FEB 2 Friday.

I look down as the sea stretches out to my right and the land to my left as I fly along the coast.

I've been flying for almost six hours now and my direction of travel has changed to be more southeast than directly south. The land curves inwards here before curving out again at a point that forms a land bridge with the Dragon Lands, something I find odd.

I've been flying with a Lightening spell on myself to conserve energy and just glide along the way. I do need to pay attention to sudden gusts of wind as they can move me around pretty quickly while being under the effects of the Lightening spell. Honestly, the travel so far has been pretty boring but bearable.

Much like with many forms of travel, it is just moving forward while having to keep alert and pay attention. At least I have someone to fly with and keep me motivated, namely Entropy as she's been thrilled with our long flight. It's almost noon now though and I need a break from flying so much.

As I start to descend from the sky my thoughts wander to the Griffons I spent time with this morning. I'm still a bit surprised at the sheer hospitality I was shown despite basically being a complete stranger. It is nice though and I'm far from complaining about it, although my paranoia can't help but think the worst.

Mostly my paranoia wonders if they could want something from me. It is unlikely that they would because they simply have more than me, at least if they don't know something they shouldn't. I also find them knowing any of my secrets unlikely as well, so is it a possibility that they want something else?

If nothing else they know I have some connection to the Equestrian crown, even if that's just working for the crown once. So being good hosts to me might score them some extra points with a valued trade partner, it's a bit far-fetched but it wouldn't cost them all that much to be nice to me.

It reminds me of a saying. Kindness costs little and anger costs more than you ever intend it to. Or something like that, I don't really have a good memory of that saying though. After circling the area for a bit I landed on a seaside cliff with a road next to it.

Many things are shipped by sea but these roads still have a fair amount of traffic. I've seen several dozen bands of traveling creatures from the air over the past few hours. Entropy lands on me as I lay down and rummage through my saddlebags before taking out an apple seed, I toss it on the ground and watch calmly as an apple tree quickly grows large and fruits many apples.

I pick several apples and cut them into slices with my regular steel dagger before passing some to Entropy and digging into our simple meal. Having life magic makes getting food a non-issue for me, at this point I can regain the magic I just used in less than an hour without needing tea or Mana Mimicry.

I should check what my magic capacity is when I get back, it's probably significantly larger than the last time I measured it. It also helps that I simply have much better control over all forms of my magic, from neutral to space and life. With better control comes less waste and increased effect.

Interestingly enough my control might be the skill I've developed the most and the area I stand out the most in. I have a vast amount of control from using my affinities so much and I'm even a bit better at my control than Twilight is from what I've seen when we study together.

She probably has more magic than me though, maybe because of her fate or cutie mark, but she has the ability to practice magic for a long time so she at least has a large capacity. Actually, could I get her to measure her magic as well? It would be an interesting thing to compare.

Again something for later. I leave those thoughts as I sense movement down the road a bit, they are around a bend and can't see me yet so I just recast the wing spell and Lightening spell to get back in the air and keep moving. I decide to leave the Apple Tree there as it makes no difference if it's found and I would rather that no one spot me.

I fly high and make sure to adjust my course again as I continue to follow the coast. I don't really mind talking to the Dragons as they probably won't care that much if I act weird or really question me all that much. Other races and beings in this area might be more curious as to why a single pony is all the way out here and take notice, so it's best to avoid them.

As I fly I take out a map and start trying to look at the coast for landmarks to find out where I am. After a few minutes, I get close enough to know I'm already a third of the distance to my destination. It's the early afternoon so I could actually make it to the land bridge before nightfall.

That's faster than I thought, but then again I'm no expert at judging distance and it makes this journey quicker than expected. I sigh and start to beat my wings faster to pick up some more speed, I still have a long way to go and if I get there before dark I can set up a proper camp for the night.

Over the next few hours, the coast bends back to the right and leads me deeper into the sea with another sea visible to my left past the land. That strip of land thins more and more as the roads became little more then dirt paths instead of the cobbled roads I'm used to.

The land itself loses more and more of its plant life and gets warmer as I continue to follow along. Eventually, I see my destination as the sun dips low, soon to set completely. The terrain is rocky and sandy as the two or three-mile-wide strip of land that separates the two seas starts to abruptly widen again in the distance.

The terrain past this point looks far more hostile and rugged, I already see a volcano in the distance and the gray stone gets darker in color. It's a striking contrast that makes me wonder how natural this entire area is. The continent I'm on just dips inward to this bridge with a very straight land bridge that opens up into a much larger land mass at the end.

It makes the location basically unassailable as it's the ultimate defensive location for any land-based war. I land on the craggy and rocky hills that make up this final stretch of the land bridge before fully entering the Dragon Lands. The strong smell of the sea is everywhere and there is a layer of sand on the rocky ground.

There are more desert-like plants here but the area is far from devoid of life, at least wildlife. There are only some small paths at this point and no signs of other sapient life. I find a rocky outcropping that works well enough for me and I start to gather firewood from around the area, something that takes a while.

Once I have a fire going I settle in and watch the sunset while looking around me. The area I'm in is a small clearing surrounded by rock outcroppings and hills with the sound of the sea being omnipresent. I spend a bit of time growing some fresh fruit and taking out some dried meat from my saddlebags to make us a small meal.

I pass a wooden bowl with the simple meal to Entropy who wags her tail a bit before bobbing her head in thanks. "Thank, love." She caws out before happily digging into her food. I chuckle a bit and pull out my sleeping bag to unroll it so I have something to sit on.

We quietly eat our food and I call it an early night by curling up in the sleeping bag next to my fire and with Entropy snuggled up against me. I stare up at the stars a bit before drifting off to sleep after a long day.

FEB 3 Thursday.

I slowly wake in the dark to the sounds of incessant waves crashing against stone cliffs in the distance. I stretch a bit and crawl out of my sleeping bag in the darkness of night while casting a light spell. I check the time and see it's about an hour before sunrise, the perfect time to do what I have planned.

I spend a moment making some fresh tea on my campfire's embers before taking out a single small seed from my saddlebags. This is one of the seeds from the Redwood pine cone I've been working on for the past few weeks and here seems like as good a place as any to test it out.

Others will definitely notice it, but connecting it to me would be basically impossible so I can just leave it here as an unexplained mystery like many other things in this world. Also the idea of messing with others by leaving this tree here without explanation is somewhat appealing to the part of me that likes pranks.

Entropy slowly wakes up as well and hops on my back sleepily as I gather my things and thoroughly destroy my campsite. I stand in one of the larger flat areas this location has and take out the seed. It's mostly sandy and rocky soil so this is a subpar location, but I have enough magic to bypass that.

The area is a few hundred feet wide and I place the seed down at the center before stretching out a hoof and activating Mana Mimicry while drinking some tea I just made from a flask I filled. I start off by using a spell to give it plenty of water and simply trying to grow the seed, and watch as a small Redwood Tree sprouts and takes root.

I modified a full pine cone so I'd have many seeds in case one was a dud, it seems I got lucky at the start though. The seed continues to grow more and more as my magic drains away consistently, it costs less magic than I expected, probably because the magical abilities of the tree haven't been activated yet.

The tree goes from a sapling to a ten-foot-tall tree quickly, then twenty feet, then forty. Taller and taller it grows while I watch my magic closely and study the magical flows of the tree as it grows. I also keep a hoof against the tree while backing up as the trunk grows wider.

After ten minutes of steady growth, the tree hits roughly one hundred and fifty feet and starts taking more magic than before. Its massive roots spiral into the rocky ground and spread out around the area, spilling down the rocky ridge I'm on and covering everything.

After another ten minutes, the Redwood Tree is over three hundred feet tall with me adding some more magic to speed things along a bit. After yet another ten minutes I'm nearly out of magic and stop the process to conserve what I have left in case I need it.

It's hard to get a perfect picture or exact measurements, but the Redwood Tree is around four hundred feet tall and has a titanic appearance to it. The trunk is dozens of feet across and I'm surprised my magic was able to grow this size of tree without needing a break.

I was using a few things to increase my magic regeneration and also grew the tree over nearly forty minutes. This type of tree has also evolved to grow to such size so that probably helped. Still, this tree is mind-boggling and almost hard to describe with words alone.

I move back and Entropy and I look up to the tree that sticks out like a beacon as the sun rises into the sky and casts the tree in sunlight. I'm not entirely sure if this tree got the correct magical ability from the Iron Oak as I couldn't grow it enough, but it is standing strong in the face of the strong ocean winds despite its size and the little soil it has.

"Big, go up?" Entropy asks while looking excited at such a sight. I'm tempted to grow the tree more and see how far I can push it, but it's day now and others will notice this thing, so it's best I get going before anything happens. So after gathering some seed I pet Entropy a bit and shake my head before I start to walk down a path towards the Dragon Lands.

"Not today, maybe when we come back though. If it's still here." I tell her while walking down a dirt path through the rocky terrain. I could fly deeper into the Dragon Lands but I'm much more vulnerable when flying and many more dragons will notice me, so I'm in for a long walk ahead of me.

As I walk I notice a Dragon fly by far above me in the air, it's hard to see any details but they seem to be large enough to be an adult. The ground gets more jagged as some lava rock starts to make up more and more of the terrain. I see another Dragon flies past about an hour later when I finally cross the last of the land bridge and make it to my destination.

A mix of black and gray stone stretches out into mountains and cliffs that stretch far away as I crest a hill and look around. I turn back for a moment and see the tree I grew, it stands in opposition to everything around it. A titan with seas on both sides of it, clinging to a stone hill and standing like a beacon in the dark.

I turn back and look into the distance sorting through the terrain trying to get some sense of direction. There are many smoke stacks from volcanic activity and few plants in the area, but there is more activity. It starts with a Dragon seeing me from atop a hill they were sleeping on as I continue walking past.

They look to be an adult, maybe a hundred feet from head to tail. They look at me for a moment and then they just go back to sleep seemingly not caring about me, and I'm fine with that. I notice more dragons flying around the sky as I keep walking and the smell of sulfur grows stronger with time as volcanoes become more common. "Shadow." Entropy caws before slipping into my shadow.

I was about to ask her to do just that so I don't mind. "Just stay awake, you remember the base of the tree right? Take us there if I say so." I get an affirmative chirp in response. Finally, after another hour of following a shabby path and being careful of the terrain, I see something more significant, a few Dragons bathing in lava.

They see me as I walk and I stare back unbothered, a few are small and look to be teenage Dragons. Again they don't seem interested in me. But I need some direction in this place, so I slowly walk over to them after casting the Flame Shield spell on myself and mentally readying myself for things going wrong.

A red and orange scaled Dragon is closest to me and is just lying in a pit of lava. "Pony." The female voice rumbles out of the Dragon, who's a bit bigger than the others, her head the side of my entire body. When I stop near the pool of lava with her in it she stretches her neck to better face me from her lying position. "Trader?" She asks bluntly, seeing my bags.

Her tone is uninterested and bland, seemingly far from curious about me. I nod, "Yes, anywhere I should be going?" I ask with a blunt but neutral tone, while studying the first adult Dragon I've gotten a good look at. Her size and looks are a bit intimidating but I don't show it.

She shows her teeth a bit and huffs some smoke out of her nose. She has a ridge of red spines running along the back of her head and down to her tail tip, a seemingly common trait amongst dragons. But unlike Spike, her spines are much more patchy and less consistent.

Her eyes focus on me before her tail points in a direction. "That way." She says before slumping back down into the lava and seemingly ignoring me. For a first interaction that seemed to go well enough and no Dragons seemed to really care about me so far, so I took her advice and started to walk in the direction pointed out.

I walk for a while and take a mental note that my magic has recovered by this point before cresting yet another hill of stone and seeing something unexpected. It's a much larger gathering of Dragons than before, several dozen all in a large area, most of them are adults but a few are younger and vary in size.

Interestingly enough it seems to be a trading area of some sort, many Dragons trading gems and gold with each other. It's hard to see it in too much detail, but it seems the larger ones trade in larger amounts or items. The larger Dragons lay curled around their pile of treasure to prevent theft while others walked up to trade with them like I would a trading stall.

After watching for a few minutes I notice another few Dragons flying in and decide to get more involved. There seem to be at least some rules with all of this and that is my priority here. I need to learn what to expect and how to act before I get myself in some kind of trouble.

Interestingly enough I spotted a few Griffons flying into the area while closing the distance, it seems I'm not the only outside trader here, as good a sign as any. As I walk close, several large Dragons lying on hills overlooking the area take notice of me, but have the same lack of care as many others, I just focus on looking around.

Younger Dragons carry things in their arms and seem to like trading with the older Dragons for larger gems. Sometimes using smaller gems or gold shaped in various forms. The very large area is just flat dirty stone that seemed to have been made for this, with Dragons all around the place with little actual structure or coordination to it all. "What have you got, Pony?"

I turn my head to see an adult Dragon lying around his small hill of gold and gems staring at me as I walk past. We're on the edge of the trading area and I think I saw this dragon flying in recently, it seems the later you come the further away you set up from the center.

I was just planning to head deeper in but this large male Dragon seems to have some interest in me. He huffs as I stare at him, "Well? What do you have to trade?" The gruff male asks again with a bit less patience, seemingly trying to force me into trading with him before others through some light intimidation as he smiles at me.

I raise a brow and stare right back at him after a moment. "I've noticed a few of the larger Dragons here don't seem to be trading, just watching everything. Are they keeping the peace for a cut then? Also, I'm guessing this place has some rules?" I reason out having noticed that a few of the larger Dragons just seem to watch and stay to the side at higher elevations to look over everything.

My calm and steady tone seems to throw him off a bit as he looks at me again before tapping a claw on the stone ground. "New then, great. Not many of you ponies here either. I'll answer you, for a price." He says back bluntly and with some amusement in his tone, along with some cockiness.

He's nice enough to deal with though so that works for me. "Ten bits, I could just go pay them to answer me if I wanted to." I haggle right back at the start. He hisses for a moment in what seems like consideration before nodding to me slowly. I take out the bits and show them all before chucking them at the pile he has.

He huffs again seeing such a small amount. "Fine. Yes, they are." He looks to one of the guard Dragons. "Rules, no fighting. Obviously no trying to kill, unless you want the Dragon Lord after you." He chuckles out at that. "Not that a pony like you is a threat." He says like it's another obvious thing. "No stealing, and you pay what is agreed." He says blandly. "See Pony, nice and simple."

I can guess there is more context to those rules, especially the last one, but that was worth a few bits. He smiles again and brings his head, which is even larger than the last Dragon I talked to closer and smiles widely. "Now, how about you look at what I have to offer, little pony." He says with some blatant greed.

Honestly, this isn't the worst Dragon to start with. He might be arrogant and a dick, but his greed is easy to work with for me. I huff back a bit and nod. "Sure, but I'm not agreeing to buy anything, yet," I say and he just backs up his head some and moves his tail out of the way.

His whole body is curled around the pile of loot with his tail and head drawing a border at the front, letting others see his goods without being close to it. Also letting him control who gets close to his things to keep a very close eye on them, as he is doing with me right now.

I steadily walk over but make sure to stay in full view of him and to avoid any misunderstanding as I look over the items. It's a rough pile with many items, mostly gold items and gems but there is also some silver and a few other random things inside the pile. After a little looking I spotted a large uncut emerald that is very clear and well-formed, it's nearly a foot across and rounded.

It'd be heavy but I'm interested in it for a different reason so it's worth it. I hold up the gem to him and he looks at it for a moment, bringing his eyes close to me. His iris widens from a slight slit, "Ssss, one hundred." He says with a no-nonsense tone.

I raised a brow nearly looking shocked at the price he offered. I might as well be scamming him, or maybe the price is just that low here? Something else to investigate. "Seventy." I counter not even blinking as the large Dragon states me down from only a few feet away, showing off his teeth more.

His eyes narrow more and he huffs smoke out once again, nearly hitting me with it. "Ninety, or you can move on, little, Pony." He says with a slight rumble to his voice that conveys he's not happy about being bargained with.

I look at the gem again and back to him. "Eighty-five, and you tell me how old you are." I counter with a slightly different offer and the same unbothered tone as before. I'm not letting these Dragons push me around, I can have some pride, just not arrogance.

He raises a scaled brow but nods after a long moment as I move further away from his pile of loot so others can see our transaction, moving slowly to make sure he doesn't take it as me running off. "Eleven hundred and sixteen. Gold, now." He demands with his eyes still somewhat narrowed.

I've been moving the gem with my field as these Dragons are unlikely to care or even know it's odd, so I can move things this way freely. I place it down and start to slowly count out the bits in full view of him before leaving the bits in a pile for him to take. I don't even respond as he takes the gold and I walk deeper into the odd market.

I'm still a bit on edge around all these Dragons, but it's getting more comfortable as time passes, I still keep my senses sharp though. It feels odd to deal with beings like this after being a pony for so long, it's kind of nostalgic. That was also a pretty good start to my trip as well, so let's see what else I can find here.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :)
Current year is 996

The Dragon Lands is sometimes an island or connected to the Eastern Continent in a few different ways depending on the map. So, I'm just doing my thing and changing some stuff up, it might deviate from the show a bit by doing this but it seems to fit well enough.

Here, have some stupid art I made with all my artistic skill to better explain what the whole land geography looks like. Please excuse my less-than-staller drawing skill.