Chapter 3: A World of Blocks
“Twilight, wake up!” Pinkie shouted, shaking the purple unicorn awake.
“Pinkie, where are we?” Twilight asked groggily.
“In a hospital, but that’s not what’s important! I spoke with someone, and he says this whole world is blocky like him!”
“Pinkie, that’s ridiculous,” Twilight began as she got off the bed. “Everypony knows that—“
Twilight blinked in surprise. Everything in the small hospital room was made entirely of right angles and flat edges. Everything.
How is this even possible? Twilight wondered.
Before she could ponder the oddities of this world any further, Pinkie said “I’m gonna throw a party!” and bolted out of the room.
Twilight heard the muffled sounds of Pinkie waking up the other ponies one-by-one as she trotted down the hall of the hospital. Everything was angular. There were no curves whatsoever.
As she rounded a corner, she heard the sound of a quill pen scratching on paper. She followed the sound, and soon ran into a creature she’d never seen before.
The blocky dragon-like creature was seated at a desk, writing in a book.
He turned at the sound of hooves and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Good. For a second there, I thought the pink one had come back. Scared me half to death that one did. Please tell me that you’re not all like her. I don’t think I could take that kind of strain.”
Twilight chuckled.
“No, we’re not all like Pinkie. We all have different traits and quirks. She just loves parties and gets excited easily.”
“So, the pink one is Pinkie, huh? I didn’t know that anyone besides Crafters had individual names,” the blue creature said as he picked up the book and stood up.
“Crafters?” Twilight asked in confusion.
“Crafters are people like me,” the blue creature said. “We’re all one race, but we also have eight sub-races: humans, monster-likes, fox-likes, rabbit-likes, dragon-likes, elves, dwarves and orcs.”
“And you’re a dragon-like?” Twilight guessed.
“Correct!” he said. “I am the dragon-like Dolphy Blue Drake, de facto leader of the town of Shimmering Hope, and caretaker of all children in it due to me being the only adult left here.”
“The only adult?” Twilight said in surprise, “what happened to the others?”
“Long story,” Dolphy replied with sadness in his voice. “The quick version is that most of the other adults died and failed to will themselves back to life, and the three who did will themselves back to life got kidnapped later, leaving me alone with fourteen children to take care of. It’s not easy at all.”
“Oh…” Twilight looked away from the dragon-like’s sad face, unable to bear his grief-stricken expression.
“Sorry for getting morbid there,” Dolphy said as a smile returned to his face, “it’s still hard, but I manage.”
“Wait…” Twilight’s eyes widened at the realization of what Dolphy said a little bit earlier. “Did you say ‘will themselves back to life’?”
“Yes, is that odd?” the dragon-like replied, puzzled. At that moment, the other five ponies walked into the room, but they fell silent when they saw Twilight talking to the dragon-like.
“But when somepony dies, that’s it, isn’t it?” Twilight asked, provoking a raised eyebrow from Dolphy when she said “somepony”.
“It may be like that where you come from, but that’s not the case here,” the dragon-like replied. “When somebody dies, as long as their will to live is strong enough, they reappear at the location that the original Crafters entered this world: about five hundred blocks East of here. Of course, that only applies to Crafters. It might apply to you, too, but I’d rather not take that chance if I don’t have to.”
“You can come back to life?” Rainbow Dash said in surprise. “That’s so cool!”
“That may be so,” Dolphy said, grimacing, “but I really don’t like dying. I end up dropping everything I was carrying, including any armor I might’ve been wearing, and I always reappear at the spot where I entered this world the first time. Well, that’s not completely true. If I’ve slept in a bed recently, I’ll reappear in that bed instead. If the bed gets destroyed… Never mind.”
“By the way, for those of you who didn’t hear me introduce myself, I’m Dolphy Blue Drake,” he said, holding out a hand for Twilight to shake.
Twilight met the hand with a hoof and shook it.
“I’m Twilight Sparkle,” she began, then introduced each of her friends in turn: “These are my friends, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and Rarity.”
“It’s very nice to meet all of you. If you want, you can stay here a while until I get this sorted out. You see, the town Nether Portal acted up for a few seconds and deposited you in our little town. I don’t know what world you’re from, but I’m pretty sure you want to go back.”
The ponies nodded, and Rarity raised a hoof.
“Yes, Rarity?” the dragon-like said.
“I have to agree. This world and its blocky shapes just look so garish!”
“Hey!” Dolphy snapped, a little irritated, “I’ve lived here my entire life, and I love this place!” He took a few deep breaths and calmed himself down before continuing. “But if your entire world consists of curves, I can understand how alien my world must seem to you. “
“Anyway, I think the children are starting to worry,” the Crafter said as he turned towards the double doors to leave the hospital. “You can meet them if you want, since the safest place for you at the moment is this town.”
The ponies conversed for about a minute, then Twilight nodded and said, “we’d love to.”
“Great! Follow me,” Dolphy said, motioning for them to follow.
He led them through the incredibly angular town. The streets were a pale blue type of cobblestone, the houses were made from some kind of blue wood, and almost everything was made up of cubic meter blocks.
As they passed a strange structure made up of squarish pipes and strange humming machines, Twilight broke the silence.
“Mr. Drake? What are those?”
Dolphy looked over his shoulder and smiled.
“Please Twilight, call me Dolphy. As for those pipes and engines, that’s our power plant. A lot of our machines can’t run without power. We switched from combustion engines to diesel engines about a year ago. They’re much safer, and they produce even more power than the old combustion engines!”
As they passed a strange set of structures made up of what appeared to be quartz, Twilight’s curiosity got the best of her again.
“Dolphy? What do those do?”
“Oh, those?” the dragon-like replied, “those are multifarms: fully automatic farms that just require power, soil, water, fertilizer and germlings to run. They place the soil and the plants, add the water and fertilizer, and once the plants are ready to harvest, they do the harvesting, too! Best of all, they even replant on their own! It makes growing food a lot easier.”
Applejack was dumbfounded. “A farm that works itself? But sugarcube, isn’t that impossible?”
“Well, back in the early days of this town, we thought so too,” Dolphy said, chuckling. “Then we discovered redstone and pistons. Not a perfect solution, but it worked for a while. Then a villager gave us a “crafting guide”, and we learned a lot about this world that we never thought possible. Engines, computers, refrigerators… The list goes on. But the thing that caught our interest the most at the time was multifarms. The guide didn’t tell us how to construct them, though. We had to figure that out on our own. It did tell us how to build the parts, though, and with all sixteen of us putting our heads together, we figured out the rest.”
“Of course, certain plants don’t work with these farms,” he continued. “Berry bushes and cotton plants don’t grow properly, and the machine doesn’t know how to harvest them, so we grow them the old-fashioned way. But what’s weird is that the machines can’t automate ore farms, either.”
“Ore farms?” Applejack was even more confused now. “How can ya grow somethin’ that’s not organic?”
“You need magic essence first,” the dragon-like replied, seeming to enjoy every minute of this. “A lot of it. Combining magic essence with the ore and a handful of wheat seeds produces two ore seeds. Ore seeds don’t grow the ore itself, though. That’d be weird. Since the seeds are made of essence, they grow essence. The essence of the ore, I mean. Combining the essence with enough of the same essence produces the essence’s respective ore. With that, we can even grow diamonds and emeralds! Sadly, not every ore is compatible with essence, but a lot of them are, so we only have to mine for the ones that can’t be grown.”
“Anyway, here we are!” Dolphy announced, gesturing to the massive building in front of them. “This is Town Hall! The children and I all live here so that I can take care of all of them more easily. Once they’re old enough to take care of themselves, they’ll be able to return to their parents’ old homes, and I’ll be able to return to my house, too.”
He motioned for the ponies to wait there, and stepped inside. The ponies could hear him calling for the children, and also heard cheering in response.
Dolphy stepped back outside.
“Brace yourselves, girls. They can be quite a handful, and they’ll probably be really excited.”