//------------------------------// // I Do Not Wish to Be the Last - Ember // Story: Post-Ponies // by RomanCandle //------------------------------// I don't really like being Dragonlord. It sounds good, at first - be in charge of all the Dragons of the world. With a wave of this scepter, you can tell any Dragon, anywhere, what to do. There's just two problems, really. The first is that you've gotta decide what you're gonna tell em to do - if you're not specific enough, some of em can get creative and do something that really messes up what you were planning. The second problem is that Dragons are kinda lazy - so they're not gonna do anything until you tell them to. So here I am, Lord of the Dragons, walking in circles and wracking my brain. It's been three days since the Sun failed to rise. Some of the Dragons are over it - as far as they're concerned it's a minor inconvenience since we've got good vision in the dark, and lava to keep us warm. Some have grown more and more concerned as the...daylessness goes on. They've started to either go into hiding or, worse - ask me what to do. I hate that, because I don't know. Nobody tells you how to deal with the Sun disappearing. I tried to send a letter to Spike to ask. He'd shown me how at one point, before he left. But rather than burning cleanly into a swirl of smoke that whisked away across the horizon, the letter just...burned. I tried it a couple more times. Or several. A lot. I might have used up all my paper. It would be one thing if he didn't answer - he could be busy, or just not have any paper himself - not a big deal. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised - if something is up with the Sun and Moon you'd expect them to be going crazy trying to fix it. That's what their Princesses do, so they'd be totally freaked if something went weird. But the messages weren't just getting ignored. They weren't sending. I'm not a mage or a scholar but - that's not a good sign. Dragons are tougher than Ponies, by a long shot - have you ever seen a Pony bathe in Lava? - so if something was messing up Spike getting the message...it didn't look good for the Pony Princesses, which meant it didn't look good for the Sun, either. Some dragons weren't worried - but some were, and they wanted to know what to do. They brought their concerns to their Dragon Lord - me - and I'm just trying to sort it out. The Lava will keep us nice and warm for a while, so we don't have to panic, at least. But lava cools off, eventually - that's why we migrate - and even if it's a hundred years before we have to deal with that...the rest of the world is going to get colder in the meantime. If it gets too cold, will we be able to fly far enough before we freeze? I don't know. I don't want to wait and find out. But I'm not sure what else to do. One good thing about ruling the Dragons, I guess, is that a lot of them are really, really old. That sounds kind of weird when I put it that way, but I've got a point. Some of them know some really, really old stuff. I used the Scepter to summon the oldest dragons to comb their brains. Teamwork saved my scales once, maybe it'll do it again. They're huge. One of them has teeth bigger than me in every direction. But more than that, they've got stories. They talk about the birth of the Sun. They don't make a lot of sense, and a lot of their stories are contradictory. The Sun was made by Unicorns. The Sun was made by Dragons. The Sun was made with the blood of all the races of the world. They have one thing in common, if you didn't notice - the Sun was made. I don't know how, or by who. I don't know if I - we - anyone can make a new one. But I know I've got to try. I'm not happy about the situation. All the Ancient Dragons could agree on was that the Sun was made in some Ancient City somewhere that's long abandoned. They can't agree on who or when or where, exactly, but from the sound of it, it was some deep jungle temple. I know where there's a jungle, and while I don't know where an ancient, abandoned city could be in it...who else is going to look? I guess I could order some other Dragons to do the searching. Maybe I should. After all, that's what the Dragon Lord does, right? Tells other Dragons what to do. But I can't. I can't ask them to do this. Don't ask me why, I don't know. Maybe I don't trust them to do the job right, or know what to look for. Heck, I don't know what to tell them to look for. But I can't let everything end like this, slowly freezing until all that's left are Dragons frozen in sleep. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that's not the end.