“It seems these equine servants are ancestors of ponies, zebras and arabians. They were as large as a saddle arabian. The wear on bones and teeth show they were long lived. Perhaps less specialized than unicorns but apparently magically stronger.
—Pena “On the Origins of Ponies*(*and Others) and Magic”
After Scorcher got over THAT disquieting revelation, he started asking questions. A horrifying picture became clear. Dragons were not waking up. Hatchlings were not being born each year. Dragons were growing smaller and smaller. No one had left the East Lair for the migrations in living memory.
“It's the magic, it has to be,” he said. “The ponies said many sad things would happen when the magic went away. But they never said anything about this.”
Dust looked at him. “My mother said something similar. She said our ancestors' fire could melt steel, and we could swim in lava! Can you imagine?” She looked at Scorcher with a slightly wistful and dreamy expression.
Scorch could. He himself had enjoyed swimming in liquid rock, buoyant and joyfully paddling about. Dragons sometimes sank in water, but with lava they had no such problem. Plus, it kept the scales clean! “What can I do?” he asked quietly.
“We want you to help us if you can… or offer some hope...” Dust said.
“How?” he asked. It seemed so impossible. The dragons looked so dejected. Wretched. The looked at each other or looked away.
Grimly nodding, Scorcher knew what to do. They need a goal, and a leader, he thought. Well drama came easily to dragons. When he was a young drake at Twilight’s school, Scorcher had always gotten high marks in rhetoric and debate. Plus, Scorcher prided himself in always attacking problems head on.
He flexed his wings and talons, standing on one foot with his claws in the air. Rampant the griffons had called it, a pose to get attention and to show how serious and dangerous he was.
“The magic is still here,” he declared. “It's in us. We sleep for decades or centuries because of it! If it was not, we would… die.” he finished lamely, the spines between his shoulders settled as he set his foot back down.
“Many have.” said the biggest drake, the orange one.
“But not everyone Searcher, and not all at once,” said Dust.
“Some like Smolder seem to sleep well for centuries, but never wake. Others die right after they start napping.” voiced the old cyan dragoness.
“I know Miss Drizzle” replied Searcher. “But it’s getting worse. More and more seem to have seizures when sleeping or just die. Two just last moon!”
That was disheartening news. Remembering something Scorch asked “The ones who passed on. Did they… did they have many friends?”
“Well, no, I don't think so, not even family - at least no one seemed particularly broken up when they passed.” Dust said, resting down on a basalt bench near the center of the ring. “We are not known for being very affectionate after all, Dragons I mean.”
Scorcher considered, then spoke. “There was a purple pony. Twilight Sparkle, an alicorn princess. They called her the princess of friendship. She said that friendship was what powered magic. So, it makes sense that dragons without many friends might have lost their magic and passed on.”
“That sounds stupid” Searcher said, grimacing.
Scorcher snorted. “No, it sounds ‘pony’. They were all about friendship and even had a song about it. Made me learn it in school. They sang it every year. Claimed it made some ice monsters called Win-dingoes run away.”
The shadows had drawn longer.
“We could ask them, I guess, send a delegate to the Tower in Canterlot, or send a letter.” He turned right and looked towards the northwest. Of course, from here the great spire of Canterhorn would not be visible, two thousand kilo lengths away. But the fine line of shadow, the sky touching Harmony Tower cast should have been visible. “Sparkle’s Folly” was always visible. It was missing. Scorcher frowned. “Where is the tower?”
“What is a delegate?” asked Dust.
“You don’t know what a delegate is?”
Dust smiled and shook her head. The pretty frills framing her narrow jaw fluffed out. The light glinted off her purple spines. Scorcher suddenly felt uncomfortably warm. He turned his eyes away, turning to address the others.
“Well, every year we would send someone on our behalf; usually a leader on the council, but never the Dragon Lord to the tower in Canterlot. To you know, make sure they knew we were keeping up our end of the bargain. Staying out of pony lands, keeping the peace, making sure things stayed quiet.”
“Why was that?” asked the orange Searcher. He was a tiny bit bigger than Dust with light blue spines.
“Well,” said Scorcher “it’s because there was this big bad - thing that happened, long ago and… worlds away, well we knew that this… danger, these terrible things called Nightmares would come here. To Equis I mean. To keep us safe we had to stop it at once, and we did. But it cost us, everyone I mean, our magic. The magic just kind of faded out for most creatures. But it was on purpose. Every creature worried the Nightmares might come back. To stop them for good we had to do without magic. We had to do it, to keep our magic low. Every critter agreed to it. Ponies, Griffons, Yaks, Changelings, Diamond Dogs, and others. Even the speaking monsters. They all sent delegates to Canterlot to work things out. We used to send a delegate every year, then every couple of years, then once a decade.”
“No one in the dragon lands has left for thousands upon thousands of moons,” said Drizzle, the old cyan one who had called kobolds slaves.
Dust continued for her “It was the last thing Smolder commanded. We were to keep to ourselves. She inscribed it on a stone right outside the High Hall and used her power as Dragon Lord and her magic to make us obey.”
Scorcher shook his head in the negative. “It must have been after I went to sleep the last time.”
Drizzle looked at Scorcher with her left eye, her right fixed on Dust. “That tower thingy fell. A long time back. I wasn’t awake for that. But my sire was. Said it caused some big fights before Smolder put her foot down and took her nap. Everything quieted down when visitors stopped coming.”
Scorcher was even more upset. “Well, this can’t go on, someone has to do something.”
A cold wind blew through the valley. The sun was starting to set. “Well, this bites.” Scorcher stated flatly.
“Bites?” Asked the smallest of the five hatchlings, a little white wyrmling.
“That means it's bad Taillie.” Search, the orange drake offered.
Scorcher swallowed audibly. “I’ll go speak to Smolder.”
Dust exclaimed “No Scorcher! She’s sleeping, she’s been sleeping for longer than you! She might hurt or even kill you. You know how angry dragons get when they’re forced to wake. I’ve seen it once before, it's terrible. It gets much worse the bigger you get and the longer you sleep!”
“Well, if I die, then after I’m dead you can tell her to rescind her order. It’s a stupid order. I’m looking around here and it's plain to see if we don’t do something... there won’t be any dragons for her to wake up to. We have to get help.” Scorch said.
“What help?” asked the old cyan Drizzle with her strange eyes. “From the little horse critters or others? No one here has even laid eyes on another critter, except for that crazy bull thing.”
“Minotaur” Search supplied quietly.
“Right, that. And that was a hundred moons ago. She just came walking on through one afternoon. Didn’t stay long.”
“Not even a pegasus or a griffon flying through?”
“No one flies anymore,” said Dust sadly.
“Is it true, we could really fly once, not just glide?” asked the one called Taillie. “I thought it was just made up.”
“Of course, you can fly, don’t any of you fly?” Scorcher said.
They all shook their heads no.
He flapped his wings. But the air refused to bite. “Scratch this,” he said.