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Hoardsmiths
Jeffrey C. Wells
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They are the Hoardsmiths, and they are completely insane.
You would have to be insane, popular reasoning went, to willingly set up camp so close to a dragon's lair. But, set up camp they did; a stalwart troop of earth-tribe craftsponies, gem-loving unicorns, and a few exceptionally bored pegasi looking to do something more "radical" with their lives than make weather day in and day out. They did it for the love of the hoard, the love of the beautiful crystalline cave in which said hoard resided, and for the love of the majestic and awe-inspiring green beast who took repose upon said hoard, slumbering peacefully and occasionally venting awe-inspiring plumes of smoke out through its cottage-sized nostrils.
It had started as such a small thing. Genius and madness often go hoof-in-hoof, and when the Everfree Forest opened somewhat in the wake of the recovery of the Elements of Harmony, a hoofful of disaffected artists and craftsponies of the nearby settlements started doing the unthinkable: they began making willing sorties into that old bastion of primal nature, looking to find inspiration in the exotic and unfamiliar plants and animals to be found there. And yes, some of them were turned to stone by cockatrices, and yes, some of them were eaten by timberwolves, and yes, some of them had their fundamental biology shuffled completely around by the innocuous blue flowers that grew in great lake-like patches in the shadows beneath the canopy of the Forest's gnarled trees. But they were crazy, and they were artists; and, since in many of the communities they hailed from the two terms were largely regarded as synonymous, they found a certain charm in being part of a fellowship of individuals sharing the same mind, even if that mind were, well, a little unbalanced. The occasional horrific casualty was a trivial thing in comparison.
Craziest among these ponies were the Hoardsmiths, the ponies that delved deep into the Forest, found the dragon's cave located deep within its heart, and never came out again. One might suspect (understandably so) that they had been devoured by the dragon itself, but this was not the case. In fact, they were devoured in quite a different way: by the wonder of what they found there.
The dragon of Everfree had accrued a mighty hoard over the course of its long life. Mountains of gold coins, seas of gemstones, priceless objets d'art from long-lost and long-forgotten masters of previous pony generations. The hoard was an overwhelming thing, a terrible thing, a thing of brain-melting beauty and splendor. Some of the ponies who saw it (many of whom would later become Hoardsmiths) saw in it a completion of sorts, the filling of a missing piece within themselves that many hadn't even fully realized was missing. So great was the rapture of many of these ponies that they vowed to set up camp outside the cave, just so that they could look at the contents of the cave every day that remained to them. They would graze on wild plants, drink from deepwater pools and fresh springs, and live in makeshift shanties constructed outside the cave-mouth; anything, anything to be closer to the hoard that gave their lives a little more joy and a little more meaning.
But, as noted, they were artists. An artist cannot be satisfied for long merely in the act of gazing upon a thing. She must create in response to it.
And so, the day soon came when the maddest and most adventurous of the camper-ponies delved into the cave on her daily pilgrimage, but this time, she emerged with a single gold ingot literally stolen from beneath the nose of the sleeping dragon. It was an audacious move, but this particular unicorn pony – whose name was, inevitably, "Goldie" – was a driven one. In her former life, she had been a prodigiously-skilled maker of gold statuary. Her family had actually encouraged her to take up the trade professionally, but she found no particular artistic joy in it and had settled into a career in chartered accountancy instead, only occasionally whipping out the odd beautiful statue when she could find the time. All that changed with her discovery of the hoard. The day she first looked upon that mass of wealth, her eyes flared and sparkled and her brain was pierced by an awl of pure noble metal, and she was filled with unbridled zeal for creation.
Goldie wanted, needed to construct a statue in honor of the hoard that had so inspired her. Unfortunately, gold was a commodity in short supply there in the depths of the Everfree. In fact, the only source of gold for fifty miles in any direction was, well, the hoard itself.
The other ponies in the camp looked on in horror when they saw the shining ingot Goldie had brought out of the cave. "What did you just do?" they demanded.
Goldie shuffled her hooves. "I... I took an ingot," she said. "It's to make a statue with."
The others blinked, horrified beyond the power of speech.
Goldie, sweating a little, began to babble. "It's just... it's just that the dragon has so much gold," she said. "I can't imagine that he cares about this one little ingot. And even if he does, well, I'm making a statue in honor of him! Surely he'll be pleased with it?"
"Did you ask him before taking it?" said a brownish earth-tribe stallion, recovering his tongue.
"Well, no," said Goldie. "I mean, you know how huge the dragon is! I don't think he could hear me talk, even if I yelled. Even if he could, I'm pretty sure we don't even speak the same language. How am I supposed to ask permission of a creature like that?"
The others muttered amongst themselves, admitting that this might in fact be a problem. "All right, all right," said the brown stallion. "You didn't ask permission, we get that. But if he saw you doing it, and was okay with it, I think it's all right. Did he see you taking the ingot?"
Goldie hesitated. It was always so difficult to tell with the dragon; nictitating membranes and whatnot. "Yes...?" she hazarded. "Yes, I'm... I'm pretty sure he knows that I took it."
The others were unconvinced and backed away slowly. "Okay," said the brown stallion, "but it's your funeral if the dragon comes knocking, wondering what happened to his ingot."
Goldie squared her jaw. "Don't worry," she said. "I'll make him proud."
And so Goldie set about fashioning a statue from the gold ingot. For weeks she slaved upon it, melting and casting and beating and stamping. The end product was a wonder to behold, a perfect miniature representation of the dragon itself, all in gleaming metal. Such was the beauty of the finished statue that it touched the heart of even the most trepid pony in that camp, and on that day, the Hoardsmiths were born.
The chink that Goldie had made in the dam became a flood. One sortie turned into another, turned into another, and turned into another as the craftsponies were, one by one, seized with the same fervor that had taken Goldie. They took treasures from the dragon's hoard and fashioned them into new and beautiful things, all in honor of the hoard itself, and its serpentine keeper. The sewers and seamstresses fashioned great curtains for the mouth of the cave from the bolts of raw and expensive cloth found therein. The sculptors produced a forest of bronzes and intricately-carved gems and arranged them into a prodigious sculpture garden at the foot of the rock. The painters found gilded frames in the trove and fitted them with canvases of their own devising, masterwork depictions of the cave's glittering interior. Quickly, the little camp in the dark woods became a little town, a tiny bohemian community with its own identity, its own lingo, and its own spirit. Wandering bards and minstrels were enchanted by the place and took up residence, devoting their song-writing talents to majestic ballads about the glory of the hoard, and, increasingly, the glory of the little village that the hoard had itself inspired. Pony mixologists happened upon the idea of creating specialty alcoholic drinks based on the hoard, and other ponies bought them, encouraging the mixologists to create yet more such drinks; and soon the nights were filled with song and laughter and revelry. Ailing ponies and ponies in need of shelter would sometimes come to the town, because the artists there were known to be prosperous and joyful and generous. Many who would have gone sick, cold, or hungry were healed, clothed, and fed by the largesse of the little community.
The funny thing was, by some perspective, the mass of the hoard was not actually being decreased by all this rampant larceny. All the gold was still in the general area of the dragon (some of it was outside the cave, true, but everything was at most a couple hundred yards from the motherlode). On top of this, the fussiest of the unicorn craftsponies had actually started bringing in gems from their own stocks back home to serve as the crowning, sparkling touches for their latest hoard-inspired masterworks. And none of this accounted for all those coppers that had been tossed into the hoard by wishful petitioners who hoped that a little sympathetic magic might be worked in their lives, or those that had been tossed by ponies who were simply grateful to the dragon and all the good that he had done simply by being there. The dragon, and his hoard, had changed all of their lives for the better.
And so the day came when a group of skilled craftsponies, who could easily have been making their living elsewhere in Equestria with their talents, decided to construct a grand and monumental sculpture of celebration inside the dragon's lair: a scale model of the entire cave, cast in solid platinum. It would, yes, require them to lift quite a bit of raw platinum from the hoard, but hardly anypony even batted an eye at that sort of thing at this point. Not everypony was particularly jazzed about the sculpture itself; some would have preferred to see gold instead of platinum, others weren't all that "into" scale models, but whatever the opinion on the piece itself was, it was generally regarded as a thing of scope and wonder, and it made the ponies of the little town happy to contemplate it. For several years the craftsponies slaved over the thing, making sure to get every last detail just right. All their craftsponyship was to be presented, free, for the good of the community, for all to enjoy. Never mind that they could have charged admission to see the replica-cave, and likely made a fortune off of it. They were driven nigh-exclusively by their love. News spread to the surrounding communities about the beautiful masterwork being prepared by the crazy ponies out in the forest, and it attracted the attention of many outside the circle of Hoardsmiths. These newcomers ventured into the dragon's cave to look at it, and though there were some exceptions, most of those who saw the work-in-progress were pleased and awed and delighted at this marvel of pony hoofwork.
On the eve of the unveiling of the celebratory sculpture, the dragon shifted in its sleep, hauled the entire piece back into its hoard and buried it out of sight, much as you or I would fold and adjust a pillow. It did not seem to particularly even wake in doing so.
A... mood fell over the little community that evening. In the many cider-houses that had sprung up within the bohemian village, you would invariably hear some variation of the following exchange, lasting deep into the night...
"Well," a pony would say, staring into his mug, "let's be honest. We were stealing all that platinum."
"But we weren't taking it," another would say. "Never farther than the mouth of the cave. And we were just doing it to show how much we loved the dragon!"
"I never particularly loved the dragon," another would pipe up. "I'm glad the dragon put the hoard together, but I was only really interested in the hoard. Gems and gold are beautiful. Dragons are monsters."
"Shame that you need a dragon to gather that much gold and gems together, though. Wonder if there'd be a different way to do it...?"
"It was such a beautiful model!" another would wail, who had been quite silent the entire evening up until that point. "Why? Why did he do this to us? We were giving him money!"
"He's protecting his hoard," another would note. "If you don't protect your hoard, ponies will come in and take it. It's the way of dragons. It's written into the law of their genes. I doubt there were any hard feelings behind it; he probably wasn't even conscious of it."
"I thought he approved of us! He never protested before!"
"Dragons can sleep for hundreds of years," another would note in response. "Has he ever actually been awake, this whole time?"
"It's always so hard to tell." A scrape of a hoof against the peanut-husk-strewn floorboards. "Nictitating membranes and all."
"Bollocks to this," another would say, pushing away his stool and standing up angrily. "I'm done tossing coppers! This whole community is based on a big, fat lie. The dragon doesn't want us here. It's not pleased by our tributes. It sees us as an annoyance and wants us to leave."
"Please, sit back down."
"No!" the pony (probably a pegasus) would shout, stalking toward the door. "I'm not sticking around here to have my art snatched up by a dragon! This is just the first step! Next comes the fiery breath! It'll melt everything you've worked for! It'll melt you! We have no idea what that thing is thinking at this point!"
The pegasus would shake his head. "I won't be treated like this," he'd say, and then he'd march out into the cold night.
Silence would fall for a moment around the little table.
"He'll be back," the first pony to speak would say.
"He'll be back, perhaps. But was he wrong?"
And no one would answer the speaker. Because they didn't know. None of them did.
That's simply what life is like, when you live in the shadow of a dragon.
Celestia's dawn eventually broke, and the morning saw the little town in the Everfree still standing. No dragon-fire had consumed it overnight. The community of Hoardsmiths was a strong one, and though tribulations would cause many to (quite understandably) leave and rush off into the night for greener pastures, many more elected to stay, living there at the foot of the dragon's rock. Whether through faith, blithe spirit, or some true hope for a better future, they had built a good thing here on the shakiest of all possible grounds. It was not a thing, they thought, to be lightly abandoned.
They are the Hoardsmiths, and they are completely insane.
But...
...they build things of beauty.
