Tales from Everfree City

by LoyalLiar

15-3

XV - III

From The Records of Carver, Cloud Architect

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7th Last Seeds, 22nd Year of Equestria

Contract: Unicorn mountain villa/fortification, or—

This deserves more written down than just the template. So, today, I met this unicorn kid. I know him from the papers, and also I guess Finder knows him? Definitely need to ask about that over a pint now, because I have a lot of questions.

The client is Mortal Coil, or 'Morty' - the kid who picked a fight with Star Swirl a little while ago (and Lun before that…). I guess Hurricane's kid (the Queen, not Commander Typhoon) recommended me, because he showed up at my door out of the blue, which was enough of a surprise since he's a unicorn and the office is Cloudsdale. But no sweat off my back, I've worked for unicorns before, so I bring him into the office, set him up with a drink, and we start to talk about what he wants built.

First off, the location is the Mountain of Dawn—which he just casually tells me Celeste gave him. Like, as a birthday present or something. Ok, sure, he's got the papers in order. Then he—just off-hoof, mind you—casually adds that she still needs to live there, so the doors need to be higher than usual. I had to ask him to repeat himself for whatever he said next, because I got lost for a good second that I was building a house for the goddess of the sun. And when I spelled that out, he said the place was mostly gonna be his, he just wanted to make sure she felt at home.

Fantastic. Got it. I start talking to him about the choice between a Cirran-style villa or something more unicorn or even earth-pony style, and if he had other functional needs. I dug into the latter a bit, because I have no idea what kind of rooms a 'wizard' needs in their house, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary. Usual questions. And he starts laying out requirements from a list. He's obviously thought this through, which I appreciate in a client (though it's a little weird how much he's struggling to read off the list; the kid might need glasses). He's describing a pretty big house, but at first there's nothing wrong there. But he just… keeps going. Talking to me about putting in baths and bedrooms and dining rooms and dining halls—and I'm the architect, but I had to ask him what he thought the difference was there—but eventually, I had to cut him off. I could build what he wanted on the ground, sure, or a cloud, but he's talking about the top of a mountain. And I can do a lot with a lot of wings (and I had to remind him: when I was doing stuff like the Cloudsdale baths, I got to tap the Legion for labor, but unless he's got a private army, we're gonna have to hire a lot of ponies), but even if we did have that many wings, if he wants to walk on the ground, it's gonna be awful hard to put this much that high.

He turns around and asks if the cloudstone that's pounded dense enough to be solid can support the weight of ground stone, so he could put dirt on top and have gardens.

So I got to sit there explaining how long and how tiring it is to make even a little cloudstone that dense. And he just smiles and says he'll take care of labor. So help me, I did not like the way his eyes glinted when he said that. Mobius strike me down for lying if I didn't have half a mind to run out of my own house. But I'm a Legion veteran, and I wasn't about to let it show over some weird unicorn kid, so instead, I started tallying up what he was asking for.

Now, I didn't work on the Equestrian palace, but there aren't that many architects in Everfree, and word does get around. So I know what we were talking about for this 'Canterlot' he was proposing (he said it like I was supposed to know the name from somewhere?) was gonna be more money than Equestria spent on the palace. Maybe about half again.

He asked me how much of that was manual labor and materials, so I factored that part of the price away, and basically just told him my fee, plus what I'd need for the specialists to do hot-and-cold water cloud plumbing, fixtures and decorations, those sorts of things. It was still like… maybe a tenth of the overall cost.

And he just pulls the money out. He had seven hundred thousand bits just stuffed into that weird jacket he was wearing—how the bag didn't bulge out, I'll never know. And then he says he's gonna take care of manual labor and materials. Like… I don't know how else to say this, but it sounded like he was implying he was gonna do it himself personally. And if that's what he meant, I cannot stress enough, this kid would have made Pathfinder look musclebound back when we were colts.

But he insisted, and said we should meet up at the site. So that appointment's on my book tomorrow.

Now I just need to figure out how not to look like I robbed the treasury with this bag of coins.

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8th Last Seeds, 22nd Year of Equestria

He brought a grizzly bear cub with him. And honestly, the cub was the more normal one.

The first thing Morty does is show me a cave, and explain the structure has to cover this cave, and that I am absolutely not allowed inside. He didn't say why. I didn't ask.

He asked me to mark out what kind of space we would need for the overhang (the support for the garden we talked about yesterday). I grabbed a few loose clouds because the mountain's far enough outside Everfree that the Legion doesn't maintain the weather, and made a sort of outline. I didn't actually get the last ones in place before the wind had the first puffs I dropped blowing away, but it was enough to show how ridiculously large the 'balcony' was going to be. I honestly expected he'd say it was too big, but instead, he asked me if it was possible to have support if we pushed the end out further. And, well, arches can do a lot of miracles, but by that point we would mostly be relying on cloudstone floating, and it would be even more of the stuff we'd need. But he was happy, so…

Look, I'm gonna be honest: I told him I didn't think this was gonna come together. And I also told him I'd give him the money back, but if he wanted me to keep working, I'd keep it whether he actually got this miracle together or not. He told me to keep the coin, and then asked me to help him mark out what stone needed to be cut, and where we would be flattening the wall of the mountain. So we spent an hour or so setting up some string between climbing pitons that he drove into the stone. I think it's insane that he didn't use a hammer, and just shoved them straight into the rock with his magic, but maybe that's something wizards are strong enough to do. I suppose I'd look at it weird if most pegasi did it, but if Rain did it, I wouldn't look twice—so that's probably the same thing, right? Or maybe Hurricane is a better example; I never actually got to see him in a fight, but if half the stories about him are true, maybe Morty's not that weird.

After we did the marking, I told him I was headed back to the office, and he said to come check in the next day. I told him the truth: there's no stonemasons in the world who work that fast. But he insisted.

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9th Last Seeds, 22nd Year of Equestria

As Garuda is my witness, he did it.

Not more than a few hours ago, I was standing on a flat floor of stone outside that cave of Morty's, with a now flat vertical wall against the cliff face. And just off to the side, he had a pile of vaguely purplish regularly cut stone bricks, and another pile of quite white stone bricks.

I asked if I could meet his team who'd done this so fast, and he told me he'd done it by magic. But… I don't know how else to say this, but I'm pretty sure he was hiding something. He seemed squirrely to me. I don't know if wizards aren't supposed to use magic to build things or something; I don't spend a lot of time with unicorns, to be honest. So I didn't push on that…

Not, at least, until he asked me to show him how to make cloudstone out of clouds. Then I had to explain one thing I do know: unicorn magic doesn't grab clouds well. Instead of condensing them, it tends to break them up. He didn't seem worried about that, and told me he wouldn't be using his horn on the clouds. That was what really made me curious. But regardless, he'd paid a lot of gold, so I showed him how to make a hoof-sized lump. I'm not a young colt, so I wasn't gonna make a full-sized paving brick for him, let alone the kind of structure we're asking for.

Then he asked me if I knew any ponies I could hire to go up and gather the clouds for him. So I spent a good deal of the day grabbing a bunch of foals who were looking for odd jobs, and giving them ten bits each (of his money) to pile up as many clouds for him as they could. The kids did a pretty good job harvesting, and by the time I had to fly them all back for their respective dinners, we had enough cloudstone for whatever magic trick he was using to keep busy for a couple weeks.

As I was leaving, he told me to come back tomorrow.

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10th Last Seeds, 22nd Year of Equestria

Well, he didn't finish all of it. But he managed to match the output we had when Emperor Hurricane had the entire Third Legion building the foundations of Cloudsdale. Not only was the cloud compacted into cloudstone bricks (though they were all at an angle relative to the standard dimensions), but the platform was even assembled out about six layers.

I gave further directions on how to progress, and asked him point blank how he was doing it. Again, he told me magic, and left it at that.

I might not have ever been a scout like Pathfinder—certainly not a big hero about it like him—but I do know a thing or two about being sneaky. And I'm curious. So tonight, once he goes to bed, I'm gonna find out the secret.

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10th Last Seeds, 22nd Year of Equestria, Addendum

What I learned is that Morty doesn't sleep. I saw some figures around him in the night that looked like ponies, but all of them were wearing cloaks and hoods. None of them ever spoke, though Morty did give them directions. It was weird.

Hiding in a cloud was a comfortable choice, but that kinda defeated my purpose; I fell asleep in it before Morty left. When I woke up, the sun was coming up, and his workers were gone, but he was still there. And then I saw something really weird: he'd picked up a big mountain stone brick with his horn, and then something happened with his horn; the magic kinda flickered or faded for a second, and the brick fell on him. And it crushed his skull. I thought he was stone dead; I admit I leapt out of my cloud and shouted out to him.

And then he oozed out from under the rock, like bacon grease that's mostly cooled in the pan, and that swirly white stuff formed back into his head. And it looked straight at me. And at that point, I admit, I ran away.

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11th Last Seeds, 22nd Year of Equestria

I've been telling myself that since he caught me spying—and he must have known for me to show up like that—that he wouldn't want me anymore. But Morty showed up at my door again today like nothing had happened. And I don't know if he was trying to let what happened be water under the bridge, or if he was threatening me, but he did make it clear he wanted me back on the job.

He told me he was fine, and that sometimes wizards can make spare bodies, and his was made of candle wax. Then he told me he wasn't ashamed of how he was getting the project done so fast, he just didn't want to make me uncomfortable. But he also offered to just tell me. And when I kind of half-nodded, he asked me if I was a particularly religious pony, and how confident I was that I knew what would happen when I die.

So at that point, I told him I was ok with not knowing, and if he wanted, I would get out of his mane so he could have the cloaked workers work before it got dark. To which he told me they didn't much care for sunshine, whether I was there or not.

He made some pretty good progress on the plateau, but he underestimated the curvature needed for the supporting half-arch, so I marked out some corrections for that for him, and then started on the main supports for the facade of the main structure.

I'm not sure if I regret this job yet, but it's definitely the first that I've felt as scared to go back to the site as I was going into battle back on Dioda.

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17th Last Seeds, 22nd Year of Equestria

I didn't take another multi-day break; just all the previous days have been me flying up, marking off some new markers and describing the shapes he needed to build, and then flying home.

Morty's insisting we move as quickly as possible on the parts of the project his magical 'team' aren't driving themselves, which means that while I did still mark out the next stage of work, the front few rooms are ready for doors and windows and some other carpentry and similar work, as well as cloud plumbing for the baths. I told him I also had no idea how to get dirt and grass up this high, and that he'd need to go to a gardener or some kind of groundskeeper for that.

As we were working, Lady Celeste—rather, 'Celestia', as she corrected me—showed up. Despite being a goddess in the flesh, she definitely made the space a whole lot more normal. Morty showed her to a room that was sticking out of the other side of the mountain (perpendicular to the face with the cave; we haven't dug all the way through yet) that he offered her as personal quarters. She seemed pleased, and asked me if I could make a few tweaks or accommodations for her. The need to have running heated water come up so high up on the wall hadn't occurred to me before, but it certainly makes sense in her unique case.

I found one of the cloaks the magic workponies were wearing while I was marking out one of the rooms near the back of the project space that was only partially mined out. It appeared to have been dropped (or the pony inside vanished somehow?). Whatever had happened, it smelled wretched.

I think this might actually turn out to be a masterpiece project, and not a complete disaster.

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34th Last Seeds, 22nd Year of Equestria
(Morty's note: The original Cirran calendar had twelve months; in the unification of Equestria, we agreed on a more modern numeration, but the Cirran names stuck (at least at the time). This entry corresponds to the beginning of proper autumn.)

(Morty's note for foreigners: the modern Equestrian calendar has 9 months, each 40 days, plus five days a year (or sometimes six) set aside for a traditional holy/holiday week. Cirran culture only recognized three seasons in a year, rather than the earth pony and unicorn four season year, which made agreeing on what to name the current date a political nightmare during the Compact period.)

Work on Canterlot is moving fast enough that I'm not sure whether to be inspired or alarmed. We've got two floors done, with another up and two more downward on the way. That said, the need for excavating the mountain is slowing down his part of the project, so I'm only going up every couple of days.

Today, he introduced me to his 'butler', who is going to be overseeing some of the work. I found Professor Oak to be much easier to deal with than Morty, which is weird because he's one of those blank-faced wooden dummies you see in fancy unicorn clothing stores. No mouth, no eyes, nothing. Still talks, still obviously sees, just by magic instead of the usual way. But he's friendly, and he knows a lot about architecture, or at least what he expects out of a house once it's finished. He said it's because he keeps Morty's current house, and there's a lot of effort that goes into that. But he had a lot of really fine detailed questions, asking about things as specific as how humid a lower floor room would be and if clouds could be made to keep it dry to serve as a wine cellar. At first, I almost thought maybe he was a real pony just in a fake body, like Morty's wax one. I asked him and he assured me he was a 'golem', but he took the fact I thought otherwise as a compliment. But then later on, when we were talking about where to put the guest toilets, he asked me if I was a boy or a girl. So obviously Professor Oak isn't a real pony.

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37th Last Seeds, 22nd Year of Equestria
After not showing up for two days (though construction continued), Morty arrived today in the company of Professor Oak, pulling a wagon full of mirrors up the side of the mountain. The building absolutely is not done, but Morty started putting up those mirrors in all the rooms that were, regardless. And he'd talk to his own reflection in them—not every one, but sometimes.

At this point I almost feel like I don't need to write down all his new eccentricities. Just throw another one on the pile.

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40th Last Seeds, 22nd Year of Equestria
I haven't seen much of Morty recently. Professor Oak tells me that he's been teaching courses at the wizard college in Horntown, and that as a consequence of being around so many foals, he's come down with an illness. I asked how he could get sick if he was made of wax; I was kidding, but I think the Professor took it personally.

Completely by accident, I stuck around toward the end of the day—there are enough rooms going simultaneously now that the marking work is taking me more of a day than it used to. As I was leaving, I passed one of the cloaked workers. What looked back at me… well, I think it used to be a pony. Maybe a frostbitten one. And I think it was a crystal pony?

If anything, I almost feel like that should have upset me more. But… I don't know, at this point I almost expected it. The way I see it, if Celestia trusts this kid, who am I to second guess?

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2nd Golden Leaves, 22nd Year of Equestria (Morty's note: Golden Leaves is the month immediately following Last Seeds; this is just 2 days later, not 42 or more)

Morty asked me to keep working in an extended absence from the project. Given what he was wearing, I hope he's still alive to come back to a finished Canterlot…

Comments

[Adin Terim]

Always nice to see an outside perspective, Morty qould seem quite strange.
Also, you've got a repeat of of an entry with the 29th and 34th.

[CopperTop]

Morty showing up to the construction site with his "crew":

I hope you don't mind, I brought some friends! Associates? Slaves. I brought slaves.

[LoyalLiar]

12153458
That's what I get for getting sidetracked trying to remember where the heck the notes were from when The 24th Pegasus wrote Of Skies Long Forgotten so I could remember how the Cirran calendar worked.

[Noobblue]

Work on Canterlot is moving fast enough that I'm not sure whether to be inspired or alarmed.

Is this meant to be duplicated in the entry right after it?

EDIT: Woops, nvm, haven't refreshed the page in a while XD

[RoboRed]

I was not prepared for the "Professor Oak" bit.

Sounds to me like Morty is making good use of Luna's crew to build the place. I'm kinda waiting for this to take a turn though, and it sure sounds like it with him not showing up towards the end there...