Seeing that Doctor Sterling was speaking to another pony, Flicker halted and waited. Much to his relief, Hennessy did the same, and as for Piper, she had her nose in a book about magical theory. The pony that Doctor Sterling was speaking to was old, remarkably old, rather battered looking, had a few scars, was missing an eye, and the most curious of cutie marks; a crossed pair of sharpened wooden stakes. The old stallion was a faded greyish white and his mane had an odd, somehow familiar shade of electric blue streaked with grey.
The two of them were discussing sanguinare porphyria, and while Flicker didn’t know what it was, something about it made his ears perk. An opera was playing on the modern hi-fi phonograph and the conservatory held the faint, nose-tickling bitter smell of fine, expensive ink. A curious collection of books lay upon the table. Empusas, Lamias, and the Striges: A Compendium. Beside that, Vetalas and You: A Comprehensive Guide to Eradication. One book was enormous, bound in leather, and made Flicker uncomfortable to look at, as it made his vision blurry for some reason. Goats and the Ancient Revenant Cult: A History of the Near Undoing of Civilisation. There was also a book bound in wooden covers titled, The First Tribes and the Aluka: A History of the Motetz Dam.
The old pony stopped speaking, then turned, and Flicker found that he was being studied. He said nothing, but stood there and allowed himself to be inspected. Meanwhile, Doctor Sterling was coming over to speak to Hennessy and Piper had sat down. Flicker could not help but feel that he was being sized up.
“Any word about my Ma?” Hennessy asked.
Doctor Sterling’s mustache quivered and the doctor let out a sigh. “Your mother,” he began, and then the doctor just slumped, as though he looked quite weary. “Your mother suffers from extensive malnutrition, an entire host of health problems related to having too many foals under horrendous conditions, her body has been ravaged by alcoholism, she has too many broken bones to list, she is concussed, and she is beset with uterine fibroids. No doubt there is more to be discovered, the doctors are still trying to sort her out. She is being kept sedated and is in the asylum wing of the hospital.”
Hennessy’s ears stood up, fell down, stood up again, drooped once more, and did not rise. “Well, damn.” The colt shuffled around, moving from side to side, until at last he bumped into Flicker, and then he ceased to shuffle around. “She can be made better, right?”
“In theory,” the doctor replied. “For some things, like alcoholism, she will have to want to get better, or a family member will have to approve more coercive treatments.”
“I don’t get what that means.” Leaning up against Flicker, Hennessy shuddered and his eyes turned glassy.
“What that means, in the most simple terms,” Doctor Sterling explained, “is that you can have her treated against her will for alcoholism, you can have her committed, so to speak, and then through the use of some harsh alchemical reagents, she can be treated, thus killing her desire to drink. But before committing to such a harsh action, I would advise that you think long and hard about it, as it is likely that she will never forgive you for your good deed.”
“I see.” Hennessy breathed out these two words and deflated. “Flicker, what do I do?”
It took almost a full minute before Flicker worked up a reply, and then it took even longer for him to be able to look Hennessy in the eye. But look him in the eye he did, and in a voice that held the faintest hint of a quavering tremour, Flicker replied, “The sacrifice of one’s self for another has a noble dignity of its own.”
“I don’t… consarnit, what’s that even mean, anyhow?” Hennessy asked.
“In the end, your own life and your feelings are irrelevant,” Flicker responded, the quaver now gone and his voice a perfect, unfeeling monotone. “She is family. She is your mother. She can be saved from her disease, which has no doubt stolen away her mind and clouded her ability to love you. As her son, you are obligated to give her whatever life that you can, even at the cost of yourself. You have a duty to see that she is cured.” Flicker inhaled and his ears splayed out sideways. “She may yet come around and forgive you. It is a calculated risk, but a good one. Then, both of you can be happy.”
“I need some time to think about it.” Hennessy looked over at Doctor Sterling, his eyes wide, hurt, and confused.
“What is there to think about?” Flicker asked.
“Mister Nicker, not everypony has your rigid sense of duty.” Doctor Sterling’s voice was soft, but also firm and he took a step forwards. “There is a wide, wide world of ponies out there, and you, my beautiful, dutiful son, are a minority. Your sense of law and order has a time and a place, but this is a matter of the heart. The very thing that you called irrelevant weighs in heavily here.”
Bowing his head, Flicker’s ears drooped in submission. “Very well, Doctor Sterling, I shall defer to your wisdom on this issue. I spoke out of place.”
The doctor let out a frustrated snort and shook his head, sending his mane tumbling about. Silver strands cascaded and spilled down the sides of his face and his forehead. The unknown pony also snorted, backed away from Flicker, and moved to Doctor Sterling’s side. The pair of them eyeballed one another for a time, and then the old pony spoke.
“He is a natural soldier, I see. Is very fascinating. Is very muscled. Disciplined. Follows orders. Is good, is very good. Will have strength of mind to resist outside influence. Will follow orders, not influence. Is good.”
“Mister Nicker, Mister Walker, Miss Pie, this is Doctor Fancy Fiasco, the great, great uncle of Lord Fancy Pants of Canterlot. Doctor Fiasco came here so that he could be consulted, and he specialises in one single disease.”
“I know you!” Flicker gasped.
“You do?” Doctor Fiasco looked amused. “Nopony knows me, I am unknown. I am pony lost to history.”
“But I do know you. You were the pony that battled a terrible plague… but I don’t know which plague. The book didn’t mention the specific type of plague, but it did mention you! When I went to the Canterlot archives to learn more, I couldn’t… access was restricted and the plague you battled was said to be unavailable for public knowledge. I was then escorted out of the archives by guards who told me to never bring this matter up ever again.”
“Mister Nicker knows his plagues,” Doctor Sterling said, offering an explanation, and then in a whisper, he continued, “he’s rather obsessed with them. I think he studies them as a hobby. I often worry that he has an unhealthy fascination with them.”
Doctor Fancy Fiasco’s amused expression vanished as he took a step forwards, eyeballed Hennessy with his one remaining eye, and then said, “My condolences about your mother. You have mine most sincere sympathies, yes.”
“Thank you.” Hennessy watched the strange old pony as he moved away from Flicker, went over to where Piper was sitting, and then sat down, his eyes never leaving Doctor Fiasco. “A stranger’s kindness is always appreciated.”
“And none is stranger than me.” Doctor Fiasco’s amused expression returned.
“Who are you?” Flicker asked, being direct and demanding.
“Oh, nopony of consequence,” Doctor Fiasco replied. “I am just a stranger that has come bearing gifts. I am the gift horse, yes. Those books on the table are for you, Flicker. It is rare that ponies such as you and I meet one another. Usually, one slayer naps in the dirt long before his or her replacement comes along. This is, how you say, a rare treat.”
Again, Flicker asked, “Who are you?”
“I am a plague doctor of another stripe.” Doctor Fancy Fiasco’s one eye narrowed. “I started off as one of the middle sons in my great and noble house. My father gave me to the Rat Catcher’s Guild. In return, my father, he secured a wife for his oldest son, the guildmaster’s daughter. I came here, to this very building, and I started to learn my trade.”
The old doctor turned his eye upon Flicker and stared through him. “No mark, no sign of talent, but a brilliant mind who was capable with weapons. That was me. I lacked direction, but I still managed to prove myself, so I did.”
Flicker hung on every word said by the old stallion.
“As it happens from time to time, a new plague sprang up, so it did. A nasty little something something called sanguinare porphyria. Now, it wasn’t spread by rats, but it was a plague. And it needed a special doctor to treat it. I became that doctor, yes. All my schooling, all my brilliance, all my weapons training… when my mark came, I was prepared to fight the disease that had come to ravage us.”
Flicker glanced over at Doctor Sterling, then returned his attention to Doctor Fiasco.
“You’re talking about vampires, aren’t you?” Piper asked. The smart filly began to put two and two together, and then she blurted out, “That rat down in the lab, it’s a vampire, isn’t it?”
“Of a type,” Doctor Sterling replied. “Rattus Nosferattus. Something new. Something we’ve never seen before. Rat Bastard seems to know something about it, but we don’t understand how he knows. There is a lot we don’t know and it is dangerous to speculate.”
Flicker’s mind began sorting out the various facts at his disposal, such as the public not knowing about this plague. He became certain that if he reported to the archives as Juniour Agent Lima, he would gain the access he needed. This was something that would send the public into a panic. This was something that the public in general was better off not knowing. Flicker of course, said nothing about his internal revelations, and remained silent.
For silence was now his ally and secrecy his cloak.
“Is good, is good,” Doctor Fiasco muttered. “A slayer needs his assistants and the slayer has his assistants. Is good to have smart filly. Now, the question that must be asked is, can handsome earth pony colt sniff out sanguinare porphyria? Is magical disease. Is very tricky. It does not want to be found or detected. Many wizards of great skill cannot sense it. Only She of the Sun has been a reliable source of detection in the past.”
“I bet I can,” Hennessy said, lifting his head as his ears perked. The sorrowful look in his eyes was replaced with determination and a bit of… anger? The colt bounced off of the sofa and began to walk towards Doctor Fiasco. “How do we test it?”
“Easy,” Flicker replied as his keen, scientific mind provided an answer. “We take tissue samples from normal, healthy rats, and some from that undead rat down in the cellar. We can have you sniff them out and that should be sufficient evidence of your detection abilities.”
“Is slow in reaction, but brilliant of mind, yes?” Doctor Fiasco’s eye narrowed and he began to study Flicker. The corner of his mouth twitched a bit and the old doctor scowled in concentration. “Doctor Sterling, you of foolish youth—”
Doctor Sterling, a pony of middle age, snorted in contempt.
“—I am almost certain, I am, that Flicker could make the Rat Bastard talk.” A sour expression caused the old stallion’s face to form what had to be a million wrinkles. “He resists our mind probing and our compulsion magicks—”
“You want Mister Nicker to torture him?” Doctor Sterling demanded.
“Nothing of the sort!” Doctor Fiasco snapped. “I want Mister Nicker to engage in aggressive interrogation and information retrieval.”
“I’m okay with this,” Flicker announced.
“I’m not.” Doctor Sterling shook his head.
Flicker, who idolised Doctor Sterling, was shocked to discover that there was now a wide canyon of disagreement between them, a yawning chasm that seemed far too wide to cross. It troubled the colt, as he very much wanted to be just like Doctor Sterling, but now, his hero, his idol, seemed out of reach. It bothered Flicker more than he cared to admit and for the first time, Flicker realised that being just like his idol was an impossible dream.
It hurt a lot.
It hurt far more than Flicker would ever admit.
The love for his idol—the previously perfect Doctor Sterling Shoe—was now tarnished.
His idol had lost some of his shine.
The colt was smart enough to understand why his torture would be effective, it was his mark. It would be his magical influence, acting in much the same way that his talent allowed him to hurt the undead rat down in the lab, he knew that he could hurt the Rat Bastard enough to make him talk, make him say everything.
Feeling a terrible ache that nopony else seemed aware of, Flicker stood at a crossroads of a sort. With one choice, he could be a little closer to Doctor Sterling, but the distance would still remain between them. With but another choice, he would be drawn further away from his hero, his idol. The knowledge of this tore him apart on the inside, and left him feeling a hollow ache, an empty space deep inside of him.
“I think that, before anything else is said or done,” Piper remarked, “that we should perhaps have lunch first. Empty stomachs lead to empty words, my father says.”