//------------------------------// // The Sorcerer's Apprentice // Story: The Colours of Dusk // by Gallifrey //------------------------------// The Colours of Dusk by Gallifrey Chapter Thirteen The Sorcerer's Apprentice Dear Diary, Of all the things I expected this trip to become, where I am right now is definitely not what I had in mind. In a good way. I have met an amazing stallion here, I've never been treated so well by one in all my life! He's sweet and caring and handsome too! I've been getting to know him well over the last few days and he even invited me out for coffee yesterday. I'm so lucky to have met Elusive. I am still finding it hard to believe that I have not only been involved in a hot air balloon crash, but I seem to have landed myself in a romantic drama, which, incidentally, was what caused said balloon crash! To be honest, it's all got a bit out of control recently, with many misunderstandings, ill-timed interventions and plain blind ignorance. But hopefully, for both Dusk and Blitz's sake, they can get together and be happy. I hope Blitz tries before I leave, I'd love to see them happy together. Dawn dipped her quill back into the inkwell and paused, biting her lower lip slightly. She looked down at the gently drying ink upon the parchment and mused to herself. Wasn't it about time she got on with some work, as Dusk was currently doing in his laboratory? Her eyes wandered to the basement door and she felt a pang of guilt. Yes, she really should do something academic, even if Luna hadn't actually asked her to. Her mirror like lake of collected thought was disturbed by the ripples of birdsong emanating from outside. There was a melody woven in the chorus that she hadn't heard before. Curious, she got up from the dining room table she was sat at and trotted outside to investigate. As Dawn left the house, the cellar door opened to reveal a fog of blue smoke. Spluttering and gasping, Dusk leapt out of the azure cloud and landed haphazardly on the library floor, coughing. That hadn't gone well at all; frankly, he was surprised he wasn't a mouse wearing a hat right now. Motioning to the kitchen for a much desired drink of water, the unicorn noticed a small and slightly battered looking notebook. Confused, Dusk wondered how his lab book had got up here, but upon closer inspection, he realised - with a small jolt - that it was Dawn's diary. He turned his head, intending to bypass it and return to fixing his catastrophic experiment, but his eyes gravitated towards it like a hoof to a 'wet paint' sign. The words 'met an amazing stallion', 'never been treated so well', and 'getting to know him' leapt out at him like a snarling lion. Oh no no no no! Not Dawn surely! That was preposterous! Nope, it couldn't be that! he thought desperately as his heart thumped madly in his chest. The seconds dragged by like claws on a blackboard before Dusk read 'so lucky to have met Elusive". Dusk felt a great tension suddenly unravel inside him. Thank heavens! See? Haha! You knew you had nothing to worry about! Haha ha! his mind told him with shaky confidence. It was never a good thing when even your thoughts had the air of hysterical laughter. He dared to read on. He approached 'not only been involved in a hot air balloon crash, but I seem to have landed myself', when, to his sinking horror, he saw a snow white hoof gently, but firmly close it. Dusk looked up, petrified. "You're lucky you're reading my diary," said Dawn briskly. "I know curiosity well, of course, for better or worse, so I understand. I'd probably have done the same in your position... but what did you read?" she asked, more seriously. "I.. uh, I read about you and E-Elusive," he stammered, covering his head with a hoof, bracing himself for a slap. When nothing seemed to be happening, he peeked open an eye. "Nothing... beyond that?" she asked, with only a trace of apprehension seeping through. Dusk shook his head. Dawn, internally relieved, scooped up her book, trying to project that she didn't actually care he'd looked, it didn't seem to work. "I'm sorry," said Dusk to the floor. "Aw, c'mon," said Dawn encouragingly, looking around for something to divert the subject to. "Hey, what's with all the smoke?" She pointed to the cellar door, which was still slowly oozing a blue cloud. "Ah, that was just an animation spell that went wrong," said Dusk, latching onto the turn of conversation like burdock seeds to a dog's fur. "Animation spell? Can I have a look?" "I... you can look at the aftermath..." he said with a slightly far away voice, trotting down into his lab. Bubble Berry was like a cork in water, even if you tried to put him down, he'd bob right back up again in an instant, jumping around, but even corks could be submerged if you tied them to a weight. At the current time, Berry was lying and groaning on his bed like a walrus. "I told you not to eat so much!" barked Blitz, having little sympathy for the pink stallion's foolishness. Berry merely groaned in response, turning over onto his back and clutching at his belly. "H-How much did I eat?" he asked weakly. "Mrs Cake is doing damage control and it appears she won't be able to sell any bakery products for at least a week. We're just glad you didn't drink all the coffee too." Berry gave a wan grin, looking Blitz hazily in the eye. "That's what you think," he managed. "Dear goddesses man, how are you still alive?" "I'm not entirely sure... Blitz?" "Yeah?" "Is there supposed to be a wormhole on my ceiling? I don't remember putting it there..." Blitz looked up to see a perfectly ordinary cream coloured ceiling. He raised an eyebrow under the momentum of slight concern for his friend. "And, ah, of course," Blitz began uncertainly, "you can't do something like this and not expect it to bite you in the ass, so uh, h-here's the bill..." He hovered the note over Berry's face, but it elicited no reaction whatsoever; the pink stallion's eyes were glazed like the two hundred doughnuts he had just eaten. Blitz therefore just sort of placed it gently on Berry's face and then scampered from the room before Berry realised what was written on it. He was padding halfway down the stairs before he heard a panicked voice yell "TWO THOUSAND BITS?!" He almost made across the empty café to beautiful freedom when he was assailed by a mass of pink. There was a brief tangle of pony, and a synchronous eye roll from the Cakes behind the counter. "Good grief!What happened in here?!" Dawn and Dusk descended into the gloomy cellar of the Library. Through the blue haze, Dawn could only see blurred silhouettes of what looked like broken test tubes and... splinters of wood? "It was nightmarish," Dusk said, kicking aside shattered glass with a tinkle. "What's with all this wood?" asked Dawn. "At least I think it's wood..." Dusk stopped and Dawn walked into him. In the low light it was difficult for either of them to see. "Sorry," apologised Dusk, reaching out a hoof blindly to find her. "I would turn on the lights, but they got broken too." "Is there anything in here that isn't broken?" "I don't know, because I cannot see anything that's in here," said Dusk distractedly as he fumbled for his desk, the sounds of disturbed paper, broken glass and a grunting Dusk permeated the darkness. Dawn didn't understand why Dusk wasn't just lighting up his horn like any reasonable pony with a horn would do in the current situation. Instead of suffering the question with no answer, she decided to simply ask him. "Dusk, why don't you just use your magic to light us up in here?" The sounds stopped as Dusk considered this. "Sorry," he said, closing his eyes and lighting his horn with a purplish white light. "I-I've just been rather distracted as of late, or so it seems," he said, collecting up his notes now he could see them. In the new, pony-powered light, Dawn looked down at what appeared to be an explosion at a matchstick factory. The floor was strewn with thousands and thousands of splinters, it was quite impressive really, for all the wrong reasons. Looking up, she saw that the vast majority of Dusk's diverse and intricate (and almost entirely superfluous) lab apparatus of test tubes, flasks and beakers had been ruined and smashed. "What the hell did you do?!" she said, open mouthed. It was hard to believe one pony could have caused this much carnage. Dusk's eyes travelled to a rather innocuous looking broomstick that was lying on top of all the splinters. Dawn looked completely at sea. "I was down here, working on– trying to work on a new alchemical agent I've been researching, but I couldn't focus at all. That's when an idea occured to me. Now I know Spike's the best assistant I could ask for, but he's only one dragon after all, so I thought to myself, perhaps I could enchant something to aid me down here while I worked so I didn't have to think about so many things at once. So I tried an animation spell on the broomstick, gave it some arms to work with, and set it to copying down my diction as I worked. When it came to reversing the charm, I appeared to have done a botched up duplicating spell in its stead... soon enough I was surrounded by dozens of the damn things." "How horrifying," said Dawn dryly. "Hey! It was pretty creepy with load of them! The only way to get rid of them was to destroy them all." Of course, Dusk kept one of the brooms in one piece, it didn't do not to have a broom in a cellar after all. "That doesn't explain the blue smoke though," said Dawn, perplexed. "By the time I'd finished with the brooms, my experiment went and exploded from lack of supervision." "Ah." She looked to his tired eyes and slumped demeanour, like a sloth who'd been up all night. "Want some lunch? My treat?" Dusk's smile was more than confirmation. Bubble Berry came with his positives and negatives, both of which seemed to be skewed to the extremes. His good qualities shone like a supernova over everyone he met, and his bad qualities sucked you in like the black hole that forms immediately afterwards. In short, Berry Bubble was about as easy to handle as a star in its death throes: proceed with caution and some extremely durable oven mitts and you should be fine. The main reason the Cakes weren't particularly angry with Bubble Berry was because a) he was a invaluable sales-stallion, and b) this debacle would get ponies talking, and, in the long run, better business for them... once they had goods to actually sell again. The two stallions came to rest: Bubble Berry heaving above him, his eyes mad and twitching slightly, Blitz, pinned down and looking for an escape. "How the hay am I gonna pay two thousand bits?" he uttered in a whisper that carried all the way over to the Cakes. Mr Cake made to speak, but was interrupted by a tinkling of a bell. It was Dusk Shine. "I– oh goodness, I'm having spa flashbacks," he whimpered, looking down at the two ponies on the floor in their compromising position. "This isn't what it looks like!" yelled Blitz immediately. "Two thousand bits!" shouted Berry at the same time. Dusk, completely flummoxed to what he was witnessing, looked up to the Cakes for help. "Berry ate everything, we've naturally charged him accordingly, and now he seems to be panicking," said Mr Cake, with impressive serenity. "Oh, hello," said Dawn with amusement as she walked in on the scene behind Dusk. "What's this remind me of, Dusk?" Dusk answered by turning rather pink and fumbling his words. "Couldn't um say, Dawn. Er, Mister Cake? Did I hear you right when you said Berry had eaten everything?" Mister Cake nodded forlornly. "We will have to reduce your payment Berry until your debt is cleared," he sighed, turning back into the basement of the shop, to salvage what little had been spared in Berry's righteous cleansing of the establishment for anything edible. "Ya know, I didn't even get to see it," said Blitz sadly, looking down at the ill-looking Berry, lying on his back. "I mean, it must have been quite the sight," he concluded, tactlessly poking the pink stallion in the belly, causing him to belch loudly. "I'm sure the patrons who witnessed it will be scarred for many years yet, don't worry," said Dusk dryly, fetching Berry a glass of water. After a half-hearted struggle, Dusk poured it down the stallion's unwilling throat. Berry grunted in pain and his eyes began to water; with a monumental effort, he staggered to his hooves and stumbled to the bathroom. The sounds that quickly followed made Dusk throw two hooves over his ears and cowered to the ground. Even Blitz's nose scrunched up in mild disgust. Dawn however looked absolutely unperturbed and was trying not to laugh at Dusk, who looked like he was about to throw up himself. "I knew the water would make him throw up," moaned Dusk, "but I didn't think it'd be this bad!" A minute or so later, Berry bounded into the room as though nothing had happened. "Hey! What's for lunch? I'm hungry!" A silence so stunned it had been tasered was his answer.