Story Shuffle 2: Double Masters

by FanOfMostEverything


God, a Red Nugget, a Fat Egg Under a Dog

Ponies are not a very religiously inclined species. When mysteries of nature ranging from “Why do plants grow?” to “Why does rain fall?” to “Why does the sun rise?” can all be answered by “A herdmate did it,” a people will not be very inclined towards further mysticism. Even the question of what happened after death was largely dismissed, early pony cultures assuming there was some unknown fourth tribe that looked after the afterlife. This led to some misunderstandings during the first encounters with both alicorns and chiroptera, but never really developed beyond that. Especially not after ponies discovered the Elysian Fields and their caretaker, Princess Mi Finale Temperanza.

Other species weren’t as magically endowed with all the answers, and thus crafted far more elaborate belief systems. Minotaur had gone for ancestor worship, at least until one rite meant to keep ancestors in the temporal world ultimately led to the Folly of Edamto. Today, they subscribe to a more abstract philosophy of coming together to bring strength to the community. Unfortunately, they named this philosophy after muscle fascia, which will cause a lot of confusion when the human world opens diplomatic relations with them if not handled carefully.

Kirin and buffalo both revere the attendant spirits that watch over all things, from the smallest blade of grass to abstract concepts to the world itself. Changelings generally revere the queen, though Hive Thorax is experimenting with every theology they can get their hooves on “in case one works.” Griffins treat their pantheons like their systems of government, having adopted at least a dozen of each through the ages and abandoning them when they presented one too many disappointments.

And then there are the Diamond Dogs.

There are things in the deep places of the world, horrors that feed on exotic minerals and geothermal heat and wild magic. They understand the surface world as easily as its inhabitants understand their homes, and would react to it about as well as an exchange in the other direction. But in the depths, they are great and terrible.

The Diamond Dogs do not worship these entities, but they do encounter them on a dreadfully regular basis. Given that, it should come as no surprise that the Dogs devised something to pray to and/or blame when encountering one early in their cultural development.

Most Diamond Dogs who live near the surface honor the names of the Firstpack. According to their worshipers, that group of hero-gods dug the first hole and discovered the True Gem, a find so great that they immediately argued over who should get the largest share and shattered it into all the jewels buried in the earth today. These Whelps of the Firstpack dig to reform that first, perfect crystal. The wise do not ask what they’ll do with it afterwards.

Other, deeper warrens honor Crunch, the Rockdog. Some syncretists call him the Alpha of the Firstpack, but this is a fairly recent development, a movement barely two centuries old. Rockpups have revered Crunch for far longer than that, sharing stories of the first hard thing in a soft existence, the inventor of the sharp edge, the creator of every stone and mineral. His heart lies lost in the northern wastes, where he abandoned it. Now it is said he lies trapped in his own work, and the Rockpups dig in the hopes freeing their god from his self-made prison.

And then there are the Smelters.

Consider a shrine to Crunch. It is very deep underground indeed, for no proper place of worship for a creature who petrified everything he touched can be kept close to the soft things that live on the surface. At best, it will calcify the surface above, inviting irate outsiders to express their displeasure. At worst, Crunch Himself may express His disgust at his supplicants' lack of proper piety.

Those unfamiliar with Crunch worship might be surprised by the spartan conditions of the cavern. Covering every object in as many gems as it can support is for Firstwhelps. The Rockpups show their piety the same way they do most things: They dig. Even a minor shrine to Crunch would be a cathedral to most other gods, and the greatest of his holy sites can form their own weather systems. (The irony of clouds forming in a temple of the Rockdog is sadly lost on those who tend to such places.) Finding somewhere to put the excavated earth is considered another form of showing one's devotion.

Front and center, there is of course a statue of Crunch Himself, life-size at least. (And given how the fables of him have tectonically shifted, slowly but inexorably, since the Discordant Era, no one's quite sure how big that was.) Rough-hewn stone perfectly captures his craggy contours, fangs like stalagmites, and pitiless gimlet eyes. A proper effigy of Crunch should appear to stalk towards the viewer, even when seen from behind. One should never feel safe when in the same room as one, for Crunch is not a gentle and merciful deity. It should always feel like the most dangerous object in the room.

This particular effigy of the Rockdog has some stark competition, for the shrine is full of lava.

Where the Firstwhelps revere the greatest of their kind and the Rockpups bow to the essence of stone, the Smelters go even deeper. They are Dogs who have never seen the surface, who consider plants a strange legend and the sun a laughable one. They know fire's place, and it is not above, but below.

As the deepest dwelling Diamond Dogs, the Smelters encounter squirming, burbling horrors most often, and in the entities' natural habitat. In the early days, they called out to something, anything that could wipe away the abominations, heedless of the cost.

And something answered.

All things have a spirit, the world included. Even that which no creature knows about has a supernatural representative to speak for it. Beneath the thin skin of the world dwells a powerful spirit indeed, and it heard the cries of the solid fleshlings above. And it answered.

The Smelters revere Lavan, the All-Smelter, the soul of magma. And they show their devotion by doing what they can to return the world to the state he remembers, when he could look up and see the stars streaking down to meet him. More than anything, Lavan is lonely, and his pets are the only things that give him the attention he craves in this modern era. In return, he offers them the power to defend themselves.

Some of them apply that defense proactively, especially against other faiths.

And so, returning to the shrine to Crunch, we see that the molten stone has not been applied haphazardly. Sigils pleasing to Lavan have been inscribed in the floor and walls with unthinkable heat, painting the entire chamber crimson. The great chamber has become an oven, with massive boulders sealing the exits and at least somewhat preserving the surrounding tunnels.

Yet Crunch still stands. Even as the edicts carved into the very walls droop, even as the cavern's ceiling drips down on his broad back, the symbol of the Rockdog refuses even the softness offered to stone.

So the Smelters have claimed the shrine in a different way. In a crater at Crunch's paws lies a glowing stone half as large as the behemoth statue. Carved with the same symbols adorning the room, it perpetually exists just shy of the melting point, ripples playing across its surface in the chamber's superheated air. It looks for all the world like Crunch unearthed an immense ruby, a sneering parody of both other canine faiths at once.

For Lavan, say the Smelters, is the greatest treasure any dog could ever hope to unearth.


"So, yeah," said Sunset, closing the book she'd borrowed from Princess Twilight's library. "Seems that's what religions on my side of the mirror are like."

Twilight stared off into the distance, ponytail frazzled and glasses askew. "I... see." She was glad she was already lying on her bed. She wasn't sure if she could've stood through the whole synopsis. "Certainly an... evocative take on interfaith dialogue."

Sunset nodded. "So, what's it like over here, anyway?"

"Well, uh..." Twilight bit her lip. Fair was fair, and they had agreed to discuss the matter. "Worshipers definitely get less feedback here."

Sunset sat at the foot of the bad, fingers folded under her chin. "Go on..."

"I'd kind of like to hear more about Crunch," Spike said from his doggy bed.

"In a bit, Spike." Sunset turned back to Twilight, utterly rapt. "Come on, I want to know who to blame for half of what I've been through in this world."

"Well, there's, um, a lot of..." Twilight squirmed as her courage failed her. "Couldn't we just make out instead?"

They did, after chasing Spike out and getting him to promise not to say anything to Twilight Velvet. (He did. She took notes for her next cheesy romance novel about a naive young wizard and the demon she accidentally summoned.) But that night, Twilight still dreamed of howls in the deep, and the things that answered them.