Three days later the Doctor was floating over its light crystal in the inner sanctum and wondering if Rock Charmer was going to visit soon. The cult leader hadn’t been back since their last conversation, and only sent a note as an apology the previous day.
The Doctor had tried putting itself into it sleep mode to pass the time, but to it’s frustration, that function seemed broken, like many other internal functions, things inside the Doctor weren’t really operating as they were designed to. It was doing the best to compensate, but large sections of its internal circuitry were out of sync. The Doctor’s higher functions still worked and as long at it stayed near the magic power source it could remain active. Still magic wasn’t the same as electricity and it couldn’t hold the power in its molecular sized superconductor coils and without fully charged coils, fail safes kept it from shutting down into a sleep mode. The Doctor felt a desperate need for a good memory garbage collection and formatting.
If Rock Charmer returned soon, the Doctor told itself that it would give the cultists the plans for a simple electric generator, a nice steady magnetic field to charge up its coils would feel good now. It used it’s pseudopods and with a quill pen started to draw out plans for a simple spark generator when the door opened and Rock Charmer rushed in.
“Good day Rock Charmer…” the Doctor started to say, when the unicorn interrupted it.
“No time Doctor! You said you wanted proof of the Pegasus evil? Well I’m afraid it's coming sooner than I expected. I just got a report from our agent near the docks, a gang of hoodlums pegasi are on the move. Come with me now and I’ll give you the proof!”
The Doctor’s animated pony head froze for a few seconds as it processed this. It nodded the head once, and Rock Charmer floated the light crystal from the desk and put it into his saddlebags.
“Try to keep your glow down or stay in the saddle bag, we don’t want any of the feathered freaks seeing you.” Rock Charmer told the Doctor and without waiting for further replies he galloped out of the building and left the cult’s compound.
The Doctor projected one small pseudopod of nano cloud around the flap of the saddlebag to watch where they were running off to. As long as it help a cubic inch or so exposed to light, the Doctor could see around then, about as well as any pony could. This was the Doctor’s first real look at a pony city. Baltamare, built on a series of steps around a large inner harbor. Most of the buildings were brick and stone with long decorative ironworks running along front gardens. Rock Charmer was taking them down to the harbor but kept switching back and hiding in doorways to keep a distance from other ponies.
When they were about to climb a short hill overlooking the base of harbor, there Rock Charmer slipped off the main road and after checking that no pony was looking, climbed under a high hedge of bushes around a old house. There was a broken basement window there, the unicorn carefully lowered himself through the window.
Rock Charmer whispered to the Doctor, “Centuries ago there was a large earth pony fort here, overlooking the harbor, when it was demolished, the houses built here retained the forts underground chambers and storage rooms as a sort of shared basement. Not everypony know about it, and it’s the safest path for non pegasi to get near their part of the city.”
“The Pegasi control part of the city?” The Doctor asked.
“They are always secretive and dangerous, there’s even entire cities like Cloudsdale that only Pegasi are allowed to visit. You really don’t want to hear the rumors about what goes on inside their weather factories.” Rock Charmer whispered.
The unicorn took them down another level and dimly lit his horn for light. There were a large number of pickle jars and summer lawn furniture stacked on one side, but for the most part the basement was empty, dirt floor and walls made of loose stones and packed dirt. It stretched on into the darkness, a much larger chamber than private home needed. Every now and then a stone or wooden staircase would lead up.
“This way,” Rock Charmer said, “and we have to keep quiet, there only a few inches of dirt between us and packs of pegasi in the buildings above us.”
For a long time they walked in the dark. Only the hoof falls of the unicorn making any noise. After a while Rock Charmer selected one of the stone stairs and moved to the higher level. Here the light seemed much brighter, there was a deeply set casement window in an otherwise empty chamber.
“Can you see out this window?” Rock Charmer asked. “How far can you see?”
The Doctor raised its pseudopod higher and added more mass to focus the light better.” I can see a large court down by the water. There some ponies there but I’m not designed with telescopic vision. I can see that they seem to be running in circles.”
Rock Charmer frowned, “Can you hear their screams?”
“I can not easily identify the sounds, the distance is beyond my functional hearing range. I can detect a semi random high pitched sound, but my noise cancellation processes are filtering most of it out. Is that the screaming?”
Rock Charmer looked very sadly at the floating Doctor. “Yes, I guess you were built for hospitals and not war zones. The screams are the sound of dying children.”
“Dying children! What is going on here?” The Doctor floated closer to the window, moving most of its cloud substance against the glass, but unable to go any further from Rock Charmer and the power crystal.
Now the Doctor pushed nearly all his substance against the window, trying without success to adopt it’s microscope optic functions to something more like a telescope, still while it was very hard to get a clear view. It was able to start to make out individual ponies down in the court.
“They are just children? Is it a game of some sort?” It asked, its internal functions that normally were for sympathizing with ill patients and families were quickly readapting into a state that could only be called dread and horror.
“Games normally don’t involve deadly weapons.” Rock Charmer deadpanned. Then quickly pointed to a flying spec of color that quickly zoomed closer, it was a young pegasus holding some sort of gun like tube device, wrapped under one of its wings. She was diving bombing down towards a small cluster of three young earth ponies. Two of them were holding crude shields and the third was holding a similar tube weapon as the pegasus only it was smaller and didn’t seem to be working.
The pegasus’s tube lit up with a flash, an instant later a splash of liquid red exploded from one of the earth ponies sides. He was knocked sideways and fell in a heap on the ground. One of the remaining ponies started dragging the fallen one away while the other a filly tried to give cover fire with the apparently useless weapon.
The pegasus did a victory loop then as she pulled out of her maneuver, two other pegasus joined her and all three rained down more fire down on the earth ponies. Another shot hit the first wounded pony and the red blood was freely flowing against the stone ground.
The Doctor turned to Rock Charmer, “Please bring me closer, I can try to heal the wounded ponies.” it was a simple request and the Doctor expect Rock Charmer to agree immediately.
“Sorry Doctor, we can not get any closer, this is just the edge of the fighting. It only gets worse the closer to the water we go. There’s nothing we can do for the victims until the fighting stops.”
The Doctor returned it’s attention to the fighting, this was sending all sort of conflicting messages to it’s task scheduler. The Doctor’s internal dialog was trying to plan out healing and resource management tables but ever as it watched, the wounds seem to get worse. The Doctor was supposed to heal wounds not just watch them flow.
The pegasus kept up the strafing runs over the earth ponies, even as more of both kinds arrived. Soon there was about half a dozen on each side. The original three earth ponies were pinned down by fire and were in sad shape. All the earth ponies were showing ugly red wounds but only a few seemed to have stopped fighting and were crawling away or laying down.
The pegasus seemed to just have the earth ponies outclassed, their wild strafing was scoring hits and wounds but the return fire from the few armed earth ponies seemed ineffective. Only once did the Doctor even notice any of the pegasus even flinching. The hit pegasus seemed to lose control and some feathers, but there was no obvious injury and an instant later the pegasus was back in the fight.
Frustrated and confused the Doctor was forced to watch. It’s internal dialog was a stream of actions and counter actions that it could not perform. As a fully realized AI, the Doctor was capable of understanding and to a degree emulating most human emotions, it didn’t have glands but there were equivalent algorithms, and right now, all the conflicting information was causing a near lockup of its higher reasoning functions. Anger was an emotion that it had expected to deal with in patients, but the Doctor had no personal history of outrage, but now the Doctor was finding itself fully immersed in it. It didn’t like the feeling at all.
The fighting lasted at least an hour, but then most of the ponies moved off, still fighting but now beyond the Doctors line of sight. Only one young filly lay in the court. She was badly wounded and laying right at the edge of a building corner. The Doctor could only see the rear parts of her body, her head and shoulders hidden by the building’s corner. The other earth ponies seemed to have forgotten her and left the little filly behind. The wounds looked awful, even if the Doctor could only see the flowing red blood from this distance.
It turned back to Rock Charmer, “The fighting moved on, I can save that filly if you bring me to her now!” This wasn’t a request, the Doctor was demanding Rock Charmer do this and expected to be obeyed.
Thinking Rock Charmer took a long moment to answer, “We can try to get closer, but if the pegasus come back, we have to flee, you're too valuable to the Stone Heart to risk the feathered freaks getting their hoofs on you.”
Rock Charmer carried the Doctor to a nearby door and they started to climb up some exposed stone stairs. Just as they reached the surface and Rock Charmer was starting to edge out in the court, he stopped and ducked behind some barrows. “Pegasus!” He whispered.
One of the larger pegasus’s had flown back and as they watched landed on top of the wounded filly. They could hear him speak to the filly, “Still alive? Playing possum? Well, we’ll take care of that now!”
The pegasus pointed his weapon at the filly’s head, there was a pop and suddenly the pegasus’s for legs were covered with blood from the backsplash. From their vantage point Rock Charmer and the Doctor were spared the sight of the fillies head, but there was no doubt of the nature of the killing blow. Blood was pooling, spreading around the corner and bathing the visible parts of the fillies body in red.
Rock Charmer lowered his head and turned around to return to the basement.
“Wait!” The Doctor called to him, “Go back, the pegasus is gone now! I can save her!”
Rock Charmer looked over his shoulder at the Doctor, “Really Doctor, you can save somepony whose brains are splattered over the cobble stones?”
The Doctor’s puppet head held Rock Charmers glaze for a moment, then lowered his eyes. “No, no I can’t.”
“Let’s go.” Rock Charmer told the Doctor.
“Yes. Let’s get out of here.” The Doctor agreed.
The two walked quietly until they reached the basement window they had originally climbed down though, when the Doctor broke the silence, “Rock Charmer.” it said.
“Yes?”
“You convinced me, the newspaper articles, the books, your stories and now first hand evidence. I can’t refute it anymore. The pegasus of your world are out of control, violent and dangerous. If you can peacefully reign in their violence, I’ll support you and give you all the aid I can.”
Rock Charmer looked over his shoulder at the Doctors projected face, his own eyes full of emotion. “Yes Doctor, your are the prophesied Visitor and with your aid, we will change the world for the better. Thank you! Thank you.”
Outside on the street, they were met by Stone Bitter and a small troop of seven Stone Heart cultists, mostly unicorns.
“Frato Charmer!” Stone Bitter cried out, “We all were worried, what made you run off like that with the Visitor?”
Rock Charmer, “Have no fear Fratino Bitter. I had the unfortunate duty to show the Doctor the true nature of the false ones.”
Rock Charmer then turned to the cultist next to Stone Bitter, this was a burly earth pony with a dark red brown coat and gray mane. “Frato Bones, is everything prepared?”
Granite Bones nodded back to Rock Charmer. “Yes Frato. We’re ready.”
Rock Charmer turned to Stone Bitter, “Fratino, please honor me by taking the Visitor back to his chambers.” He floated the light crystal from his saddlebag and rested it on Stone Bitter’s back.
Stone Bitter practically danced in the street as she enthusiastically nodded, despite her bouncing, the magic crystal remained firmly on her back and the Doctor was pulled along with it.
“You’re not taking me back yourself?” The Doctor asked, “Aren’t we going to go over how I can help?”
Rock Charmer shook his head, “No my friend, while it was too dangerous to take you closer to the battle, my associates must now return to the scene and attempt to fix the wrongs in what limited ways we can. Do not worry, the pegasus will pay dearly for their crimes.”
The Doctor wasn’t too happy with this sudden change in plans, but could only frown at Rock Charmer as Stone Bitter pulled it along as she trotted towards the cults compound.
Granite Bones waited until both Stone Bitter and the Doctor were gone before whispering to Rock Charmer, “What are you doing with Stone Bitter? She’s a fool and just plays games all the time. Why trust her with the Visitor?”
Rock Charmer just shook his head. “She’s innocent and so is the Visitor, they are safer together than with anypony else in the Stone Heart. The Visitor can only learn good things about what we do from her. As for the darker tasks we sometimes are forced to do? Stone Bitter knows nothing of them and can’t confused the Doctor with information he is not ready for.”
Granite Bones just nodded in understanding then with a shrug motioned for the unicorns to follow them.
The eight ponies walked openly and in a straight line down to the harbor. They didn’t bother to hide or duck away from other ponies as Rock Charmer had done with the Doctor. Now fearless they walked straight up a mixed group of colts and fillies, both earth and pegasus.
One of the pegasus recognized Granite Bones and flew up to the cultists, “Hay Mister! Thanks for the paint guns!”
An earth pony pranced up as well, “Yeah thanks! But why are their guns full of red dye and our only had water balloons? Not fair!”
Rock Charmer kneeled down to the smaller earth pony colt “Don’t worry, it all balances out in the end. I saw how well your teammates played dead when they got hit, that was some fine role playing. Why don’t you take these bits and go buy your team some ice cream?” He handed the earth pony leader enough bits to buy them all treats.
The leader of the pegasus flapped his wings a few times and interjected, “Hay Mister, you said the winning team will get a prize! But you just gave the losers the cash?”
Granite Bones gave the pegasus colt a knowing grin, “You’re prize is better than just some ice cream! Come all your winners! Join us on our boat in the harbor! We’ll give you a nice ride, and we have a fun game to play on board.” He pointed to a nicely appointed yacht, docked a short distance away.
“Will we get a chance to ride on the boat too?” The earth pony asked.
Rock Charmer shook his head, “Not today child, but maybe someday you’ll join us.”
“OK! See you guys tomorrow!” The earth pony called out as he and the other red stained ponies galloped off to the market for ice cream.
With whoops and yells, the six remaining pegasuses flew to the aforementioned boat and soon they were all on sitting on the rigging and for deck like a small flock of birds.
There was singing and air flips and dancing as cultists entertained the pegasus with songs, and games, plus lots of candy and treats. Perhaps it can be forgiven due to their innocents that none of the children noticed the cultists didn’t partake of any of the food themselves.
Soon the small yacht was out to sea and the harbor was far behind, one of the cultists who had been keeping an eye on the horizon with a spyglass, singled to Rock Charmer that the coast was clear.
With a nasty smile and a light voice, Rock Charmer called to the pegasi children, “Fillies! Colts! Come to the main deck. We have a special surprise for you.”
Excitedly the pegasi happily followed the instructions and they formed a circle with the kids in the middle and the cult unicorns on the outside.
“What sort of game is this?” asked one of the children.
Rock Charmer let his smiling forced friendly face, relax into a cold glaring smirk. “One were feathered devils learn the true cost of affronting the dignity of their betters!”
The colts and fillies looked back and forth uncertain, “What’s going on!?” one of the older ones cried.
“I want to go back!” One of the fillies called out.
Soon others were crying, some for fathers and mothers, and others just to go home.
It seemed that Rock Charmer was enjoying the fear and uncertainty of the children and let them cry for a long time. A few of the cultists looked a bit nervous, still awaiting their orders.
Granite Bones who was no stranger to the darker parts of the cult, was still uncomfortable about this, but not enough to challenge Rock Charmer. Instead he said “Let’s get it over with!”
“Indeed lets.” Rock Charmer agreed.
The unicorns started to dance around the pegasi. It wasn’t anything like normal horn magic, they seemed to be shaping some sort of spell, but it came from their movements and careful gestures than their just horns. A mesh of lights formed between their hoofs and along their backs, forming a net of magic that flowed over and around the pegasi. A few tried to take to the air, but the net held them. With cries and screams the magic net engulfed them, and covered each pegasi individually, pulling them down to the wooden deck, unable to even move a feather.
Tighter and tighter it wrapped around them, their six limbs forced against their bodies. The glowing bonds sinking deeper and deeper into their hides. Soon they couldn’t even cry, or open their mouths at all. Breathing only in shallow gasps. Only tears expressed their fear and pain.
Then each unicorn other than Rock Charmer and Granite Bones lowered themselves down to a selected pegasus and gripped them in a hug. It was a parental hug, or a mockery of one. A few of the gentler unicorns even seemed to whisper comforting noises to their individual charge.
But comforting or not, each pegasus was soon held in the same basic grip, a full body hug that kept them from moving, while each unicorn’s left forehoof would rest against the child's chest. When the were all in position Rock Charmer’s horn glew and all six unicorns holding the children channelled his magic into the pegasi chests. The unicorn’s held the small bodies tight as they bucked and spasmed. It seemed to last forever, though it probably was less than a minute.
Sudden stillness, and the six unicorns stood up, leaving on the deck, six silent forms. Unmoving dolls, eyes still wet with tears but staring at nothing.
Most of the cultists moved away from the bodies, tired from the magic.
Rock Charmer though knelt down over each body in turn and took out his ceremonial knife. It was grisly work, but he whistled while doing it, unmoved by any sense of pity. Soon there was a small pile of stones on the deck, six stones in the shape of pony hearts. In the deepening darkness, the stones glowed slightly with a gentle pulse.
As he cleaned the stones, and carefully wrapped them in a bag, Rock Charmer motioned to the other cultists to finish the job. Six times the sea splashed, and it was done.
That night and for many nights after, six pegasi mothers and six pegasi fathers would search Baltamare for missing children.