“This is the story of how my daughter was born.” Tholumom spoke in a quiet, calm, measured fashion, as though he was trying to make himself easier to listen to.
“Hey Tholumom!” The other miner shouted from across the room. The meeting hall was large and lively on this day, its polished stone gleaming in the half-hearted rays that made it through the entrance tunnel. Lanterns glowed in a friendly impotence, casting rings of light on the floor. Tholumom was talking to his wife, whose radiance was all he could be sworn to protect. Zustashmabdug had interrupted that. Tholumom motioned for him to come across the room. Zustash obliged him. “The boss has another section for us to mine out. He says that he wants you to start the preliminary digging.”
Tholumom shuddered, the boss didn’t request particular workers unless it was a job which carried dangers. “Is the digging dangerous?” Tholumom asked.
Zustash shrugged. “I don’t know. The boss just had me notify you. If it helps, it’s on the eastern side of the fortress”
“That’s not too bad I suppose.” Tholumom was not intimidated, the geology on the eastern side was made up of mostly igneous rock, strong stuff. “Will you be alright, my love?”
His wife nodded, “I might be pregnant, but that doesn't mean that you have to worry for me constantly. I’m a dwarf, we’re built of stout stuff. Go off and take care of the bosses’ work, I know you’ll be okay.”
He kissed his wife goodbye. then headed off to the eastern side of the fortress.
The eastern side of the fortress was used more as a storage space than a living or working space. As a result, the lanterns were dim, and the stone floors had never felt an engraver’s touch, leaving them rough and ugly with the marks of the pickaxes that opened the cavity in the first place.
Tholumom squinted at the marked wall. Felt it with his hands, it was not quite the same feeling as the other walls. The area in the fortress is too dark to see, so he confines his tests to feeling the rock. The rock is not out of place enough to make him worry, so he begins his excavation process.
He has taken four hours to dig in five meters, he laughs as he thinks about how he must be a bit rusty, it should have taken him two hours. The work is not exhausting for him, he has done it all his life, and found it to be the best that he could ask for.
He gets another meter into the stone before breaking through to the other side. “That’s not right.” The dwarf pauses to get his bearings, the side of the mountain should be at least fifty meters away. He glances into the darkness, and hears the sound of rushing water. Dammit. Underground rivers. It is impossible for the dwarf to continue, digging, but that stops being the priority when a wet slapping noise begins to echo around the cavern. Tholumom knew at that point, that he had found carp.
“But carp aren’t carnivores.” Twilight mentioned exhausted by the absurd story.
“That doesn’t mean that they can’t drag you down into the depths of the river to drown.”
“No, I’m pretty sure that carp don’t do that.”
“Anyway, I ran back to the center of the fortress, terrified. When I got there, I found that my wife had given birth to my daughter. A wonderful bundle which brought me happiness for the next nine years.” The dwarf finally smiled, “She also motivated me to purge the fortress of the carp, so I lead a squad of soldiers to the river, this time we brought lanterns so we could see the damned creatures, and we slaughtered them.” the dwarf paused for a moment. “Of course, they killed seven peasants, most of whom had been conscripted into the military beforehand, so it was a rather successful battle.”
“Seven out of how many soldiers?” Twilight had produced a notepad again, somehow.
“I think that there were twelve soldiers that day, including me.”
“How many carp were there?”
“three.”
“So, for every kill, you lost three and a third soldiers?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a terrible ratio! How can you even bother fighting when you’re that bad at it?” Twilight’s expression was of mathematically induced horror. Sort of like the expression that dwarves got when they calculated the chances of surviving to their twenties.
“Well... We can’t really swim, and since the carp have this tendency to pull us into the water, if they succeed, we typically die.” The dwarf shrugged, “just the way we live. Or something”
“Have you ever considered learning how to swim?” Twilight’s tone became condescending, the princess shook her head at her student. Apparently if you weren’t Prince Blueblood you couldn’t get away with condescension of that kind of magnitude.
Meanwhile in Blueblood’s estate
“Sir, your special diplomatic summary of the Crystal Kingdom has arrived today.”
“But Preppy Heights, I thought I told you I wanted the Crystal Empire summary.”
“Sir, I already explained that there is no Crystal Empire other than the one which is synonymous with the Crystal Kingdom.”
“Preppy, I know that you went to some kind of school which had a population of forty-two and a strong association with sub-ivy league colleges, but I know more than you.” The condescending moron placed his tea cup back onto the table inside the pegasus carriage which he had cleverly attached to his house by means of Crazy Glue.
“Absolutely sir, who am I to question the inner workings of a stallion whose brilliance caused him to use mayonnaise instead of Crazy Glue to fix a pegasus carriage which randomly crashed into his bedroom onto his house?” Preppy Heights felt, as did everypony who knew Blueblood, to shove him and his ‘brilliant architectural masterwork’ out of the window which it had replaced.
“Now you see my point.” Preppy Heights rolled his eyes, he really couldn’t remember how he got this job in the first place.
“Also look into a material I’ve heard of called Slade, I want a chandelier made out of it.”
“Absolutely sir.”
“Twilight, I know that you have a problem when things don’t make sense, but you have a lot to think about.”
“And now something bad is going to happen because you said that before the changeling invasion. Out of all the times you have said that, something terrible has happened.”
“Come on Twilight, that’s probably not going to happen. Anyway, we just don’t like swimming, we can do it, but it practically takes a dwarf getting thrown into waist deep water to teach us.” Twilight shoved a hoof into her head, making the dwarf wonder whether or not self-mutilation was a common theme here.
“Okay, Tholumom, there is also a more pressing matter at hand here, there is a volcano that is dangerously close to eruption, if my geologists are right at least. If what you’ve told Twilight is true, then your kind know how to deal with that, maybe even prevent it?”
Tholumom furrowed his brow in thought for a moment, was it really right to give up the treasured secrets of the state to these horses? “Well... I could build a long channel to direct the magma to a center of industry, which could use it to smelt ore without coal, or potentially, generate elarctracity, was it? without coal or a moving water source. It wouldn’t prevent an eruption, but it could move enough magma out of the volcano to make it less dangerous when it happens.”
Celestia raised an eyebrow at this idea. “Twilight, does that make any sense to you?”
Twilight shook her head, “I think it might work, but... What if it goes wrong? How many ponies could suffer?”
“Not more than a hundred.” Tholumom yawned. “I don’t see why other races see it as dangerous, it is safe if you know how to handle it. Just like that Elictracity thingy, right?”
“Tholumom, the word you are looking for is electricity.”
“Applejack, it’s your turn, three of the orcs are dead already, but there are two more left.”
“Pinkie Pie, I can in fact listen to you narrate the story, I know.”
“Come on Applejack, I really want to do something else, let’s finish this battle so we can leave.”
Pinkie Pie glared at Rainbow Dash, “You know I love you Dashie, but if you keep on ruining my campaign, then we’ll have a problem.”
Rainbow Dash shuddered at the thought.
“Okay, Ahm going to take out one of the orcs.”
“Which one, the one with the bowtie, or the one without the bowtie?”
“Ah don’t care.”
“But if you don’t care then what is there to care about?”
“Not Ponies and Paladins.”
Pinkie Pie flipped the table that the trio was using, throwing the various roleplaying supplies to the floor of the barn. “Well then, I guess it’s on to GURPS.”
“What?” Applejack and Rainbow Dash chorused.
“Come on you guys, we haven’t even wasted an hour playing PnP, why don’t we try the other system?”
“I’d really like to do some... flying.” Rainbow Dash glanced pleadingly at Applejack. “And I have to buck some Apple trees.”
Pinkie glared at them. “You two are finishing one campaign with me.”
“Why would we need to build forges in this manner in order to utilize the lava taken from the volcano?” Twilight’s question caused Tholumom to think of the various humans that have asked the same question, of course, they never really tried hard enough to think about it.
“Lava’s convection currents in the air are so hot that it is possible to seriously injure yourself just by standing near it. I would recommend that you use a fairly small aperture for whatever ducts you use to bring in the heat.” Tholumom sighed, “Or you could build it like you suggested and find the corpses of twelve good ponies dessicated and burnt by the heat and flame.”
Celestia glanced between them. “Tholumom, the reason that Twilight sees your process as flawed is due to our production methods taking place on a larger scale than you must have been accustomed to back on your world. I don’t think that you understand the idea of a blast furnace, and while your species’ method is fine for small scale, our smelting takes place at such a larger scale that the wages of the ponies which would be employed would outweigh the benefits of not needing an external fuel source.”
Tholumom raised an eyebrow before taking a sip of tea from a flagon, drawing Twilight’s attention to his strange choice of drinking vessels. “You sure do know a lot about industry for a princess whose very way of life is existentially separated from the practical applications of such.” he took another sip from his strange choice of drink holder. “I really appreciate this mug, it doesn’t even spill as much as ours.”
“Thol, that’s not a mug. That’s our serving container.”
“Oh, so that’s why it seems perfectly sized. hmm.” He finished the flagon and placed it back on the table. He grinned as he marvelled at how whatever drink they had given him had caused him to become drowsier, completely opposite to the revitalizing effect of alcohol.
“You can keep it Thol.” Celestia’s smile probably caused a windigo to “D’aww” as some say.
The dwarf’s eyes lit up like Pinkie’s in a candy shop, or any shop for that matter. “Really?” Celestia nodded. “I love you forever Princess Celestia.” He clutched the flagon greedily in his arms, then hugged the royal Alicorn warmly. The mere sight of it could have caused Chrysalis’ heart to grow three sizes that day, or possibly feed an entire army for a month, but what Chrysalis did with her food was outside the subjects which anyone in the room could possibly make a valid judgement about.
“I have a favor to ask then...”
By the way a flagon can be:
Or if you prefer: