Journeyman's Journal

by Journeyman

MLM: AtE Alternate Scene: Better Make Way When the Crafter Comes

Author's Note:

I had the underground scene in chapter 29 of At the End in my head for a long time, but it has gone through quite a few changes. Originally, the Crafter was never intercepted by anypony and freely retreated underground. There, he slowly dug to the surface, learning the pony way of life little by little. He stayed hidden due to his ability to dig tunnels, and that's how he listened to their conversations and learned about their way of life, including their language.

This concluded in him saving Rarity from some Diamond Dogs. Obviously, I've rewritten several things since my first draft of the story. This is a scene from Rarity's perspective a little after he saves her. I'll tell you, this way written WAY back, so my prose is poor and it hasn't gone through editing. This is just a little alternate cut that came to my mind so long ago. There are spoilers for chapter 29 nevertheless.

Without further ado, here's the partially completed chapter aptly titled: Better Make Way When the Crafter Comes

Chapter XX: Better Make Way When the Crafter Comes

Rarity was having trouble keeping up with her benefactor. Whatever it was—no, whatever he was, he had a very high stamina. High enough that Rarity was sure he could match Applejack in a race. He just kept on sprinting down the endless tunnels, swerving right and left with only a torch and the light of the gems to guide him. Rarity was accustomed to tunnels, they held the best gems after all, but he seemed to have an uncanny sense of direction in the endless gray and brown tunnels packed with dirt and stone.

“Please Mister, I am quite aware of the unpleasantness and lack of hospitality of Diamond Dogs, but I must rest. Plus I need to clear my mane of this unpleasant dust.” The creature turned to Rarity, eyes concerned, but still urgent. He held up his strange hoof and a mass of brown coalesced out of the air into a cube of wood. For the life of her, Rarity had no idea how he did that. Maybe Twilight would have an answer once she made it back to the surface. The creature ticked away at the wood for a second before showing her what he wrote.

ALMOST THERE

“Well, Mister, why didn’t you just say so?”

The creature ticked away at the sign some more. Rarity blinked in surprise. For one, the previous message inked in black letters had vanished. Secondly was the three words printed on the sign.

I CAN’T TALK

Spike spoke up before Rarity, “Well I’ve never met a pony that couldn’t talk before. Even monsters of the Everfree Forest make some kind of noise.”

“Please Spike,” Rarity chided. “If he says he cannot talk, then he can’t.” She turned to the creature before her. “Well Mister, do you at least have a name I can call you besides the standard polite prefix?”

The creature gave Rarity what she thought was a confused expression. He thought for a moment before ticking away at the sign.

I DON’T HAVE A NAME

Rarity was about to ask a question, but the creature started sprinting again, gesturing for Rarity to follow. Rarity gave a defeated sigh and ran after him; he’d better have a shower.

After a minute, Rarity noticed a strange shift in the tunnels. The once rough and winding tunnels had started to widen and become more angular. The tunnel opened up to a larger cavern that ran alongside an underground river and the floor was conspicuously flat. The walls and stones lining the wall had much sharper angles while the cavern on the other side of the river was still full of curves and ridges. Rarity, Spike, and the creature came up to a nearly flat wall. He turned around, making sure he got Rarity’s attention before pointing to some small outcroppings on the wall.

“...Well what about it?”

He shook his head and pressed one of the bumps in the wall. Rarity gave a small shriek as the wall in front of her parted to reveal a hidden room on the other side. She didn’t get a good look at the other side because after a second, the wall slide back to its perfectly flat state. He pressed the bump in the wall and the wall opened. He quickly walked through and gestured for Rarity to follow before the wall closed once more.

“Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Spike said. He stood up on Rarity’s back and pressed the button to open the wall.

“Spike!” Rarity almost objected, but cut it short as the wall opened and she walked into the room with the now beckoning creature.

Rarity gasped, not quite able to process what she was seeing at the moment. In front of her built into a large cavern was a full courtyard with an accompanying garden in front of a small mansion made out of granite and cobblestone. There was stone steps built in tiles leading up to a circular park with trees, grasses and an array of flowers there was a bubbling brook in the center that flowed underground and parted to run parallel to the left and right of the stairs. She could see reds, yellows, blues, and even common weeds arrayed in patterns framing trees and other shrubbery. She saw great oaks, weeping willows, birch, and elm trees. Flowers arranged in colored rows leading to the center of the garden where a great oak tree stood.

And then there was the mansion, a marvelous, if a little too angular, piece of craftsmanship 5 stories tall, one hundred meters wide and fifty deep. A small set of stone stairs led from the courtyard up to the iron doors and Rarity could swear she could see woolen carpet of a variety of colors in the many, many windows dotting the sides. But despite the grand scale of everything inside, the cavern was shockingly well lit. Not by gems, though the creature seemed to have begun to grasp a gem’s light retention capability with their dotted locations across the courtyard, but by torches. There must have been hundreds, maybe a thousand to cover this grand room.

“I... I... I s-suspected that there was only one of you. To build all of this... How many of you are there?”

TickTickTickTickTickTick

I STARTED BUILDING THIS MYSELF SINCE I CAME HERE A MONTH AGO

TickTickTick

I AM ALONE

Rarity’s dropped jaw would have hit the ground if it could drop any further. That... that was impossible. The stairs or the garden alone would have taken a team of ponies weeks to construct. And moving all that stone and mortar to make the mansion? There was no conceivable way that could occur. ‘But...’ Rarity’s thoughts backtracked. This creature did have an unusual kind of magic. He could make things appear and disappear at will, so his claims weren’t completely unbelievable. Just mostly.

Spike had regained his grasp on his speech as well and was about to give the creature a retort for his claims, but Rarity quieted him with a glance. She had far too many questions and didn’t want Spike to anger him accidentally. The creature beckoned once more up to the mansion and the pony followed with careful steps. She couldn’t help but admire the creature’s work. The smells of the garden would make Fluttershy envious beyond belief. There was fountain deeper in the garden and the source of the brook. The spray of the water was a bone-cutting cold as she walked past. Well water from deeper underground. Rarity’s mind backtracked again. Despite all of the sights and smells of the garden, she didn’t see or hear a single bird or squirrel or any animal whatsoever. She supposed it would be hard to get animals this deep in the earth; it was another question to ask for later.

Inside, Rarity could see it was every bit as grand as she thought. Woolen carpets, pane glass windows, bookshelves lining the walls, a fully stocked kitchen and a wall full of ovens, a dining room with glass floors, a living room with oak furniture and potted plants in the corners, dozens of empty rooms richly adorned with woolen sheets and carpets of deep blues, reds, and purples. Everything in this building rivaled even the most tactlessly extravagant places she’d seen in Canterlot. Everything still had an overabundance of lines and edges, but Rarity had almost immediately forgotten about that. Sure, she believed that smooth, flowing textures and patterns were superior to this creature’s designs, but there was a simple, spartan beauty to this place’s simplicity. Every line and block had a purpose and fit together like a puzzle. Rarity couldn’t help but admire the craftsmanship.

The creature led the pair to the living room and gestured to a simple bench covered with woolen sheets. Rarity’s eyes almost bulged. Now that she noticed it, all the sheets and carpets in the mansion were all hoof-stitched. How did he do this!?

The creature sat down on a wooden chair and held out a sign.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?

The obvious question came first, “What are you?”

The creature ticked away at his sign.

I SUPPOSE YOU COULD CALL ME A CRAFTER. I BUILD THINGS

“What kind of things?” Spike asked.

WHATEVER I WANT

“But how can you create such detailed extravagance? By yourself no less?”

IT IS WHAT I DO BEST

“But how? I have never witnessed such incredible and useful magic before! If I may be so bold as to inquire, where did you research such marvelous feats?”

The Crafter looked confused for a second before making another message.

NOT MY LANGUAGE. TOO MANY BIG WORDS

Spike laughed at that. “He’s got your number Rarity.”

“Spike! Do not be rude to our host! He did save our lives after all.” Rarity turned back to the Crafter. “I do apologize. What I mean to say is can you tell me about your magic?”

HOW I CAN CREATE AND ABSORB MATERIALS?

Rarity gave a furious nod.

IT IS JUST SOMETHING I CAN DO

The Crafter scribbled at his sign some more, having run out of room.

I DO NOT KNOW HOW IT WORKS

“Well, how did you learn you could do it?”

INSTINCT. EVER SINCE I AWOKE IN THE OVERWORLD, I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO CRAFT

“What is this... Overworld?”

The Crafter had begun to write, but stopped and wrote something else. “I WILL NEED MORE SIGNS.” Getting up, he walked along the woolen carpets and to the cabinets on the far side of the wall. Unlike the rest of the cabinets she’d seen dotting the mansion, these ones were very simply made. Oddly enough, the doors opened upward instead from the front, as if to keep a flat workspace when the doors were closed. Rarity got up on her hooves to observe the Crafter root around the chest. There was nothing but a swirling mass of colors of every shape of the rainbow and more inside. The Crafter seemed to know what he was looking for and reached for a jumbled mass of brown, twisting, semi-viscous energy. The brown energy shot into the Crafter’s odd hoof and disappeared. He closed the chest and sat back down, Rarity mimicking his action.

The Crafter got busy writing on his sign. When he ran out of room on that one, he set that one down on a mahogany table and conjured up another. Now that she had time to stop and think, she observed the Crafter’s conjuring. A mass of the same viscous energy escaped from his hoof and curled around his foreleg. Rarity had seen Fluttershy’s animals nuzzle the gentle Pegasus in the same manner, but this seemed different. But after a blink of an eye, the brown energy morphed and hardened into a blank, square sign.

I LIVED IN THE OVERWORLD, AN ENDLESS PLACE FULL OF NATURE, ORE, AND MONSTERS
IT IS THERE THAT I MINED THE LANDSCAPE AND HARVESTED THE WORLD’S BOUNTY TO SURVIVE.
MY FIRST MEMORY WAS ON AN ISLAND WITH A GREAT LANDMASS ACROSS THE WATER
MY MIND WAS GRACED WITH A SINGLE THOUGHT: SURVIVE
CRAFTING WAS ALL I KNEW, SO IT IS ALL I DID. I HAD NO REASON TO, BUT NO REASON NOT TO
SO I CRAFTED TOOLS, THEN OBJECTS, THEN BUILDINGS, THEN CITIES. IT WAS ALL I KNEW

Rarity was quiet for a minute, silently chewing on the Crafter’s words. His behavior matched what she’d seen so far. A grand feat of architecture and design lay underneath her hooves in all of its marvelous splendor.

Comments

[Reader Review]

Meanwhile in an alternate universe

[Siphon117]

I like it. Definitely would have been different if events had happened differently.