Forest Treasure

by MirroredHawk

Sawmill

Fire woke up from a door knocking. He went to bed too late, because of the urge to finish everything. He quickly gathered his things and left the room, meeting Tiny Crunch in the corridor. Students were slowly walking down to the main hall.

“Thanks,” Tiny spoke friendly.

“Nothing to thank for,” Fire yawned, “Is Golden Robe with you?”

Tiny got a bit confused, but quickly found himself, “Yeah, of course. He's already downstairs.”

“That horny one seems to have over-experimented. In his work he wrote that there's no need to use manipulative magic for the automation of object movement. Even the leading academicians of Order of Belladonna would argue with that.”

“He said that he found a new method to enchant object for the automation. Was happy as a foal,” answered Tiny, starting to go downstairs.

“I can't remember the last time his work wasn't parsed by our best unicorn lecturers,” Fire laughed.

“But the enchanting magic is one of the least studied, isn't it?”

“Yeah, but it involves highly questionable practices. It is as if Golden takes his conclusions out of nowhere. They checked him, right?” asked Fire, when they appeared in the hall.

“Good morning, Mr. Fire,” a short young turquoise unicorn with a golden mane greeted him with his eyes of pale yellow.

“Have you decided to ignore the study material again?” Fire asked bluntly.

“Did you get to check my work again?” Golden answered with a sarcastic tone.

“Golden, toying with the enchantments never ended well for anypony,” Fire said seriously.

“I assure you that I'm very—” Golden Robe was interrupted by the lecturer, who declared, “Onwards to sawmill!” Foam first left the building, briefly nodding to Fire and to thestral, who was about to leave for bed.

Group of four ponies walked in front of Fire, he knew Golden, Mistral and Tiny already, but he saw a blue earthpony with a light-green mane for the first time. They were merrily chatting as Fire approached them, looking questionably at unknown stallion.

Being the most energetic one, Mistral quickly introduced them, “Fire Sense, lecturer assistant,” she pointed at him, turning her wing onto the earthpony, “Silver Toll, he's studying agriculture in parallel with Tiny.”

“We met during the automatic plough project. Sadly, it did not work out,” Silver said.

“Yeah, unicorns screwed up again,” Tiny added.

“It is much harder to set up a magical crystal than to dig out potatoes, one mistake and everything goes to Scorpan,” Golden pointed out indignantly, “I told you that they are not to blame for lacking information in which conditions this crystal will operate.”

“Even fool could guess that in the field!” Tiny exclaimed.

“Yeah, but you forgot to tell them about the rain,” Golden calmly retorted.

“Pegasi made a mess that day,” Mistral spoke, “Cloud equipment malfunctioned making a rainy cloud.” She sighed, “We haven't got any new equipment from Cloudsdale for ages.”

“Defence preparations?” Fire asked.

“My brother is there, last time he wrote me three days ago. They've prepared firing points, cloud and weather barriers as well as special encapsulated storms. They nearly released one due to the provocation near Ponyville. As if nightmares became true...” Mistral sounded worried.

Fire sighed, “Yeah, it's horrible when war becomes part of everyday routine. Celestia returned 7 years ago and from that point everything went straight to Scorpan. And every time when you think that it can't get any worse—”

“—Somepony proves you're wrong,” Tiny finished Fire's monologue.

“Mistral, you said that you helped Frist and...” Fire forgot the name of second student.

“—And Byrk,” Mistral corrected him. “Yeah, we helped them with the saw. Tiny met Frist and offered our help, since he had acquaintances in a logging camp on South-West from Whinnyapolis.”

“And I helped them with enchantments,” — Golden added.

“For how long I haven't spoken to students...” Fire sighed, “I hope this time there were no flying feathers obsessively chasing mares?” he laughed.

“Fire, I've been making stupid mistakes then,” Golden was embarrassed, “And besides, nobody was able to reproduce this spell yet, including myself.”

“Some would desperately want to,” Fire ironically remarked and whole group burst in laughter.

They were met by the crystal unicorn and an earth-forepony near the workshop. They started to show the sawmill. It was mechanical with the water wheel controlling the saw movements. Unicorn decided to tell students how they deal with the sturdier logs.

“There must be several unicorns capable of casting elemental and manipulative magic,” unicorn started, “One or two unicorns reinforce the saw with magic while other two are moving the saw synchronously with the water wheel, and the last unicorn is pushing the log from the back. The resulting force will be just enough to deal even with the sturdiest wood, as well as this way the sawmill is able to sustain efficiency even when the current is slowed down. Of course, such methods are not always needed and unicorns are working as part of personnel.”

He coughed, “That's about summer, of course. In winter this becomes a necessity. We have 3 unicorn crews. Two crews are performing already described actions if needed and one is working on the wheel”

“Is the sawmill active?” lecturer asked.

“Not at the moment, but to the North in Castle Danger logging is done only in winter because of the swampy terrain, so the sawmill is operating from time to time,” unicorn replied, “We will have to cut 530 logs next week and send those to Sundown woodworks, for example.”

The unicorn-guide led them to the wheel. It was situated in the small ditch, which was fenced off from the main stream by the wooden gates. There they met another three unicorns, one of which also was crystal.

“Now we're going to demonstrate you how it works,” guide announced and unicorns placed themselves.

“Launch!” one of them shouted. Four horns lit up and ice in the ditch started to melt.

“Ice is heated by the elemental magic,” professor explained.

“Open up!” shouted the same unicorn and crystal one jumped to the position with better view on the gates. His horn lit up and the gates started to lift, allowing the current of cold water into the ditch. All the broken ice was melting on the way. Wheel started to rotate and saw in sync with it was moving up and down.

Guide moved back and said, “Here. Now it's possible to cut a log in half.”

Suddenly, as if from nowhere, came forepony bringing half-sawed log, slightly covered with snow, to the start of the chute.

“Oh, you're lucky,” guide said, “we forgot to finish it last time.”

Forepony placed log in the chute and hit the lever. Moving part started to push log on the saw and after around 30 seconds two quarters of the log fell into the pile of the same quarters.

“Stop!” forepony shouted. Crystal unicorn closed the gates stopping the water.

“Wooden gates aren't great, but our mayor wasn't able to finance the sawmill more,” guide pointed out. Unicorns stopped watching over the water and relaxed.

Guide and forepony started to explain the details of the sawmill mechanism. Lecturer came to the Fire and said, “You need to go already. Frist and Byrk are waiting.”

Fire nodded and gestured his four students to follow, trotting out of the building.

“Good morning,” Frist greeted them, “Are you ready for the mountain crossing?”

“It will take around 4 hours,” Byrk said with obvious Severyanian accent. He was dark-red grey-maned unicorn, “Here, we've found some winter clothes for you.” He placed a bag on the ground with five jackets, hats, scarves and fur-shoes for hooves.