“A virtue must be our invention; it must spring out of our personal need and defense. In every other case it is a source of danger. That which does not belong to our life menaces it. What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure – as a mere automaton of duty?”
– “The Antichrist” Sec. 11, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1895
ARGUE UNTIL YOU WIN. FIGHT UNTIL YOU WIN.
Those are the words that read alongside the Great Tablet of Murder Spree, which really more like a plateau with big, bold letters is carved on the side. It’s called that because the titular Dragon Lord that carved the phrase also signed his name at the bottom. We don’t know if Murder Spree was the first Dragon Lord, the first one to wield the Bloodstone Scepter, or just really, really old. I’m going cut things short and say we argue about that from time to time. And in other times, just for a change of pace, we fight about it.
Twilight Sparkle asked me in one of her letters if we had any religion or concreate code of ethics. I told her that we have two sentences, and everything else depends on the Dragon Lord. It goes without saying that the Dragon Lord isn’t allowed to change those rules. They’re literally set in stone, after all. Twilight responded with a four paragraph way of saying ‘That’s… uh, good to hear!’
I felt obligated to ask Twilight about her religion. Apparently, those butt tattoos on ponies are called ‘cutie marks’ and they determine their destiny based on a particular talent they are skilled at and enjoy. So basically, a pony’s place in the world is determined by their job and how they fit in with everypony else. Makes sense, in a bizarre way.
It’s still a dick move when a pony with a dragon-slaying cutie mark comes at you with a sword between her teeth, though.
“Rrrgghh toogh ssrrrgghy yoo!” she snarls. I can’t decide if she doesn’t know that she can’t talk with the handle in her mouth, or if she doesn’t care. She can’t be from the Equestrian royal guard, since her armor is clearly homemade. That’s the funny thing about plate armor: Dragons made it first to fight other dragons, which made perfect sense. But when other races made it, they forgot to make it heat-resistant. Ok, granted, we never thought of the idea ourselves, but that was fine for us. For instance, when a dragon wearing armor gets hit by stray fireball or takes a dip in lava without stripping, we have to pull the armor off and lose a few scales that would grow back anyway. When a pony’s armor gets hot, they get baked alive.
But enough about ponies being stupid in general, let’s talk about this pony being stupid in particular. She, for reasons that I have yet to figure out, decided that it would be a spectacular idea to go into the dragon lands alone. From the way she avoided all the other dragons and went for me, I suspect that she was specifically trying to assassinate me. I don’t know why, but she opted to come at me when I was giving a public speech about the fundamentals of forgiveness. (I read about them in one of Twilight’s letters.) In result, the valiant dragon slayer is now under a three-dragon dogpile, trying to decide whether to breathe through her mouth for more air or keep biting on her sword for protection.
I make the decision for her and pluck the blade from her mouth. She tries to resist, but dragons are always stronger than ponies. Her breaths are rough as the gravel ground crushing that her belly is crushing against.
“Ah… ah… I… I waited… ten…” Good gracious, is she trying to give a speech? This could take all day.
“Get off her,” I shoo my draconic defenders, “she wants to talk.”
The plumpest dragon starts to protest. “But she tried to-”
“Off. That’s an order.”
They get off her, I can get a look at her proper. She’s got a pale-blonde mane and tail, out of array by the helmet hair and impromptu dragon-on-pony wrestling match. Her coat is a wooden brown, with a cluster of bleach-white freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her face is kind of like the night sky that way, if space was the color of poo instead of soot. Her cutie mark (ugh) depicts an angry pony face scaring off a shadow of a monster. She stands up, and her lips start to form an involuntary ‘thank you,’ but she stops herself. She seems to hate her throat for almost giving me some positive feedback. Heaven forbid, right? I’m just a big, mean dragon that wants the pony the tried to kill me to sit down and talk. She stands tall, and begins her speech again.
“I have waited ten years for this moment, Dragon Lord. When dragons burned down my parents’ village, I wanted nothing more than to see your kind wiped off the face of Equestria. Every day I trained for the day a dragon would come to another village nearby my dojo, ready to defend my homeland from you foul creatures. But when the so-called Princess Twilight announced a peace treaty had been signed, I knew treachery was afoot. Your kind does not know peace. Your kind has never shown mercy. The only conclusion was that blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, something about a false sense of security, yadda yadda yadda, so began my epic quest into enemy lines, yakity yak yak yak, more yaks than Yakyakistan, your rein of tyranny ends here as soon as it begun, etc, etc, etc.”
At least, that’s what I heard.
“Fascinating,” I reply, failing to fight back a yawn. “Can I finish what I was doing now? This was kind of important to me.”
She sputters. “This is important to me! Hay, in fact, it’s important to you, too! It’s the last day you’ll ever spend alive.”
“Mhm, yeah, nice one-liner,” I shoot back dryly. I gesture a lazy sweeping motion with her sword. “Now shoo. Away. Vamoose. Bon voyage. Go back to Horsehoof Buckleton, or whatever you keep calling those places.”
Her mouth opens and shuts like a fish. I think she scripted this conversation, and I’m doing the heinous crime of diverging from it. It’s like she didn’t even expect to come back alive. Or, you know, without a brand-new dragon pelt. She’s not the only one that’s confused, though.
“I thought that we were gonna eat her,” mumbles a local idiot that we all call Scrap.
“Eh, she hasn’t gotten to do anything,” I respond. “Remember that thing I was talking about? Forgiveness? Call this an example.”
The earth pony sputters again, but manages to do it in an angry tone. “B-but I don’t want forgiveness! I want revenge! I want to be a hero!”
“I’ve been there,” I say, starting to walk away. “Okay, in honesty, I wanted to prove my father wrong while also making him proud, and becoming in charge was the fastest way to accomplish that little contradiction.”
Miss Hero isn’t listening to me. She’s going by body language, and by my body language, I’m ending the conversation. “Hey! Get back here!”
“Why?”
“Because I’m gonna kill you!”
“Uh huh. You were coming from that direction, right? I think I know a shortcut. Follow me.” I toss the sword away. “Hey Crackle, free toothpick! Consider it a present.”
Crackle’s happy. Miss Hero is grumpy. I need a nap.
“Where are we going?” she demands, following me just get in a word in edgewise.
“Ponyville. Twilight’s castle. She’s the kind of girl that would want to write in her diary about something like this.”
“You… you’re turning my government against me! You fiend! I never knew that dragons could be this devious!”
“And I never knew that ponies could be this stubborn. Why are you stopping? We’ve got a long way to go.”
“I’m not letting you do this! I’m not going to let you turn me in! You’ll never take me alive!”
I snort. “You want to kill the Dragon Lord, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she says after a pause, getting ready for me to take a jump on her.
“Well, the Dragon Lord’s going to Ponyville, with you or not.”
She stops to think for minute. A small wonder. “I’ll just have to… wait until you come back. Yeah!”
“In the dragon lands?” I question her skeptically. “What you going to do for food? How are going to stop yourself from being food?”
I stumped her. I stumped her, and she hates it. It’s kind of new for me to be on this side of the argument with a pony. It feels nice.
“So, do you want me to fly or do we, as the saying goes, hoof it?”
“Going up in the sky where you can drop whenever you want?” the pony spits. “Fat chance.”
“Alright, so we’re taking this the hard way,” I sigh. “But you know, it’s kind of awkward to introduce you as ‘the pony that tried to stab me on that one Tuesday.’ You got a name.”
She swells with pride. UUUUUGGGHHH. SHE HAS ANOTHER MONOLOUGE IN HER. “I’m going to be known as the One Dragons Fear, the Light in the Darkness, the Champion of-”
I cut her off. “Your name, not what you say when you touch yourself.”
She turns red at that. “Straw Mane.”
“I’m Ember. It’s nice to meet you and not get either of us murdered.”
And thank the holy mother of me, she shuts up. For a while. I’m an abolitionist, not a miracle worker.
"LET ME MAKE ONE THING CLEAR! I’M NOT WORKING AS A HERO TO MAKE YOU MORONS ADMIRE ME! I DO IT BECAUSE I WANT TO!
– Saitama, One-Punch Man
Author's Note
Remember when you wanted to read more Ember? Well, I ended up wanting to write more Ember. Cool, right? Also, piece of writing advice: Don't make the dialogue end with an exclamation point at the end of ever sentence unless you want to make your characters look like a bunch of bland assholes.
