//------------------------------//
// Everfree 
// Story: My Little Fortress: Friendship for the Blood God 
// by jaked122 
//------------------------------//

Tholumom Lathonudlerned has been content recently. He has mourned for the loss of loved ones recently. He has eaten a decent omelet recently. He has had an excellent drink recently. He has had the satisfaction of learning what an animal trap does.
He is slow to anger, but often feels depressed. He is not particularly sociable. He cannot find happiness in his work. He is not self-conscious. He is reserved.
He has a wonderful kinesthetic sense. He is very strong. He possesses an incredible endurance. He recovers quickly from sickness and injury.
When he is angry, his hands clench into fists. When worried, he tends to use threats often.
His nose is broken. 
He has begun to wonder whether all this death is worth it.



The dwarf returned to the library, feeling exerted after his twofold labor on that day. That Applejack, that one single pony had forced him to work harder than the final confrontation with the demons of hell. He opened up the door, barely able to concentrate, but happy to have succeeded in travelling this far in such duress. The inside was dark, an unexpected treat, “Wow, just like home in the fortress. Poorly lit as always. Come on, turn on the lights you ponies.”
        A groan emanated from the darkness. “Party pooper.” The lights turned on, revealing Pinkie Pie’s disgusted expression. “Come on Tholumom Lathonudlerned, Deep Dark, you ruined the surprise, but you didn’t ruin the party.”
        The dwarf smiled at her. “But, my dear, we have only just begun our celebration of a new life and a triumph against death. I can hardly ask for the pleasure of being surprised in addition to that. I’m sorry about that, but I don’t like surprises. Not to men-”
        The dwarf recoiled as he found a slice of cake shoved into his mouth. “Come on, enjoy the party. You’ve had enough work shoved upon you by AJ.” 
        The dwarf considered the possibilities of what was occurring, but realized that the cake shoved into his mouth was probably meant to stop him from protesting, rather than asphyxiate him.
The entirety of Ponyville had gathered in the library to greet the dwarf. Not surprisingly, it was a little bit more cramped than it usually was. All of Ponyville’s  party goers were in the library, it was a small town, by any measure except perhaps for the dwarf’s own settlement at first. The memory of that was shrouded by the cider, the exhaustion, and the piece of cake that the dwarf chewed slowly. 
Like a sea before a goblin demonic leader, the party split in two, letting a single pony pass. A strange, bright unicorn, minty green, her eyes wide, and a strange wide smile on her face. She passed through the crowd. “Can I talk to you, Tholumom?”
The dwarf lifted his eyebrow at her seriously, “Where did you learn my name?”
She gestured towards a party banner that he had not noticed before. “Okay then, I can see that you have something to talk with me about.”
“Yeah... I kind of said that, directly.” the dwarf looked thoughtfully at the young mare, though he was not entirely sure how he recognized her as being young..
“Good, because asking indirectly would be strange. “ 
“Can I talk to you alone?”
“Sure miss?” The young mare led the dwarf to the empty kitchen.
“Lyra.” she said her name shaking her flank towards him, exposing a lyre cutie mark. The dwarf was not impressed. 
“Was that supposed to arouse me?”  The dwarf’s face was unamused, suddenly. His eyes looked down into the Unicorn’s, startling her with their hardness.
The mint unicorn cringed at the question. “No, not consciously, at least.” 
The dwarf placed his hands behind his head and yawned. “What was it that you wanted to talk about with me?”
“I wanted first to extend my greetings,” the unicorn stood up on two legs, concentrating on her hooves, her horn glowed, and the dwarf’s eyes went wide. “Dear Armok! You can stand on two legs! I’ve never seen such a thing as that!”
“What?”
“You can stand on two legs! That’s impressive.” The dwarf patted the mint green abomination on her head. “You should show this to the others! I’m sure they would like it!”
The Unicorn’s face soured. “You haven’t seen what I can do yet!” her voice was nearly full of desperation. 
“What is that then?”
“I can turn my hooves into hands!”
the dwarf looked down at the unicorn’s forelegs, finding that they did indeed end with hands. “That’s marginally less impressive.”
“Can you at least give me the courtesy of shaking hands with me?”
“What? That’s not how we greet each other where I’m from.”
“Show me then.”
The dwarf grabbed the unicorn’s hand and curled it into a ball, then hit it with his own knuckles. “That’s how you do it in the mountainhome.” The unicorn was stunned. “Are you okay Lyra?”
“That’s what we do...” The mint green unicorn whispered softly, as though in despair.
“Did you have any other questions?”
Lyra stared off into the distance, an impressive feat considering that she was in a small kitchen inside of a tree. She suddenly snapped out of her daze when the dwarf began to wave his hand in front of her face. “Have you met any humans?”
The dwarf had met a few. None that had found him of any interest, neither being very wealthy nor the broker of his fortress, he had very little time to talk to them. “I’ve met a few. Were you looking to have a greeting as a human would have it?”
“Yeah.” Lyra looked sheepish and began to fiddle with something on the ground with her legs. 
“What could possess you to learn about them? They weren’t that interesting. They had very little that we did not, we had more then them in general, and we were smarter, stronger, and a little bit faster. None of that affects the fact that they dominated the peaceful plains of our world, which added up to quite a large amount of land.”
“What made them humans?”
“They were slightly more lithe than us, taller, not so thin as the Elves, they were decent with tools, but when they could just get a caravan together and head to our civilization, they tended to trade with us rather than learn the artisanship themselves. They were decent traders, and they rarely sold you out to the goblins they noticed around your fortress. Overall, I heard that they were relatively decent creatures. They kept a culture based around servitude of the rich, who would pay for soldiers and guards to defend your village in exchange for some fraction of your crops. What mystifies me is what a nice mare like you could find interesting about those humans, they had little time for music, my dear lyre player, they were more interested in the wealth that they could achieve, than what they could bring by spending it.”
“They didn’t like music?”
“They traded instruments, but never did I see a guard, merchant, nor any other human that came to our fortress play upon any of their instruments.” The dwarf cringed at the hands that the unicorn had given herself, they would be large on a seven foot tall ogre. “But to your interest, let me shake your hand, in order to avoid being strangled by them.”
“What do you mean strangled by them?” the dwarf leaned down to her forelegs, measured them.
“You have given yourself hands that are twice as large as is the typical proportion in an average human or dwarf”
“I- I thought that having large hands was a good thing.”
“Perhaps, but the fact that they don’t fit your body is too disturbing to make that any better. You should reduce the size, trust me, unless you are a mechanic, long hands such as that will get you nowhere. Though I’m surprised that Twilight has never experimented with that transformation, she seems like she would be interested, if only for the concept.” The dwarf toyed with the idea of introducing it to her, perhaps on his own. Lyra was either too shy to do so herself, or had a reason to keep her hand spell hidden.
“They would think I was weird if I told them what I know.” Lyra’s eyes were tearing up, fortunately, she had gotten rid of her hands, so the dwarf wasn’t so afraid to hug her, not that he did.
“Now Lyra, I’m curious if my humans and your humans are the same. You probably have some research material, you seem like a smart filly, or mare, or whatever the age-gender specific word is for you, otherwise your own opinion would have been eliminated by the ceaseless destruction of your beliefs as a child. I’m sure that you have gone through the constant and mechanical refinement and quality assertion process that is youth.” The Dwarf looked away, staring off into space, perhaps recalling some half-remembered insult that a friend once hurled at him for questioning whether or not the Elves deserved what the dwarves gave them.
“You went through that too as a colt too, didn’t you?”
“Nah, I went through it as a boy.” The dwarf was not aware that colt and boy were virtually the same in meaning when applied to this context.
“What would you do then, if you were in my situation?” 
“Lyra was quite involved at this point, drawn in to the deception that is the dwarven thought, but in this case, it was truth.” a deep voice boomed through the kitchen.
“Shut up pinkie!” Lyra yelled. 
“Sorry.” The reply crept in from beyond the kitchen.
“That’s odd, she was wrong there.” The dwarf was naturally confused. The dwarven mind is commonly known to have relatively little natural inclination towards deception. In fact, it takes training to make a dwarf a good liar, which means that no dwarf who lies is a bad liar. Either way, Pinkie Pie had failed in her normal omniscient presentation of facts that she could not possibly know. 
“I’d be willing to show you my research materials at some point.” Lyra smiled at the dwarf, pleased that she finally found a good fellow to have a discussion about humanity with. the dwarf smiled, “I’m sure that at some point in the next three months, I can find time to work with you on your quest.” The smile of the dwarf was warm, but also showed its size, enormous, odd because the size of the head was not any larger than what would be expected. Lyra thought about the implications of such a large mouth, so large that a scootaloo might fit inside, which as she thought immediately afterwards, was a strange way to formulate a comparison of size in the first place.
The dwarf rejoined the party, leaving the unicorn alone in the kitchen, pondering the possibilities that the dwarf could open up for her. After a few minutes of thinking, she wandered back to the party.


	
“What do you mean that manticore venom isn’t valuable?” The dwarf looked down at the small vial of bodily fluid which he had bashed out of a manticore, it should be worth something. After all, he had beaten a dangerous creature to death to obtain it, right? The hut in the woods was small, with a single room with a cauldron in it. Perhaps Tholumom thought, Zecora was one of those alchemist thingies which could refine poison into something worth more than its weight in gold.
“That fluid in your hand, which of payment you do demand, is not venom.” The zebra sighed. “You don’t seem to understand, of what prices you demand, there are better ways to earth your wealth, certainly without risking your health.”
“I’m sorry, I guess that I’m not a butcher by profession.” Tholumon smashed the vial on the rim of Zecora’s cauldron.
“You silly little thing! Be cautious of what you swing. Else you’ll end in tears, perhaps greater than your only fears.” Zecora grasped for words, but by the relative lack of meaning in her second line of her couplet, she was running out of things to say.
“What was that then?”


“How can you be so unobservant? Ack! you know no more than a brain dead rodent!” The caudron had begun to bubble in the last minute or so while the dwarf was busy not noticing the cauldron’s boiling. A large eye coalesced out of the boiling cauldron. It glanced around, locking on to the dwarf. When Tholumom noticed that, he paused, considering whether or not he should say hello.
“Hello, floating eye thing.” The eye blinked. “You must be deaf.”
(If the cauldron’s eye is not read as Plankton, then you are doing it wrong)
“No you damnable dwarf. I do not accept greetings from a lowly life form as yourself.”
The dwarf drummed on the rim of the cauldron, amused. “Aye, but you did respond. Also I happen to be your creator, so if anything, I’m the superior creature.”
“You are a mockery of a biologist. You dropped a flask of urine into this cauldron, you pitiful fool. You couldn’t possibly have any idea that a simple flask of urine would result in my creation.”
“Of course I did. All dwarven alchemists are trained purposely to create contemptuous creatures inside of random cauldrons with whatever they have handy.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yes. Because Dwarven Alchemists don’t exist.” The dwarf laughed.
“So I’m not superior?” The cauldron bubbled, furrowing its single eyebrow.
“No, my cauldronite, you’re not, perhaps you should stop existing.”
“I believe that you are correct.” The cauldron seemed resolved in its tone.
The eye in the cauldron disappeared in a puff of logic taking the cauldron with it.
“Of such a cauldron you have broke, never should I have spoke.”
“I owe you something too, don’t I?”
“Yes my minion for the week, do not fear for it shall not be bleak.”
“I don’t suppose that you would like a system of catacombs underneath your house for whatever you might need a system of catacombs for?”
“I have no need for caves my friend, instead there is something you must rend. Beware its teeth its flashing eyes, for in the darkness they surprise.”
“That sounds like fun.”
“Fun it may be, but it will be harder than bucking a tree.”
“What is it that you want me to... rend?”
“A manticore, no more.”
“Sure.”
“Do you ask anything of me?”
“Not really. You should tell me where it is, but beyond that, I can handle it.”
“And of those ingredients that I will ask of you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it would make a nasty stew.”
“You should probably tell me about those too.” The dwarf sighed, sitting down on the floor, next to the cauldron’s stand. He could expect an earful.