//------------------------------// // Smolder's Journal // Story: You're The Inspiration // by AlwaysDressesInStyle //------------------------------// Sunny flopped onto her unmade bed – she’d never seen the point in making her bed, she was just going to muss it up again that night anyway. The broken Twilight Sparkle toy joined her friends on the nightstand, and the Equestrian bit was tucked into one of the drawers, along with assorted other sundry items that had been in the chest until only the books remained. Those she spread out on the bed. It was a jackpot – dragons were notorious for hoarding. That meant that unlike many other students, Smolder had kept her textbooks and schoolwork. Sunny practically drooled at the prospect of reading Twilight Sparkle’s Friendship Journal, but first she wanted to get to know Smolder. Many of the books were the dragon’s personal journals, and she hoped that there’d be a record inside of exactly what had ended the utopia known as Equestria. Entry 1: So yeah. Journal. Meh. Dragon Lord Ember decreed that there’d be a dragon enrolled at Twilight Sparkle’s new Friendship University or whatever it’s called, and by virtue of being the least disgusted at the prospect of attending, I’m the lucky ‘winner’. I leave next week. One of the requirements is keeping a journal, so yeah. Journal. Woo. Entry 2: So the school’s less lame than I expected. It’s pretty nice, and not gonna lie, it beats living in the Dragonlands. I think I may have even made some friends already. Not bad for the first day, even if they’re all the misfits like me. There’s one yak, one griffin, one hippogriff, one changeling, and of course I’m the only dragon. So I made friends with them, and the one pony that paid us attention, Sandhill or something like that. Shards, I’ve got to get better at remembering names. I think he has the hots for the yak. Her name starts with a ‘y’ just like the griffin’s name starts with a ‘g’ but I can’t remember their names either. And the only reason I remember the changeling’s name is I had to have her pronounce it a bunch of times so I could get right. I still have no idea how to spell it, but it’s pronounced Oh-sell-us. Once I got that in my head, the first image that came to mind was some company making toys of us and selling them. Ha! As if that would ever happen. Entry 3: Okay, here goes: Changeling: Ocellus Hippogriff: Silverstream Pony: Sandbar Griffin: Gallus Yak: Yona It’s a good thing the teacher with the hat (Apple something… I really need to work on this name thing if I want to do well here – I’m pretty sure friends like you to remember their names) takes roll at the beginning of every class. She even asked Ocellus to spell her name, sparing me the embarrassment of having to do the same. So after school, me and my new friends went over to some cutesy little bakery-restaurant thing, and wouldn’t you know it, one of our teachers (the pink one) works there. What’s up with that? You’d think being a teacher would be a fulltime job all on its own. But we all got to know one another better over dessert, and yeah, I think I can safely call them all friends now. That wasn’t too hard. Sunny planned to read and reread the journal repeatedly, but right now she wanted answers more than anything. So she skipped ahead a few entries. One of the dragon’s classmates was a racist pony named Cozy Glow that Smolder wanted to eat. Sunny’s hopes that that was a metaphor for something else were quickly dashed when there was a graphic description... and crudely-drawn illustration... of Smolder using the pony’s own bones to pick her remains from her teeth. Disgusted, she skipped ahead another few dozen entries. Cozy Glow turned out to be a more important pony than her initial journal entry had indicated. She tried to take over the school, and then Equestria as a whole, and Smolder had stopped her with her friends. Sunny felt vindicated – friendship was important. But a failed coup wouldn’t explain what happened, so she skipped ahead some more entries. Cozy Glow was back again. This time with the help of a centaur and the deposed queen of changelings. It didn’t end well for them. Turned into a statue was a slightly better fate than being eaten by the dragon. Probably. Again, failed attempts didn’t mean anything. But someone eventually succeeded. Graduation, and the end of daily entries. So everything was still good in Equestria past that point. Smolder stayed at the School of Friendship as a teacher, along with Silverstream and Ocellus. Gallus went on to join the Royal Guards, while Sandbar and Yona ran one of Rarity’s boutiques – the original location in Ponyville. The journal ended there, and Sunny dug through the pile of books, hoping she’d kept notes on her classes. Not surprisingly, she had. There were dozens of other journals, and she quickly determined there was a separate one for each year. While no doubt a treasure trove of information, coming from a friendship teacher, she scanned them for the last one. She found it, and the school year ended… suddenly, with the utter destruction of the school. Discord is a slimy traitor. I can’t believe everycreature trusted him all these years. I didn’t like him back when I first met him, back when he was messing around with Starlight Glimmer, and I should’ve trusted my gut instinct. I guess he had really been planning to do this decades ago, but Cozy and the others betrayed him before he could get his plans off the ground. This time around, he’s in control, and he’s terrifying. He summoned King Sombra, freed Queen Chrysalis, Tirek, and that wretched Cozy Glow from their confinement, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, there were more monsters than ever before. Grogar, Lavan, some slimy goo called the Smooze, and I lost track of the others. It’s awful. Destruction and chaos everywhere. Twilight and her friends are trying to stop it. I feel so powerless right now. They’re in the other room right now. My friends and I are huddled in this room, and we’re all writing in our journals. It seems so silly, and yet it helps. Twilight was right about that – it’s why she had us keep them back in school, and I guess none of us ever got out of the habit of daily writing. She’s a smart pony, and she’ll figure something out. I have faith in her. The map is showing… you know what, I’m not even going to write that down. I don’t want to remember that later. I really, really hope I can forget it. Starlight just came in. There’s something they can do but… it has awful consequences. I’m crying now. I don’t think I’ve cried since I was a whelp. It’s done. The attacks are over. That should be a bigger cause for celebration. Discord and his cronies are gone, but so are the best and brightest of our heroes. Twilgiht and her friends, Celestia, Luna, Cadence, Flurry Heart, Luster Dawn, Sunset Shimmer, Headmare Starlight and her husband Sunburst, and Star Swirl the Bearded and the other Pillars. They used Star Swirl’s limbo spell and they’re all in some sort of suspended animation. I don’t understand the details, but what’s left of the world is safe. I’m back in the Dragonlands now. There’s no more School of Friendship, and our headmare and vice-headmare are gone forever, so there’s no hope of rebuilding it. My friends and I agreed that we needed to do what we could to keep the peace between the nations of the world. Worst of all, there was a solitary survivor. It shouldn’t surprise me that that treacherous filly decided hiding was a better option than fighting. Cozy Glow is back and trying to fill the power vacuum in Equestria. And she’s succeeding. Stupid ponies. Stupid herd species. They all want to be followers, and when a leader comes along they’ll follow her to the ends of the world, no matter how awful she is. But she’s got a platform, and that platform is ‘look where friendship got us’. In hindsight, trusting Discord was a mistake, but trusting her is also a mistake. The entries became more sporadic after that, as one by one the nations of the world closed to one another. Even the pony tribes split into their base components. Eventually the dragons had turned to fighting one another, and Smolder had left the Dragonlands for the relative safety of wandering the ruins of Equestria. Sunny was crying by the time she finished the journal. Friendship used to be magic, to see it end like this was simply tragic. After crying herself out she returned to the beginning of the first journal, set on reading through everything. If she had any hope of fixing what was wrong with the world, she’d need to start from the beginning. And there was no better place to learn than the School of Friendship, even if she needed to learn by proxy.