My Little Fortress: Friendship for the Blood God

by jaked122

Stars and Sun

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 has felt guilt for his part in ending life recently. He has received pay recently. He has felt left out of the loop recently.

He is slow to anger, but often feels depressed. He is not particularly sociable. He cannot find happiness in his work

He has a wonderful kinesthetic sense. He is very strong. He possesses an incredible endurance. He recovers quickly from sickness and injury.

His eyes are brown, his hair is brown, his skin is pale.

He has begun to wonder whether all this death is worth it.

---

There are few ways to make a dwarf more uncomfortable than placing him in a carriage flying through the sky. The fact that it was flying was almost as unnatural to the brown haired charleton as the fact that it was a carriage, it was even stranger and less useful than those wagons that merchants of all civilizations used to carry large amounts of useless trinkets that apparently had a use “Just past the next town over” perpetually denying any use.

Then again, rock mugs were an effective way of making a large number of worthless projectiles perfect for defending against a goblin horde, nobody used them for drinking because rock, as it turns out, tends to be a bad material for making waterproof containers out of.

The dwarf was ripped away from the relatively mundane and uninteresting thoughts about the idiosyncrasies of his world’s economy by the sudden invasion of the results of turbulence into his inner ears. Then his breathing was interrupted by the sudden reflex that every living thing that does not fly has to such extreme turbulence, he threw up.

Twilight watched the dwarven spectacle with a mixture of disgust and horror, really a fitting mixture giving the retching sounds that could probably be heard on the ground. It would be fortunate if the sound of the dwarf’s pained moans and splatters didn’t cause the pegasi pulling the sky carriage to get sick as well.

“Are you okay Tholumom Lathonudlerned?” The unicorn struggled to say the name, but managed in the end. “Your name is really, really long. Is there anything shorter that I can call you by?”

The dwarf finished emptying the imaginary contents of his stomach onto the floor of the carriage, and sat back on the bench. “You can call me Thol if you want.” He paused, thinking about something pertaining to his situation, Twilight observed. “What do you think that the princess wants anyway? I hope that she hasn’t called me up because she thinks that I’ve been shoplifting.”

“I doubt that, even though I’ve seen you stealing from various food stalls, I doubt that Celestia would care enough, especially since you had no money in the first place.”

“That never stopped the hammerer.” The dwarf mumbled to himself. The dwarf perceived Twilight’s confusion at the mention of the Hammerer, but chose to keep silent, ignoring her curiosity.

A heavy cloud cover loured over the castle that was affixed to a mountain in a manner that was familiar to the dwarf. Certainly the rulers could not be so bad if they had a proper appreciation for the beauty that a building defying gravity, hugging the side of a mountain, allowing its occupants to look out over the land they possessed, then what judgement could he find being from another culture that appreciated the same style of building, be it a bit less, decadent.

The gleaming gold on the castle seemed to amplify the reflected lightning as the carriage passed underneath the thunderstorm. The prospect of thunder was not enticing to the dwarf, especially seeing that he was, in fact, hurtling through the air at around thirty seven world tiles an hour, not that a tile is a good unit of measurement for distance, but that did not occur to the dwarf as the twenty-million-urist lightning bolt struck the ground beneath the carriage.

Twilight shrugged. This storm was perfectly safe, its lightning was meticulously planned, or at least that’s what Celestia told her when she refused to come out from underneath her bed for three days as a filly. Of course, now that she knew Rainbow Dash, maybe she should return to the safety underneath her bed.

The carriage landed safely. Somehow. The dwarf was presented, upon leaving the carriage, with a sight of a large white horse that seemed to be a few colors short of a rainbow. The dwarf thought of a rainbow, bringing to mind the fact that he had not yet met Rainbow Dash, whose collusive antics with Pinkie Pie had made the dwarf slightly interested, but far more wary of the supposedly multi-colored pegasus. Of course, this thought was interrupted by the simultaneous occurrence of a sudden sheet of rain, and a large lightning bolt striking the Alicorn.

The dwarf’s mouth hung open as the lightning seemed to draw out the strike, as if to pain the creature which it maimed. The creature dispelled the lightning bolt, breaking the arc. The creature smiled at the dwarf, its pale magenta eyes examining him kindly. Tholumom, however, had a different reaction to such a demonstration of power. Namely sliding underneath the carriage, hiding from the god-creature. Perhaps it was just another goblin ploy? Their law-giver demons were the only creatures which ruled any civilization which could withstand such a blow from the lightning.

Meanwhile somewhere else...

“Hey Dashie I was going through Twilight’s stuff and found this stick thingy and I thought that only Rainbow Dash could know what it was so I went looking for you all over Ponyville and I got tired so I ate a cupcake and it was good and then I found you so I decided I would ask what you think this thingy is?” A pink pony asks, pointing to a stick topped with a crescent moon of iron which she had materialized with behind Rainbow Dash.
“What do I look like, some kind of egghead?” Rainbow Dash made an attempt to hide the box with ‘swag’ written on it crudely.
“I bet that it has something to do with farming or mining.” The pink pony mused examining the pick with her eye telescoping towards the tip of the pick. Her tail twitched five and a half times, "Hmm... Somepony will use four periods instead of three in his ellipsis."
“Naah. That couldn’t be. It seems to be a bit too awesome for either of those.” The Rainbow pegasus ignored the latter part of the comment; a pink grammar checker was of no use to the surprisingly athletic egghead.

Back at the castle....

The large white creature lowered her head to look underneath the carriage, get a better look at the strange dwarf which was hiding there at the moment. The dwarf retreated a bit further back into the carriage, avoiding the large white Goblin-Law-Giver-Horse thing which had absorbed a lightning bolt with no trouble. He could not best something such as that in normal combat, or in any given combat, no matter how abnormal the combat could be.

Tholumom Lathonudlerned is deathly afraid of Alicorns

"Come on out Tholumom. Please. I only want to talk to you about your world. Or, more specifically, how you got here." The white Alicorn that Tholumom did not know the name of used a genuinely concerned tone, perhaps she did care for the dwarf a bit.

What did that matter? She was obviously a Goblin-Law-Giver! Tholumom knew that there was no way that such a creature could care for such a lowly being as himself.

"Stay away Demon! I'll gut you if you come closer!" The dwarf desperately yelled at the creature, praying, for the first time in his life, to the Everlasting Trout. The dwarf grabbed at where his axe should be, but found only an empty loop in his belt. "Dammit! the only time I actually need my warhammer, it's not even here!" He whispered frantically to himself as sheets of rain continued to pour down on the top of the castle landing strip.

Meanwhile in that other place...
"Hey Dashie, look at this hammer I just found while once again going through Twily's things."

"Pinkie, why are you going through Twilight's stuff again? Isn't that kind of breaking a friend's trust?"

"She never asked me to promise that I wouldn't go through her stuff when she isn't around."

"Okay... Wow, that hammer is pretty cool."

"I bet that Applejack could use that for repairing her barn. She'd be all like-" The pink pony began to go through the list of awesome actions that Applejack would do with this hammer, breaking boards into the correct lengths with a single swing of a hammer, forcing nails in so fast that the wood would explode, killing a few Timberwolves, turning them into the door of her new barn. Ironically, the last action, being the most difficult, was also the only one that the warhammer was meant to be used for.

Back at the castle...

After thirty or so minutes trying to plead with the dwarf to come out, bearing assurances that he would be fine, reassurances from Twilight that Celestia was a benign ruler, and not a demon, whatever that was, and generally trying to make the dwarf come out of his hiding spot under the carriage, Twilight was beginning to suffer from hypothermia from the rain, Celestia was getting bored, and the royal guards had facehoofed so many times that they were dazed.

"Okay, Tholumom, if you don't come out, I'm going to move the entire carriage off of you, and you will be apprehended by those royal guards, whose brains are now damaged due to your absurd antics." Celestia's voice was not filled with the same kindness as before, ponies were getting hurt trying to make the dwarf be reasonable.

"Never Demon!" The dwarf howled in desperate fury. It would have been intimidating if magic didn't exist, and two of what are arguably the most powerful magic users in the world on that rooftop were struck magic-less.

Glowing, the carriage began to rise above the dwarf. When it had cleared him entirely, Celestia threw the carriage off of the castle.

---

Blueblood's estate:
Blueblood surveyed his gardens carefully, they were beautiful in the rain. He felt at peace there, sitting under the roof of his new Gazebo, while sheets of rain came down upon his plants.

Behind him a crash sounded, he turned around to see his house with a new addition, a pegasus carriage stuck half-buried into his bedroom. He shrugged, he didn't have enough money to build that addition to his bedroom, the carriage would do just fine. Now to find those contractors which he had fired previously.

---

Once again, back at the castle....

"So, you aren't a demon?" The dwarf looked up to the flowing maned creature above him, which happened to, at this point, be glaring at him.
"No, I suppose that I am not a demon."

"Why didn't you say so?" Tholumom laughed. "Most creatures that can survive being struck by lightning tend to be dragons, amorphous elder-god horrors which exude gaseous poison from their pores and originate from the deepest pits of the earth, or, seeing as you are neither of those two, a demon. That theory seemed pretty good at the time because you are the ruler of the realm and the goblins of my world are also led by a demon, so it made sense at the time that it could, potentially, be the same here."

"I'm actually a bit more like an elder-god horror than anything else." Celestia let the line hang in the air for a moment; if she failed to capture this incredibly stupid and annoying creature’s attention for very long, she would kick herself.

"What?" The dwarf was surprised causing Celestia to smile, he had fallen for her obvious lie.

"Come inside, my student seems to be in danger of dying from the cold." Celestia motioned towards a pale unicorn that sat shivering in the cold rain, glancing between Celestia and Tholumom drearily.

"That's never happened to a dwarf. Usually you have to freeze them entirely before they take serious damage." Tholumom studied Twilight where he stood, but did not bother helping her. Celestia looked at him for a moment, it was rather rude to allow somepony else to suffer while they were completely comfortable.

"Tholumom, don't you think that it's appropriate that you help Twilight? After all, you seem to be her friend."

"Yes... That sounds like a good idea actually." Tholumom grumbled, once again he was reduced to the level of a small child in the eyes of an elder, who looked down upon him with her knowledge and wisdom, and saw an error immediately in his actions. He cursed himself a bit, it made a lot of sense for him to help Twilight, so it was doubly insulting when Celestia reminded him of it.

"Sorry Twilight."

"It's okay." Twilight's teeth chattered, turning her three syllable sentence into a twenty syllable sentence.

"Come on, Tholumom, Twilight, let us go in." Celestia pushed a door open with her magic shortly followed by the mismatched duo.

---

Meanwhile in the Everfree Forest

The howl of the timberwolves reverberated in their woodwind fashion, an orange pony runs through the forest.

"Applebloom! Where are ya?" it frantically screamed, eyes darting left to right as she ran down the trail into the forest.

“Applejack! Help me!” The voice of a filly pierced the air, piercing the orange pony’s heart with its shrillness. A howl from a wolf reverberated across the forest, chilling Applejack’s bones.

The farmer ran to the Everfree, eyes wide with fear, her sister could soon enough be no more. A glint of steel shown down from the heavens, flies into a tree. A gleaming steel hammer sticks out of a knothole, threatening a family of owls.
Applejack did not have time to think about the owls, so she removed the hammer, it couldn’t hurt, could it?

Applebloom had managed to climb up a tree, just in time to be surrounded by vicious wolves made out of wood. Naturally, this was a result of her endless quest for a cutie mark. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo had managed to escape the wolves, promising to bring somepony back to help her.

“Abblepoom! mm ging to sieve do!” The filly’s sister ran into her line of sight, carrying a large hammer in her mouth. “Applejack, seems like a bad time to repair the gazebo, doesn’t it?”

The pony swung the hammer at the wolves, denting them slightly, but not to the point where even fluttershy could accept their being hurt. Oh yeah, also Applejack injured her hind legs doing some kind of generic farm work that would sound out of place in an orchard, probably bucking ploughs.

Finally, the orange pony rolled a 20 on her hit check. Unfortunately, that lead to splinters flying out of the timberwolf, striking the others, which also happened to be the victims of other twenties, causing a massive thermo-timberwolf chain reaction, killing all of Ponyville in the explosion, especially Applebloom.

The pink pony finished telling her tale to the orange farmer. The sheer strangeness of such a story made it incredibly difficult to hold back laughter, or a far more probably uncomfortable silence.

“And that’s what your life would be like if you had this hammer AJ.” The rainbow maned pony was stunned. It wasn’t everyday that Pinkie took a tool that they were examining, somehow brought them to Sweet Apple Acres, then explained exactly what would happen if Applejack started using the tool.

“Uh, Sugahcube, I don’t quite know how to tell you this, but we aren’t playing Ponies and Paladins, if I rolled a twenty in real life, there would be a useless die on the ground right near the wolves.”

“Aren’t you just a little bit concerned about the fact that your little sister was about to die in that story? You being the one who was responsible for her death.”

Applejack shrugged. “It’s not like Ah’d ever do anything like that in the first place. Applebloom knows her way around the forest, not to mention that her little group is more dangerous than the average pack of them timberwolves.”

“Applejack! Stop ruining my campaign!” Pinkie’s voice carried a conquering tone, assured by the natural confidence of laughter. Her voice carried the confidence of laughter, but lacked the triviality which she normally poured into her conversation.

The three of them found themselves in Applejack’s barn, hunched over a table with several sets of die lying anemically beneath a layer of dust. “Now Rainbow Dash, it’s your turn.”

Rainbow Dash glanced uncomfortably at Applejack, who nodded at her. “I guess that I’ll make a spot check.”

---

Meanwhile in a room in a precariously perched castle on top of a mountain.

The room was tall. Almost six meters tall. A fireplace gently roared with a well contained heat. Revitalizing a lavender unicorn whose hypothermia was a cause for alarm. Near the fire, Twilight, Princess Celestia, and Tholumom sat at a relatively unadorned table, whose surface provided a firm resting place for a strangely shaped pot which would be virtually impossible to determine whether or not there was a similar one in orbit around the sun.

Tholumom was draped over a red and gold couch, nearly asleep. The other two talked about things that were normal for students and their teachers to discuss at length, such as the purpose of life, the meaning of harmony, and other perfectly boring subjects such as the origin of the Alicorns.

“So that’s how Alicorns work?” Twilight was stunned. Who could have thought that it was so simple, just a single ritual away from godhood. “I mean, why aren’t there more of you if it’s that simple?”

“There’s a good reason for that Twilight, but it seems that our guest has a few questions of his own.” Princess Celestia turned towards the dwarf, who had been half asleep during her explanation of whatever an Alicorn is.

“Your Highness, I honestly can’t imagine where you got that idea.” Tholumom grumbled. Last time he had seen royalty was when the fortress found the adamantium vein. The upper echelon of nobility tended to move around following the adamantium, of course, that also meant that the fall of civilizations also tended to follow the discovery of adamantium. Anyway, this was still more interesting than that speech which the king had managed to spew for over five hours.

“Well, as a miner I’m sure that you’ll be interested in the mineral deposits that exist around Equestria. Our country is famed for its unusually rich supply of magic gems and precious metal.” The princess took a swig of her tea.

The dwarf sat up, making a check intentions check. Unfortunately, its hard to understand the expression on someone’s face when only one of her eyes remains uncovered by a billowing mane. “Yes, that is a somewhat interesting subject, your Highness.”

“Please, just call me, Your Royal Highness Princess Celestia.” The casual manner which she said this in made it sound as though she was telling him that ‘your Highness’ is too formal. Too bad that her name and title just grew a few syllables.

“Okay Your Royal Highness Princess Celestia, what of the minerals and ore in the ground. I know that Canterlot is situated above a vast kimberlite and lamproite vein. In fact, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen both simultaneously in the same vein. Not to mention the massive gems which Twilight has mentioned while in the throes of a nightmare.”

“Why were you listening to me while I slept?” Twilight’s tone became accusatory.

Tholumom rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry about that, it was a bit strange, wasn’t it? Anyway, you remind me a bit of my daughter, she loved books too. She loved the stories of the past. She also loved learning how things worked. She was a brilliant child. And I couldn’t save her.” The dwarf sighed, but didn’t continue.

“I’m sorry Tholumom.” Celestia’s tone became soothing. "Would you like to talk about her?"

“Yes. Actually I would.”

Comments

[SouthernmostDogs]

YAY UPDATE!

Now to read the story.

[Baboosh]

Yeah! Bit of a sad bomb in there, BUT YAY ANYWAY!

[NUMUETUE]

Im really confused is his weapon a hammer or an axe? Cause it seems to change from time to time. I guess its just dwarven magic