Rainbow Dash flew straight to the road first. It would’ve been impossible to get lost anyways what with her being able to fly but she also wanted to check out the buildings and homes in this part of the city and be able to watch over any mammoths coming from the quarry. Arkul had said that most of the homes here were for mammoths that worked on the farms but she was willing to bet that a lot of them were for mammoths that worked at the quarry too. Some of these buildings looked like large storehouses too, probably where a lot of the dug up stone was kept until they needed it for new buildings.
Another thing she only now noticed about the east side of the city since she was now really looking at it was that there wasn’t as much art around. Most buildings were painted more normal colors and their weren’t as many huge murals or things like statues or water fountains. Must be because it was newer. She only saw a few houses that were painted things like powder blue, or yellow, or prettied up in some way but there wasn’t anything that was obviously planned or installed by the city. Maybe it also had to do with them being outside the walls.
Either way she was now hovering above the road and as she looked out to the east and the mountains she saw a steady stream of mammoths pulling big carts towards the city. Some of them were covered but on the ones that weren’t she could see they were filled up with stone. What stood out to her was that some of the stone looked like it had been smashed up into gravel, while others were carved into blocks, and still more were just jagged chunks that looked like they hadn’t been touched at all after they had been dug out of the earth or broken from larger boulders. Instead of just mining the rock at the quarry they had to have places or set groups there too that divided the rock into certain uses before they even transported it back to the city.
Rainbow Dash started to fly low over the road to the quarry, low enough where all the wagon-pulling mammoths could see her. She waved and smiled to all of them, saying hello to the ones that stopped and greeted her too. They were all happy to see the flying pegasus because of how special an occasion it was and it made their journey not so monotonous. A few of them probably would’ve liked to stop and talk with her too but Rainbow Dash was going straight to the quarry without stopping.
Hopefully there was one single mammoth she could go to that was in charge of managing the quarry so she wouldn’t just be lost and make an annoyance of herself. She knew the quarry work was tough and could be dangerous so she wanted to be even less of a bother than she had been at the farms. And now as she flew the sight of the foothills of the mountains and the rocky terrain grew in her vision, along with the numerous buildings and cranes at the end of the road.
One of the mountainsides had been dug into and a rectangular quarry emerged from it, hewing out a large portion of the mountain and also going deep into the dirt and bedrock below it. She saw a couple of wooden towers that overlooked the whole quarry along with a few other buildings up on top of the rim. And of course the multiple cranes on all sides for lifting loads of rock out of the quarry and onto ground level.
When she got to the point that she could actually see down into the quarry she saw that there were scaffolds and ramps constructed all throughout it to allow the mammoths to get to every last spot and transport rocks back to the surface if the cranes were in use. A couple of rudimentary elevators made out of wooden platforms and rope pulleys also enabled them to descend and ascend to any level.
“Now if I was the boss of this place where would I be?” Rainbow Dash said aloud as she circled the quarry from above.
A wooden building that looked like an office standing right next to the top of the ramp that led out of the quarry seemed like a safe bet to her.
Rainbow Dash shot down to it right as a trio of mammoths were carrying loads of rock on their backs up the ramp. Her sudden appearance startled them and they almost fell over backwards but caught themselves. Rainbow winced and hesitantly stepped forward, raising up a hoof in greeting.
“Hey, sorry about that.”
“You… you’re that pony,” the lead mammoth said to her while the other two came up beside him and gawked at her. The mammoth in the center had darker and rougher looking fur than the average mammoth while the one to the right had several steel braces around his tusks and the one on the left was a bit overweight.
“That’s me,” she chuckled nervously.
“What are you doing here?” The one to her right asked. “Not that we’re not happy to see you—we’re just confused.” He quickly added.
“Yes! We’re very happy to see you!” The one on her left exuberantly nodded. “You’re a once in a lifetime event and everyone told me we have to make you feel as welcome as possible!”
Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow at him and the other two gave him a look that said he definitely wasn’t supposed to say that to her. She already knew that thanks to Larkon though so it’s not like she was gonna make a big deal out of it.
“Hey it’s whatever,” Rainbow Dash shrugged after a second. “Anyways maybe you guys can help me out? Is there like a boss or foreman in charge of this quarry? Is this building like an office or something?”
The first mammoth nodded. “You’re correct on all accounts. This is the quarry administration office, our boss, Korsa, is inside it right now. Did you want to see him for some reason?”
“Yeah actually,” Dash smiled. “I’m kind of spending the day exploring your city and learning about it and everything. And so now I’m here. I just wanted to talk to your boss to see if he could like, set me up with a tour or tell me anything important about the quarry.”
The dark mammoth took in a loud breath of air through his trunk, making a nasally noise. “I don’t think that would be a problem, he’ll probably be happy to help you with that. Uh, and sorry but the three of us really have to get going. Quotas to fill, you know?”
“It’s fine, thanks!” Rainbow Dash told him and went to look for the front door to this office. It was on the side of the building facing away from the quarry and was unfortunately closed. So she had to use just about every ounce of strength in her to yank it open and keep it from shutting back on her. Why did mammoths have to be so big? Even opening doors like this was a hassle for her because of that.
“Ugh!” She forced it open and slipped in just as it slammed back shut behind her. She emerged into a large room where a couple of mammoths stood around a table with a blueprint of the quarry on it, going over who knows what, and another mammoth seated behind a desk in a corner. Besides them there were filing cabinets and boxes of open folders all across the room, not the most well-organized place she had seen. Twilight would have a fit.
It was clear the mammoths recognized her and the one at his desk stood up and walked around it to her. “Can I help you?”
“Maybe. Are you Korsa?” She asked.
“Indeed I am,” Korsa nodded and lifted his trunk up for her to shake. “And you’re Rainbow Dash, the pony from Equestria.”
“Yep!” She gave his trunk a quick shake and dropped it. “So anyways, I’m here cause Larkon wanted me to learn about this quarry and stuff. Could you like, give me a tour of it or whatever?”
Korsa seemed a bit surprised and he looked over at the other mammoths and the blueprint they were huddled over. He scratched the top of his head as he thought for a moment before looking back at her. “Hmm… I suppose I can, yes.”
“Cool,” Dash grinned.
“Just one second,” he said and grabbed a hardhat off his desk and put it on his head. “And you two-” he spoke to the mammoths at the table. “You finish up those plans and give them to me at the end of the day.”
“Right, boss,” one of them said.
Korsa glanced down at Rainbow Dash and smiled. “Let’s go.”
“We’ll start from the bottom up so we don’t have to backtrack at all,” Korsa said to her as they were lowered down on one of the elevators to the bottom of the quarry.
Naturally Rainbow Dash could’ve flown down but she would’ve had to wait for him anyways.
She got to have a good view of everything on the way down, groups of mammoths chiseled at the walls of the quarry or dug tunnels deeper into the roots of the mountain. And still more dug straight down into the bedrock to excavate more of it, making more room for themselves and getting plenty of choice stone to take back to the surface at the same time. Mammoths swung pickaxes that were larger than her entire body, used hammers and chisels that would’ve been too heavy for her to lift, and carved out huge blocks of stone that could’ve been the foundation for a great castle back in Equestria. Lumber may have been in short supply up here but this quarry was working overtime to make sure they never ran out of building materials.
The mammoths looked like they were working to one day hollow out the entire mountain this quarry was built into. And there were way more workers here than she had seen at the farms or the docks, just dozens of mammoths at every level either digging out, breaking up, or transporting stone through the quarry. This was the sort of backbreaking work that Applejack would’ve said built character but that Rainbow Dash would’ve gotten bored of pretty quickly. The fact that it would’ve helped build up her muscles would’ve been welcome but everything else about it was too plain for her, and she preferred being in the air.
Their elevator hit the ground and she and Korsa walked on out at the bottom level of the quarry. Some of the mammoths saw the two of them but Korsa motioned for them to keep working.
“Well this is the heart of the quarry pretty much,” Korsa said as he and Rainbow Dash looked around. “There are stairs, ramps and other lifts that can take you to any section of the quarry from here, and look-” he said, pointing with his trunk to the mountainside. “I’m sure you noticed those tunnels digging into the mountain? You can get to those mines real easily too.”
“Yeah, I did,” Dash nodded. There were a couple of tunnels with entrances at each level of the quarry and mammoths were constantly going in and outing of them and lugging either empty minecarts or ones that had been freshly filled up.
Korsa and Dash walked over to the northern wall of the quarry, walking up a ramp that took them from the very bottom to another level where a row of mammoths painstakingly swung their pickaxes over and over at the rock. Breaking it down and trying to widen the quarry. Huge clumps of dirt fell out every now and then too, which would need to be picked up and deposited topside to make room.
“I’d like to give you a pickaxe so you can see what it’s like yourself but I’m not sure you can lift one. It’d be rather unwieldy for you even if you could,” Korsa said.
“Yeahhh… might not work too well,” Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her neck. Using those clippers back when she was harvesting kelp was tough enough and all the tools here were even bigger.
She still didn’t want to back down from the chance though. Someone telling her she couldn’t do something? That was a good way to get her to try anything.
“Hold on,” she said to Korsa and flexed her shoulders, flapping her wings to get up to the same height the mammoths were striking the wall at. “I’ll try it anyways, I bet I can at least do something, I’m pretty good at surprising people you know?”
“Suit yourself,” he shrugged. “Hey! One of you all have an extra pickaxe for Rainbow Dash here to use?”
The mammoths working stopped for a bit and looked back at Rainbow Dash and Korsa before checking their own tools and what they had lying around. One of them picked up a pickaxe that had been left resting beside them, it was in noticeably poor condition but it suited Rainbow Dash’s needs just fine.
“Here, it’s an older one we were still using,” the mammoth that gave it to her with his trunk said.
“Thanks,” Rainbow Dash grabbed it and had to heft it onto her back. The wooden shaft of the pickaxe shifted about between her shoulder blades and the weight of the metal head pulled her off balance but she was still able to stay in the air. Whether she could swing it with her hooves, and with enough force to make a crack in the rock, was a different matter.
She wobbled through the air to get between some of the mammoths, her wings having to do some extra work to keep her afloat and steady. The quarry workers gave her a bit of a wide berth just in case she dropped the pickaxe or something.
“Okay, I’m gonna show you what the most awesome pony in the world can do!” Rainbow Dash boasted.
With a grunt she hefted the heavy pickaxe over her head, holding it up and aiming the sharp pick at the wall of the quarry. Her hooves trembled a bit and the shaft was a little too wide for her to really hold it properly in the first place. Sucking in a deep breath she swung it forward as hard as she could with her awkward position.
The metal pick clanged off the hard rock wall with a loud screech and the vibrations that traveled up through it shook her entire body. She reflexively dropped the pickaxe onto the ground while her teeth chattered and her brain rattled in her skull.
Korsa winced and held her steady with his trunk gently lowering her to the ground where Rainbow Dash swayed back and forth for a second before shaking her head.
“Woah… not exactly what I wanted to do,” she blinked a few times while her hooves continued to shake and looked up to where she had struck.
Unfortunately there was only a slight chip in the rock with a few cracks spread out from it. This stone was tough. It reminded her of that one time she had accidentally flown into the side of Twilight’s castle, that had been pretty painful.
“You’d need a pickaxe more your size if you wanted to work down here,” Korsa said. “I’m impressed that you could lift and swing it like that though.”
“Tch,” Rainbow Dash clicked her tongue. Applejack would’ve been strong enough to do this.
“Don’t be discouraged, look how big we are, what’s the point in getting upset that you aren’t as strong as a mammoth? I’m not bothered that I can’t fly after all,” Korsa said and then whistled at the other workers. “Okay! Back to work like normal, still a lot of stone to get out!”
Rainbow Dash sighed and flew back up to around eye-level with him as she looked around at some of the other mammoths working in the quarry. Right now there was one guy pushing a huge wheelbarrow full of dirt up the ramp that led out of the quarry. “Yeah I know, I live in a place where there are ponies that can do stuff that I never could, but I like to challenge myself. I want to prove and show off how awesome I am all. The. Time. That’s just how I am.”
“I’m certain that a creature like you has plenty to show off,” Korsa shrugged. “I read about you in the paper, no mammoth in this city is half as amazing as you. Frankly we’re all truly in awe of you. I’d be gushing a bit more if I wasn’t trying to be formal… and quite a lot of the others you’ve no doubt encountered today have probably been shy.”
“I guess,” she knew a lot were acting nicer or at least putting on their best behavior too.
“Do you want me to show you around the rest of the quarry? Or inside the mountain? You can see the mammoths who carve up the boulders and stone taken from the ground and turn it into blocks,” Korsa suggested.
Rainbow Dash looked up into the sky, it wasn’t late yet but the sun was starting to enter its descent. She still had time before she needed to return to Larkon’s home but probably not enough to see the entire quarry. “Sure, show me whatever you want. I’ve gotta go in a bit but if we can’t see everything I might be back with Larkon some other day.”
Korsa nodded. “Come along then, you can see the blocks the city will be using for the pillars of a new bridge, they’re taller than you are.”