Chapter one

Ember walked down the dark hallway alone. Two months had passed since the call of the previous Dragon Lord, two months since she had risen to the position herself. Thinking back on the event, she still couldn't wrap her head around it. To think that Spike, that tiny purple dragon, had so readily handed over the power of the Bloodstone Scepter to someone he'd only just met; she couldn't understand it. He could have kept it and become the Dragon Lord... but instead he just gave it up.

To further complicate things, he had also extended a claw of friendship, something that dragons didn’t generally do. Friendship was just something that didn't work with dragons; at least, it hadn’t for a very long time. Ember had thought about it ever since she had obtained the scepter, and each time she had looked back, she had found it nearly impossible to think of a time in which a Dragon Lord had been friends with ponies. Yet here she was once again, thinking these same thoughts two months later, and still not a single Dragon Lord came forward in her mind.

 Frustrated, She decided to do something desperate, something that she'd never done before. She decided that she needed to do some research and spend some time in the Royal Archives. Surely, there must have been at least one Dragon Lord that brokered some kind of peace or some kind of friendship with the ponies. After all, the dragons weren't at war with the ponies. Now all she had to do was find the Dragon Lord that was responsible for the peace that existed between their two species.

 Weeks passed, and still she had come up with nothing. In desperation, she reached out the one dragon she could count on as a friend, Spike, hoping that he might know of the dragon that brokered the peace, or at least what the dragon's name was. If he did not know, perhaps his friend Twilight Sparkle might. She has seemed genuinely interested in dragons and she imagined that she would relish the chance to research the dragon that had brought the original peace between the ponies of Equestria and the Dragon Lands. After three days of waiting, a reply finally arrived.

 Dear Ember,

 I'm glad to hear that you are doing well. I myself didn’t know the answer to your question, so I asked Twilight about it. It turns out that she was able to find the name of the dragon that brokered the peace between dragons and ponies. According to Twilight, the dragon's name was ‘Obsidian the Black’. The peace treaties had apparently been signed over a thousand years ago, and according to Twilight, Obsidian had been a good friend with the princesses of Equestria. From what we were able to dig up, it appears that he fell into reclusion after the banishment of Luna. I hope that this helps, although I'm not sure why you wanted to know. Just remember, if you need any help or if you ever just need to talk, Twilight and I are both here.

Your friend,

Spike

Ember sighed, having reread the letter for the third time. “Well, at least I know what his name was... I guess that's some place to start.” Steeling her conviction, she dove back into her research. At least now she had a name to go with. “All I need to do now is figure out if any dragon knows who he is, or possibly even where he is.”Ember knew that this was a long shot; after all, nodragon had heard of or even seen Obsidian for the last thousand years, but Ember was stubborn. She knew that if she spent enough time and devoted enough of her energy towards finding him, eventually she would either find him or at least find something he had left behind. Should she succeed, she would be able to utilize her knowledge to try to broker a new era of peace. Perhaps something longer lasting, or at least more stable, than what Obsidian had left behind.

 She threw herself into her new obsession. She wanted to know who this Dragon was, know what he thought, and most of all, figure out how he dealt with having friends. She continued to exchange letters with Spike and Twilight, and that certainly helped, but even then, she still felt as though she was missing some key components to what it truly meant to have friends.

 Hours turned to days, days turned to weeks, weeks turned to months. Before she knew it, an entire year had passed, and after a year's worth of research, she was no closer to finding out where Obsidian was or even if he'd left any kind of writings or works behind. Currently, all she knew was that he had been the Dragon Lord over a thousand years ago. During her exhaustive research she had spent a mountain of gems trying to find any information about him, all to no avail.

  Late one night after another day of fruitless research, Ember threw herself into her bed, a recent gift from her friend, Twilight. She mused to herself, “Even if there’s been nothing else useful to dragons created by ponykind, at the very least they invented the feather mattress.”

 She snuggled into the soft confines of her bed. Truly, this was heaven. After years of sleeping on rocks—and occasionally a pile of gems—the softness of this bed was something that she couldn't compare to anything else. As she lay there, staring at the ceiling, all of the lights in her room suddenly winked out for all of half of of a second. Startled by the sudden darkness in her room, she looked over to her bedside table and noticed something that had not been there only moments before.

 A black scroll tube that appeared to be made of obsidian laid there. Her heart rate increased as she reached out to grasp the black tube, although upon wrapping her claws around it, she almost dropped it.

“This is really warm...” she said to herself, “almost as if it's been sitting in the sun for a few hours.” After the initial shock, she grasped the tube and removed the lid. Inside was a piece of the finest parchment she had ever held, and on said parchment was a letter that she had not expected to receive:

 Greetings, Dragon Lord Ember, first of her name,

  It has come to my attention that over this last year you've spent a great majority of your time searching for the writings or whereabouts of Dragon Lord ‘Obsidian the Black’. I must express my curiosity as to why you would even bother looking into some dragon so long forgotten. I must admit that you have piqued my curiosity, and as such I would like to meet you, to truly gauge whether or not I should divulge certain information that I hold as to the whereabouts of Obsidian. I requested this meeting so that I may be able to determine whether or not you are worthy to meet Obsidian; after all, he did make quite a few enemies during his rule. As I'm sure you can imagine, not all dragons were too terribly keen on the idea of being at peace with ponies. As far as the meeting goes, if you would be so kind, please meet me where you laid claim to the Bloodstone Scepter, at midnight one week from today's date.

 Best regards,

 Phoenix.

Ember could hardly contain herself. After a year of time spent looking, she was only a week away from possibly finding out the answers to some if not all of her questions. Not only that, but possibly even where he was and the chance to speak to him directly.

While she was busy musing her thoughts and a few questions to ask, she missed a tiny flash of something blue on the lid of the scroll cap, the tell-tale sign of a spell designed to spy on someone.

“Well I guess I'd better get some sleep. I need to get a lot of things taken care of before I go to this meeting next week.” Feeling better than she had in over a year's time, Ember lay down on her bed and uttered a final thought. “Maybe I can finally figure what kind of dragon he was, and maybe even figure out how having friends works...” Sleep overtook the young Dragon Lord. The land of dreams awaited her, and after a year of waiting, she was finally able to get a full night's rest.