Dr Whooves MONSTER

There I was, sitting at my desk the very next foggy morning. The month of October, judging not by the calendar, but by the pumpkins scattered across the town walls. The smell of sugary sweets and popcorn filled the air. Nevertheless, not one decoration of the sort was held in my office. Unless you counted the pony skeleton I had hanging by the door, for work.

If it weren’t for the distraction of a piece of chocolate I had in my mouth, perhaps a cure for our trinkets would have been found much sooner. But as I tossed the wrapper away, I turned to the distilled blood to examine my results of the day. My eyes danced across the page, only to roll when I tossed the paper away onto the floor with the others. Twenty-four to be exact. Some may say twenty-four down, but hey, twenty-five would be my lucky number. But at the moment, the only thing I could do was settle back in my chair and wash my failure away with another bite of chocolate. Once my sweet tooth was satisfied, I turned to my books in hopes of finding anything that could be of use to me. What ailment could be the darn cause of the sickness plaguing my world, I wondered as I flipped through the books once more. Only for a knock on the door to pull me away from my work.

With a turn of my head, I came face to face with the figure of an old unicorn, adorned in a starry cloak and a wizard hat. “Star Swirl,” my eyes shot wide at the sight as I rose from my seat and gave a polite bow. Despite this, the old pony kept a neutral look as he stroked his long beard. “What are you—”

“Dr. Hooves, I have come for your expertise on a rather poor subject.”

“My—” I sputtered, nearly breathless, as I stumbled forward. “Sir, I am but a humble earth pony doctor. What can I do that one of your stature cannot?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself; I merely wanted a second opinion on the matter at hand,” he said as his horn glowed, producing yesterday's morning paper.

With a quick glance and an amused chuckle, I tossed it on the floor with my failure of the day. “Sir, that subject is for the authorities. I wish to heal the sick and the wounded, not bother myself with yesterday's news.”

“Check the date,” he muttered as he looked around the room.

“I did, finding the same headline as before, but the date was this morning once again.” My jaw dropped as my eyes filled with fear. “Another mare died this morning, but, but…”

“That makes the second one this week and the fifth one this month,” the old pony lowered his eyes. “I, of course, was brought in to take a look-see, only I have found myself stumped.”

At his words, I snapped my head back to him, my temperature rising as I stood before him.

“Yes, even one as powerful as I does not have all the answers all the time,” he stated as he picked up my most recent failure and glanced over it. “The victims of some disease, one would think, but I’m afraid I could not determine one issue with the subjects at hand. All of them died in the same prolonged way as your mother.”

The very mention of her struck me cold. I could feel my own heart stop beating for a moment as those days flashed before my eyes.

A beautiful, chocolate-brown mare, with strawberry-red curls, flipped pancakes in the morning for me every day. That morning was no different, as I walked into the house smelling the batter on the stove. But as I walked into the room, a young, spry colt would lick my lips at the delicious smell in the air. My world turned upside down at the sight of my mother lying emotionless on the ground. Soon the pancakes would burst into flames, but it wasn’t the fire that had my attention. “Mom,” I yelled, and ran to her side, pulling her best I could over my arm. She was tired, but alive. With a groan, I helped pull her out of the kitchen and out the front door, as the flames grew high catching the curtains. It wasn’t long before everything I knew would be turned to ash and dust, but I cared not for my childhood home. Instead, I pulled my mother straight to the town church, bursting through the door, where a younger Star Swirl was teaching magic to the young unicorns. I say younger, but then again, he didn’t look much different than he did now. He rushed over, seeing me aside and helping my mother to a bench in the corner.

“Help her, please!” I demanded. Star Swirl only gave a nod as he rushed her through the doors, slamming them shut in front of me, leaving me on the steps, just outside.

…

As I came back into reality, no longer was there any pain or sadness in my heart. Now all that remained was the fury for the pony in front of me. “You were supposed to heal her!” I growled, shaking in my stance.

Star Swirl glanced at me, but there was nothing in his eyes. Not a speck of empathy or regret, nothing except his unicorn pride.

“If you can’t heal the sick, then what point is there for your magic? And now you tell me, five more have fallen for the same ailment as my mother!”

“Do you not have a patient of the same sickness?” He asked, getting right to the point, with no drop of care in his voice.

I could feel my anger welling up at his tone, but instead of acting on it, I crossed my arms and turned around from him. “Your pride student has already diagnosed her, with the same ridiculous sediment you gave my mother.”

“And he is wrong, just as I was wrong then,” he said in the same tone as before.

I spun around, wide-eyed. For the first time since I couldn’t remember when, he actually stated his own mistake.

“I fear something far more sinister is at play, than a mere disease. My students would only come to the same conclusion as I, since I taught them, but you,” he narrowed his eyes on me.

I straightened my posture and stood as tall as I could. “I am a scientist, with a medical profession. My ways are a mystery to the mystic arts of magic. You need me.”

I smiled, confident in my words.

“He slowly blinked at first, letting the room grow still for a moment, before giving me a nod. “Magic and science, may be the only way we solve this mystery.” He then produced a file with a puff of his magic, that landed on my desk.

“What is this,” I asked, giving it a look over.

“The files of research on every incident this has happened,” he said, as he began heading out the door.

I didn’t think of it much at first, but as I read through the files, it was all too clear. I nearly choked on a piece of chocolate, as I realized the size of the file in my hands. There were hundreds of cases just like this over the years. Hundreds dating back to the days before Queen Celestia's reign. All with the same symptoms: loss of color, loss of energy, but no disease ever found. The subject would just grow weaker and weaker until death. Whatever plagued my mother, and my patient, plagued the world for thousands of years.

What in the world was I up against? I had no idea. You would think the daunting task would overcome my pony brain, but in fact, the opposite occurred. As a surge of energy ran through my veins, full of excitement and a new-found determination, I slid across the floor, grabbed my hat, and followed the old pony out the door.

We quickly headed to the only stone building in the entire town, the church. It rose above the many small huts of Ponyville, shining a glorious sun symbol above those of the land. Being Monday, the church was quiet, empty, all except for a few orphans making the most absurd Nightmare Night costumes I had ever seen. A creature with five pony limbs and a bat wing, and another with four unicorn horns. They looked more silly than scary, and I couldn’t help but smile at their innocent minds. It was a good chance for me to relieve the tension I had from that morning, before a gruesome sight would be laid before me.

“This way,” Star Swirl demanded, catching my attention and bringing me back to the task at hand. We walked into a back room, where the morgue held the dead before burial. The stench of decomposing matter struck my nose, causing me to gag on the spot.

Star Swirl, who seemed oddly used to it, gave me a moment before he pulled off the cloak, revealing the corpse of a dragon.

“Wait, I thought I was here to see the mare,” I raised an eyebrow.

“This is actually the most recent to die of the disease. She was found just outside of Ponyville not even an hour before I fetched you,” Star Swirl confirmed before raising his voice. “STYGIAN!!! What notes do you have on the body?” he barked at his student.

Stygian, who was upstairs, came rushing in, with a nervousness I had not seen before. “Y-yes, Master,” he stuttered as he quickly crossed my path and pulled scrolls of notes from the back. “I found no cause of death. In all regards, her heart just stopped beating. She was a perfectly healthy dragon, by all accounts,” he squeaked in a high-pitched tone.

With a stomp of Star Swirl, his student bolted back. “That tells us nothing,” he groaned and turned to me. “Well, Dr. Hooves, now’s your chance,” he said, clearly unimpressed with my previous work.

I lowered my hat and began examining the corpse as best I could, looking for anything out of the ordinary. “Did you do a blood or tissue test?” I asked Stygian, who immediately handed me a clipboard. Same with every test, no results were found. “That doesn't make any sense. If it were a transmissible disease or a pathogen, then it would have been caught and studied. But even in Mrs. Apple’s case, no such cause could be determined. Even stranger still, it only affects females.”

“Neither could a source of magic, I’m afraid. At least none that I could find. All I could ever see was the subject growing weaker in comparison. Well, that, and—”

“And what? Spit it out!” demanded the old pony.

“Dra—dreams, sir,” the tiny unicorn shrugged.

“Dreams? Yes, my mother also said she had nightmares before that fateful day. But,” I shrugged and discarded the clipboard. “Everyone has bad dreams from time to time. They’re just a state of unconscious restlessness. Nothing that can kill a pony, let alone a mighty dragon.” With a head shake, I tapped my chin in thought, but it was Star Swirl who narrowed his eyes.

“Dreams have a lot more than just a matter of unrest. They are a direct link between reality and the divine! Why didn’t you tell me of such a development before?” he turned his gaze to Stygian, making the unicorn cower further.

“I didn’t think it was worth mentioning, until I knew more,” he stumbled back.

The pony rolled his eyes and grumbled “worthless” under his breath. But I caught it as he headed out the door.

With a raised eyebrow, I turned to my old friend.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he deadpanned.

“You’re just going to let him get away with that?” I spat, keeping my voice down.

“What can I do? He’s Star Swirl the Bearded, and I—”

“Are Stygian the Unicorn. One day your magic will be mightier than his,” I declared with a stomp of my hoof.

“You—you really think so?”

“I think I know so. You’re stronger than you look. Why, I’d bet my degree in medicine that you will one day prove him wrong about you.” Out of nowhere, the little guy gave a giggle, catching me off guard. “What, what is—”

“You’re always so nice to me, despite our differences in our methods.”

At his shift in tone, I lunged back, wide-eyed. “W-well,” my eyelids lowered halfway. What was I supposed to say at that moment? Was I supposed to give in and tell him how I truly felt? Perhaps if I did so, perhaps if I told him how jealous I was of my lack of magic, maybe things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did. But looking back on the moment now, I remember grunting and stomping away. He was my rival, my archenemy. My best friend. I couldn’t give in to his nature, could I? But as I remained there studying the bodies of the dead, listening to him grovel at the insults by the mightily powered unicorn, my bitterness for them grew ever stronger.

Unicorns with all their magic, and not one of them ever truly lifted a finger to help anyone, not one—except Stygian. And here I had to watch such power take the knee to someone greater. What was I then? If magic couldn’t solve this issue, how in the world could I? How could science be the answer? Oh, how I wished I knew where my troubles were leading to.