Doctor of the Lance

by Silver Page

Chapter 2 – The Magic / Die Magick

Chapter 2 – The Magic / Die Magick

The evening had been interesting, to say the least. The Summer Sun Celebration was the annual Summer Solstice festival, where the foals and children would frolic and consume sugary treats, while the adults stayed up for the sun rise while the youngsters slept off the crash. However, things had gotten weird around the time of the sunrise. When Johan had first arrived, he had not fully believed anything could control the sun at a whim, even with magic. In fact, up until that day, he had held that it was all a sham. However, when the sun did not rise for several hours after the appointed time, Ponies were panicking in the streets; a riot nearly broke out at the lamp store, and most of them rushed around screaming in fear.

Johan, deeply disturbed by this sudden lack of sun, had forced away the realization that, yes, the sun and moon were somehow controlled by forces he did not know of, and instead tried to take charge and calm them all down. It worked. Several Unicorns claimed to have felt a wave of magic emanating from the moon around the time of what should have been sunrise. He’d deal with that later. Then, just when he thought nothing else odd could happen, another burst of magic erupted, this time one even he felt. His hands had tingled, and the horn he kept hidden on his person had vibrated and given off heat. He wasn’t sure why.

Thankfully, whatever had happened had not dispelled his Spell Pact illusion. If anything, it felt more solid and durable. After the second magical eruption, dawn broke on the horizon, and relief filled the Equestrians.

Thus, at the end of a stressful night, Johan had escorted the tired mare Milky Way back to her home. She lived close to the edges of town, running the local dairy farm. The cows here in Equestria were dumb, something he was thankful for, but were treated much better than expected, and as pets, rather than cattle. Made procuring meat difficult for the stranded human. He ended up having to get his protein from Griffin importers down at Manehatten.

Bidding Milky Way goodbye, Johan made his way back home, which was further off, about fifteen minutes past the Milky Ranch. He grunted with exhasutions as he opened the gate, and though he needed to check on his magical scanners, he would do so later, after sleep and a hot bath. Back inside his manor, Johan sighed with relief and removed his magical disguise. He made his way to his nicely appointed room, and dropped onto the bed, dead tired.

Hours later, and he was busy studying the data, both collected from his devices around the house, but also from Wish Burst. She, like several other Unicorns, had felt both instances of magic, and the artifacts in her had recorded her reactions.

“Wish Burst, please tell me what the two magical phenomena felt like,” Johan inquired, clipboard and pen in hand. He was back in his lab, late in the afternoon. He wanted to gather as much as he could from her before too long.

“The first magical burst felt like…I was drowning. It was hard to breathe for a moment. Then, I… I think it was like I was crying. I was all alone…forever…”

“Subject Wish Burst claims to have felt sensations of drowning, and then of crippling sorrow and fear of being alone.” Johan then wrote it out.

“The second burst was… pure Happiness. I felt whole, and clean again…” Wish trailed off, her mood having spiked towards joy as she recalled the second energy wave, but it quickly fell as she recalled where she still was.

“Subject Wish Burst claims to have felt happy, and purified while experiencing the second magical burst. This stands to reason. A number of her scars and injuries, gained while she was locked up, have healed, as if they’d never existed. Her Thaumata gland spiked sharply while subjected to the second magical anomaly. For the first one, the only responses were in her brain chemistry, registering the fear and sadness, and the sensation of drowning.”

Johan carefully plucked the needles and measuring tools from her body, jotting down any additional info. He picked up a syringe from the trolley and injected the fluids into her. She struggled, and then stopped, her eyes closing and her breathing becoming ragged. He then removed the Unicorn horn and began to weave a spell over her sleeping form.

Carefully, Johan rewrote her memories of the past few days. He had barely experimented on her, careful not to leave too noticeable a mark on her. It was harder for him to keep all his subjects from dying. It became too suspicious after a while. That was why he’d had to flee Las Pegasus all those years ago, and change his Pony identity. Too many missing Pony reports and mutilated corpses. He had learned to hide the bodies properly if need be, and also to weave false memories into a survivor. Healing their wounds was also simple enough, though some of them were impossible to avoid, and to heal. Skin grafts only went so far.

Satisfied with his work, he lifted her with telekinesis from the table and brought her into another one of his rooms in the hidden lab. This one was a new addition, designed for storing the personal effects of his victims, as well as a cleaning facility for said effects. She wasn’t too dirty. A quick scrub in the small shower and tub combo stall took care of that. He dressed her quickly in her clothes, and then gathered her luggage. She had been a medical student on vacation that had visited a cousin in Trottingham for a few days. She had stayed with her professor, Spell Pact, at his home while she was there, and then supposedly left on the train a few days back, but in truth, that had been a magical decoy clone. The real Wish Burst had never been allowed to leave, and imprisoned in his lab the day she had “left.”

Finished, Johan Faust reached into a chest nearby, and removed a large crystal, the insides pulsing with a spell. The gem in particular was an amethyst. He’d learned that certain stones and minerals were better at storing certain spells and schools of magic. Pocketing the gem, he levitated her body and her bags out of the room and eventually out of the lab into the corridor between his house and the lab’s steel door. Removing the gem, he stared at it, channeling his own feeble stores of magic.

The amethyst sparked in his hands, and in a flash of purple light, the Human and the unconscious mare were teleported away.
They appeared in a small hut on the outskirts of Manehatten. Johan Faust had dozens of small little shacks set up across Equestria, using them as way points for his teleportation stones. It helped with dropping off his experiments, and soon, Wish Burst was walking out of the small little hut, her eyes glassed over and unfocused. She would walk for a while, to the edge of the city, and then the spell would break. The memories Johan had given her would “remind” her that during the stop over from Trottingham, she’d decided to explore the Big Apple, but due to the Summer Sun Celebration, been unable to book a train back home until now. A ticket for a train later in the evening was in her pocket, courtesy of Johan.

Pleased all was well, Johan watched the mare wander off, before reactivating his teleport stone. He reappeared in the corridor of his hidden lab, and then exited, ready to put things away. Belatedly, he realized he still had to clean up the sensors littering the yard outside.

With a groan, he stepped out to deal with the problem.

Sometime later, he got an unexpected visitor. He wore he Unicorn disguise while he worked outside, in case of peepers or watchers, and only had a small panic attack when a grey coated Pegasus mare with golden, crossed eyes landed in his yard with a thump.

“Gott im Himmel!” Spell Pact shouted, and he whirled to face the intruder.

“Afternoon, mister! I got some mail for you!” The Pegasus reached into her satchel and removed a cream colored scroll from within. Embarrassed at shouting, Spell Pact took the scroll, eyes widening at the name of the sender.

“Princess Celestia?” He asked aloud, and the Mail-Mare nodded.

“Yup! It was sent from Ponyville, ‘cause that’s where I live, and I was the only Mail-Mare on duty who could deliver this message post haste!” She declared proudly, neither eye focusing properly.

“I see…” Spell nodded, as if he understood, and then opened the scroll, breaking the wax seal.

“Dear Doctor Spell Pact, I have some issues regarding magical anomalies that I want your help with. As you are one of the premiere researchers in magic and its consequences, I request your precence at the Canterlot Palace as soon as possible. Signed, Princess Celestia.” A silver ticket for all expense paid trip to Canterlot was nestled in the folds of the scroll.

Spell Pact stared. She wanted him? Sure, he’d met her once or twice, but never in much of an informal setting. She needed his help with magic. Perhaps it was to do with the strange happenings earlier…

“Have a pen I could borrow?” he asked, and the Pegasus reached in and pulled out a small, old fashion quill, with an ink spell attached. He sighed as he took it. These things were annoying. Better than the old dipping quills he’d had to use. One of his older personas, the Grandfather to his current form, in fact, had patented this very quill-with-ink-spell. Each quill had enough ink for 1000 words, and would not discharge the ink unless pressed against a surface. This meant they tended to explode if not packed carefully.

“I will be there soon,” he wrote on the back of the scroll, before handing it and the quill back to the Mail Mare.

“Take that to the Princess, please,” he said, fishing out a ten bit coin and paying her for the delivery. With a salute, she shot off into the air, leaving him coughing in the dust.

“I’d better pack,” he grumbled.

Author's Note:

Slow beginning, but soon we'll get to all the Hannibal Lector-ish stuff you desire!

Comments

[Sonik]

Another good chapter, my friend!