was for making a very specific species of plan,  laying out all the necessary details to make those plans happen, and executing those details precisely and correctly.  Anything outside of that narrow slice of the world was an irritation and a puzzlement to Broken Sigil.

I turned to my ‘prentice, and asked her what I had done.  She was quick on the uptake, and rattled off what she had seen me do.

"That's good.  But why did I do that?"

"Ich nicht verstehen.  Den Kopf, sie untersuchte ih fur Schlage auf-"

"In Equuish, even if it's difficult or impossible.  You start as you intend to continue, and we need to get you speaking the Company lingo.  That's Equuish, even for ponies like you and Feufollet who came to us speaking something else for the most part."

"Okay.  I do… not know. The… the haid ov der Greif, ah, the griffin, you look vor blows. You not find dem.  You look th' Auge, the, the-"

"Eyes.  I checked his eyes."

"You checked the eyes, vor – vat?"

"It's called reaction response.  To see if the pupils – " I pointed to my own pupils, right and left, "contract or shrink when you shine light in them.  I also looked to see if he was showing thestral eye, what the pony who just left called ‘Company eye'.  Have you noticed that yet?"

"Company eye – you – talk of katse-eye? Das gluhen, the?"

"Glow."

"The glow in the dark?"

"Exactly.  For many of our ponies, it's something that we do with enchantments, it allows them to see in the dark. Usually their helms are spelled, and as a side-effect, they look like thestral ponies. You've probably never seen a thestral, may have never heard of them.   They're like regular pegasi, but their wings are more like a bat's than a bird's, they have long, tufted ears, and their eyes are dark-adapted, with slit pupils and they glow like cats-eyes."

She was muttering as I talked, and I could tell she was trying to remember all the new words I was throwing at her.

"The importance of this, is that the Captain here has been showing thestral eyes without the helm.  Day to day. Without intending to do so.  And he had been acting strangely, unlike himself.  Increasingly  hostile and bombastic, impulsive.  We've been working around him, but it's been affecting the performance of the Company, we've been taking more and more chances, acting more and more aggressively as a matter of policy.  And this pony here – " I waved a hoof at the unconscious griffin beside us – "has been responsible for that aggressiveness."
I had been speaking faster and faster as I approached my point, and the little fawn was looking a bit wall-eyed at the torrent of half-understood Equuish I was pouring over her head.

"OK, simpler.  Hrm.  This griffin, he's our boss.  Head of the Company, current one, anyways.  He's been acting odd.  Showing glowing thestral eyes without aid.  Sound like somepony we just met an hour ago, the big black madmare you could look through?"

Roggentochter's eyes widened in realization, and no little alarm.  "Die geist-mare! She eindringliche der Kapitan!"

"She may, indeed, have been possessing him.  What worries me is that I kind of think that she's been possessing all of us, to a slight extent, for a very, very long time."

Roggentochter looked perplexed, and I didn't have the heart to clarify that to her.  I set one of the still-awake convalescents to  stand a sort of watch over the still-unconscious Captain, and I hurried off to find Languid with my apprentice in tow.