//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3: Dragons Don't Share 
// Story: Ember, Hoardsmelter 
// by Bugsydor 
//------------------------------//

	Drakkenstadt was roaring. In a good way. In the early days, Ember had wasted little(1) time teaching the populace the arts of smithing, metallurgy, construction, masonry, and other such needful things for building a city.

Once she had educated what she felt was enough teachers of the practical arts (and taught them the concept of trading knowledge for more tangible treasure), she moved on to the fine arts.

Little effort was spent on painting(2). More effort was given to jewelry(3), with higher levels of success among the more mature dragons. What dragons really took to like fire to linseed oil, was sculpture. Clay, metal, marble… just about any medium(4) that could be considered permanent at high temperatures, as long as it could be made to look like a dragon.

“How do you like your new statue, friend?” Talc asked.

“I like it,” Garble replied. “I think it really captures my essence.”

“It looks sort of… angry. Like it wants to rip off my head and breathe fire down my neck.”

“That’s sorta what I meant.”

Garble was quite pleased with the somewhat larger-than-life(5) statue. Its polished red granite body upright on its haunches, claws ready to eviscerate the unfortunate creature its yellow scapolite eyes were presumably glaring down at. The gaping maw being lined with teeth cast in white gold was a particularly nice touch, he thought, and the detailed lines being accentuated with gold inlay didn't hurt either. It was a likeness any proper dragon should be proud to display in their front room.

It may have cost him more treasure to commission than he’d earned in his entire life before coming to Drakkenstadt, but it wasn't a large enough expenditure to make him lose sleep over nowadays, and hadn't been since a couple years after he’d taken up finance(6) as the smart drake’s way to grow his hoard. After all, nodragon defaulted on a Garble loan.

“So, uh...” Talc said with fidgeting claws, once they’d made their way to Garble’s sitting room. “Have you heard the Dragonlord's most recent proclamation?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

Talc’s expression went instantly from nervous to floored.

“Bu— Wha— You can't be telling me that you, that Mister Wait For the Dragonlord to Get Torn Limb from Limb and then Swoop in to Take her Place, are okay with this!”

“Eh, I can't exactly say I like it, but when has that ever meant anything? So the Dragonlord wants us to trade with other species. Big whoop. I’ll let a few early adopters take it in the teeth, and then move in in a way that actually makes sense. Like I always end up doing whenever she makes a proclamation trying to turn the world upside-down. Hate to say it, but everything that Cunning Optimist touches turns to gold, even if it spends some time as coal along the way. Tartarus, even the Acquisitions Tax I was sure would go over like an osmium balloon led to dragons clamoring to donate their finest works, in hopes that they’d get featured in the gallery of the Cobalt Palace(7).

“Anyway, my sources in Wyrmwood have been telling me that the small-scale pony-dragon grey market trade there hasn't been hurting things for them. I’d actually considered importing some pony-made quartz cake from there, if you’ve got to know.”

“So, you are okay with this,” Talc said, visibly relaxing.

“Close enough. I figure if the world is as mad as Ember is, I might as well roll with it and take what I can get. And ‘what I can get’ has been pretty good so far.

“Besides,” he said, a grin spreading across his face, “it was really hard to argue with her closing remark. ‘Greed is good.’”





(1) Some time was admittedly​ lost on false starts translating theory to practice.

(2) Not only are canvas and linseed oil quite flammable, dragons find the heavy-metal-based pigments delicious.

(3) More time was lost on trying to give dragons the concept of fine jewelry. Jewelry, to a dragon, is viewed very similarly to how flower arrangement is viewed by ponies. A particularly fancy gem setting has about the same life expectancy around a dragon as would a specially arranged bouquet of exotic flowers around a perpetually starving earth pony.

(4) Some of the more eccentric dragons even commissioned statues made out of pieces of their personal hoards.

(5) 1.2:1 scale, at the time of its creation.

(6) Once Talc finally managed to explain the idea of financial interest to him, Garble found giving out loans quite interesting indeed.

(7) In much the same manner as a mother might hang her child’s hoof-painting on the fridge.