“Sis, I’m not angry.” The break in the silence made everyone, with the exception of the construct, visibly jump. It had been at least a couple of hours since any of them had said anything, even their vicious minder, and Twilight had focused her attention on the eerie abandoned settlement, and then the stark rocky landscape, and then even the pattern of steam and emissions from the volcanic mountain that was the palace of the Dragon Lord. All of it was interesting, but it wasn’t why Twilight was keeping her attention on it.
“Twi, I’m not stupid,” Dawn said. “I ran the same bucking numbers, got to the same place. I’m not mad about it.”
Twilight still couldn’t look at her sister, managing a vague nod of assent in her general direction as she continued to plod along after the sadistic construct.
“OK.” Dawn sighed. “OK, I’ll amend that a little: I’m not mad about you handing me over to a psycho so a bigger psycho doesn’t erase my brain, but I’m gonna start getting mad if you keep your eyes averted like the nut cut me up so bad that I’m horrifyingly hideous or something.”
“If you’d met psycho, you’d know it,” the construct said without looking back at them. “You’d better hope you never do.”
Twilight quashed the impulse to try to find out what the pretended pony was talking about and forced herself to look at Dawn. The ‘art’ the sadistic creature had carved into the brilliant pink earth pony was horrifying to look at, whorls and lines of scabs destined to become scars spreading out across her face and barrel in a macabre composition of pain and ruination. Far more disturbing than the actual work was that with some detachment, Twilight recognized tha pattern of the cutting: every line, every whorl, every strip of flesh, all followed the natural contours of muscle, although none of the cuts were deep enough that the sadist could have guided his blade by feel. Which meant that the construct was either so well-practiced that it instinctively knew where the contours were, or it could somehow see the muscles below the skin, and coupled with its mind-reading ability, both possibilities opened up a whole menagerie of questions.
“No matter how much you turn it over in your head, sis, yer not going to be able to fit this into some kind of logical framework,” Dawn said. “And really, |’m gonna be fine. We’ll kick the kid’s plot, and kick this thing’s plot, and kick some other plots, then I’ll go back to Sweet Apple and stare lewdly at farmpony plots and it’ll be OK. Speaking of plots…” She looked over her shoulder at Applejack grinned. “Liking the new tats, AJ?”
Applejack blinked a couple times at that and her cheeks colored briefly before she snorted. “Ya’all get cut up by a mad whatever-it-is and you still ain’t turning if off?”
“Part of mah charm, farmpony,” Dawn replied in an exaggerated drawl.
“Ain’t charm at this point, Dawn.” Applejack told her. “More like desperation.”
“Only desperation if it doesn’t get me anywhere.” Dawn’s grin faded as she looked back at the maze of healing flesh left over from the construct’s work. “So Twi… speaking of my nice new tattoos, can we talk about that alchemist weirdo’s iron case of what-the-buck? Because I’m pretty sure I should still be bleeding from whackadoodle’s fun times.”
“Oh, he wasn’t weird,” Pinkie said. “He just liked the dark.”
“Mighta been a mite odd, but Ah ain’t ever seen or heard of medicine that does that kinda work.” Applejack’s expression was unusually pensive, and had been ever since they’d applied a salve that Green Leaf had labeled ‘Regenerative Stypic’ to Dawn’s seeping wounds in hopes that it would make her able to travel sooner without needing to be carried along. The instructions that the odd-looking alchemist had included with the vial directed that no more than the smallest drop should be applied to any given wound and it had been instantly apparent why: the instant the greenish fluid had contacted the first wound, it had audibly sizzled and the bumpy slightly shiny new flesh of a cut well into the end stages of the healing process had begun covering the wound from one end to the other. Twilight suspected that the miraculous-seeming curative couldn’t prevent scarring but to see it regenerate a wound as effectively as magic from a single drop had made all of them (including the construct) stare.It was all Twilight could do not to use the vial generously to relieve her sister’s pain sooner.
At the end, the vial was still half-full and Green Leaf had even included instructions on the proper resealing procedure. While the others had marveled, however, Applejack had gotten the oddly pensive look on her face and it had persisted through the resumption of their journey.
“I haven’t either,” Twilight said. “Sure, the usual stories of some miraculous curative derived from a mythical plant or spring, accompanied by some point meant to teach a moral principle, but never anything like an ordinary pony preparing a carrying case of curatives as part of routine preparations for sending other ponies into danger. It’s probable, based on how he treated an order to prepare a case of them, that…”
“...they use ‘em lahk we use analgesics an’ bandages,” Applejack concluded.
“Or at least use weaker forms,” Twilight said. “He did call them his most advanced alchemical aids, implying that they’re unusually effective somehow.”
“At this point, Twi, I’m wondering what the buck his ‘alchemical suspended animation’ thing is when his thing for closing wounds doesn’t just stop the bleeding but skips directly to the last stages of healing,” Dawn said. “I’ve never seen chemistry that can do this. Hell, magical healing can only accelerate, not just make it all good.”
“Remember the smoke lamp thing, Twi?” Pinkamena said.
“Yes, the one he said naturally balanced moods.” Twilight furrowed her eyebrows slightly as she recalled how Green Leaf had explained it. “He said something about ‘medical essentia’ being part of how…” She stopped. “That’s right, he called what he was doing ‘thaumaturgy’ and distinguished it from alchemy.”
“Which also combines the traditional practice of herbalism, and the sciences of botany and chemistry,” Pinkamnea nodded. “I guess there’s your answer for why his treatments work differently: it’s a branch of alchemy that obeys different rules.”
“I don’t think it’s alchemy,” Ember said. “He demo’ed it for a delegation, which I got into, last year. Stuck a gem in a weird furnace and it, like, burned. Like it was made of wood. Then these sparks of magic come out the top, go into a thing that spun real fast, and liquid the same color as the magic came out and he put it in a jar. Watched the entire thing through a big lens with a gold frame. He did it again but let us look through the frame, and it was freaky. You could actually watch energy flowing, and it was everywhere. Doesn’t seem like alchemy, or runes, or any of the other stuff.”
Dawn looked at Twilight. “Sounds really… sciencey.”
“Yes, it does.” Twilight frowned and looked ahead to the construct, and the extremely roughly-made ‘palace’ that was the home and center of government for the dragons rising ahead of them as they neared the edge of the abandoned town. “Making this ‘thaumaturgy’ at least as much about energy flow as a variant of chemistry. You said that the sparks were rendered into liquid by a spinning instrument, Ember?”
“Pretty sure it was a centrifuge of some kind, yeah.”
“So part of the science is a means to render something into magical essence, and then to render the essence into liquid, presumably so alchemy can be done with it.”
“Couldn’t tell ya, Princess,” Ember said. “He demonstrated how he derives the essence, but didn’t discuss what he did with it. Not really sure how he makes random items he puts through a furnace into a potion that regenerates like magic, but it can’t be too hard if he hooks you up with a buncha them.”
“Circling us back to the observation that making the aids must be routine if Green Leaf had the components and means on hand to make a case of advanced ones for us in a single day.”
“So, I bet you’ve been wondering why the kid’s worried about the Queen and her hugbugs coming over and causing trouble,” the construct said without turning its head. “Especially when the alternative is that Sun and Moon come over and kick plot. So’re you starting to get the picture yet?”
“Green Leaf’s thaumaturgy.”
“Keep goin’ girl, keep thinkin’.”
“Queen Chrysalis has an actual army.”
“And spies,” Rarity added. “And assassins.”
“Yup, that’s interesting, and that’s interesting too, and all that adds up to yeah. What else?”
“She’s being…”
“Don’t think there’s anything else,” Dawn interrupted. “Unless you’ve got something to suggest, suddenly helpful creepy sadist thing.”
It snorted. “Don’t know why you bothered trying to stop her from mentioning the 800 pound gorilla, but I’ll play. The other big thing you’re missing is she’s a queen. The other two’re diarchs, equals, two halves of a whole, two minds trying to achieve the same goal. That ain’t ever gonna be as strong as a single will guiding a million hooves.”
“A million hooves?”
“Hang that.” Applejack stepped passed Twilight and Dawn. “Why’re ya bein’ so neighborly?”
“I’ve got nothing to say to a dirt farmer.”
“Got anythin’ ta say to an apple farmer?”
The construct looked back at her. “Orchards?”
“An’ vegetables, sure, but Ah’m an Apple, born an’ bred fer generations.”
The construct considered this. “Alright then, sure, I’ve got something to say to an apple farmer.” It looked squarely at Applejack. “Kid stepped over a line. Price of doing that is that I put a knife or two in her back. She knew it when she did it, an’ did it anyway. Giving you something to think about that might hurt her is a knife in her back; don’t think I’m doing it to be nice.”
“And torturing me so she doesn’t is another one?”
That got a smile, an actual smile without any of the sadistic leering. “Clever girl.” It stopped walking and gestured towards the palace. “So, ya see that place up ahead?”
“Hard to miss home, jackass.”
It sneered. “Orders are, I stop here and you walk on. No escorts, no supervision, no threats, just a rule: no wings.”
Twilight eyed it. “Why?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. I just know that if you break the rule, ya get hurt and I get ta have fun watching.”
Twilight watched it for several moments before nodding. “Alright.” She paused. “You know you’re going to pay for what you did to my sister.”
“Worry about surviving the kid and her friends before you start threatening to punish a nobody, princess.” It gestured towards the palace. “Chop, chop children, little zebra filly wants her play date.”