It took Smolder, Spike, and Oil the better part of an hour of rummaging through the scrap to roughly categorize it all by size and rustiness. They were completely surrounded by a wide array of scrap metal strewn in rough little piles across the floor by the time they broke out the crucibles… which was also when Oil insisted that they call Billet back to babysit them.
Billet gave them a slag bucket, cleared up some of the truly worthless rust hunks, and shifted the big metal block thing out of the way to clear some floor space for them to work. Other than that, he'd actually stayed out of the way. He just hung back and watched them go through the lesson without a single interruption. He was really watching though. It was like how her dad used to loom on the ridge overlooking the valley when she was practicing hunting with Garble before her Molt. He didn't say a word, but she could feel how ready he was to pounce in at the first sign of trouble.
“You taste that sort of zing its got?” Smolder asked while Spike gnawed a piece off a thick steel bolt from the closest pile. “That's the chromium. Good stuff like that is more than a tenth chromium.”
“That's 316 stainless,” Oil chimed in. She hung back a few paces on the other side of the crucible, craning her neck to watch, and apparently listen, just as attentively as Spike. “16-18% chromium, 10-14% nickel, 2-3% molybdenum--”
“Moly-- what?” Spike asked.
“You catch that funky aftertaste?”
“Uh-huh. It kinda tastes like powellite.”
“That's the molybdenum. Like she said, a little goes a long way. We're definitely gonna use these. Go ahead and add it.”
There wasn't a metal Smolder had ever met that could hold up to a dragon's fire. Her mother had told her stories of dragon slayers armed with enchanted chains that shrugged off the fire of young dragons. Leftover pony scraps didn't stand a chance.
Oil shook her head in amazement while Spike's green flame turned bolt after bolt molten over the crucible mouth. “I heard about dragons eating gems, but grading metal by taste? I feel like I'm watching my mom cook!”
Smolder blew flames over her own clawful of bolts and poured them into her crucible. “It's how my mom and dad taught me.”
“Does your mom do a lot of this kinda stuff?” Spike asked.
“Nah. Not anymore, anyway. Dad still does sometimes though. It's sort of a hobby, I guess.” Smolder scraped some rust off the next piece of metal then tossed it over her shoulder onto the 'useless' pile when all she saw on the other side of the rust was the far wall of the workshop. “Plus, some dragons like to wear armor to show off, so Dad'll make 'em stuff sometimes if they cough up enough gems.”
Oil Quench leaned in with a grin for some reason. “Dragons wear armor?”
“Yeah!” Spike chimed in. “When I first met Ember, she was wearing this whole suit of bronze armor so that her Dad wouldn't know that she was trying to run the Gauntlet of Fire!”
Oil's grin faded to confusion. “Bronze? I always heard dragon scales were tougher than any armor, especially bronze.”
“Pft, yeah, when we're big,” Smolder said with a roll of her eyes. Did ponies only ever think about grown-ups? “Besides, it looks cool. You should see old Lord Torch's armor. He's got this ginormous breastplate made of black steel that you ponies could build a house in. He must've had to trade a total feast of gems to get that thing made. But we're not gonna be making anything like that today.”
“Oh.” The pony sounded a little disappointed by that. She craned her neck over the wagon full of molds and tools. “What are you gonna use this steel for, then?”
Smolder shot her a critical look. “What do you think we're gonna use it for?”
“More tools, I guess? It looks like you already brought a lot of stone hammers and… are those knives or spearheads?”
“Claw-axes,” Smolder corrected. “This is all just stuff for shaping the metal after we cast it. Some of the fancier stuff is gonna need some detail work. Punching holes, sharpening, that sorta thing.”
“Hey, Smolder,” Spike called. “That's all the bolts. This look like enough?”
Smolder leaned over the wide mouth of Spike's crucible and reached her claw into the thick, melted metal. She was halfway up to her elbow before her palm found the flat bottom. Any deeper and Spike was gonna have a tough time working it.
“Yeah, that should be good for the first pour.” She scraped a few clingy globs of metal off her fingers and backed up to give Spike some space. “Let's get it mixed up. Bare claws are the best tool for this. You wanna get over it like this, right? Hey,” Smolder stepped around to where Spike was hunching over his little crucible and put her claws on his shoulders to straighten him out. “Don't scrunch up like that. We're gonna be here for a while, so you're gonna wanna stay loose.”
“Sorry.”
She rolled her eyes and took up her position at her own crucible. “It's your back. C'mere and watch me first. So, claws against the far side like this, bring 'em aaaall the way down to the bottom and sorta scoop it up through the middle and fold it back on itself.” She ran through the motions twice slowly then a few times at the right pace, “Down, up, over. Then do a quarter turn,” she stepped around the edge, “and repeat. Make sure you're getting as close to the bottom as you can without scratching it. You don't wanna get any bits of stone in there. And just keep going down, up, over, down, up, over. Then heat,” a long blast of flames brought the dulling glow right back up to full brightness, “and let it sit and wait for the slag to bubble up. Now let's see you do it.”
Pouring was the worst part of the whole casting deal. All the hours of work that went into sculpting the molds, scrounging, melting, and skimming the metal, all of it could be chucked right back in the caldera by a lousy pour. It didn't help that she'd stupidly decided to start with the biggest casts of the day. The rectangular mold was as tall as Spike and almost as wide when stood on end for filling. Two thick “straps” of cooled lava held the halves of the mold together, with a single well no bigger than her fist left open at the top for them to pour the metal into.
It would have been a lot easier if getting a hold of Spike's crucible wasn't such a pain in the tail. Out in the wild it was easy to just dig your talons into the dirt to get the bottom with one claw and hold the rim with the other. This “cement” floor made that impossible, so she'd had to risk rocking the super-hot, super-brittle stone back and forth until she and Spike could both get a grip on it and lift it up and over the narrow hole in the top of the upright mold.
Then it turned out that Spike was too darned short to get it up to the right height without flying, so they'd had to work out the best positioning for that. Then the metal had gotten too cold so they had to put it down, heat it back up, and get in position all over again.
“Hold it good and steady, we only get one shot at this.”
“What happens if we mess up?”
“Then we'll have to remake the mold and start all over again, that's what. We wanna pour it good and steady until it fills all the way up the well. Try not to let it get all globby or it'll get holes in there. On three, ready? One… two… three!”
Together, they tilted the crucible over and set the molten metal pouring down the narrow channel sculpted into the cooled lava. The stone creaked and plinked from the heat, but no major cracks popped up right at the start.
“Just about… Just abouuut…” Metal crept up to the very top of the well until it threatened to spill over. “Stop!”
They backed off and set the crucible down gently a couple paces back. Smolder stepped around the mold to check that the seams held before she flashed Spike a thumbs up.
“You gotta check for any metal getting out and try to stop it if you can. Leaks can totally wreck a cast. Now we just give it a minute to set up and then we'll crack it out of there. Then we'll do mine while it cools a little.”
“I can't wait to see how it turns out!” Oil was practically prancing in place with excitement. “I've never seen a stone casting die before!”
Smolder's brow furrowed in confusion. “What do ponies use then? You can't seriously use wood or something, right?”
“Well, yes. I mean, no. The wood is just a frame to hold the sand. We use packed sand with just a little oil to make it take an impression.”
“Sand, huh?” Smolder rubbed her chin. “I've always used lava.”
“Lava? You mean like those volcano bowls they make in Haywaii?”
“Yeah!” Spike said. “Smolder's been teaching me how to sculpt lava. I made this mold myself,” he added, proudly.
Smolder smirked at the way he puffed up at the wonder on Oil's face. It was good to see him boast a little. Getting pumped up was half the fun of competing!
“That is so. Cool! Have you ever done glass? I know a colt up in Canterlot--”
Smolder let the pony ramble on while she got to work pouring her own batch. The sooner she got this lesson done, the sooner they could get to the fun one.
After all, what wasn't to love about spearfishing?
The more she thought about it, the more Smolder suspected that ponies might have a lot they didn't love about spearfishing.
They'd broken for lunch right after they'd gotten the tines of her spear roughly shaped to show Spike how it was done before they did his. Oil was a little too into it when she'd figured out what she and Spike were making, but Smolder had a feeling she wasn't thinking about what spearing a fish was actually gonna be like. She also wasn't the one she had to talk into letting her teach Spike how to stick and gut a fish.
Ponies didn't eat fish. They gave her, Gallus, and Ocellus stuff that sure looked and tasted like fish, but she'd seen ponies make things out of thin air before. Or they could've bought them from griffons or something. Letting Spike actually catch his own, like a real dragon, was a whole lot different from magic or money. And giving her fish only happened in the cafeteria at school. There wasn't so much as a crayfish to be had in Professor Applejack's whole picnic basket.
It was a weird way to eat lunch, too. She'd lived in Ponyville long enough that it wasn't anywhere near her first picnic, but they didn't get any less weird to her. The cafeteria made sense. The cook ponies made food in the back where they didn't have to chase anyone off, and everyone else ate right there just outside the kitchen because that was convenient. Cooking everything in one place and then dragging it all outside to eat in Billet and Oil's back yard though? And on a blanket too, which Headmare Twilight brought along because ponies only wanted to eat grass, not touch it. Apparently.
Then there was the food.
“What… is this?” She asked of the bowl of pale cubes slathered in a yellowish, mustard-smelling goo that Spike dished out onto her plate.
“That there's potato salad!” Professor Applejack said. “Made it myself!”
“You should try it!” Spike said. “If you like it, I can make you my own recipe sometime!”
Smolder scratched the base of her crest at the back of her head. “Uh… I thought salad was the leafy parts?”
“Ponies have all sorts of salads,” he explained. “Potato, egg, cobb…”
“A salad,” Headmare Twilight declared, “can refer to any dish (usually cold) consisting of fruits or vegetables, such as (but not exclusively) lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, covered with a dressing and sometimes containing eggs, nuts, or seeds.”
“Or gems!” Spike added.
“Or gems,” Twilight conceded with a smile. “But, you're probably not going to find gems on most menus in Equestria.”
“Oh, yeah, I've been wondering,” Smolder countered. “Why do you like eggs cold and raw, anyway?”
Everypony from Billet to Twilight actually gagged on their food.
“That ain't even close to right, sugarcube,” Applejack said.
“Who told you that!?” Oil asked.
“Uh, the ponies who kept theirs in cold vaults? Why else would you make 'em cold?”
“'Cold vaults'?” Spike asked. “Uh, do you mean ice boxes?”
“Uh… I guess?”
“Those are for storage,” Twilight said. “Most food will keep longer if kept cold.” She touched her hoof to her chin. “Maybe I should add some basic science to the curriculum after all. Ooh! Or a comparative life-studies course to promote international friendship by fostering a greater understanding of day-to-day life in other cultures!” A quill and scroll zipped out of the saddlebags beside her and started scribbling.
“How do dragons store food?” Spike asked.
“We usually pile it up and sleep on it.”
That pulled the Headmare back into the conversation.
“Wait, does that mean that dragons eat their hoards?”
Smolder snorted. “What, do you think grown-ups just don't eat for a hundred years at a time?”
“You mean… that's normal?” Spike said, hopefully. “All dragons eat in their sleep? It's not just me?”
“Let me guess,” Smolder sighed. “Ponies don't do that, huh?”
“Er, actually… we do, sometimes,” Twilight said. “But it's part of a condition called 'sleep walking'. It's not a normal, healthy sleep pattern for ponies.”
“So you thought something was 'wrong' with him, huh? Why am I not surprised,” she grumbled under her breath. She scooped up a clawful of potato gunk and stuffed it in her mouth. None of the ponies came up with anything good to say to that, which she took as a win.
“So!” Counselor Starlight said to break the awkward silence. “Now that we've learned that, how is the rest of the lesson going? Learn anything interesting, Spike?”
Spike brightened right up again. “Loads! Smolder taught me how to taste different kinds of metal, and how to mix it up and skim off the slag! We're making fishing spears!”
Smolder stopped short of scooping up another clawful of the actually pretty good potato gunk and sat up straight. They'd gotten to that part way quicker than she'd expected.
“Er, don'tcha mean fishin' rods?” Applejack asked.
“Nuh,” Smolder answered, then swallowed her mouthful and tried again. “Nah. We're gonna do spearfishing.”
“Huh. Ain't never heard of that before.”
“Neither have I,” Twilight admitted. Her quill and parchment took up their positions again, waiting for details. “From what I read in Bygone Griffons of Greatness, griffon fishers usually used nets or their bare claws to catch fish. I don't remember any mentions of using spears though.”
“Nets are flammable,” Smolder said with a shrug. “Guess that explains how you know what fishing is though.”
“I've been fishin' before,” Applejack said. “For my dog, Winona. It's good for her to get a little fresh meat every now 'n again. Plenty o' ponies got pets that eat that sorta thing. Why, Fluttershy probably buys more fish than the rest of Ponyville put together!”
“It's all carefully regulated, of course,” Twilight added. “I've never fished myself, but I buy some for Spike. Ponies may not know much about dragons, but we understand how important a balanced diet is for omnivores.”
“So…” Smolder cast a wary look back and forth between Spike and the ponies, “you're cool with this?”
“Why wouldn't we be?”
Smolder threw up her arms. “What's the deal with you guys!? I wanna teach him to spear and eat fish and you're just cool with that? You're not gonna panic or call me a monster or lecture me about how fish have more right to live than dragons do to eat?”
Twilight jerked back like she'd been whacked right across the muzzle. “We'd never deny any creature or animal what they need to live! How could you even think that!?”
Smolder crossed her arms and glared at Twilight. “Why wouldn't I? You've freaked out over just about everything else! I mean, you ponies all act like the whole world is gonna burn down if we spill a drop of metal!”
Most of the ponies got that awkward, nervous look that they did whenever an argument started up. Starlight in particular looked worried, while Applejack tugged the brim of her hat down and murmured something to herself that Smolder didn't catch. Headmare Twilight, on the other claw, set her jaw and glared right back.
“And you don't seem to appreciate just how dangerous a drop of metal can be! Do you have any idea how hot molten iron is?”
“What difference does it make? You can just use your weird pony magic to fix everything, so what does it even matter?”
Twilight's whole expression changed. One second she was going full headmare rage, the next she was just… shocked. “Is that what you think? Smolder--”
“Two thousand eight hundred degrees marenheit.” All eyes turned onto Oil Quench. She was looking at the sandwich resting at her hooves, but she might as well have been staring off at the horizon. “Water boils at two hundred twelve degrees marenheit, but it takes a lot of heat to get it there. If you soak your coat and move really quick, you can touch something like molten lead and be just fine because the water turns to steam and insulates against the heat.”
“Quench, ya don't hafta--,” Iron Billet started, but Oil didn't seem to hear him. She got up on her hooves and turned to her left like how a pony might do to show off their mark or something. A sharp bite and a tug with her teeth undid the ties of her apron. Another twist pulled it off and flung it aside.
“Otherwise, you get burned.”
Smolder didn't get what she was supposed to be seeing at first. Fur wasn't something she thought about a lot, except for when Yona tackled her and nearly smothered her in it. She thought even less about bare skin. You couldn't shave scales, after all. So it took her way too long to realize that bare skin was exactly what she was looking at. But, even then? Even then she didn't need to hear the gasps around her to know that skin wasn't supposed to look like that.
Oil's right side was bare the whole way from shoulder to flank. A few sparse wisps of colorless fur tried to sprout from the bizarrely smooth wrinkles of pinkish flesh, like scrub grass on a lava field, but it was nowhere near a normal coat. The rest was nothing but warped-looking skin.
“I got lucky.” Oil's voice was softer, but still miles away from all that enthusiasm she'd had when they were working. “Somepony heard me scream when it happened. And that's down to luck because I was alone in my workshop, like the dumb little filly I was. And because I was a dumb filly, I didn't keep my 'workshop' organized. If I had, I wouldn't have been looking for my goggles when I already had metal melted and ready to go. And I wouldn't have tripped over a toolbox on my way back. Then I wouldn't have stumbled into my crucible and knocked it over on my way down.
“I had second, third, and fourth-degree burns all along my right side. If there hadn't been a weather team prepping clouds right overhead, I would've died.”
A shudder ran through the group at the grim certainty in Oil's tone. She made it sound so… factual. Like one of the Headmare's lectures or something. Smolder had never heard a pony talk about death like that. Like it was an actual thing that could happen to them. Whenever she or Gallus brought it up, they'd dance around the subject until they found a way out of it. She pulled her eyes off the gigantic mess of scarring to look at her teachers.
“What's a 'fourth-degree' burn?”
Headmare Twilight grimaced. “Doctors have a rating system for burns, from first to fourth. Fourth degree burns are the worst. That means the heat has gotten all the way through the skin and started destroying muscles, tendons, and even bones.”
“I was lucky,” Oil repeated. “I was only on the edge of fourth degree. I don't think they could have saved me if it had gotten my ribs. I'm lucky to be able to walk.”
“I remember when it happened,” Applejack said. “Whole town was holdin' its breath for near on a week, waitin' to hear if y'all were gonna pull through. Just about the biggest relief we ever had when the doctors gave us the good news.”
“But… it's fixed, right?” Smolder asked. “It might look weird, but you got a spell done or something--” Smolder started in place when Spike spoke up.
“Magic can't just unburn stuff, Smolder, believe me.” He paused, shot a look and Twilight, then picked up again after she nodded. “Twilight's one of the best at spells, and even she couldn't unburn all the stuff I set on fire when I was little.”
Smolder huffed angry jets of smoke. “Well, duh, that's dragonfire. It's magic too, y'know.”
“That would actually make it easier to undo,” Counselor Starlight chimed in. “Magic can reverse magic easy. If I were to, say, transform this apple into an orange,” she plucked an apple out of the picnic basket and shot a beam of blue-green magic at it to do just that, “the orange sorta… remembers that it used to be an apple. That means that somepony else, like Twilight, could just use a generic counter spell--” A zap of pinkish magic from Twilight turned the orange back into an apple. “And change it right back to how it used to be.”
Twilight nodded approvingly and picked up the lecture along with the apple. “There are three kinds of changes in nature: physical, chemical, and magical. Starlight's transformation spell uses magic directly to alter the form of an object, making it a purely magical change because that underlying memory isn't altered. But magic can also perform physical changes, like cutting, by using magic to apply physical force.” Her magic split the apple into perfect segments. “Or chemical changes, like cooking, by using magic to generate heat.”
A focused bolt of magic struck the segments, instantly setting off hissing and steaming like they'd been tossed into a frying pan. The smell of roasted apple wasn't nearly as drool worthy as usual alongside the sight of Oil's scars.
“These sorts of changes do change the memory of the apple. It's a segmented and cooked apple now. Even if I magically transformed it back into a whole, raw apple, it would always be a segmented and cooked apple just waiting to be changed back to its true form.
“That's why the Elements of Harmony could undo everything Discord did to Ponyville, but couldn't repair the Golden Oaks Library. Tirek didn't transform the library into a stump, he blasted it with heat and force.” She cast a sad look at Oil's scarred side. “Magic can fix some physical changes, but cooked apple is a fundamentally different thing than raw apple. That's why something like ordinary fire can cause more lasting damage in a matter of seconds than spending hours under the influence of chaos magic. Burns like that must have taken moons and dozens of operations to treat.”
Oil nodded. “It was half a year before I was out of the hospital. Another full year of physical therapy to get me close to normal. This,” she brushed a hoof over her scars, “is as healed as I'm ever going to get.”
“But… one of you raises the sun!”
“It's not about power,” Twilight said. “If power was enough, then Starlight and I could empty all of Equestria's hospitals by ourselves. Magic is an important part of medicine, but it can't fix everything. Some things… just can't be fixed.”
Smolder stared at Twilight. She wasn't done with her lecture, was she? There had to be more, right? There was always more with these ponies. They always had a trick or a spell or a something to solve their problems. If there wasn't, then…
“You're crazy,” Smolder said.
Twilight frowned. “Smolder, that's not--”
Smolder sprang into the air right in the middle of the group. “You're telling me that normal fire can kill you, and there's nothing you can do about it? And you invited dragons to your town!? Do you have any clue how many houses I've burned down? And you're telling me I might have-- Is that why mom always said…?”
“Uh, Smolder,” Spike tried to say.
“And you guys!” She whirled around to face Oil Quench and Iron Billet. “Are you out of your minds!? You spend all day messing around with stuff that could kill you!? Why!?”
Oil turned herself a little further so that her flank was on full display. On it, with the edge just barely shy of her scars, was a cutie mark of a bucket brimming with fire, with a spear and sword crossed over inside it.
“Because I love it more than anything.”
Smolder hung in the air, staring at the mark Oil had presented as if a patch of colorful fur would just explain it all away. She flapped higher and shook her head in a daze.
“You're crazy. You're all crazy.”
She shot away from the group as hard and fast as her wings could carry her.