//------------------------------//
// A Potion of Love and Obsession 
// Story: The Best Intentions 
// by SpearmintSonnet 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 1: A Potion of Love and Obsession:

The room was dark and smoky, filled with dim, ever shifting light that played off of the tall shelves and empty potion bottles that adorned them, making them seem to dance and sway in time with the illumination. Books were strewn around the room, each lay open to a seemingly random page. Most were stained from the odd smoke, the crisp white pages now dyed in a strange array of blues, oranges, and greens.

The room itself was sparse- other than the shelves, there was a desk pressed up against the wall opposite a window with the curtains drawn. Upon the desk there were many potion bottles, most were empty, a few were even shattered as if the contents that they had previously contained had been volatile. There was only one book on the table and it was propped up against the wall, it's pages faded and old, but the writing was crisp and clean upon the page. A quill was laid across the top, fresh ink dripping slowly down the back cover of the book.

A glow of magic appeared around the quill and angrily ink slashed across the page, crossing out another line of text as more smoke billowed out of a beaker and a gray pony coughed loudly into his hoof.

The unicorn stallion slowly laid his quill down and stared forlornly at the page that was filled with text that had been scratched out. Each a failed attempt at the spell he was trying to produce. “It's just not working,” he muttered, his hoof over his mouth as he coughed yet again. So much smoke was not good for his lungs, but he dared not risk anyone else see his work. Not yet.

He tapped a hoof against the floor softly as his eyes quickly scanned the tabletop. Very few ingredients were left- a few wisps of cloud drifted in a vial, a little lightning sparked in a crystal cylinder, a few drops of rainbow glow clung to a beaker, but hardly anything else worth mentioning. The alchemist pony sighed again. So many of his attempts had failed, he would need to buy more the next day if his studies were to continue.

“But I cannot give up. I will never give up. She is worth it.” He glanced upwards towards the nearest shelf where a small picture sat next to a intricately carved wooden box. A glow of magic surrounded the image, drawing it close to the stallion who smiled fondly. “I will do anything for you, my love. My Princess.” The engraving was one of a pretty pink mare, a pegasus, who's tri-colored mane was done up in beautiful curls from which hung several dozen small crystals. The unicorn looked at the image for a moment longer before setting it back on the shelf.

He glanced around the room one last time and sighed with defeat. Nothing he had tried that night had come remotely close to what he had been trying to produce, but it never had. Slowly the unicorn stood up and backed out of the small room. He used a little of his magic to keep the smoke contained in the chamber while the door to his bedroom was open, when it shut behind him he let his horn dim and released the magic.

Laying down on the comfortable bed, the stallion released his pent up breath, reveling for a moment in the blessedly fresh air. “Everything will be clear tomorrow. I'm sure tomorrow is the day I will have a break through. I can do this. I must.” It was what he told himself every night before he fell asleep. Months ago when he had begun his research he had believed it. Now, after so long, it was merely part of his routine.

~~~

The next morning, the young stallion went to the market to restock his supply of alchemical ingredients. As he pushed open the door to the small potions shop, a small bell rang to announce his entrance. Inside the shop was filled to bursting with books, vials, and boxes. Along the side walls ran bookcases that had books stacked on them any which way, sometimes with vials topping precarious stacks or holding up books that didn't quite fill a shelf. Boxes served as display tables and were covered with vials and beakers.

From the back of the store came a tall blue earth pony with a short lavender mane. He smiled when he saw the younger stallion. “Morning, Prince. How's the weather been treating you?”

“Quite well, quite well. I much prefer northern springs to its winters.” The stallion stepped lightly around the boxes to the back counter.

“Don't we all, though? Don't we all!” The blue pony smiled brightly, “What are you here for this time, Prince?”

“The same as usual, Half Penny.” The unicorn's horn glowed and a small purse of gold bits dropped onto the counter between the two stallions, “but no lightning this time... I think I've quite exhausted it as a possible component.”

The shop-keeper moved quickly to gather everything his customer asked for, “Seems odd, if you don't mind me saying, a unicorn like yourself interested in earth pony alchemy.”

The prince smiled sagely, “Being the only unicorn which an alchemical talent leads one to be the topic of interesting conversations.”

“Of course.” Placing the last of the vials onto the counter, Half Penny began wrapping each in paper. “Is that everything, Prince?”

Looking over everything, the younger stallion mentally checked each component off until he nodded, “Yes, I believe so.”

“Very well,” he set down the last of the vials and smiled at the prince, “And will we be seeing you at the Crystal Fair next week?”

“I wouldn't miss it for the world.” The unicorn lifted each of the wrapped vials into his saddle bags and nodded to the shop-keeper.

“Have a good day, Prince Silver Scales.”

“And a good day to you, Half Penny.” The prince gave the earth pony a nod as he left.

Half Penny hook his head as the door shut behind his royal patron. “Royals. I'll never understand them.”

~~~

Back at the castle, Silver Scales sequestered himself in his little smoke-filled drawing room. Coughing, the prince lit his horn with magic just to see. “I really should air out this room eventually,” he coughed again, sitting in front of the desk and pulling his notebook close with his magic. Lifting the quill, he dunked it in the inkwell and began scribbling out notes.

Potions had two or three components that complimented each other and amplified the qualities desired to bring about a quantifiable result. Too much or too little of any component would leave the potion weaker than optimal, but so long as everything was prepared and mixed correctly the desired result would be brought about. This was the basic art of alchemy. Something that Silver Scales had learned when he'd first started dabbling into alchemy as a foal.

Now it was the mantra he chanted to himself as he worked, trying again and again to find the perfect blend of ingredients to create a love potion. But not just any love potion- a powerful one. One that wouldn't just last an hour or a week. One that would last a life-time from just a single dose. It was beyond ambitious to think that he could create what other alchemists had tried and failed to, but the prince was sure that they had just over-looked something minute.

Or he had when he had started. Now with pages and pages of his old notebook blotted out as failures, even the love-struck prince was beginning to lose hope. Sitting back away from his desk, he closed his eyes, a hoof rubbing his temple to stave off a headache.

His horn glowed and the image he kept safely on a high shelf in his workroom floated down next to him and settled on the desk. He stared at it for long minutes, thinking and dreaming of his princess- the lovely Princess Cadence of the Crystal Kingdom.

When Prince Silver Scales had first come to the Crystal Kingdom with his family several years before, he had immediately fallen in love with the young pegasus. She was kind and generous and was always smiling. When his family had left to return to their own kingdom, he had begged to stay behind. With his parent's blessing, Silver Scales had begun courting the princess, but she had gracefully rebuffed each of his attempts, eventually telling the prince that while she was fond of his attentions and his company, she loved her kingdom first and foremost and did not believe she would ever love another single pony even half as much.

Heartbroken, Silver Scales had returned home to the kingdom of Magia where he poured himself into his alchemical research. For months nothing could be said or done to bring him out of his rooms.

One day in late September, he was pouring over an old tome when a single potion caught his attention. It was a love potion. Excitedly, the prince read on, but was sorely disappointed when he realized the affects were not permanent. Quickly he began reading into love potions, but each time it was the same- no potion was infallible.

But the prince was no longer so deeply depressed. He decided to return again to the Crystal Kingdom and spend his days researching a more potent love potion.

Now, with several months gone by, Silver Scales had begun to loose hope that he would ever find the potion he was looking to create. He looked longingly at the image of Cadence that sat on his desk for a moment longer before sending it back up to the shelf. He pulled the ingredients he'd purchased that day out of his saddlebags and laid them neatly along the wall.

Wrapping his magic around each of the vials, the prince probed the ingredients, pulling pairs together to see what reacted. Being a unicorn, Silver Scales had an advantage over most other alchemists, he could use his magic to tell him what kinds of ingredients might react with one another if he held them close to each other. He concentrated on each pair of ingredients as he pulled them together, writing down new combinations he hadn't tried before in his notebook. Once he had several jotted down he set to work testing each.

Today he started with eagle feather and north wind. Gently he place the eagle feather into a medium sized silver beaker. With a prayer to the goddess Chrona that this combination might work, Silver Scales unstoppered the bottle of north wind and carefully poured a few breaths of air across the feather. That was all it took for the feather to dissolve into a puff of golden smoke that billowed out of the beaker. Holding a hoof to his mouth, Silver Scales leaned back from the desk and coughed several times, replacing the stopper in the vial of north wind, and scratching out the combination in his notebook. Using his magic to clear the air over his desk again, the stallion sighed, “Oh well, on to the next one...”

Glancing into his notebook, Silver Scales used his magic to pick up the next two elements he would try- moon dust and ice crystals. When he mixed the two together, he flinched away from the concoction, afraid that it might burst the beaker, but this combination did a lot of nothing. For a moment, Silver was disappointed, but when he probed the potion with his magic, he felt life in it. Not much, but it was something.

Lifting the beaker, he slowly drew it past the other ingredients waiting for the small spark in his mind that would signal something would happen. But he felt nothing, so he tried again; still he felt nothing. Whatever he'd made, it was not reacting with any other components he had at his disposal. He decided to probe the potion farther, see if he could even divine what it did.

Slowly he let his icy blue magic seep into the potion, feeling around it to see what kind of catalyst he would need to tap into it's full potential, and to possibly see what that full potential was. As his magic reverberated throughout the potion, it became increasingly clear that while this was a stable potion, it was not the love potion he was looking to create. Sighing dejectedly, he placed the beaker on a shelf and scratched a thick mark through the next line on the page.

“Nothing to do but keep going...”

Throughout the rest of the day and into the evening Silver Scales slaved over his potions. Most exploded violently in his face, filling the room to bursting with multi-colored smoke. A few fizzled with sparks and others shattered the silver beakers they were held in. Eventually the prince stood coughing and moved to the window. Pushing the curtain aside and cracking the window open minutely, he noticed just how late it was- the moon had risen high into the sky and was nearly at it's zenith for early spring.

A yawn sneaked up on the stallion and he quickly inhaled a mouthful of the awful alchemical smoke. Coughing loudly, he cracked the window wide enough for him to stick his head out and get a few breaths of clean, cool air. As his coughing fit subsided, Silver Scales shut the window and moved back to his desk, but as his eyelids began to droop, it was clear that he would not get anymore work done that evening. He blew gently on the still damp ink in his notebook before shutting it and moving back to his sleeping quarters.

Laying down on his lovely, soft bed, the prince looked at the crystal ceiling and yawned again. “I'm sure I'll find the solution tomorrow. It can't be too far off now...” Quickly his eyes fluttered shut and he drifted off to sleep.

~~~

But he didn't find the solution that next day. Or the day after that. Or even the day after that. Soon the Crystal Fair arrived and Silver Scales was still no closer to discovering his love potion than he had been when he'd first started, or so it seemed to the prince.

Sitting in the smoggy darkness of his study, Silver Scales flipped through his notes, searching for anything. With a disgruntled sigh, he finally flipped to the last page and propped it against the wall again. There were several lines of text not yet scratched out. Still more potions to test. “And more that will fail...” Silver Scales muttered to himself dejectedly.

His horn lit up and levitated two ingredients across the room to his table- his quickly dwindling supply of rainbow glow and a strange plant native to Magia called Heart's Desire. Pulling an empty beaker close, he shook the pink lily blossom over it, dislodging several of the heart shaped leaves. He waited until they were settled at the bottom before picking up his pestle and gently crushed the leaves until they were broken up. He uncapped the vial of rainbow glow and levitated it over the beaker, slowly and carefully he let three drops of the precious liquid pour over the leaves.

When there wasn't an immediate reaction, he slowly began mixing them together with a glass stirring rod. Immediately he regretted the decision as the mixture gave off a rather rancid smoke. Coughing viciously, he waved his hooves over the beaker to disperse the smoke. Once the reaction finished, there was nothing but a black film on the bottom of the beaker.

“Well... I suppose I knew that was coming... Mixing herbs- even magical ones- with sky elements has always been shaky business.” as he coughed again, the gray stallion levitated the Heart's Desire back to the shelf it had been sitting on and his quill scratched out the top line of text in his notebook.

“Now what....” Silver Scales sat back and levitated the book close to his face so he could see the writing better. “Cloud and moon dust...” Carefully he lifted the two vials and poured some of the contents together into another beaker. There wasn't any hesitation as the room was filled with a bright pink fog, but despite the color, the potion was weak and just by touching it with his magic, the prince knew it was not what he was looking for.

“I'm so close! I can feel it!” Drumming his hooves against the floor, he looked around at the ingredients he had left. Again his stores were depleted, but there was still enough for a few experiments. He had plenty of cloud, rainbow dust, and crushed crystals left over, but he was down to his last drops of moon beam and had only one eagle feather remained. His other supplies were nearly exhausted as well. Running a hoof through his tousled mane, Silver Scales looked at the last few combinations scribbled in his notebook.

“Cloud and rainbow glow.” The unicorn poured a few drops of rainbow glow over the soft clouds in a clear glass beaker. At first it seemed to have been another failure when finally the cloud began to absorb the rainbow glow and slowly turned a pale pink. Intrigued, Silver Scales poured a little more of the rare component into the beaker until the cloud was a bright and shining pink. He lifted the beaker and let his magic seep into it, poking and prodding to see what it was going to do. It did have life to it, but it wasn't nearly potent enough, even if it was a love potion. Slowly he moved the potion across the few components he had left, and a few of them sparked, but one stood out more than the others- the eagle feather.

Worried that he wouldn't have enough rainbow glow for more than one other attempt, Silver Scales decided to go with his best bet- the eagle feather. Lifting it off the desk, he dipped it into the pink cloud and began to stir, slowly at first, but faster as a reaction started. The potion began to glow faintly and seemed to be working, but then the eagle's feather began to dissolve  and the pink glow dimmed and the potion burst, creating a large smoke cloud over his desk, streaking everything it touched with pink.

Coughing and spluttering, Silver Scales waved his hooves frantically in front of his face, trying to clear his vision of the pink smog. Angrily he pounded a hoof against the desk. So close! He'd been so close! What had gone wrong? Eagle feathers were the strongest kind he knew of- besides Gryphon feathers, and where in the known world would he be able to find one of those? It would be a stretch for Half Penny or any of the other merchants in town to have one. Ponies didn't get along with the war-like Gryphons and trade between the two races was unheard of.

Standing up, the prince moved back into his sleeping quarters to pace. It was easier to think when he wasn't surrounded by smoke and smog. Shutting the door behind him with his magic, Silver Scales started to walk in slow circles around the rug that insulated the floor from the icy crystals from which the castle was made. As he walked, he watched the moon rise through his window and soon he realized that no matter how he tried, it was no use trying to stay awake.

But when the prince lay down and closed his eyes, he found his mind wouldn't stop turning. Finally, after an hour of tossing and turning in bed trying to fall asleep, Silver Scales sat up. “Maybe I'll be able to sleep if I just look at her picture for a few minutes...” Pushing the covers off his body, the unicorn slipped back into the smoke-filled workroom. His horn alight, he carefully began levitating the framed picture down from it's high shelf, but stopped. He gently set the image back down and turned his magic instead to the intricately carved wooden box he'd placed next to it.

Lowering it to his level, he carefully pushed back the lid, revealing the contents. A long pink feather lay atop a cushion of silk. It was one of Cadence's pinion feathers and Silver Scales' treasure. He'd acquired it before he'd left the Crystal Kingdom and it was never far from him at anytime. He set the box down on his desk and carefully removed the feather, using a hoof to slowly stroke the barbs so the whole feather lay straight and smooth.

Just as he was about to put it away again, a thought flitted through his mind. What about this feather? Would it work as the catalyst I need? Immediately he dismissed it. If the spell didn't work, he'd lose the feather. It wasn't a risk he wanted to take, but as he lifted the box back to the shelf, he caught sight of the beautiful pegasus mare who had captured his heart and he was torn. It could be just the thing I need! But what if it fails? I'll be back where I started, and without her feather...

Waring with himself, Silver Scales returned to his bed, not expecting to get any sleep, but the day's events and stress caught up to him and he fell into a deep sleep.

~~~

All night he dreamed of Cadence, as he always did, but these dreams were different. He was no longer chasing his love fruitlessly. This time was a wedding, and he was the groom, his beloved walking down the aisle towards him, her mane piled up and curled exactly as it was in the image he kept of her. He was so over-joyed that he did not want the dream to ever end, but end it did, as all dreams do. Still, that feeling of joy followed him into the waking world and prompted him to try one last time to create the potion he sought.

“A bit of cloud and rainbow's glow,” Silver Scales said to himself as he mixed the ingredients together in another beaker, the one from the night before had shattered when the potion had imploded. “Stir with a pegasus feather...” Carefully and hesitantly he drew the pink feather down from the shelf. Holding it gently with his magic he looked at it one last time before taking a deep breath and dropping it into the cloudy pink solution. “This is for you, Cadence,” he said softly as he began to stir, slowly at first, but quickly he hastened the motion when he felt the potion begin to destabilize. “No... no no no no....”

As the feather spun faster and faster in the beaker, the potion continued to glow a bright pink until it flashed once and turned from being pink colored clouds to a thin solution that seemed to resemble fruit juice. Sighing with relief, Silver Scales drew the feather out of the solution and brushed the liquid off the end, placing the feather back in it's box.

Turning his attention back to the potion, he slowly probed it with his magic, the blue light sinking slowly into the liquid and agitating it slightly. Silver Scales pulled back, expecting the potion to destabilize and explode in his face like the others had, but this one just sloshed back and forth inside the beaker as if nothing were wrong. Exhaling, the prince turned his attention back to studying the potion he had created. He was so intent on hoping that the potion was a love potion that for a moment he was shocked that it was in fact a true love potion. And a powerful one to boot. Suspicious that his hopes were clouding his ability to accurately read the potion, he tried again, this time clearing his thoughts as he did so.

Setting the glass down, Silver Scales sat back, his eyes alight with wonder. “I've done it... I've actually done it. I've created a love potion powerful enough to last as long as my love does... I can't believe it!” He stood and began pacing around the small room. “Now what? Now that I have the potion... how do I get it to Cadence? I don't want her to know... she'd think I was the worst kind of stallion... nor can I let that dragon friend of her see me... Oh... what do I do?”

As he paced, he heard a loud shout of excitement from outside his little window. Pulling himself out of his happy little world, Silver Scales pulled the curtain aside and watched as the citizens of the Crystal Kingdom lit up the Crystal Heart with their uplifted spirits. As the streets of the kingdom glowed blue with the magic of the Heart and the protective spells were renewed for the new year, Prince Silver Scales smiled to himself. He'd decided how and when he was going to give the potion to Cadence- and it was that very night.