Chapters Her father never listened to her.
Ever since she was hatched, Ember was expected to sit by quietly and watch her father work on dragon stuff. She only learned to talk because he did a lot of it, and he was very large and very loud, and she was there to hear it all.
Of course, other dragons often came around to give news to the Dragon Lord, or pay their respects, or - if they were not so smart - make requests. Ember had learned from this that her father's manner of speech was... largely unique to him, and so she had not inherited his distinct accent.
She couldn't have even been ten years old yet when she heard him cursing the princess of some faraway land. Well, she'd heard that all her life, but this time she finally understood all the words. "The bloody bandit," he said. "What nerve does a pony have to ask a dragon for anything! And for our eggs, no less!" He reached a pudgy claw up to touch the tiny bridge between his eyes. "Hundreds of years. This same pony has been askin' for hundreds of years."
"Daddy?" Ember started to ask - much quieter than the thunderous roar of her father's mumbling.
He seemed not to hear her. "What all is she going to do with them. Eat the buggers?!" he rasped, outraged. "No pony should ever be allowed such an honor as eatin' a bloody dragon ."
"Daddy!" Ember said, a bit louder.
"Who would want abandoned eggs?" he continued, pacing back and forth, the earth shaking beneath his feet. "Might as well just let 'em be devoured by the lava-snakes."
"DADDY!" Ember yelled, and he perked his head up and looked round.
He saw her pouting up at him. He smiled - or tried to - and leaned down low. "Wot is it, my li'il precious stone? Daddy is listenin'."
Even at that age she wasn't sure of that, but she tried anyway. "If she won' shuddup until ya do what she wanns, and we're not gonna use 'em, why not just give her the eggs? Then she won' bozzer you any more."
He blinked, his smile dropping quickly. His eyes went to the side, then up, brows furrowed in thought. He slowly exhaled through his nose - careful not to blow his precious little daughter away - and rose. "Sure. You're right, diamond," he admitted low, and walked back to the podium bearing letter. He picked back up the huge magnifying glass, held in one claw, and the little bitty quill, held between two fingers of the other.
He began to speak as he wrote.
"To Princess Celestia of the ponies... Against my better judgment, I, Dragon Lord Torch, will agree to your suggestion..."
This was so stupid. How could he do this to her?
For years she'd been trying to convince her father to consider passing the Bloodstone Sceptre to her, thus crowning her as the Dragon Lord.
Instead, he'd put his own daughter on egg duty.
Apparently, the princess of Equestria had asked Dragon Lord Torch to send any abandoned eggs the dragons found and didn't want over to Equestria. She'd asked him repeatedly for... Ember didn't know, five hundred years? A thousand? It was a lot. (Ember had completely forgotten that, some years back, she herself had pressured her father to accept this arrangement.)
Torch had made it very clear that if a single pony dared to eat a dragon egg, he would order the entire Dragon Lands to burn Equestria to ash. Ember shuddered at this. She didn't know much about ponies, but she knew there were at least three kinds, and at least one of them - unicorns, they were called - had magic. She vividly recalled, when she had displeased her father once, he'd read her a "bedtime story" where a unicorn cast a spell that melted the flesh from some poor dragon named Crocomire. It had been described in visceral detail, and it had been a very slow process, and she'd even remained alive until she was little more than bones. Ember had nightmares for weeks.
Also, while she hadn't been formally educated on the subject - dragons didn't do schools - Ember was pretty sure that not every single egg a dragon laid was fertilized. She refused to believe that so many eggs were being... produced, and then abandoned. She loathed the possibility that she would one day just start dropping them around herself. Either way, who cared if a pony ate an unfertilized dragon egg? Dragons ate actual ponies. And griffons. And sheep.
Mmm, sheep.
Torch had selected the - what was it he said - "softest, most tender-hearted, namby-pamby excuses for dragons" to scour the Dragon Lands regularly for any abandoned eggs. They'd search the local area for parents and, if they found none who admitted ownership of the egg, turn them in so her dad could judge whether they were worthy to keep or to ship off to the pony lands.
He'd picked Ember as a soft, tender-hearted, namby-pamby excuse for a dragon. In fact, almost everyone on egg duty was female. Her father was such a judgmental pig sometimes. Did he not know how many previous Dragon Lords had been female? Ever heard of Scales, dad? She was a necromancer . The next Dragon Lord had to kill her three times. Or... at least that's how the story went. Come to think of it, that and the dragon-melting thing might have been made up...
She stopped to look at the egg she was currently carrying under one arm. It was a pale cream, with a green stripe across its middle, and thorny circles at the top and bottom. If she'd been more educated in pony culture, she may have found it humorous how much it resembled those candy-coated eggs - the ones that foals had to run around looking for, much like she was doing herself. Or, more likely, she would have been deeply insulted, more so than she already was.
As it was, she knew nothing of such silly egg sports, and her eyes softened gazing at it. At first she'd hated these stupid things and only the old dragon law had stopped her from smashing them - but then she realized she and the eggs were not so different.
Their parents didn't want them either.
She held it in front of her with both arms, and choked down her sobs by returning to the topic of the old dragon law.
It's not that dragons cared about vulnerable life - because they didn't, at all - but dragons who went after utterly defenseless things like eggs were the lowest cowards. Even small creatures like griffons or ponies were fair game - some of them had been known to slay dragons before (besides Crocomire.) Dragons were expected to seek thrills, and danger, and worthy opponents. Only a weak, frail, pathetic dragon would go after an egg. Even the rocks would be better, a dragon might break her leg kicking one.
She cleared her throat and forced herself to be proper, then knocked on the wall of the local "Egg Office". These "offices" were little more than specially designated caves or clearings spread all about the Dragon Lands. There was an "egg-mother" assigned to each one, and the other two kinds of dragons who frequented them were getters and runners. Getters gathered eggs one or two at a time and collected them there, and runners would pick them up in bulk and take them to the Dragon Lord for evaluation. Egg-mothers kept the eggs safe and made sure they were ready for pickup.
The egg-mother for this office was a few years younger than her - definitely not "mother" age - and Ember had never caught her name. She was prone to belching. She never excused herself, either.
"Morning, Princess! [belch]" she offered.
Ember wrinkled her nose and set the egg down gently. "You're lucky the smell of all these eggs drowns you out."
"You're up pretty early!" the office master continued, unaffected. "Your dad doesn't let you sleep in, huh?"
"For his many flaws, my father is not nepotistic," she explained. "I am expected to work just as hard as everyone else. Sometimes more so," she finished with a grumble, and the dragon laughed (and burped.)
"Isn't it amazing how [belch] many dragon eggs are laying around this place? We oughta get some birth control," the gal offered. Ember found herself nodding before she could stop herself. "Oof, heavy sucker. This kid'll be healthy," she complained as she tried to lift the egg.
"Say, do you erm, know if dragons can lay eggs that... won't hatch?" Ember asked.
"The heck does that mean? [belch] Of course the eggs'll hatch, if we keep 'em happy," she replied.
"Never mind." Ember flew off without another word.
After another day of egg-hunting, Ember made it back home just before sundown.
"Hey dad, I'm back." Ember called, floating into the hollow, skull-shaped mound.
"Find any heroes?" Torch called hopefully. He was lazing on the giant dais that constituted his bed, surrounded with pointless trinkets. Dragons and their hoards.
Ember's eyes narrowed. "No." she said. "All pales today." In dragon superstition, white eggs - even with decorations like the green-striped one she'd found - were considered nothing special, compared to eggs of vibrant colors, which were believed to hatch stronger dragons.
So-called "pales" definitely made up the bulk of abandoned or lost eggs. Ember's heart sank to think that dragons could be so cruel and utilitarian about their own children.
"Dad," Ember asked hesistantly. "What color was my egg?"
There was a very terse silence; even a guy like Torch thought twice about such a question. Her father blinked and bit his lower lip before responding. "It was beautiful, diamond," he asserted. "There are places where water flows like lava. They call them all kinds of weird words. 'Rivers', 'oceans', 'lakes'. I don't know the difference, but they're all blue. Your mother --"
He paused, and Ember crossed her arms in discomfort before he continued.
"... She told me about the ocean. Your egg was blue. Deep and beautiful, with these cyan swirls as bright as the sky. She said it reminded her of the ocean."
"My mother knew what the ocean was?"
"Get some rest, diamond." he sighed. "You look exhausted."
Ember laid down on her own bed, facing away from her father.
"Nothing here," she sighed. "I thought I saw a flash of light, but..."
She was slowly, carefully walking through some old ruins on the very border of the Dragon Lands. She had to be careful, here - she wasn't familiar with the terrain. It was full of... grass , and moss, and other things she'd never seen before in her life, and there may be non-dragon civilizations nearby. These ruins were definitely not of anything dragons built. The doors were way too small.
Also, it was starting to get dark. She turned and began to walk back to familiar territory. Once she was back in the core Dragon Lands, it'd be safe to fly, if she could see well enough by then.
Ember had been egg-hunting for years by now. She'd picked up and carted around more stupid eggs than she'd like to remember. She was livid. Not heartbroken.
No, it didn't deeply hurt her at all that her father had grown more and more excited about recovering abandoned eggs every time he found one of an odd color or pattern. Sure, dragon mythology swore up and down that the less common a dragon's egg color was, the stronger the dragon would be, but so what? Even the most selfish dragon parents would want to keep , say, a coal-black egg with golden stars all over it, right? That's the bossest egg ever.
She wasn't upset by how incredibly, irrationally mad he got every time he had to confront the fact that every dragon in the Dragon Lands other than him had gradually stopped caring about his hero-dragon fetish, and many had just started chucking every other egg to Equestria because it took less thinking and less stonework.
She was absolutely not at all affected by the fact that her father would rather search the Dragon Lands for years, decades, centuries, on the off-chance of finding some stranger's discarded super-egg t-to hatch into the next Dragon Lord, i-instead of her. N-no, that didn't hurt at all, s-she didn't care.
Sh-she was just ou-out at the b-border of the Dragon Lands a-at sundown i-in some dumb r-ruins surrounded by gr-grass and clear s-sun and other stuff she didn't like and, and her father didn't give a --
"Yeep!" she squeaked as she tripped on something, and fell right on her face on the hard stone.
Between her thoughts and her bloody nose, Ember started to cry. It was okay. No one was there to see it. No one was ever there to see it. The only time her father had seen her cry, he'd yelled at her to stop being so weak, and she'd never let him see it again.
She looked back with narrow eyes and hissed at the thing she'd tripped on, but the angry sound caught in her throat as her eyes went wide.
As we might recall, dragons were superstitious creatures. Among their many other nuances, they believed that the color and pattern of an egg determined the strength of the dragon within it. Pale eggs produced weaker dragons, while vibrant eggs with elegant designs produced stronger dragons. Any egg colored a deep red or blue was considered the best the parents could hope for - and although she was still upset with her father for bringing up mom, Ember was proud to hear that her egg had been blue.
She liked that her mother had thought her egg was beautiful.
Dragons were inventive and imaginative - that tended to happen when they had nothing but rocks and dirt to play with or eat. They'd come up with all kinds of ridiculous, fanciful "legendary eggs" said to appear extremely rarely, which contained dragons with the powers of gods. A dark golden egg covered in lightning bolts, for instance, was said to birth a thunder-dragon who could command the storm and the sky.
There was one egg all dragons revered and told stories of beyond all others, and Ember blinked with wonder, her face white and her heart still, comparing the egg at her feet to the check list:
Purple? Yup.
Covered in dark spots? Yup.
Shiny like glass? Got that too.
Gentle glow around the silhouette like an angel? What an overachiever.
She thought she must be going mad. This egg had never been seen for all the time the dragons knew. It was the Egg of the Champion, whose inhabitant would not only become the Dragon Lord, but would set the bar for all Dragon Lords to follow. The dragon within this long-storied egg would change what it meant to be a dragon, in his time and forever after.
... but surely it must have been seen before, right? Or else any description of it would have been fabricated and no egg like it should ever actually exist... right?
And why didn't she see it before she tripped on it and busted her nose? Aaargh.
Ember squeezed her eyes shut a few times. When the egg remained present, she slowly adjusted herself to a reverent, nearly praying posture before it, setting it upright - it must've been the heaviest darn egg - and checking for damage. It was completely unblemished... a sturdy little thing, alright. She even gently knocked on it with her fist. Toong, toong . That was one hearty egg. If she could lift it, she could probably KO Garble with it, the uppity jerk.
She looked all around. Who in the world would have left an egg like this behind? Any dragon who pushed this out would be honored as a saint for the rest of her life, and her mate too. Dragons would kiss the ground they tread and hope to inherit their fertility. Ember blushed as she considered how touching the egg itself might have affected her. She would choose to interpret "fertility" as "success in all that you do". Yeah, that'd be nice. Success in convincing her dad that she wasn't some useless nymphet. Maybe this egg would help her become the Dragon Lord. Heh, that'd be a funny thing.
For possibly an hour Ember sat and contemplated the egg. She still wasn't sure if it was really there or if she was imagining it, but she was thinking about what would happen if she brought it back.
She might be honored for finding the Champion, sure, but she wouldn't be the Champion. Heck, even if she got Dragon Lord for it, she'd get to enjoy it for... what... ten to twenty years? Then the kid in the egg would be the Dragon Lord, probably.
And her dad wouldn't... he wouldn't congratulate her for it. Well, maybe he might. But he'd give her a pat on the back and then obsess over the egg for the next several decades.
Ember's heart began to boil with anger and jealousy. She reminded herself that the little guy in the egg wasn't to blame. She wasn't angry at the egg. She was angry with her father, who'd tossed her aside for far lesser eggs and would surely --
Her eyes went wide in sudden horror.
There was no way Dragon Lord Torch would permit anyone to raise the Champion but himself.
He'd adopt the egg.
He'd replace Ember with the egg .
She started to shake and hyperventilate in a flurry of inexplicably entwined emotions. With great effort, she gathered up the egg gently against her chest.
"Listen here, little guy," she cooed. "I know just what to do with you. Trust me, this is the best thing for us both, and you'll thank me for this later. My dad's a jerk. You'd hate him. Honestly, I hope you never meet him."
And with the egg, she snuck off into the rising night.
"What in the world..?!" Princess Celestia gasped.
Her guards leapt to her side immediately, spears ready. She held up a wing to brush them back. "No!! No, everypony, it's fine. I just... There must be a mistake."
"What do you mean, Your Majesty?"
"The dragons have a... superstition, about eggs," she said. "The more colorful ones are more valuable to them. That's why they've sent us mostly white eggs. More recently, they've gotten a bit careless and sent us some red or blue specimens. But this..?"
She looked down at the spotted purple egg in front of her. "They can't possibly have meant to send this..?"
When her sister was banished to the moon, Celestia had been overcome with grief and guilt. As a futile sort of internal apology, and as a way to feel closer to her sister again, she'd taken up some of Luna's interests with a zeal very unlike her previous inclinations. Back then, she'd been... lazy and unappreciative. No doubt that had been a factor in her sister's Malafesting... that poked needles into her heart now more than ever.
In particular, she had taken herself to study, and had read - so far as she knew - all that there was to read. She certainly hoped there wasn't much more to go. While ponies had little knowledge of the ways of dragons, a few brave explorers had brought back some bits here and there. Between this and the information about egg health she had wriggled out of Torch while negotiating the egg trade, Celestia was the best-suited pony to personally examine the eggs received from the Dragon Lands.
She was using this knowledge to train her unicorns. Invoking the magic of other beings was one of the most dangerous and difficult things for a unicorn to do - but dragons were incredibly durable, even as eggs. Celestia remembered the silly legend of a unicorn actually melting a full-sized dragon to goo. Celestia herself couldn't even do that... probably. She wasn't that kind of pony, so she'd admittedly never really tried. Still, ponies tended to underestimate the ego's effect on ontological inertia, and dragons tended to have tremendously powerful egos.
In any case, her final measure of a student's mastery of magic, not only in power but in grace, was to hatch a dragon egg. No other school in Equestria had students hatch dragon eggs . It was a fine feather in her cap. 'twas boss as all getteth out, her sister would say, if she were there.
Celestia stopped herself from shuddering. Luna would be there. Very soon, actually. Long ago, an old friend had promised Celestia they would save her sister when the time came... She refocused her thoughts. She didn't need to worry about that now.
Every student in her university would be "tested" to hatch a dragon egg as part of their entrance exam. It was virtually impossible that any of these foals would succeed; her intent was to gauge their personality and existing magical potential by the way they went about the task and how they reacted to the failure. Unless the student was tremendously powerful, the egg would be unharmed by any young mind clumsy pawing at it.
Just before graduation, each student would be tasked again to hatch the same egg. Celestia still wasn't 100% sure how dragon eggs hatched normally - it was probably the love of the parent that did it - but she'd found, with the proper care, they could remain dormant indefinitely and the dragon within would not be any worse off. So, the students were usually able to hatch the same egg they had tried before. At first they had nearly all failed, but after a few years Celestia had increased the success rate to over 95% and could not be happier with the results.
The hatched dragons were raised by the state, of course. They were not able to raise them the way a dragon would normally be raised, but that was actually ideal - she intended to create a culture of "Equestrian dragons" who would populate the country. This had an effect of repelling dragons from the Dragon Lands, who were disgusted by niceness, and thus the ponies would have nicer neighbors. This on top of ensuring that Canterlot's unicorns were state-of-the-art? Celestia just had to stroke her goose a little bit.
... another phrase related to Luna. She'd been thinking about her a lot. She had to have faith. Applejack would never break a promise in any lifetime.
Coming back from that tangent, of course Celestia knew about the Egg of the Champion. It was supposed to be the most valuable dragon egg ever, wasn't it..? She didn't understand how it, or at least an egg perfectly matching its description, had come to her door. She couldn't trust just any student with this. Her unicorns had never broken a dragon egg before, but she wasn't about to let this one be the first. For all she knew the thing was a magical bomb that would annihilate the whole city if it was mishandled. She might even need to hatch it herself...
She couldn't shake the strange feeling that she needed this particular egg... but for what? She actually started to feel nervous staring at it. Nervous? It was an egg. It didn't have a pony-eating monster hiding in it -- actually, she supposed it kind of did, considering.
"Your Majesty, the egg has something underneath it," someone said. Celestia leaned in - her old eyes weren't so great these days, especially with her long neck adding extra distance from whatever she was looking at - and carefully tugged out the note underneath the egg with her usually-graceful magical aura.
"Thank you," she was sure to say. She blinked. It was written very beautifully for a dragon. Must've been a young one, the big ones had trouble with the tiny print.
To Princess Celestia of the ponies,
No other dragons know that this egg has been borne, and I do not know who bore it.
Perhaps you are aware of our myths and legends, perhaps you are not. Suffice to say you must treat the egg before you as though it were a prized and dangerous magical artifact. It is the Egg of the Champion, and the one within it will define all dragons for generations to come; but I do not know what that means now that I have sent it away from home.
It is my deepest regret that I must refuse to explain why I have chosen to trust you with this. Perhaps I am a fool to do so. Time will tell.
Yours,
P.S. Don't tell my father.
Celestia blinked in thought for several seconds, while her guards looked between each other in confusion, what since none of them were able to read it while she had it.
Torch would be very upset to hear that his daughter had given the ponies the most precious dragon egg of all time. The "right" thing to do would be to tell him what happened, without incriminating Ember, and give him the egg back.
"Daddy issues," she mumbled, and the guards mouthed words to one another and shrugged.
To hell with the right thing!
Truth be told, this was an incredible stroke of luck. If this dragon turned out half as powerful as the legends implied, she (he?) would be a fantastic force to protect the Elements of Harmony.
Celestia made her decision right there. She'd been given a promise that they would all be ready. She was absolutely certain the last one was the unicorn she needed. Celestia just had to find her. She would know as soon as she saw her. She would be the one. The little hero in that egg would be her companion.
The crawling anxiety inside her was satisfied by this answer. She just knew it was right, but she wasn't sure why.
Everyone in the room snapped to attention as she looked back up. "The dragons have given us a gift that none of us will ever see a match to in our lifetimes. Perhaps not even myself." Celestia announced. "This purple egg is to be treated as a top-priority asset. No harm must come to it. The first to scratch it will be sacrificed to Nightmare Moon."
Her guards stiffened with wide eyes.
Celestia loved to use that line to get folks to respect her stuff. Six hundred years ago she'd ordered a one-of-a-kind figurine that some idiot had dropped on the floor and now it had a big dent in its head.
That kind of thing didn't happen anymore.
She pouted, having made herself think about Luna yet again - but her people got to work, busily and diligently taking the eggs where they needed to go, and she was needed elsewhere, so she called out "As you will!" and headed off.
In about ten years, she wouldn't be using that line anymore. Either Nightmare Moon or herself would be no more.
Ember quietly landed at the base of the mountain leading to her home, scrambled up the side as quickly and stealthily as possible, and peeked in the mouth of the skull. It was pitch-black outside.
She began to tiptoe in.
"EMBER!!" came her father's roar, and she almost fell back down the mountain.
She scrambled back to her feet. "... Yeah, dad?" she said as normally as she could.
"Where have you been?!" he continued, almost civilly.
"Egging." she deadpanned.
"You've never been out so late before! What happened? ... Answer!!" he bellowed. Great. Every dragon within a few miles was probably awake hearing her dad yell at her.
She rolled her eyes. "Gosh, you got me, dad," she cooed, dripping with sarcasm, "I found a legendary egg and I've been hiding it from you all day ."
"Don't get funny with me, young dragon," he snarled, then sighed. "Forget it. Take tomorrow off. You've been doing well."
Ember blinked. "W... what?" She couldn't remember the last time her father had even ambiguously praised her.
"You're doing a good job, diamond," he said. "... not Dragon Lord good, but good." He paused, and his next words sounded intentional and awkward. "I know you hate egg duty, and yet you've been very devoted. I... know I haven't really rewarded you for it. You won't be able to get up early tomorrow, so, uh... take tomorrow off. I'll think of something better by then."
"... Sure thing, dad," Ember replied, unsure. She fluttered to her bed and laid back down. "... Thanks."
"Don't mention it. To anyone. I mean it." He rolled over.
She grimaced. "I won't, dad."
Figures the one time she absolutely backstabbed him he would talk about how devoted she was.
She was sure, one day, her father would use the Sceptre to call all the dragons in the world back to the Dragon Lands, and the Champion would be there, just like everyone else.
If he was recognized - as she suspected a purple dragon totally would, that was not a common color - then Ember would have to explain how that egg got sent to Equestria.
Gosh, her dad was gonna be mad.
But that was a problem for Future Ember.
