Entry #1
So, I haven’t actually had much time to do anything since I exited the time jump to the time Twilight Sparkle sent me to. I'm currently shacked up in a fairly simple hut, but it was biggest house in the village. The ponies consider me a hero, though I don't really feel like one. I decided to write this journal after I finished my adventure in this time, and I will be leaving tomorrow.
I suppose I should start with the obvious.
First of all, I’d like to note that the transition from the previous time to this one was very smooth, almost like taking a step.
Of course, I didn’t get to admire that smoothness for long before artillery spells were destroying the ground around me. I… may have panicked… a little.
As in, I instinctively responded with at least four different, far more powerful, artillery spells of my own. I think it was four. Maybe. I may be rounding down... a lot.
Suffice to say, a large chunk of my magical education before focusing my studies on time travel was dominated by learning war spells and having the instincts of a battle-mage ingrained into me. The Kingdom of the Three Tribes, what amounted to the country of the ponies before Equestria was founded, was not a kind place. Ever.
Then artillery from the other side caught me off guard. Whatever hit me knocked me out.
When I woke up, it was to a very painful migraine, a sore body, and three stone brick walls with a single barred wall. On closer inspection I realized the bars were wrought iron. Huh. I must be in some of the really early days. Wrought iron was the go-to method of containing Unicorns before inhibitor rings were invented two hundred years prior to my original time.
I had been imprisoned, though I was not contained. Wrought iron would certainly slow me down… but the sloppy stone work it was built into would not. However, I decided not to escape. While I had a general idea of when I was now, I didn’t know the exact date yet. Also, all of my stuff had been taken from me while I was unconscious, including this journal and my time travel device.
I needed to find out where my stuff was. Considering I was alive, whoever captured me likely wanted something from me, so I knew I just had to wait to get some answers.
It hadn’t taken long for someone to come to me, as I had expected. What I wasn’t expecting was a Dragon to walk in.
Pitch black scales, and grey membranes on their wings. His reddish orange eyes almost looked like fire. He had a single brown satchel over his shoulder and wore a black chain around his neck. A literal chain of command, a tradition dragons had maintained even in my present time period. Black, or onyx, meant a General. If I ever saw a dragon wearing a chain made of rubies, then I knew to steer very clear of them. That would be the Dragon Lord.
I let him question me first without complaint. He asked the basic questions. My name, my age, my home.
Then he asked me to low-ball my average magical output for him. I told him the last test I took to check my average output put me in the range of 2000 units. I didn’t tell him that my last test was shortly after I graduated from school.
He grew silent then, looking contemplative, before sighing. Then he took the satchel and upturned up in front of him, depositing this journal and the time travel device on the stone floor between us. He picked up the journal, leafed through it, then set it down in front of the bars of my cell, open to the entry before this one.
The entry that detailed why I came to this time period, and the fact that I had travelled through time to begin with.
An interesting characteristic of dragons is that their size is nearly directly proportional to their greed. That fact popping up in my mind is the only reason I didn’t immediately begin panicking. This dragon was civil, spoke clearly and with carefully measured words, and most of all… he was only slightly bigger than me. This was a dragon not ruled by greed, but that did not change the fact that I had been imprisoned, likely by his orders.
I asked what he expected of me.
“Do we win?” he asked.
I had to ask what he meant. He explained that he was talking about a war between dragons and ponies that he says had erupted only days before.
Ah. The Skyland War. A war between dragons and ponies that lasted all of a week. Some call it the Seven Day War. My time period didn’t know how the war started, nor do we know how it ended, only that dragons had surrendered.
He asked how dragons were treated after the war. I explained that a tentative peace had been established, but dragons were not allowed into the lands of Equestria for a couple decades. The peace, despite unease between the two races, lasted all the way to my time period.
He seemed contemplative after that, and sat silently for a few minutes. Finally, he asked me a startling question. “We were never meant to win, were we?”
I had been confused. He elaborated with a confession. “I lied about when the war started. What you call the Skyland War happened seven years ago… and dragons won.”
What?
It had been the appearance of a pony who could control fire like no dragon could, the General told me. A pony that claimed to have fled a corrupt Canterlot, and desired to help the Dragon Lord raze the fledgling nation to the ground. This pony was careful to never show their face, and even utilized magic to disguise their voice. Often the Generals received their orders through telegrams that appeared in front of them magically.
This pony somehow changed not only the war, but time itself when they led the dragons to victory.
I asked who the dragons were fighting now if not ponies. He said it was rebel remnants of ponies, a group calling themselves the Blades. They had somehow devised a way to mimic the magic of dragons and turn it against them. While small in numbers, every single one of them had the potential to kill hundreds of dragons if not handled carefully.
I had remarked on how alarming it was for ponies to so quickly adapt to warfare, before recalling my own time in the Unicorn Military. Ponies did not easily go to war, true… but when we finally do, it tends to get ugly.
I eventually decided to answer his previous question. No, dragons were not supposed to win. I told him that ponies would win, through a means lost to the history of my time, and would eventually form a stable, if uneasy, peace. Ponies would also begin research into helping dragons who lacked the natural talent for controlling their greed. Last I had heard before I began my adventures through time, ponies had discovered dragon magic could align itself along a basic moral spectrum and thus their bodies and minds were influenced by their emotions. They were testing methods of locking down that connection between emotions and magic before I left.
The dragon sighed wistfully. “I had always known going to war with you ponies would be our undoing, and now I know it is because we need you if we ever want to overcome our nature.”
Then he shocked me by unlocking the door to my cell and opening it. “Come with me. Quickly. It won’t be long before that accursed pony get here. She had some kind of spell on the lock. She knows I opened it.”
If I had to say with certainty when it was I joined the resistance of this time, it was when I stepped outside the jailhouse and saw the sight of ponies everywhere.
Lifeless… And not even a scratch. They were dead, there was no doubt. But… how they died was a mystery.
What in Tartarus were the dragons doing?!
He shoved my saddlebags onto my back and pointed east. “Do not stop running until the sun sets. Even then, do not stop completely. Keep going until you find Knothole.” Then he turned and breathed a great gout of flame at the jailhouse, igniting it. There must have been explosives inside, because chain detonations began going off. “GO! NOW!!!”
I didn’t look back. I didn’t need to. Not seconds after I cleared the camp and passed the treeline into the surrounding forests, I heard his roars of agony.... And then silence.
I never learned his name. But his face… his face will always be first in the line of faces in my mind that never fades. No matter how much I sometimes wish they would.