1) Day 1- A Strange, New World
Unfamiliar LandsA Minecraft crossover by The Accursed OneChapter 1: Day 1: A Strange, New World
A dragon roared, flocks of birds taking flight at the loud, sudden noise. The ponies who had angered it, used to this occurrence due to the dragons trying to take Equestria over, stood their ground, attacking the dragon in any way possible. Unicorns shot bolts of magic; pegasi divebombed their targets; and Earth ponies tried to get their target down with arrows and, strangely, a confetti-shooting cannon.
“Rainbow! Fluttershy! Get the dragon into Applejack’s range! Pinkie, get the Party Cannon ready to trap the dragon! Rarity, help me keep the dragon down when Pinkie traps it!” Twilight Sparkle called to her friends, using their usual strategy for subduing a large target.
The ponies did as asked, the dragon now trapped on the ground. A stray arrow, launched at too high of an angle by Applejack’s bow, hit the dragon in the back of the neck, killing it. The dragon’s body started glowing and rising into the air, passing through the ropes holding it. Beams of light erupted from the corpse, explosions occurring as well. Eventually, the dragon’s body disappeared, a jet-black egg with streaks of purple appearing on top of a fountain-shaped structure made of a seemingly unbreakable stone below the point where the dragon died.
Pinkie Pie walked, well, bounced, to the fountain-like object. She looked into it and saw a black liquid that seemed to have white dots in it. She called out to her friends, “Hey, girls! I found something cool!” She tried picking up the egg but stumbled at the last second.
Luckily for Pinkie, Fluttershy quickly flew over and kept her from falling into the possibly dangerous liquid. After she put her friend safely on the ground, Fluttershy went back to the fountain and tried to grab the egg, the egg teleporting at the last second. She tried again in its new location, but got the same result.
The group argued amongst themselves, not knowing what to do with the fountain. Eventually, though, they all agreed on asking Princess Celestia before taking another action. The six walked back to their hometown, idly chatting about their past adventures. Upon arrival in Ponyville, the sextet walked to the Golden Oaks Library while Twilight was in the middle of explaining a new book she had found.
Inside the library, a large, lone book stood on a lectern, the tome open and full of strange writing. Next to it lay a scroll with the same symbols; a key for the code, so to speak. The ponies walked up to the book, staring into a panel filled with dark swirls on the right page.
“I have no idea what the picture on here is supposed to represent. Can any of you figure something out about it?” Twilight asked, pointing to the picture with a hoof.
“Uh, Twilight? I think you have bigger problems…” Rainbow Dash replied.
Twilight looked down then screamed. Her purple body was enveloped in smoke, eventually being fully engulfed. The picture on the page turned from dark swirls to a pleasant hillside with a lone tree. Every pony in the room ran to the book at once, all bumping into the picture and teleporting with their friend.
*****
The six ponies landed with a heavy ‘thud’ as they entered a new Age. The book they had in the library was nowhere to be found; instead, a flat area of stone was near the group. Everypony had their respective set of saddlebags on as well, when they didn’t in their home dimension.
Opening her saddlebags, Rarity said, “Girls, do you have a book in your bags? I have this one book, strangely about survival. I don’t recall borrowing something like this from you, Twilight.”
Everypony looked in their bags to find a similar book. They all opened the tomes, looking at the diagrams contained inside. Recipes, they seemed to be.
Flipping through the many pages, Rainbow Dash exclaimed, “Machine blocks? Covalence dust? How the hell are we supposed to get these things?!”
“Hey! A chapter on how to survive! Okay, so it says step one is… punch trees? Why would anypony do that? What did trees do to us besides making our houses?” Pinkie Pie questioned.
Rainbow Dash went up to the nearest tree, an oak, and hit it with a forehoof. She noticed cracks appearing in the wood and repeated her previous actions, eventually felling the tree. The logs she broke were magically vacuumed into her saddlebags, effecting a surprised gasp from the pony, then she asked, “Okay, we have wood. What now?”
After receiving the answer, Rainbow broke down the logs into planks, making some of those planks into sticks. She then put four planks in a square to make a workbench, placing it down near the group in a bright glade surrounded by oak and birch trees. “We’ve got a workbench now. Next we make tools, right?”
“Yeah. Toss me… um... four sticks and six planks; I’ll get some stone. Applejack, could you chop down some more trees with an axe? I’ll make it for you,” Twilight told Rainbow and Applejack, then receiving the requested materials. Placing the sticks in a vertical line and three wooden planks across the top, Twilight noticed a flash as the crudely-shapen lumber turned into a wooden pickaxe. She then made an axe for Applejack and gave it to her.
After everypony received tools, they went to do their respective jobs: Twilight mined stone, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy scouted out the land, Applejack cut down trees for a base, and Rarity and Pinkie Pie looked for ores from the surface. When the sun started to go down, everypony returned to their home with the loot. Their total was 5 stacks of 64 logs, about 32 coal, a half of a stack of torches, a furnace, and 2 stacks of cobblestone. Night started to fall, a crescent moon starting to hang above the group, when they all frantically worked on building a home.
Sacrificing beauty for function, the six built a small wooden shack with a cobblestone floor, big enough to house them until a better house could be built. Zombies started spawning, banging on the doors so loudly and often that nopony could sleep. Skeletons rattled, searching the dark landscapes for any signs of life. Creepers prowled the forest, prepared for a suicide attack if necessary. Spiders scurried across the terrain, some with skeleton riders. Every monster stopped the ponies from drifting into sleep’s warm embrace until the sun came up.
