//------------------------------// // Epilogue // Story: A Day at the Quest Hub // by Braininthejar //------------------------------// EPILOGUE A Week Later “There you go,” said Carrot Top to an armored earth pony, handing him a large bag. “You will use up the cheese and probably lose the chair, but make sure to give back the flute when you deliver the order. They’ll need it for whoever takes the cart back.” The pony took the bag and nodded to his two friends, one of whom was harnessed to a wooden cart. “I’ll remember that. Ok guys, time to move out!” The three turned away and left the farm, turning to the north after they passed the gate. Carrot Top followed them with her eyes. The swamps won’t be a big market, but new connections are always a good thing. There was a sound of flapping wings above her and a familiar voice called down to her. “Heya Carrot! We’ve got your oven.” It was Cloud Kicker, armored and pulling a small chariot with a large cubic package resting within. Blossomforth descended alongside her. As the chariot’s wheels touched the ground, Carrot Top walked up to it to look curiously at the package. “So, this is the real thing, isn’t it?” “Yes,” smiled Blossomforth. “New and improved, 96% more explosion-free and with no bats.” “Or bears,” chuckled Cloud Kicker. Blossomforth stared daggers at her. “Anyway, if anything needs fine tuning, I’m sure Vinyl will know how to help you.” She paused, thinking. “You sure you don’t want it installed in Berry’s inn?” Carrot Top shook her head. “The whole point of our deal is that I do the baking. If I placed it at the inn, I’d have to move there to be on time with the morning batch. I guess I could rent a small house in the town center, but my home is here on the farm. Just put it in the kitchen. Everything’s prepared there. I’ll have to stay here to keep an eye on things, but you can ask Blueberry if you need any help… You sure I don’t owe you anything?” Blossomforth smiled. “I have to keep tinkering all the time so my engineering skills don’t grow stale. I may as well make something useful with it from time to time. Plus a lot of what happened was kind of my fault.” Carrot shook her head and smiled. “Hey, everypony makes mistakes. And we couldn’t have done it without you. I only had an idea. You planned out everything and then hammered it together.” Blossomforth was about to respond that she’d have had nothing to work on without the idea. Then she saw Carrot’s smile and shrugged, raising her right front leg. The mares high-hoofed and beamed at each other. “Ok, let’s get it done,” said Cloud Kicker and pulled the chariot towards the house, Blossomforth following her. Carrot Top shook her head once more and then closed her eyes and breathed deeply, allowing the sun to shine on her face. Things were finally looking up. “Um… miss Carrot Top?” Carrot Top opened her eyes and looked behind her. There was a blue earth pony stallion standing there, dressed in simple armor. Carrot vaguely remembered seeing him in town before. His cutie mark was a musical note, I think… “Noteworthy, is it?” The stallion nodded. “How can I help you?” “Well…” started Noteworthy, visibly anxious. “It’s just I’ve just heard you were the one who gathered those herbs for Nurse Redheart a couple weeks ago, to make a poison joke antidote…” Carrot Top groaned. “I don’t do adventuring anymore. I may be a druid, but I’m not an adventurer.” She smiled smugly. “I’m a quest giver now.” “Oh, no, no. It’s nothing of the sort,” replied Noteworthy. “I just wanted to thank you.” “Thank me?” asked Carrot Top. “Wait, you were the one who got his face rearranged?” “Yes,” said the stallion. “And I just had a go at the herb gathering job myself and found out what a chore it was. Those herbs are hard to find and most guys are already done with that part of the forest before they visit the hospital. That’s why Nurse Redheart is always short on ingredients. Almost nopony takes that quest. If it wasn’t for you, I could have spent another week in the hospital.” “Oh” said Carrot, making a mental note to talk to Nurse Redheart about quest giving efficiency. “In that case, I’m glad I could help.” The stallion returned her smile, but kept standing there. The moment stretched until the silence became awkward. “Soo…” asked Carrot Top, “Is there anything else I can help you with?” Noteworthy seemed to turn a bit purple. “I was thinking… would you… do you have any plans for this evening?” Carrot Top blinked in surprise and then smiled contentedly. Things were really looking up. *** Sometime earlier Somewhere by the road in the forest, two slightly burned green shapes were sitting among a smoking wreckage. “It’s all your fault! Why did you stop working on unjamming it?” “Because there was a bat trying to hump my earhole. Wait! MY FAULT!? Whose bright idea was to leave it in the machine in the first place!?” “We needed it to set a trap for them! What if they got on the judges’ good side? Did you think about it?” “Then why didn’t you replace it with something that did the same without blowing everything sky high?” “BECAUSE, that would require taking the thaumic converter to pieces and then we would be without an oven for half a day, a day before the contest.” “Is money all you care about?” “As if you were different. You know what? Stick to cooking and leave technical stuff to me, will you?” “It’s like that time in the Outland when you tried to fly a zeppelin right over Burning Legion positions. ‘Oh, they won’t bother with us. We’re civilians. We’ll save a lot of time this way.’ And where did it get us? Eating hellboar bacon and ravager eggs for two weeks.” “Don’t remind me. I still can’t believe you managed to make it edible.” “So… what do we do now?” “Same we did then. The oven is blown, but the main engine didn’t blow up. If I get enough parts, I should be able to get us back on the road. So, you look around the local wildlife and find us something edible and I’ll try to talk someone into walking around the forest and picking up all the stuff we lost when I was trying not to hit any trees.” “Should work… but we’re barely out of town. Most adventurers here will be ponies.” “So what? They are adventurers. They’ll help. They always do. We’ll tell them it’s a quest.”