Plagiarism of the Gods: Equestrians of Discworld

by Bugsydor

Maud vs. Troll

“Hi. I’m Maud.”

Slate looked out from his dark alcove in the Shades_[1], saw nothing, and then looked down. There was a grey horse-thing with purple hair in a dull blue dress staring up at him with half-lidded, too-huge eyes. It looked to be about dwarf-height.

[1]: A part of Ankh-Morpork that, had railroads been invented on the Disc, would be on the wrong side of the tracks. Well, wrong-er.

“Youse one o’ dem hall-Lucy-nations? I ain't touched tha slab_[2] in a while, but…”

[2]: A sort of troll narcotic said to melt their brains. It's uranium-based.

“No,” the horse-thing said in a monotone so cold, Slate could feel himself getting smarter_[3] just hearing it. “What sort of rock are you? You’re much more talkative than most rocks I’ve met.”

[3]: A troll’s silicon-based brain brain doesn't become exponentially more efficient as temperature drops, so much as it becomes factorially so, and magic of many sorts have a certain weakness for wordplay.

“Uh… fanks. Trolls is made of…” he knew he'd heard this word before... “metamorphorical rock, which means, eh” – the horse-thing was tapping him now with a hoof – “that we’s made up a’ local rocks. Except for our teef, which is always diamonds.” He tried to grin menacingly, but Maud just kept tapping at the bits of him she could reach.

“My name is Slate, 'cause I’m made a’ slate.” Slate’s beady eyes flickered back and forth to make sure they were alone. “An’ maybe a little shale.”

“More than a little. You are at least thirty-seven point six percent shale. Is there some kind of stratification in troll society based on strata?”

Slate's blood began to boil. You didn't tell a troll with a big club that he wasn't exactly what he said he was. And you really didn't tell him he was mudstone. It was time to teach the horse-thing a lesson. A very blunt and swift lesson.

“HWUAAAAA-ack!”

“Sandstone,” Maud said in her eternal monotone as Slate stared at the settling pile of sand that used to be his club. The horse-thing had done this with one hoof rather than becoming a greasy splatter on the jagged cobbles, forcing Slate's brain into a reboot. “Heavy, but not strong. Not good for making blunt instruments.”

She pulled a pebble out of a pocket and held it up to her ear.

“Boulder says that wasn't very nice of you, and that you should apologize.”

“Sorry, erm, Maud.” He thought he saw Boulder move. “And Boulder. Is… Is Boulder a troll?”

Though Maud’s face stayed locked in its perpetual flat expression, she tilted her head in a thoughtful way.

“No,” she said after a few seconds, “though I have wondered a few times. He doesn't have teeth, though, or a mouth for that matter, so he can't be a troll.”

Slate scratched his head for a bit, making a sound like nails on a chalkboard that made Maud's ears fold back but otherwise left her expression unchanged.

Maud’s stomach rumbled.

“Do you have any food on you? Like some gypsum? Or hematite. I’m not picky.”

Slate fished around in a bandolier pouch and pulled out some gypsum chips to hand to her.

Maud crunched through them.

“Thanks,” she said. “That was some good sulfur. My compliments to the grower_[4].”

[4]: While a few of the fancier trolls in Ankh-Morpork preferred to get their food “free-range”, even though it meant paying a dwarf_[5] to mine it, most trolls just ate the freely available farmed rocks.

[5]: A race that trolls have had an infamously bad time getting along with.

Slate’s befuddlement deepened. “Is you some funny-lookin’ kind a’ troll?”

Her teeth didn't look like diamonds, and she was awful smooth, but she wasn't the wrong colors…

“No. I’m a pony. Who likes rocks.” She looked down at the pebble in her hoof. “Let's go, Boulder. I think I felt some mining down below.”

Slate stared at the pony, dumbfounded_[6], as she walked off into the depths of Ankh-Morpork.

[6]: Well, moreso than usual.

Comments

[Reese]

Excellent. :D

(And trolls have rock farms?)

[Bugsydor]

8622141
Glad you liked it.

And the rock farms are run by whichever enterprising sophonts care to go into the business.

[NobodieZ]

That was funny.

[Bugsydor]

8652770
Glad you enjoyed yourself, despite not being a fan of the source material.