Hope is a lie.
I used to believe in Twilight and her ideals about friendship. I was her number one assistant, trying to make her dreams into reality. Our goals seemed so close. We were in the best position to bring the magic of friendship to all Equestria.
But then we didn’t. Friendships died. Magic died. And the dream of united Equestria died with them.
My world crumbled. Everything I had was lost.
For a time, I thought about trying to rebuild the pieces, but I was just a foolish dragon clinging on to a lost past. If I couldn’t do it with Princess of Friendship Twilight Sparkle, what chance would I have to do it by myself?
As time moved on, it brought many disasters. Ponies recovered from some of them, and from some they did not.
I was unaffected for I lived under the rock, sulking in self-pity due to the life I had lost.
One year after the dust had settled, I made my way to Ponyville for the last time. Crumbling remains beckoned, devoid of life, but not of their past. Pinkie Pie made sure of that.
Among all the destruction, Pinkie Pie’s basement remained intact. It is there that I found a treasure beyond treasures: memories.
I always knew she collected data on everypony. We all knew that. But nopony knew how far she would go to obtain the information.
Her diary that I found revealed her secret. What she couldn’t learn from public information, she would obtain from private information.
When Celestia set the sun and Luna raised the moon, Pinkie Pie would put on her black furtight bodysuit and go on a hunt. From all the previous excursions, she knew where everypony hid their diary. She would sneak into their houses when they were sleeping and transcribe every word from their diaries. Not once was she found out, for she achieved maximum sneakiness.
Yet, even that didn’t sate her stalky nature. She found her way to Luna’s dream journal, detailing the very dreams of ponies.
It was all there in Pinkie Pie’s basement for me to find.
Though I may not have been appreciative of her methods at the time, I felt a sense of duty to preserve the memories of what once was.
Even though it looked as if I was burning it all to ash, I was doing the exact opposite. With my magic fire breath, I transferred all the writings to my den for safe keeping.
For decades, they would keep me content. But as time went on, Pinkie Pie’s insatiable curiosity about others rubbed off on me. I wanted more.
With the help of Twilight’s books about magic that I had salvaged from her library, I managed to hone my magic fire breath into something extraordinary.
The gift of magic fire breath was so rare that some dragons practiced their whole life in vain to obtain it. For me, it came naturally since I was a young dragon. I used it intuitively without understanding what it was.
It was that inherent aptitude that gave me the potential to transcend the limits that other dragons were held back by.
Magic fire breath is more of an ability than a spell. Though it’s basis is magical in nature, the intricate upgrades integrate quantum fluctuations and soulcasting. Those are only possible with the exact mind-to-body-to-soul ratio. A ratio like that forming by chance in a universe is negligible, yet there I was, the one who could utilize it completely.
An uneducated pone might call it an extraordinary coincidence that I would be the one breaking the time-space limits, but what would actually be extraordinary is an absence of manifestation of the chance, as small as it may be, in the infinite realities.
With centuries of practice, I learned to further stabilize the dimensional doorway through time and space. It allowed me not just to transfer writings, but to reach into any place I set my mind on, even beyond this dimension and even through ages of time, past and future.
With my honed advanced skill of magic fire breath, I could make new memories from anywhere. I opened doorways in the shadows and observed.
When you look at the dark corner of your room, you don’t see me in my pitch-black den, even though you’re looking straight into my eyes. But I see you. I see everything. And one day, I may claw a story about you on these walls of mine.
The only solace for me are my memories. When long millennia catch up to me, even I shall perish. But the memories will remain! I shall make sure of it.
I will write down the most significant snippets of my memories into the walls of my den so that the elements and time cannot erase them. When I am gone, my claw marks in the stone will remain, a testimony to a time long gone.
*
These writings in the wall greet you as you enter the cave. As you shine your flashlight into the corridor you see more writings ahead.
Do you dare venture further into the dragon lair? Is the next memory written on the neighboring wall really worth risking your life for?