In a World of Mining

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Applejack landed with a thud onto the soft ground. Sounds of the beach set the scene, and the noise of something sinking could also be heard, but that noise quickly faded away.

Applejack slowly regained her senses. It had seemed like a long time since she had gone to sleep in her bed. Normally she would've woken up from her bed in what seemed like seconds... now she was outside somewhere, and it felt as if weeks had gone by.

Applejack was also unusually warm. Ponyville was recently having a pattern of relatively cold weather, and sudden shifts in climate never happen. Such a change in temperature startled her.

The farm pony slowly opened her eyes, feeling very tired, but less than before. She was lying down on a large block of sand. In the distance was water, and up above was sky.

She got up, brushed the grains of sand off of her and had a better look at her surroundings. Now that she was up, it was much easier to see.

She was at what appeared to be a beach, yet the sand was flat and square. Even though the sand was this way, Applejack could feel it getting into her hooves. The water was square, the clouds in the sky were made of cubes, the grass was square... in fact, everything in the strange land Applejack was in was cubic in proportions some way or another. Nothing was familiar to Applejack, and there was no visible indication as to know where she was.

Apart from some bruises, the only thing that had changed about Applejack was that a satchel was on her back. She took it off and looked inside. There were four rows of nine pockets inside the satchel, one fitted with a torch. It was alight, but the flame did not burn the satchel. Noticing this made Applejack even more curious about her surroundings.

She called out to see if someone or something was near her in the strange land. "Is anyone out there?"

No answer.

Applejack called out once again. "Hellooooo?!"

Still no answer. Everything was completely silent apart from the echo of Applejack's voice and the sounds of the beach. She tried to picture in her mind that this was all a dream, but something inside her kept telling her it was much more than that.

She started to walk away from the beach and across the grassland. With every twenty steps she had to make an abnormal leap up or down in order to keep going. The ground seemed to jerk up at certain points. As Applejack continued her trek, she spotted some trees in the distance. Seeing them made her excited, but then depressed and confused once again.

The trees were also comprised of cubes and had no apples in their leaves, unlike the trees from the orchard. Despite this, the land was foreign to Applejack, so adrenaline kept her wanting to explore more. She walked over to one of the trees and stared at it for a while. There was an urge to kick the tree travelling around her body...

She shrugged, twirled around and swung her hind legs at the tree. She expected them to stop with the tree, but then again, this wasn't Ponyville.

When her hind legs hit the tree- no, passed through the tree, a small knock was heard, shortly followed by Applejack losing her balance and crashing into the wood of the tree, then rolling onto the ground with another crash.

"Oowwwww..." she moaned. Shaking the pain off her body, she turned around to check why her legs had passed through the tree instead of being stopped by it.

The tree was missing a piece of it's wood. This didn't happen in Ponyville- well- unless Big Mac tried apple farming. Applejack was used to apples falling from the trees... but this tree had broken in half, and it's top half was somehow unaffected by gravity.

Just before Applejack could ask herself another question, she saw a small block on the ground. She peered down at it and realised it was the block of wood she had kicked off of the tree. Applejack picked up the block of wood and put it in her satchel. It turned out that the shrunken wood was just the right size to fit in one of the pockets.

"Ah think ah can get used to this!" Applejack stated. She lined up at the tree again and kicked some more wood off of it. The wood up the top was a bit trickier to get off the tree, as she had to stand on her hind legs and punch it with her forearms, but it was worth the effort. She also collected two saplings and an apple from the leaves of the tree.

She thought for a moment, then continued this work on the other trees in the area. At the end of her work she had gotten thirty-one blocks of wood, seven saplings and three apples. Applejack was a bit disappointed by the amount of apples she had gotten, but this wasn’t Ponyville, so she had to make some adjustments to the new land.

Applejack didn't notice a block of wood was still on the ground. She launched her satchel onto her back, and stepped on it, breaking it into four. The sound of shattering shocked her.

She looked down underneath her body, and behold, four other blocks had replaced the broken wood. They looked like planks, a material that Applejack commonly used to build things. She was afraid at first, and stepped away from the blocks, but was drawn back to them.

Applejack reached out towards the blocks and picked them up with her forearms. The planks were put under pressure in Applejack's grasp, and fused together into another block. Applejack was interested, but then again curious as to why you could do such things in this land.

“Hmmm...” she mumbled, looking at the newly formed block. The majority of the block was wooden planks, but on top of it was a grid that consisted of nine squares, and a small axe was attached to the side of the block. Applejack smiled and put the block into her satchel. She would find a use for it soon, there was still a lot more to learn about the cube world.

Applejack had already started work on a makeshift house. After rediscovering how to break wood, and learning that grass could be dug up, she laid down a wooden plank foundation, six by three plank blocks in size. She was just about to start work on the walls when her stomach growled. She took one of the apples out of her satchel. It shattered into smaller cubes that faded away upon her biting it, but her hunger died down. Either she needed to find a better food source, or she was okay for a few more hours.

The sun was setting quickly. It was as if the afternoon was a time trial, a rather quick one, expecting Applejack to complete the house in such a short amount of time. Even so, Applejack was able to finish it as the moon rose. She had made good use of the new block by crafting sticks and a wooden door. She named the block a "tool maker thingy".

So far, Applejack was comfortable with this new land. In time she would know everything about it, and not have to work out how to craft things.

Applejack looked outside. The moon was now well in the sky, and the sun was concealed by the water in the distance. This land behaved very much like Ponyville- well, that's what Applejack thought- but something was off... something was not right...

Applejack stared out of the door, focusing on a distant object. It looked like a pony from behind, but it was standing on it's two behind legs, with it's front two legs out. It was wearing a shirt and pants, hiding it's tail, and it had no mane. Unusual for a pony.

Applejack pressed her face up against the door to have an even closer look. She accidentally opened the door with the force of her face, and the object turned around to the noise. Viewed from the front, it wasn't a pony, but Applejack couldn't care what it was. It looked unfriendly, and was approaching her house.

Applejack closed the door and rushed to the back wall of the house. The thing chasing her started to bang on the door. Cracks were forming. It definitely was not friendly.

Applejack started to dig up the floor of her house. Her hooves hurt, but there was no stopping now. She had to get underground. Just as she had made a hole big enough for her to fit in, the door was already half broken.

Applejack was fretting. The though of the thing at her door tearing her to bits kept her working. "Fill it up, fill it up, fill it up!" she shouted to herself.

She had ran out of planks, so dirt became the substitute for the filling of the hole. Just as Applejack placed the last dirt block down, the door broke. Applejack was safe, but stuck in the dark.

Applejack noticed a light coming from her satchel. She opened it and peeked inside. There was the torch in the top-right pocket... she had forgotten all about it.

She took it out and stuck it in the dirt surrounding her. It wasn't a very good light, especially in such a small confinement with brown walls, but it seemed to do the trick. She was exhausted from the quick escape from that thing- thing? Zombie? Best call it zombie. That word made much more sense. She switched hooves, as her front-right one needed a break, and dug away at the dirt to give herself some more room while she waited for the sun to rise again.

Applejack dug for a long time. Her hooves were wearing out, but there was nothing else to do in the darkness of the underground.

All of a sudden she heard music through the dirt. She decided to dig in that direction. The more she dug the louder the music got. At long last the dirt gave way to a cave, already lit with torches. There was a door in the side of the cave made of a very hard material which Applejack couldn't point out. There was a button next to the door, but Applejack also spotted a ladder behind the door, and she knew where it led. "Not goin' up there just yet." she told herself.

The music continued to ring in Applejack's ears as she journeyed through the cave. The terrain was very steep, but thankfully stairs had been put down to make going down and up easier.

Suddenly the music stopped. Without the music, the cave was a whole lot spookier. Applejack, despite shaking legs, went on. In only a short anount of time, she reached an end to the cave. The end was lined with wooden planks, with a wooden door in front of a long passageway. Applejack creaked the door open and tiptoed down the long path, just in case something else was around.

At the end of the passageway there was a path that divided into two sections: to the left there were wooden planks, and to the right there was stone.

Before Applejack could reach the end, the sound of footsteps suddenly became audible. They were fast, very fast... coming from the stone side. Applejack was frightened, and slowly backed away as the footsteps got even closer. Suddenly a silhouette raced from the stone side to the wooden side, not noticing Applejack. The footsteps died down instantly, nothing could be heard.

Applejack creeped over to the end of the passage and looked down the wooden side of the path. The silhouette was there, but it was facing away from the path, staring at an open chest. It was very busy in whatever it was doing.

Applejack got closer to the dark pony, until she was at the edge of the room it was in, and had a look around. The room was full of chests, paintings, and a couple of other things Applejack didn't understand. She was shaking in fear over the thought that this pony might not be friendly. She gulped silently and whispered to the silhouette.

"Uhhh... howdy?"

The silhouette turned it's head a little. A sharp red glow was in it's eye. Applejack's eyes narrowed at the sight of it.