xjuggerscrapsx

by xjuggernaughtx

A Periodic Tale of Elements: Generosity - Chapter Seven (Dark, Adventure)

Transitive Properties of Elemental Magic… Blackstone’s Untested Magical Theorems… Eldritch Mists: A History of Dark Forces… Ugh, where is it?!

Clover swept books aside, coughing as dust filled the air. Why doesn’t he ever put anything away?! he thought as he attempted to control his inevitable sneeze. Losing the battle, he hacked and coughed even the harder as the sneeze whipped yet more dirt into the air. He’d asked himself ten times a day why he’d become a wizard’s apprentice, but he’d never had any convincing answers. It certainly wasn’t the working conditions. Or the hours. Or the education. In fact, Clover found himself hard pressed to find any good reason why he was still with the wizard, but here he was.

Clover certainly recognized Star Swirl’s brilliance. Everypony did. It was like looking up at the sun. It burned bright and hot, and it was captivating, yet you knew if you looked too long, it would blind you. He’d seen countless wonders during his time with Star Swirl, but wonders were not always pleasant, and Clover often found that he had trouble sleeping at nights.

“Clover!” a sharp voice yelled from the adjoining room. “I’ve asked you to retrieve a book, not recalculate Mindtrap’s Fourth Law! I’m in the middle of a time-sensitive experiment that could fall apart at any second without that research, but I suppose that means nothing to you!”

“Well, you see,” Clover shot back, rifling through another pile of books, “there’s this whole shelf labeled ‘Summoning Spells’, yet your book of incantations doesn’t seem to be on it! Again!”

“Oh, for the love of—” Star Swirl grumbled from the other room. “If you’d pay attention once in a while, you’d remember that we worked on astral transfers last week and I fortified the exchanges with energies from both the Great Plateau and the Seventh Dimension! If you find the tome on the Twelve Adjoining Realms, then the summoning manual should be nearby! It must be by the door! Hurry!”

Clover cringed as Star Swirl’s voice filled with strain, and he dove for the least dusty pile of books he could find. Shoveling copies of worn texts aside, he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the book’s metallic copper lettering glittering darkly near the bottom of the pile. Yanking it out, he ran from the room, his eyes still streaming from the library’s assault of dust and cobwebs.

Taking care to avoid the laboratory floor’s meticulous pattern of runes and sigils, he shuffled as quickly as possible to Star Swirl’s lectern. Throwing the book on top of it, he began rapidly leafing through the pages.

Behind the lectern, Star Swirl stood, hooves outstretched, his eyes locked onto a hole on the wall that swirled with liquid madness. Clover tried his best to ignore it, but the hole pulsed and writhed like a living thing. Malevolence poured from dimensional rift, and Clover was sure that whatever it was on the other side would pay any price to open the portal wide enough to step through. Clover winced as he nervously checked on Star Swirl’s condition. Sweat poured off of the wizard’s body as he tried to force his hooves together, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

“Quit staring at me and find the spell, dolt!” the wizard growled. “This isn’t as easy as I make it look!”

Jumping guiltily, Clover’s hooves were a blur as he rifled through the pages until he finally found it. “Aha!” he yelled, stepping away from the lectern. “The Psychondal Extrusion Incantation!”

Star Swirl sucked in a stuttering gasp of air and began the rite. His horn shining like a thousand suns, Star Swirl began chanting in a low, grating voice that Clover thought sounded like a stone sarcophagus being opened.

The candles in the room guttered wildly, and then went out as the portal began to rapidly devour the room’s air. Clover set his hooves widely apart, gritting his teeth against the rift’s titanic strength. He watched with some dismay as more than a few tools and papers disappeared through the twisting maw. Somehow, that’ll be my fault, he thought as his mane whipped around his face.

Despite the loss of the candles, the room glowed pestilentially. The portal’s own eldritch light combined with that of Star Swirl’s horn, bathing the room in a spectrum that Clover knew ponykind were never meant to experience. All around him, he could see the membranous dimensional barriers that were normally invisible to ponies were rippling and twisting. Every so often, some terrible, unknowable shape would near those curtains of energy, and Clover would screw his eyes shut, turning away. There were things that lived in the wider Outside that could break a pony’s sanity as easily as snapping a dry twig.

His sepulchral voice booming now, Star Swirl began pulling one hoof away from the portal while slowly trying to close his other into a fist. In response, a writhing, elongated shape pushed its way through the horrible, spinning nightmare. As the flopping, flailing thing fell into the workshop, the maw began to close, and the suction became more extreme. Despite his firm footing, Clover found himself being slowly dragged across the floor where the eel-like monstrosity mewled. Its tentacle body pawed the air, reaching for Clover, and he backpedaled, fighting harder than he’d ever fought for anything in his life. Even from several yards away, he could feel hate flowing off the thing in waves so strong that his stomach heaved.

With a primal shout, Star Swirl finally closed his hoof, and with it, the portal. Gibbering pathetically, the thing on the floor flopped desperately for a few seconds and then became still. Clover’s body shook as adrenaline slammed through his veins. Curling his lip in disgust, he watched the thing blacken and twist, shriveling into a wrinkled, baleful statue.

“There,” panted Star Swirl as he leaned heavily on his lectern. “Now we have a psychondal bone to work with when we test out the Abjurant Pathways tomorrow.” Star Swirl sat suddenly, his shaking legs refusing to support him any longer. Resting his head against the wall, he turned slowly to Clover, his eyes heavy with fatigue. “Now, put that thing in a pentacle-sealed case, but do not touch it with your bare hooves!” he said, coughing into his hoof. Clover could see the foaming spittle was speckled with blood. “Even the dead bones of a psychondal are enough to rip a pony’s mind apart. It would like nothing more than to devour you where you stand.”

Clover turned back to the bone, inspecting it with disgust. It’s stench was incredible, even from several yards away. “That… that thing was a bone?!” he asked, tilting his head.

Star Swirl shook his head, laughing derisively. “You didn’t think every creature in the multicosm had the same physiology we have, did you? We just call it a bone because it’s an internal support structure of a sort. It’s as close to your bones as a fish is to buttered toast, but in the state that it’s currently in, you two have a similar density.” Leaning his head back, the wizard promptly fell asleep.

~~~

Clover had just stored the case in Star Swirl’s repository when the thunderclap hit. Even in this windowless room, the effect was blinding. There’s light, he thought, squinting and shielding his eyes from the glare, filtering in through the cracks between the masonry! How is that even possible?

Somewhere above him, the tower was sounding a continuous note that made his teeth rattle. Holding his head in one hoof, Clover stumbled out of the repository and back into the lab. It felt like his skull was splitting open. Still leaning against the wall, Star Swirl opened his eyes and spit out a few curses.

“Those nincompoops! They’d better have a good reason for this!” he growled, pushing off of the wall.

“W-W-What i-is g-g-g-oing on?” Clover yelled over the noise.

Star Swirl stared at his assistant for a moment, before shaking his head in disgust. “Just levitate a little, Clover,” he said between his clenched teeth. “Why is it always too much to ask for you to at least try and perform a few experiments before asking for the answers to everything?” Without waiting for an answer, Star Swirl glided swiftly for the door.

Shooting his master a brief, but viciously dirty glance, Clover concentrated, assembling the spell in his mind. As his hooves lifted off of the ground, the horrible vibration stopped. Working his tongue around his mouth, he checked to make sure that none of his teeth had shattered. With his head still throbbing, he floated after Star Swirl.

“Well, since it was so loud,” he posited as he chased the wizard, “I’ll suppose it’s some sort of an alarm. You’d need to be able to hear, or at least feel it, from anywhere in the tower, no matter what kind of experiment was happening at the time.”

“Truly, your deductive reasoning is a wonder to behold,” Star Swirl drawled back at him. Clover wished for the tenth time today that he could just clock the old buzzard and be done with him. Getting anything from the wizard, even a compliment, was like squeezing blood from a stone. “The alarm you’re hearing signals a priority one national emergency. More importantly, it confirms why I never leave this tower if I can help it.”

Clover left the statement lingering between them as long as he could stand it. “And why is that?” he finally asked, knowing that it would come back to bite him.

“That bell only rings when someone has done something colossally, stupefying idiotic and they want me to clean it up for them,” Star Swirl growled, tilting his body to glide up the circular stairs that ran along the tower’s inner wall. “Every time that happens, yet more ponies see me as the answer to their follies, and the bell rings again and again.” He turned to regard Clover balefully over his shoulder. “Just like you. Obviously, all would be revealed if you only had the patience to wait a few moments, but here you are, demanding answers, solutions, just like everypony else!”

“I didn’t demand anything, you old bastard!” Clover yelled. “You’re supposed to be teaching me!”

“You can’t cultivate a field that’s full of rocks, Clover,” Star Swirl returned, his voice full of false patience. “First, you have to remove the rocks, then plow the field. Once the seeds are planted, you deposit the fertilizer and water, and watch to see what grows.” Star Swirl poured on an extra burst of speed as he neared the top of the tower. “You’re field is still full of rocks and you want to jump straight to tilling the soil. It’s a great way to get a broken plow, and I don’t have to tell you what that means in my line of work, do I?” Star Swirl stopped and fished out a key from one of his many pouches. “I probably will have to tell him, won’t I?” he muttered under his breath as he inserted the key.

Frowning, Clover stopped behind the wizard, squinting his eyes as he looked to the ceiling in concentration. “And so, you’re saying that my time here has been… what? Training?”

“Yes, fool!” Star Swirl exploded, whirling on his startled assistant. “Haven’t I been telling you to deduce before asking?! Haven’t I set up memory skills like finding the book earlier?! Haven’t I set up linear logic exercises and projects in comparative analysis?!” Star Swirl thrust his face into Clover’s, tapping his hoof against his assistant’s forehead. “Before you learn, you must learn to think! Right now, you’ve got the brainpower of sack of rotten potatoes!” He turned abruptly back to the door, turning the key. “Now quit bothering me! You’re like an anchor around the neck of a drowning stallion, Clover.”

Clover swallowed hard, his face burning. He’d been the pride of his village. No pony for miles around had been able to keep up with him. After three years of school, he’d already run out of course material. But here he was, fumbling around like the town idiot behind this surly wizard. He’s right though, Clover though, clenching his jaw. I’ve gotten lazy. It was always so easy before. He watched as Star Swirl trotted into the room and touched a panel on the wall. With startling suddenness, the ringing vibration stopped. Rising up on his hind legs, Star Swirl extended his other hoof toward Clover. It’s time to show this stallion what I’ve got! he thought, his face hardening with resolve.

“Hey, jackass!” Star Swirl said, looking back through the door as he flexed his hoof toward his assistant. “I suppose you want to get left behind?”

Though what I might have is a right hook… Clover thought sourly as he grabbed the wizard’s calloused hoof.

Then there was light. And pain.

~~~

Clover lay writhing on the ground. Every bit of him was on fire.

“Quit screaming and get up,” Star Swirl growled at him, kicking at the apprentice with a hoof. “We don’t have time for this. The effect dissipates rapidly, so get moving!”

Groaning, Clover got his hooves under himself and tried to rise. Star Swirl clucked his tongue as his apprentice stumbled, trying to work out the stabbing pins and needles that wracked his body. Finally, Clover thought as he rubbed his body vigorously. While still unpleasant the pain was receding. Clover opened his mouth that ask about the process, only to snap it shut again. This was something he should deduce for himself. Star Swirl gave him a tight-lipped smile before trotting off toward a nearby castle.

Okay, I’m obviously in Crystal City, by the look of things, Clover mused, scanning the darkened city for clues as he trotted behind the wizard. But something’s wrong here. I remember reading that the crystals were bright, but none of these are shining. Clover squinted down an intersecting avenue as they passed. There’s no pony out in the streets, and the houses are mostly dark. Clover’s eyes grew wide, his lips pulling back from his teeth. Gone! he thought. They’re all gone for some reason!

“I can hear those rusty wheels beginning to turn,” Star Swirl called back to him. “Quit dawdling and tell me what you’ve learned.”

Clover quickened his pace, wincing at the way it echoed in the empty streets. “We’re in Crystal City and something has happened to the population. They’re all missing.”

“Eh,” the wizard replied. “Obvious, but nonetheless true. How did we get here?”

Caught off guard, Clover blinked rapidly, looking up into the sky. Beside him, the wizard sighed heavily. “Molecular transfer and reassembly!” Clover said, the words rushing out. “That’s why the sensation was so acute! The body is rebuilding itself bit by bit, and the mind awakens before the transfer is complete.”

Stopping before a pair of palace guards, Star Swirl gave his apprentice a stern stare, but Clover thought he caught a hint of amusement in them. “That may be the first sign of skill you’ve shown to me. Perhaps you’re not a total waste of my time.”

Star Swirl motioned impatiently at the guards. “Open these doors and tell the royal couple that we’ve arrived!” he snapped.

“Err… who’s arrived?” the guard said, blinking.

“Who’s arr— who do you think, moron?! Star Swirl yelled, pointed a hoof at his flowing beard. “Nevermind! Get out of the way!” His horn glowing, Star Swirl’s magic surrounded the palace doors, and they flew open, barely missing the guards as they dove out of the way. Muttering under his breath, Star Swirl stomped inside.

“Um, sorry about that,” Clover said, helping the guard to his feet. “That’s Star Swirl the Bearded. Your king and queen sent for us—”

“WOULD YOU HURRY UP?! Star Swirl’s voice roared back down the hallway.

Jumping, Clover cantered after his teacher, disappearing into the dark hallway.This bit probably needs to be reformulated, as I don't think a hoof can ever be curled into a fist.

Sure it can. Think of the way that Scootaloo curls her hoof when she says, "Here, branches, branches" during Sleepless in Ponyville.

Maybe 'fist' is the problem here. Maybe I could just go with curled. I'll give it some consideration.