Strange Alchemy

The carriage rolled through the cobblestone streets of the Citadelic City, and Dee was able to relax momentarily. Properly prepared streets did not have the same bumps and unevenness of rural, unmaintained roads, and for once the ache in his back was not exacerbated by sudden and random sideways motion. Soon, he knew, they would be back at his house on Mortlake, and he would be able to continue his work.

Across form him, Fyr’mond sat silently. She was no longer looking out the windows at the crowds or the city. Dee was glad that she had finally overcome her childish and pointless curiosity for the mundane, but somehow, she seemed immensely sad. She had been that way for their latter part of the stay at the ruin, and had said almost nothing on the way home.

Dee did not know why she was so sad. The trip had been a resounding success. He had collected several priceless trihorn tablets, as well as sketches of the diagrams engraved on the inside of their buildings and samples of the stone that the buildings were made of. He was overjoyed, personally, and almost salivated at the thought of returning to his laboratory to begin deciphering the detailed and immeasurably complex spells he had found.

Fyr’mond, perhaps, simply could not understand the significance of what they had gleaned from that beautiful and dormant city. Dee supposed that she was simply depressed from not having access to the lavish accoutrements of royal life that she was normally accustomed to.

Her mood was depressing him. In an attempt to cheer her up, he opened a small box and removed a narrow, perfectly grown carrot, one of several hundred that he had magically preserved before their trips.

“Are you hungry?” he asked, offering it to her.

She looked at it, almost terrified, and shook her head. Dee shrugged and began to munch it as he looked down at pencil sketches of the ruin’s overview. As he did, though, the carriage came to a sudden jolting stop.

“What now?” he said, pushing open the shades and allowing the light to pour in. Dee shoved open his window and looked to his servants in front, seeing that numerous carrages ahead of them were all also stopped. An immense crowd was also milling through the streets, far more than there should have been on a Tuesday afternoon. “Why did you stop? I have important business to attend to!”

“My good sir,” said a unicorn who was passing on the sidewalk below, his bags filled with spiky and unusual fruit for sale, “I’m afraid you will not be passing through for some time.”

“Why?” demanded Dee.

The unicorn vendor pointed in the direction of the traffic. “The Questlords are returning from their brave pilgrimage to the edge of Hyperborea, bearing gifts for our glorious eternal king. Their procession to the Citadel is blocking the streets. A festival has been declared in their honor.”

Dee looked into the distance, and recognized the banners that were flying over the crowd, decorated with the sign of a thistle. He cursed under his breath.

“Do you want to buy a spine-squash?”

“No I don’t want a spine-squash!” yelled Dee, waving his hooves at the unicorn outside. “Go away, peasant!”

“Well, you don’t need to yell,” mumbled the unicorn, wandering off to continue to sell his wares.

Dee flopped back into his seat, crossing his forelegs in a huff. With a parade crossing the key roads, it could take hours to reach his destination.

Fyr’mond did not seem to mind much. She leaned over to the window and, for the first time, looked out, staring at a crowd that had gathered around a street performer standing on a stage in a nearby plaza. Dee noticed as she smiled.

“Oh look,” she said. “That pony is doing magic tricks!”

Dee leaned forward, sighing at his wife’s ignorance. As he looked, he vaguely saw the shape of a pale blue pony at the top of the stage, casting surges of green fire and making the crowd gasp and cheer. Even with one eye blind, Dee noticed what to him was clearly obvious- -the pony had no horn.

“It is just an earth pony magician,” he said, sitting back. “That is no magic. Just illusions and slight-of-hoof. The fire is just distilled spirits and cuprous salt. All of it is fake.”

“Earth pony magic?” said Fyr’mond, beginning to sound excited. “I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

“It isn’t magic. No earth pony can use magic. Just tricks.”

“Well, that makes it more exciting, then, doesn’t it?”

“No, it doesn’t. It makes it foolish and pointless. Dancing around pretending to be a unicorn…”

“Oh, Dee, he is just performing.” Then, pausing. “Can we go see?”

“You mean join that rabble?” Dee looked at the crowd. Although many were unicorns, there were a number of earth ponies mixed into the crowd as well. “Absolutely not.”

“But it would be fun,” said Fyr’mond. “And it would certainly be better than waiting here. If we are going to be stuck in a festival, we may as well enjoy it.”

Dee grumbled, not wanting to acknowledge that she was right. He hated festivals, crowds, and most other ponies. They were pointless frivolity, and they were noisy and smelly. He just wanted the quiet of his books. But he also hated sitting- -and, on some tiny level that he would never admit to, he wanted his wife to be happy.

“Fine,” he said, pushing open the door.

“Oh, thank you!” Fyr’mond nearly jumped out of the carriage. Dee followed, stopping to stretch his back as she trotted ahead. Almost every vertebrae he had popped and cracked. He hoped that the trihorn tablets included a spell to make him less old.

He slowly followed his wife, pushing through the crowd of filthy earth ponies and poor unicorns. Eventually he managed to stand beside Fyr’mond between two unpleasant creatures: a brown earth pony, his hourglass cutie mark lewdly exposed, wearing only a bizarre strip of green cloth on his collar, and his companion, a heavily cloaked gray earth pony whose golden eyes faced in to entirely different directions, neither or which seemed to be at the stage.

“Must be lead pipes in this region, methinks,” said Dee to himself.

He turned his attention toward where his wife was standing wide eyed. Up on the stage, he saw the blue earth pony standing on the stage. Now seeing him closer, Dee saw that he was a relatively young stallion, smiling at the crowd with the glow of a professional entertainer. He was arguably handsome, save for a severe and peculiar tattoo or ceremonial scarification that covered his entire right foreleg.

The performance seemed to have moved into its secondary act just as the crowd was solidifying in their position. The performer took the center of his makeshift stage. Around him, a second pony was carefully pouring out a small container of reddish powder into a complex shape onto the wooden surface. She appeared to be his assistant. Strangely, her entire body was covered in the garb of a nun, including her eyes, which were covered with a black blindfold of silky cloth. Despite being unable to see, however, her blindness did not appear to be part of the show, nor was it impacting her painting of the shape around the blue performer.

“Ladies and gentlecolts!” called the blue pony, causing the crowd to giggle at the ironic use of the terms. “Gather round! The aimless, the feckless, the lame! I, the great and powerful Ward Kelley, shall perform for you unspeakable acts of magic! By the power of the gods that has been granted to me and to each and every one of is, I shall heal the ill, the wounded, and the infirm!”

The crowd looked at each other and murmured. Dee rolled his eyes. He recognized a religious revival meeting when he saw one. He knew as well as any unicorn that most diseases simply could not be cured with magic; this was nothing but a futile exercise in faith healing.

“Nyar, is the spell prepared?”

The nun nodded and stepped back, descending the steps of the stage and standing beside it, watching attentively.

“Then behold! Earth ponies, unicorns, and gods above!” Kelley raised his tattooed leg to the sky. “Rylanokk, Hound of Tindalos! I summon thee! Come forth and serve your master!”

The scars carved into his foreleg suddenly glowed a hideous red, and he plunged his hoof into the center of the circle or red dust painted around him. The dust exploded in a plume of magical fire, and Dee winced in pain as the shock of the surge impacted his horn. That explosion had not simply been performed with powdered explosives: it had contained a profound amount of magic.

Space around the stage seemed to distort, and the immediate area darkened as though clouds had moved over head. From the stage, a long, narrow arm suddenly shot up from nowhere, and a ghastly claw tore at the stage. Then something pulled itself up, emerging into the space of the stage.

Dee could not comprehend what he was seeing. His mind did not seem to want to allow him to. A creature had indeed appeared on stage: a tall, distorted, angular thing that stood on an uncountable number of legs, looming high over the performer. Its body was not made of any obvious substance, and did not seem to move or position itself according to normal rules of physics and space. The legs it stood upon were far too thin, and its body seemed to shift shape entirely depending on the position it was viewed from.

The crowd screamed in panic, pushing backward. Two unicorn guards reacted instinctively, rushing forward and firing two beams of powerful magic into the creature’s body. Though their aim was true, the beams did not strike. Dee watched in confusion as the beams missed the creature where they should have passed through, as though they had been curved instead of straight.

“Do not fear!” cried Kelley, his voice booming over the audience. The authority in it was almost palpable, and they stopped. As they watched, Kelley raised his hoof, his foreleg still glowing with energy, toward the creature. It lowered itself, bowing, and nuzzled his hoof with one of its tentacle heads. “This creature is strange, and unusual, but my it obeys my command absolutely! By my word as a mage, no harm shall come to you!”

Dee almost screamed at him. His desire to shout down this charlatan was almost overwhelming. Although he did not know how the trick worked, he knew that this pony was no mage, simply a showman tricking the gullible with lights and strange images.

“Now,” said the performer. “This creature is dredged from the depths of the beyond, and she comes bearing great gifts. Come! Bring me the ill, and together, our power shall heal you!”

At first, no pony moved- -but then a pair of stallions pushed forward. They bore with them a bed, on which lay a thin, emaciated colt, followed by his mother.

“Come, my friends,” said Kelley, helping her onto the stage as the stallions carried the boy. “Tell me, what ills this child?”

“He is afflicted with myletic paralysis,” said the mare, wiping tears from his eyes. “He cannot walk. Please, mister Ward, if you can do anything for him…”

“Indeed I can. Curing him will be an easy feat indeed!”

“Now that’s enough!” screamed Dee, amplifying his voice with his own magic. The ponies stepped aside, and Fyr’mond gasped. “I’ve had enough of this charade! Summon tricks if you will, but I will not allow you to defraud these ponies! There is no cure for myletic paralysis! You cannot make that child walk! It is impossible!”

“Oh,” said Kelley, smiling and rubbing his chin. “My friends, a doubter, a skeptic! But tell me, friends…” he raised his hoof to the creature beside him, “would it not be so easy to simply say: ‘let this child walk’?”

The creature jerked forward suddenly, and pressed one of its thin legs through the colt’s body.

The crowd gasped, and the colt’s mother cried out at seeing her son impaled. The blind assistant, however, was quick to respond, ascending the stage and holding her back, keeping her from interfering as her son convulsed on the wooden stage.

The creature removed its appendage from the colt’s body, withdrawing it with no wound. Then the unthinkable happened. The colt opened his eyes, and, as shakily as a newborn foal, stood.

The crowd gasped, and then, as the colt took his first steps, they began to cheer. The mother was allowed forward to embrace her son, and even the strong stallions who had born him to the stage wept and joined in the hug. Kelley raised his hoof to the sky in victory.

“Imposter!” cried Dee over the crowd. “Cannot any of you see it? Are you all such fools?! That child is nothing more than a shill! He never was sick!”

Kelley’s eyes narrowed. “You try my patience, old stallion. Perhaps a more personal demonstration.”

He pointed his tattooed hoof forward, and the Hound responded. Its narrow legs moved in a parody of walking, and it stepped off the stage. The crowd pushed back from it, afraid and in awe of its touch, staring up at it in sudden silence and terror as it moved toward Dee. Fyr’mond latched onto her husband’s foreleg, but Dee did not back down. Though superficially frightening, he knew that the creature was nothing more than an illusion, conjured by powders and herbs, a trick of smoke and light.

The creature stopped before him, and lowered its body. He stared into its fungoid, toothy mouths as it lifted one of its legs, straightening it and pointing it at Dee. Then, without warning, it plunged the needle-like appendage into his eye.

As Dee had expected, there was no pain. Instead, he felt a bizarre energy. Something like magic, but closer to smelling something, something like terribly ancient rot. He felt his body shake, even as he tried to suppress the pain.

Then, as the creature withdrew its arm, the world seemed to change. It shifted from being flat and limited to being far wider, with the new half fading from black to yellow-gray, and finally resolving into an image of the world. Dee gasped and put his hoof to his eye, the one that he had burned into blindness with his studies of the sun. Its vision had been restored.

“The sick shall heal,” said Kelley, “the lame shall walk…and the blind shall see.” He grinned wildly, even smugly, and with a wave of his hoof dispelled the creature he had summoned, allowing it to shift into nothing more than smoke. “Now!” he yelled to the crowd. “Are there any more that do not believe? Are there any more that have been cursed by the limitations of modern medicine? Bring them to me, and through my magic, they shall be reborn!”

Dee grabbed his wife’s arm and led her away.

“But the show,” she said, disappointed.

“We are leaving,” he said harshly and pulling her sharply. “This is nothing more than a con! A trick for fools!”

Fyr’mond, submissive as she was, allowed herself to be pulled away. Dee knew that he was probably hurting her, but he did not care. He needed to get away. That blue earth pony, that Ward Kelley, he was something to be loathed. Dee did not know what had just happened, or even how, but it defied explanation by any known form of magic. It was wrong, perverse- -and utterly false. Earth ponies could not perform magic.

Still, he some deeply ingrained part of him was afraid. Terribly, terribly afraid.