//------------------------------// // Part 5 (Oliver) - Chapter 5 // Story: Founders of Alexandria // by Starscribe //------------------------------// It took twenty minutes or so to clear a large enough swathe of the library that he had room to work, hanging sterile sheets and turning reading tables into operating tables. He had the help of all his “guards” except Abrams, who kept his distance and watched everything he did with passionless eyes. Oliver had never seen eyes like that before, not in the week or so the immigrants had been in Alexandria. Why had it only happened now? Oliver felt the solution must be in whatever had happened once Adrian and Sky began their spying mission. He wondered what they might’ve learned that would have provoked such a strong reaction, transforming friendly ponies into a militaristic enemy with dead eyes overnight. He had more important things to be thinking about just now. Two ponies with poorly treated bullet-wounds. He quickly dismissed the mare’s wounds as superficial, and determined neither of the injuries (both to her legs) had done serious damage. Indeed, neither had trapped the bullet or any shard of it. He covered her back up and focused his attention on the stallion. The signs he saw were not good. Injuries to the abdominal cavity, still seeping dark blood despite the bandages. He considered it a miracle the pony was even still alive, and that was likely because of his earth-pony nature. There could be no tourniquet, and his pleas to move the procedure to the hospital were summarily denied. Oliver adopted a battlefield innovation: using a sensitive handheld metal detector to find the bullets instead of an x-ray. He had no life support, and no guarantee the drugs he had would work as intended on ponies. The deeper he probed, the deeper the damage proved to be. One of the bullets, as it turned out, had probably punctured the pony’s liver and one of his kidneys. It was a miracle nothing had punctured a lung or the stomach, or else he would’ve already been dead. Oliver did not get discouraged, did not once even consider the difficulty of what he was attempting. Perform high-pressure surgery on a species he barely knew? He was no surgeon, not yet. Yet he would have to be, improvising procedures he had seen or read about during his training. If he failed, Adrian might be killed. Even more important than that, failure to save this patient would be another way to break his oath, and that he could not abide. Oliver was a sworn enemy of death, in all her forms. She could not be allowed to take even a dangerous enemy. Wasn’t this enemy’s life just as precious and unique as any of his friends? Even if he didn’t know the stallion’s name. He didn’t ask, didn’t want to know until after he succeeded. Yet still it weighed on him. At one point, he asked, “Can you please go to wherever you took the pony library and get the illustrated guide to earth pony anatomy? Or… one of the tablets, that would work too.” After all, the entire “read this first” section had been scanned, so he could read the book on any of the tablets if he had to. “I can’t,” offered his makeshift assistant. She sounded regretful. He had given her a sterile gown and mask to wear, both of which were stained with blood. “We burned all of it. Every book from Equestria is gone. All the ‘tablet’ devices are burned too. We found the deceiver's lies all through them; we had no choice.” Oliver didn’t know what that meant, nor did he much care. He felt furious at the idea of those books being burned, though more for what it represented than any real loss of knowledge. If anything, all his mindless hours scanning books now felt validated. But he had learned something else about their enemy. “You’re saying you burn books?” he said towards his surgical kit, very loudly. He couldn’t think of a single case of book burnings from his own world that had been done for positive reasons. Whenever an ideology suppressed knowledge, it meant it had something to hide. It meant it couldn’t stand up to honest scrutiny. But giving that scrutiny wasn’t what Oliver cared about right now. Right now he just wanted an anatomy book, so he could make sure he wasn’t about to cut into an artery or something. Oliver wasn’t utterly without resources, though. He had something more than his lifetime of medical experience, more than the books he didn’t have. Oliver had magic. It was hard to say exactly how he called on the magic that came with being a pony, hard to say what he did different than he would’ve done if he had been performing this procedure on two legs instead of four. Yet just as it had when he had been working on Adrian's gangrenous wing, the magic came. It flowed into him through the floor, though his hooves and their contact with the building’s foundation and the heart of his planet below that. Healing was magic unlike any other. Healing was to unravel the little threads of the tapestry creation had made into people, then find the frayed ends and tie them back together again. With the perfect combination of dexterity and compassion, he could prevent an entire section of the fabric from being lost forever. He felt the life of the pony beneath him as though it were something solid. He saw the damage a bullet had done, beginning its work of ending that life. Thus began his two tasks; to remove the foreign object, then repair the damage it had done. No part of his medical training had prepared him for the sensation of magic. Nor had he needed to be prepared. Once the procedure began, it seemed as though all the secrets of living creatures unraveled themselves to him. Every movement was a dance, one whose steps he did not know, but carefully choreographed all the same. His body knew the steps. He sliced with dexterity no hoof should’ve possessed. He administered drugs, stitched, and cleaned. All the while he didn’t feel hungry, didn’t feel thirsty, barely seemed to breathe. He didn’t need to. Some motions required more dexterity than he could manage; he used his unicorn assistant for that. Even without any medical knowledge, she could hold things like a sewing needle with perfect precision. He had no concept of time, no perception of reality outside of the injured pony and his equipment, like a spotlight in the center of time. Then the procedure was done, and he found all the energy leaving his body like the air drained from a balloon. He stripped off his protective clothing onto one of the plastic sheets (to avoid staining the floor), then collapsed onto his side, a few strides from the patient. Against all odds, the stallion was still breathing. He had accomplished everything without life support, without a trained staff, without any drugs not contained in his trauma kit. The world swam around him, and he bobbed atop it like a fish. An ocean rose up around him, an ocean dark with nightmares. The ocean broke on him, but it had no more impact than Alex’s anger had earlier today. One pony remained untreated, his business was unfinished. The nightmare whispered strange things in the dark. He saw speeding vehicles and dark nights. He saw snow, he saw blood. He banished all these thoughts with a concerted effort of will, drawing in a new wave of strength from the earth beneath him and the defiance in his soul. The nightmare faded from around him, and he rose to his hooves again. He cleaned the operating theater, then switched patients. Rather than an intense surgery, the injuries of the cultist mare were mild enough that he was able to finally relax. He found himself breathing normally again. Relaxed enough that he was able to devote some portion of his thoughts to the deeper problem: whatever had been done to the minds of these ponies. For instance, was the process complete? There were drugs that increased suggestibility, but these varied in effectiveness between individuals. There was also magic as a variable, which was particularly meaningful since he knew almost nothing about it. Only what he had learned from Joseph, whenever the unicorn got drunk and rambled about it (it was far more interesting and less disgusting than his rambling about Moriah). Still, he figured the effects, whatever they were, would be most pronounced in those who had been affected by it the longest. One of his guards, Abrams, had seemed like a strong-willed individual in all their encounters. He had been an officer if the stories he told were true, and not an unimportant one either. Nobody had ever managed to make him reveal his rank, or his previous position; it was his bearing that had spoken for him. He set the highest standard of behavior, was always well groomed, always spoke with respect and courtesy. Like the gentry out of some story. What force could turn a creature like that into a simple guard to wave a gun around? “I take it you and your men are helping these… ponies.” He gestured vaguely at his patient, as non-threateningly as he could. “What did they say to convince you?” In the face of death, Oliver felt only spite. Yet Abrams was more than just death. His face was dark. His movement bespoke none of the twitching resistance Oliver had seen in Adrian, however. Did that mean all the fight had gone from him? His words were less stiff, too. Did that mean the enemy had more complete control? That he was more indoctrinated? Or just more cooperative. “We know our history, Oliver. We know an untenable situation when we see one.” His voice alone was anywhere near as deep as a human’s, rougher than gravel on his ears. “You know what happened to Agamemnon. His men fought bravely for ten long years. But, eventually, he realized there could be no victory, and he had no choice but to turn his ships around and flee. Taking Priam’s city would be far easier than standing against Odium.” Oliver was so stunned that he very nearly dropped the needle he was holding between two of his hooves. Even so focused as he was on the health of the mare beneath him, he could not miss at least some of the implications of those words. Abrams was still enough of himself to remember human history. Not only that, but his words were obviously meant to draw clear parallels between himself and his men and the Greek armies. Oliver wasn’t much for history, besides the history of medicine and the songs he liked to sing. Yet this story was so well known, even he didn’t fail to know it. Agamemnon had not taken the Greeks home in defeat. They had traveled only far enough to appear gone, while Priam’s city rolled a treacherous wooden horse within the walls. Not only was the diamond dog still himself enough to remember history, but he was still himself enough to be subtle. No brute at all, even as he stood there with a rifle he was prepared to use. The communication strategy appeared to be working, because the unicorn agreed with a nod. She hadn’t seemed to understand anything Abrams said, not until the very end. “Odium will forgive you too, doctor. He will take your hatred from you and give you absolution in its place. Not even the pretender princesses can stand against our master.” Oliver couldn’t remember hearing anyone say a name with more spite than the way Light Spinner said “princesses.” He had heard more understanding from speakers at hate rallies he saw on TV. “He will free you of your hatred,” Abrams agreed. “He will free the whole world. But first, Alexandria.” Oliver did not know what this Odium was, not yet. As he finished with the injured mare, the weight of the fact he had made himself a prisoner began to weigh on his shoulders. He could not go back and erase the choice to come here, not now. He had not saved Adrian. Instead, he might very well have subjected himself to whatever alien thing suppressed the will and strangled the soul. Maybe Alex knew something he didn’t, and the promise she had made that he wouldn’t be left to these beings would somehow come true. He knew that if anypony could make this whole thing right, it was probably her. It didn’t matter either way, though. Without his help, there wasn’t even a chance the stallion would’ve lived; now that he had done his best, his oath was satisfied. Oliver’s part of that fight, aside from keeping him sedated and supplied with antibiotics, was largely over. His fate was in God’s hands now. Or whatever god the pony believed in. Probably  Odium.