Princess Ember flipped her scale along the spaces between her claws like a coin she was preparing to spend. It wouldn't get her much, of course. Its sky blue face was bland and scratched up, and worst of all, it made no effort to light up the dim, dusty cave around her. Not that it glowed much when it was attached to her, either.
“Stupid scepter,” she spat, tossing the piece of her against the wall. “What’s wrong with me?”
The scale bounced and flew behind her head towards the cave opening, making three faint clink sounds before going quiet. Ember tucked her knees behind her elbows and made two tight fists.
“Didn’t want to be Dragon Lord anyway…”
Ember’s claws started to dig into her palms, and the dragoness realized she kind of liked having something to fiddle with.
She stood up in less than a hurry and sulked to the cave entrance, borrowing the energy she was using to keep her eyes open just to put one foot in front of the other. She rubbed her heavy eyelids and longed for the days when she would be an adult, and she could sleep for months at a time without being judged for it.
When she reached the spot where her scale had come to rest, she paused. Her eyes creaked open, and her pupils grew thin. She reached down and picked up the scale with two delicate claws, and then shook off the mess of snowflakes that came with it.
“Um… Come again?”
She took a step outside and was hit by a wall of frigid air as she left the mountain’s warm interior. Grabbing her shoulders and descending into a shivering fit, she kicked at the pile of snow beneath her and nearly slipped backwards.
She fluttered her eyebrows to fend off the bunches of sleet falling across her face, and she scanned the columns of basalt leading down to the beach—each supporting a neat patch of snow about an inch high.
“No, no, no… What is going on?”
Ember skipped down the steps from her cave on her tip-claws, the snow stinging her hot skin with every step. She reached the shoreline and peered into the water, where the winter was only getting worse.
Ice was forming on the lake, stretching out from the shoreline in skinny little dendrites—like silver trees reaching out for the horizon. The dendrites grew with the same crackling sound that most trees fell to. Ember gave it about two hours, maybe more, before it reached the Flamecano. That was, until she noticed it was speeding up.
“The Gauntlet of Fire will be ruined,” she said.
It was a fact, nothing less. And with her Father, the dragon lord himself, out hunting for slingtails and angler serpents for the opening stages of the competition, she was the only dragon around to look after the Flamecano. And the only one around who could rescue it from the approaching cold.
However that was done.
Ember took to the sky, relishing the chance to shake off the snow from her wings and warm herself up with exercise. Aiming for the highest peak on the mountain, she dove through the biting mist and landed on the covered surface. She staggered her back claws on two columns of rock, and cupped her front claws over her eyes.
The Dragonlands had never seen a storm like this. Usually a bubbling minefield of lava pools and steaming geysers, whatever was rolling through now had turned it into a blistery white nightmare. The green and smoky sky had been replaced with clouds—grey and black and dumping pounds of the awful powder all over Ember’s homeland.
But every second she spent gawking was a second she was wasting. The Flamecano was at risk, and if her shivering shoulders and chattering chompers were any indication, it was not the only thing in danger.
Lucky for her, the next step was clear.
In the distance, there was a light, sitting at the end of a mile-long causeway that used to act as a bridge between two parallel rivers of lava. The beacon burned through the storm like a second sun setting at dawn. It was large and slender. It was navy blue and it was completely still.
“Is that… a candidate?” Ember wondered. She hadn't actually seen one yet, but she knew it couldn't be, and there were two reasons why.
For one, it was too early. Dragon Lord Torch had only sent out the call for dragons the night before, and he’d said that the first candidates would arrive in roughly a day.
For two, the figure was much too large. Her father had said that the Bloodstone Scepter was very picky—and it would only summon the young to compete for its ownership. Eighty years old tops. If the beacon in the distance really was a dragon, it was an adult. Surely, the scepter wouldn’t have bothered.
Whatever the case, the shining light in the blizzard had clearly arrived with it in tow. And if there was one way Ember was not going to find answers, it was standing on the mountain peak, staring at the figure like a cockatrice.
The dragon princess tossed her severed scale into the air with one claw and snatched it with the other, holding it tightly in a clenched fist. She stepped off the ledge and fell into a glide, aiming directly for the light. A downdraft thick with snow pushed her to the causeway, and before she was even halfway to the beacon, she was forced to walk on the rocks to avoid having her wings torn apart.
Not that it was much safer at ground level. True, the gusts were blowing the snow out of her path, making it easier to find her footing, but it was also trying its best to sweep her off her feet entirely.
Deeper and deeper, Ember ventured into the storm. Her lips cracked and the wind cut underneath her scales. But for everything the blizzard did to slow her down, she gritted her teeth and sped up despite it. The storm may have stopped the lava from flowing on either side of the causeway, but it was still very much alive in her veins.
The light resolved as Ember got closer, and she realized two things. First, there was no question what the creature was. It had the long, slender neck—with skinny spikes sticking out from its back. It had those far-reaching wings—with sharp thumb-claws pointed up to the sky. It couldn’t be anything other than what it was. Dragons were unique like that.
Second, and although Ember couldn’t know how, it was definitely the cause of the blizzard. It was sitting too tall—too at home in the storm. And its scales were shining with a blue that complemented the white around it far, far too well.
Ember grumbled at the beacon, a few choice words forming in her head for the dragon that was ruining her father’s gauntlet before it had even started. Was it trying to spoil the competition? Did it just want to just take the throne without the proper trial?
“HEY!” Ember called out as she approached the candidate. She stopped trudging through the powerful wind and waved her arms over her head. “HEEEEYYYY!!!”
The glimmering dragon did not move. Ember sucked in the sleet and exhaled her strongest fire to get their attention, only to see it bend away and disappear next to her cheeks. Her choice words vanished along with her flames.
“ARE YOU HERE FOR THE GAUNTLET?!”
There was no worded reply, but there was definitely a grumble. Either that, or a small tremor from the magma that was being suffocated underneath them.
“BECAUSE IT’S NOT READY YET! OH! AND COULD YOU MAYBE CHILL OUT?!”
Ember took another step forward, and it would prove to be the last of her journey. With a harmonious sound, a light formed under her right foot, and a shell of ice burst up to her knee. She felt her bone bend, and she stepped back to save herself from a broken tibia.
“WHAT GIVES?!” she yelled, yanking at her stranded leg.
Around the base of the frozen trap, more ice started to take shape in the snow. This time it was more deliberate, solidifying into small lines and curves.
It was writing.
Be quiet, and I won’t hurt you.
Sparks flew from the dragon princess’s teeth as she ground them together. “YOU THINK I’M AFRAID OF YOU?!”
The ice dragon’s head rotated slightly towards her, and a pair of azure lights appeared in its head. A bubbling growl rumbled through the causeway, and a single icy word melted away.
Be quiet; I won’t hurt you.
“That’s… better,” Ember admitted.
It wasn’t the only thing that improved. The next was the blizzard. Without warning, a tunnel of fire careened through the clouds overhead, evaporating them all instantly. Ember shielded herself from the orange glow, but the candidate did not budge from its spot.
A hot vapour rushed down over the two blue dragons. The remaining snow in the air plummeted, melting into piles of slush on the ground.
“YES!” came the shout of a rugged voice. To most, it would have sounded like it came from every direction. To Ember, she knew exactly where it was coming from, and even who it belonged to.
“YES!” her father repeated.
Ember hopped around on one leg to see the 100,000 ton dragon, perched on top of the mountain from where she’d come, a dozen slingtails trapped against his chestplate by an enormous, green arm. The animals squirmed and fought against him just as Ember had done with her leg in the ice. And just like the ice, the dragon lord failed to notice their efforts.
“Dad!” the princess called out. “I tried to stop him!”
“I didn’t think you would come!” Dragon Lord Torch continued. "I didn't think you were alive!" He hadn’t even looked at his daughter yet. Either he was ignoring her, or she was too far and too small to be noticed. Then again, it could have been a combination of the two.
Ember turned to her icy trap and blew on it with searing flames, no longer hindered by the cold atmosphere. When her leg was free, she pivoted on it and sprinted back towards her father, kicking up dirty slush with every step.
“DAD!”
A blue glow appeared in the slush in front of her just as she was taking flight, and before she could change course, a new spire of ice erupted from underneath her, encasing everything up to her waist in cold, clear crystal.
“Oh, come on!” she moaned. “Hey, buddy! Would you give it a...?”
Ember looked upon her captor and realized she had gotten a couple things wrong about them. In the storm, they were hidden, but with nothing more than a few loose snowflakes between her and the glowing candidate, everything was clear.
It was the sleek shape of its neck and head that gave it away—like that of a groomed serpent with wings, waiting to strike. But while everything above its shoulders was smooth and tense, everything below was the opposite. The skin around its claws sagged like they were melting. The giant sheets of skin that were its wings had holes in several places. Even the flat spike at the end of its tail had a skinny cut down its center.
This was not an adult dragon at all. This was a dragoness, and this was a fossil.
Its eyelids, likely shut tight to keep out the Dragon Lord’s fire, gradually split open. Underneath them were two foggy, blue gemstones. They were so vacant that it was impossible to tell what she was looking at—but one could assume from the curling of her lip, that it was not at a friend of hers.
Ember wondered if she should bow her head in respect to the elder dragoness. That was, until she remembered the present she had just received from her. She cracked a claw into her new frigid clothes and managed to chip a piece off, but nothing more.
A plume of steam erupted from behind her, and she twisted her body to see a patch of ice disappearing into the slush. It was the words she had first read. The ones assuring that she would not be hurt.
She held her breath and struck the trap again, but she only seemed to be making it harder. “Dad?! A little help?!”
“Ember! Do not worry! We are not in danger!” he claimed.
“Easy for you to say! You’re ten times her size! She’s ten times mine!”
The Dragon Lord swung out his arms so he could have more room for a belly laugh. “Indeed she is, Ember!” he agreed, paying little mind to the animals he had just released. The slingtails rolled down the mountain and scurried away in every direction, save for down the causeway towards Ember and the candidate.
“It’s not FUNNY!” Ember cried. “She’s ruining the Gauntlet of Fire!”
“PAH! Don’t you see, Ember!?” the Dragon Lord boomed. “We need no Gauntlet! She is already perfect! Look at her!”
Ember scoffed and obeyed her father, trying to find what made this frigid dragoness so special. But all she could see were reasons that it couldn’t be her. Reasons like her deflated skin or the holes in her wings—some were even big enough for Ember to fly through. The Dragon Lord couldn’t be so damaged, could they?
There was one scar in particular, stretching across the base of the elder’s neck like a necklace burned under skin. It was a complete disqualifier. That was the dragon’s famous weak spot. Where Ember’s father had told her to always protect. Someone or something had attempted to kill this dragoness, and although they hadn't managed it, they had gotten awful close. And the esteemed lord of all dragons shouldn’t be so blatantly beatable.
Besides, how was she supposed to command anyone if she didn’t even speak?
“Who is she?!” Ember called to her father, who had not made any effort to chase the slingtails, or it seemed, to come any closer.
Dragon Lord Torch narrowed his eyes at the candidate, his mouth widening to reveal an array of rotting teeth. “I called for the young to compete to see who would take my place. And in what I thought was a moment of madness…”
He paused to pluck the Bloodstone Scepter from beneath his armor.
“…I called for Concordia.”
The candidate twitched, crushing a few pockets of snow under her claws.
The dragon lord laughed and expanded his wings as far as they could go. “Come!” He held the scepter up to the sky like a toothpick. “Claim your rightful throne!”
The candidate snarled. Ember heard a crackling under her, and she looked down to see more icy words forming in the slush.
When your father is finished, kindly tell him to exclude me from his farcical ritual.
A line was drawn under the second last word in the sentence. Then another line, followed by a third.
Ember rubbed her eyes and re-read the message. “I… What?”
The glowing dragoness picked up her left claw and made a point of scratching her neck. Two scales fell off and landed on the ground, sticking out like a couple of shining coins in the muddy snow.
“The… spell?” Ember twisted back to her father, “Dad! It’s the SPELL! She wants you to turn it off!”
Torch brought down the scepter and raised an enormous eyebrow in the candidate’s direction. “Don’t pretend you don’t want this! This is your destiny! Every dragon, bowing to your command! And they would be the first step… The second… is those filthy, rotten ponies!”
His final word rushed down the causeway in a wave of putrid stink. When the smell reached the candidate, she winced, gathered a pint of saliva in her mouth, and spat it out. Cracking out a kink in her neck, she started to stand. Not at a fast pace, and not without her hind legs shaking a little along the way, but she got up.
As she rose, the storm clouds filed into the sky overhead once again, and Ember’s lips started to dry out.
The dragon lord, meanwhile, was not finished. “Is it because of your age?! You may not last the 300-year term, but what you could do with one year alone! You could take revenge over those sniveling rodents for everything they’ve done to you! You could enslave them all!”
The glowing dragoness stopped and cocked her head. Ember heard another message forming underfoot. She darted her eyes down to see, but the inscription was covered in snow before she had a chance to read it.
It didn't matter. The dragon princess would have bigger problems to deal with pretty soon. The candidate, who was now shrouded again in the blowing blizzard, had restarted her march down the causeway. And the only thing between her and Torch’s mountain perch, was the princess.
“You back off!” Ember warned, digging her claws as far as they would go into her frigid trap. It wasn’t very far.
The approaching dragoness strolled to Ember’s right side and sat down with a huff. The storm blocked out more and more light, such that Ember could only see the elder’s shining silhouette next to her—punctuated with those two burning sapphires. Somehow, in the storm, it was easier to see where the elder was looking. And it didn't take Ember long to notice, that she was focused directly on her captive.
Ember blew on her trapped legs as hard as she could, but her fire wasn’t even leaving her mouth before it disappeared, along with the hot water that it usually left behind. She pounded both claws into her waist one last time, pressing against the ice and letting the pain run up to her shoulders. “Do your worst,” she said. “You don’t scare me.”
The ice dragoness snaked her head through the blizzard, coming around to Ember’s front and stopping with her axe-like nose inches from Ember’s nostrils. The captive princess snorted out a feeble puff of smoke. The elder exhaled a snowy mist that solidified over Ember’s face and settled under her scales.
“Mmmhmm?”
“Y-y-y-you heard me.”
“Hmmmmm.”
The elder slithered her head out of her prisoner’s personal space. She stretched her neck up high into the blizzard, and the two blue dragonesses were side-by-side, peering at the dragon lord’s dark silhouette on the other side of the storm.
“What is going in there?!”
A wave of cold shot out from in front of the elder, and the snowy curtains parted in an instant, giving Dragon Lord Torch a perfect view of the causeway.
The candidate raised her left claw, as if she were holding onto an invisible orb. The unlucky snowflakes that passed it were diced clean in half. It hovered in place for a few moments, and then gradually made its way behind the stranded Princess.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” Torch barked, “You would not hurt one of your own kin for comfort!”
Ember stared at her father as the claw disappeared behind her head. She felt two sharp points place themselves on either of her cheeks, light enough that it didn't hurt her scales, but hard enough to keep her skull in place. She bit down hard on her lip and focused everything she had on stopping herself from shivering. The taste of blood in her mouth wasn't helping.
The candidate, meanwhile, only tilted her head in the direction of the princess’s father.
“Enough!” the Dragon Lord bellowed, sending another heat wave down the causeway. “I cannot turn it off! It will only stop when the gauntlet begins… Unless!” he raised the scepter again, the flawless ruby in its center pulsing with a crimson light. “Unless a candidate is crowned first!”
Ember’s captor did not budge. But, for those looking carefully, the space between her eyes could be seen tightening.
"This is the only way... And you know it!"
The three dragons stayed perfectly still—two because they didn't want to move, and one because she couldn't. The only movement and noise anywhere on the causeway came from the wind, howling between the dragons like the ghosts of a frozen pack of wolves.
“Tch.”
Princess Ember choked out the breath she was holding as the weapon left her vicinity. The elder dragoness brought it up to her shoulder to scratch off a few more flakes of her shining skin. She groaned like a child who had just been given a chore, and after a few seconds of silence, she raised her right claw.
It was the most damaged part of her by far. Not only did it tremble every second it spent in the air, but its talons were blunted down to their bases, like they had been smashed off with a boulder.
The emaciated claw came up to the elder’s eye level and opened up in the dragon lord’s direction.
Torch’s smile widened on both sides. A low rumbling laugh shuddered through the causeway.
“NO!” Ember shouted. “She doesn’t even want it!”
“You will not regret this!” her father celebrated. He held the scepter between his thumb and middle claw, and he flicked it at his successor.
“NO!”
His aim was perfect. The elder didn’t even have to move her damaged claw to snatch the artifact out of the air and bring it over her opposite shoulder.
The Bloodstone Scepter exploded in sound and light, humming and sending several wisps of red magic up the elder’s arm to her head. In less than five seconds, the scepter fell quiet, and the transition was complete.
“YES!” Dragon Lord Torch elated. “This is the start of a new age for dragonkind! All hail Dragon Lord Con—!”
The scepter’s new owner swung it down and to her right, slamming it against the mucky rocks on the causeway, and sending a few slim shards skidding through the slush in every direction.
“Be careful with that!” Torch shouted.
The scepter screamed, sending out a blinding white light that covered everything in sight. Ember’s eyes watered, and she threw her arms over her the bridge of her nose to avoid the stinging.
The light eventually faded from the scepter, and from the dragonlands altogether. But to one dragon in attendance, it clung.
The elder threw her head back and opened her mouth, and as the her shimmering scales dimmed from top to bottom, she released a long and visible breath, filled with sparkling snowflakes.
“Hah…”
The remaining clouds disappeared.
Ember brought her arms down and tried to open her eyes, wondering why she was still being blinded. She heard the familiar sizzling of cooking meat, and immediately looked down to see her soaking wet legs, appearing from out of the receding ice. She flicked the remaining water off her feet and noticed that the glisten wasn’t going away. She traced her scales all the way up from her ankles to her top half, down her arms, and finally to her claws—still curled in tight fists. She held them in front of her face and turned them over. Her eyes burned from the light, but then again, so did her entire body.
“You… You gave up your candidacy!?” The Dragon Lord leapt from his perch and swooped towards the two dragonesses, arriving in seconds and slamming his body into the ground, knocking the smaller one onto her backside. “I was wrong about you.”
The elder did not even look at the towering dragon before her. She simply inspected the scepter—now just as damaged as the claw that was holding it—and let out a small ‘hmph’, before letting it fall into her stronger claw.
The Dragon Lord frowned at his glowing daughter, rubbing his teeth together in his mouth. He reached out his palm to his ungrateful successor. “I’ll be needing that back, now… Look at what you’ve done to it…”
The elder held the scepter outwards, parallel to the ground, and let it fall into the snow. Another tiny shard split off from the ruby.
The Dragon Lord pounded his open claw into the causeway. “YOU WILL RESPECT THE BLOODSTONE SCEPTER!”
The ice dragoness blinked.
“Hmmm?”
She picked up the discarded item and shook off the snowflakes that came with it.
The Dragon Lord stretched out his claw once again. “Now…”
Flipping the scepter over so that the damaged ruby was in her palm, and with an action that took her whole body, the elder flung the artifact over her shoulder. She stared deep into the Dragon Lord’s narrowing eyes until it landed, far away in the distance, on a solidified pool of lava.
Torch pointed a fat claw at the elder’s nose. “If you were not so close to death… I would strike you down where you stand.”
A mess of ice formed between the elder and the dragon lord.
I’m sitting.
The ice dragoness stood up and let a pleasant shiver run up her body. She massaged the back of her neck and turned away from Torch, leaving him to seethe, simmer, and pound her message into the rocks with a meaty fist.
Princess Ember, meanwhile, was still getting acquainted with her new scales. The warmth they brought her finally allowed her to relax her fists, which she realized she’d been clenching since she left the mountain.
Out from one palm fell the scale that had come off this morning. She swiped it out of the air with her other claw and held it up to the sky, admiring the shimmering blue pattern on the front. She gave it a kiss and stuffed it back in her fist.
The princess threw her attention at the departing dragoness, whose steady march down the causeway showed signs of speeding up.
“Wait!” Ember called, jumping into the air and flying in the dragoness’s way, arms outsretched.
The elder’s shoulders slumped down a few inches. She sat down and massaged her temples with her strong and weak claws.
“I won't keep you long, just… Thank you.”
The decaying dragon rolled her eyes. A navy blue glow appeared in the slush between the two of them.
Enjoy the Farce.
“It’s not a farce! Maybe you don’t want it, but—”
The elder groaned like a wounded puppy, pulling the skin under her eyes down even further than it had already sagged.
“Sorry…” Ember said, hovering out of the elder’s way. “Have a good rest.”
The lumbering dragoness passed Ember by, her shaking head sunk down close to the ground, and her tired eyes staring up at the horizon. Getting over the mountains took her several minutes, but as the cold and snow departed along with her, Ember had no trouble watching her leave.
The dragon princess lowered herself to the causeway, flipping her severed scale along the spaces between her claws—its value shining perfectly clear. She flicked it over her head with one claw and caught it behind her back with the other, and the smirk on her face lasted until she felt the familiar aftershocks of her father stomping towards her.
“Don’t get any bright ideas,” he intoned.
“You lied…”
“What was that?”
Ember spun around and whipped her scale at the dragon lord’s face. “You LIED to me!”
Torch didn't even blink. “I did not! I knew she would not hurt you!”
Ember shot up into the air like a dart, stopping in front of her father’s eyes and pointing right at the space between them.
“You said the scepter called the candidates for the Gauntlet of Fire, but it was you! You’re the one who didn’t pick me!”
The dragon lord turned his towering eyes away from his daughter, but she flew around to follow.
“I may have lied about that,” he admitted.
“Why?! What’s wrong with me?!”
“It doesn’t matter what’s wrong with you! And it doesn’t matter that she gave up her spot in the gauntlet to you! You are not competing… and that’s FINAL!”
The beastly dragon bellowed out his concluding command, blowing Ember back several yards. She righted herself and turned her wrists up, two fresh smoke plumes shooting out from her nostrils. Several retorts exploded into her head, but she decided to simply steam instead.
Not that her father gave her much time to respond. He was already turning his gargantuan body in the direction the elder had tossed his scepter. “I have to go set up the gauntlet… You stay out of trouble!”
Torch opened his colossal wings and jumped into the air, mumbling something to himself as he bounded away. He picked up his damaged artifact, dusted it off and stuck it back in his armor. He scanned the Dragonlands to see how far his slingtails had gotten. It wasn’t very far.
Ember floated back down to the causeway chewing on the inside of her mouth as she watched her father fly away.
“What does he know!” she blurted—when he was out of earshot, of course. She saw a leftover patch of snow on the ground, and she took the opportunity to give it a swift kick. A kick that would send a shock up her leg when her foot struck found something much harder underneath.
“Gah!”
She bent down on one knee and rubbed her toe-claws. Dusting off the snow she’d failed to kick away, she found one of the elder's messages, but wasn’t sure when it was written down. Everything the ice dragoness had scrawled into the snow had melted away in her absence—or been crushed, in the case of one message—but these last words persisted, shining firm in the rocks like crystals instead of ice.
My best friend was a pony, you nitwit.
The ash settled into the air again. The sky filled with smoke. The winter storm had left the Dragonlands for good, but it had stayed behind in two ways.
The first way was this message, which, as Ember would discover when she looked for it again the next day, would eventually melt.
The second was the rivers of lava on either side of the causeway, solidified by the elder dragoness’s presence. The magma may start to flow again underneath the rocks, but nothing would bring the red, bubbling liquid on the surface back to life. It was forever hardened and blackened and frozen in its wavy shape, like the tussled bedsheets of the restless.
