It is not from the benevolence of the farmer, the baker, or the dressmaker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

—Adele Smith, The Wealth of Nations

Huh numble suh Spruggle. Twudlud Spruggle.

Here are some interesting facts about dragons:

Some dragons have spikes on their tails and ridges on their backs. Others just have spikes on their tails, or just have ridges on their back. Some have neither, and instead have horns on their foreheads. Their horns are as magical as you believe they are, assuming your beliefs about the magical nature of dragon horns are exactly correct.

Dragons can live up to one lifespan long. After that, they die.

Dragons can grow to be about sixty feet from the end of the tail to the tip of their snout. That’s almost as tall as a brontosaurus can get.

Brontosauruses don’t exist, of course. But neither do dragons.

Dragons…went somewhere. They never got along well with dinosaurs, who always felt that dragons were cheap imitators. The biblical connotations didn’t help, of course—dragons protested that they flew with their majestic wings, not crawled on their bellies, but seriously, who would believe anything a dragon said? They’re liars—didn’t you hear the story about the apples in that garden?[1]

[1] The garden's name is lost to time, alas. Researches only know that it started with the letter E and had three more. Econ? …No, couldn’t be….

And you thought apples had something to do with honesty….

A couple of rocks collided in space. Dinosaurs went and humans came, telling their own story about the lie in the apple orchard. Dragons argued about this, but they had not reckoned on one fact. One interesting fact about humans they hadn’t known.

Humans are good at arguing. So good, in fact, that scientists think arguing is what separated man from beast a long time ago. That, and two rocks colliding in space.

Dragons sharp of tooth and hot of flame lost that fight.

(How sharp of tooth? How hot of flame? Here are some interesting facts about dragons: dragon teeth are hard enough to cut diamond. Some ponies believe diamonds are ancient dragon teeth, and they might be right. Dragon flame reaches at least 6200 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt tungsten. Establishing an upper bound on the heat of dragon flame has proven quite challenging.)

Dragons…went somewhere. Where? Look around, I’m sure you’ll see one…you read pony fanfiction, for goodness’ sake….

Found them yet? That’s right. Dragons went into books. They branched out into television and film later—a purely financial move, of course. They went into our stories. And humans were, by and large, fooled by this. Not entirely, of course. People associated with dragons were targeted as “nerds,” a corruption of the Norse word Niddhog, a probably legendary dragon who slept under a golden oak tree, and they were subjected to violence and disarray in their youths.

Now you know.

Everything became cold, for some reason, and it started snowing a lot. Humans went away, and the pages of their books tore up into little pieces that scattered in the wind like snowflakes.

Dragons were back. A lot older, a little wiser. They had learned something from the humans. They had learned about arguments, which were strength but also weakness. Dragons gained a new kind of power.

And went back to sleep. It was a long winter.

It had been one year since Twilight Sparkle, Chief Executive Economist of the Daughter Bank of Ponyville, First Equal of the Nine, had made friends. Now she was being subjected to Buddhism.

“And then I said, ‘Make me one with everything!’” Pinkie Pie giggled. “Get it?”

Twilight stared at her.

“She didn’t get it either,” Pinkie Pie said, not put out at all. “I was the one making the cupcake, so I guess it didn’t make a lot of sense.”

“I really don’t think there’s anything to this Buddhist economics,” Twilight said as delicately as she could. “You can’t not want things and still have an economics.”

“Here’s a question,” Pinkie Pie said. “If a tree falls in the forest and no pony is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

“Well, obviously ye—“ Twilight stopped. “Are we talking about the Everfree Forest?”

“It’s a Buddhist Zen thing,” Pinkie Pie said quickly.

Twilight eyed her suspiciously. “Well, if it’s not in the Everfree Forest, then the answer is probably yes.”

“Want to bake cupcakes later?”

“No.”

“Want to have a party?”

“What for?”

Pinkie Pie frowned. “What do you mean, what for?”

“We want a party!” three annoyingly sweet young voices chirruped.

Three heads so adorable Twilight almost suspected they had been deliberate designed to elicit the feeling of “Awwww! I just want to squeeze their little cheeks!” appeared around the rows of bookshelves.

“Studying is boring!” complained Sweetie Belle, Rarity’s younger sister. She was white, with a mane that was by parts faded pink and pale violet, and she tended to squeak when she talked, which was always.

“Economics is just common sense anyway,” said Apple Bloom, Applejack’s younger sister. Yellow and sassy, she had all of Applejack’s stubbornness and twice as much savvy. Her accent wasn’t as good though—Applejack said it took a while for them to grow into it.

“This isn’t fillysitting,” accused Scootaloo, Rainbow Dash’s…fan. She was, apparently, an orphan, and had patterned herself after Rainbow Dash like a duckling that imprints onto the first awesome thing it sees. “You can’t make us read economics all day!”

“Yes, I can!” Twilight snapped. “Now get back to reading. Your sis—uh, Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash will be back soon to pick you up.”

“I want action!” Scootaloo said.

“Then…then read Pony Action!”

“Maybe you should take them outside,” Pinkie Pie suggested.

“I need to step outside,” Twilight said. “I need to clear my head.”

“You better not be going to the Daughter!” Pinkie Pie said as Twilight headed to the door.

“Just clearing my head!” Twilight said. She slammed the door behind her. Pinkie Pie shook her head and got to work baking little cakes for Twilight, who Spike had confirmed thought they just materialized in a manner analogous to how the trash just took itself out, the table cleaned itself, the library books sorted themselves back onto the shelves….

Sweetie Belle was looking among them now. “Found it!” Clambering up the shelves, she managed to knock Pony Action down and opened it to the first page.

The rest of the page was blank white. Sweetie Belle turned to the next page. The page was yellower, like it was much older, and the ink was…blacker, like it was more powerful. It read:

Sweetie Belle turned the page.

On the next page each word was smaller, and there were a lot more of them. Sweetie Belle settled down to read. After a moment, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo joined her.

It was another normal day in Ponyville.

It was another normal day in Appleloosa. There was an argument in an apple orchard about a lie that might have been told.

“This apple has a worm in it!” Little Strongheart gestured furiously at the dropped apple with a bite taken out of it. There was indeed a worm crawling pathetically out of the wreckage.

Braeburn tried to stifle a laugh. He never could take that skinny little buffalo seriously. “I didn’t know! How could I have known?”

The apple orchard was in a valley below Hark Mountain, which loomed over them like Chief Thunderhooves over a bowl of corn mash. As the sun moved awkwardly behind the mountain like a distant cousin during an argument at a family gathering, a shadow fell on Little Strongheart’s face like the will had just been mentioned.

She did not like Braeburn’s shrieky voice. She did not like his laughing eyes nor his boring cutie mark, and she especially did not like the way he said "Appleloosa!"

“All you ponies are the same,” she said.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Braeburn said, but he wasn’t. “Just take another one,” he said, but she wouldn’t take just another one.

“This apple orchard is a sign of friendship between pony and buffalo,” Little Strongheart said. “But ponies are not friends to the buffalo. Everyday the ponies disrespect us. They disrespect our land and our traditions.”

“Come on, Little Strongheart, can’t you take a joke?”

“I can take a joke. What you should wonder, Braeburn, is whether you can keep an apple orchard.”

Little Strongheart walked away.

The Daughter of Ponyville loomed like an old stallion hunched over his cane overlooking his yard, shaking his fist at the young 'uns he just knows are causing all the macroeconomic instability 'round here. The sight of it made Twilight’s muscles tingle like they needed to be stretched after sitting down too long. That was a good thing, because Twilight was starting to feel twitchy.

The problem, Twilight thought as she magicked open the heavy wooden doors of the Daughter, was that the world wasn’t ending.

It didn’t have to be ending per se. It would just have been nice, that’s all.

Working with Princess Celestia (Learning from Princess Celestia! Living so close to Princess Celestia that the princess might step into her dreams!) had taught Twilight that the world was always ending, at least a little bit. Economic crises, eldritch monstrosities from beyond space and time, and economic crises masquerading as eldritch monstrosities from beyond space and time were omnipresent in Equestria. By Twilight’s count, there was at least one ridiculous and dangerous conflict with Equestria’s future at stake that Princess Celestia had to personally address each week.

And it had been, to use Rainbow Dash's favorite second favorite word, awesome.[2]

[2]The first being "money," as in, "I've got a lot of money, and you haven't."

The connecting muscles between her legs and her flanks burning like a blush. Electric energy dancing up her neck. The snap of a pen, the taste of dust, the smell of ink. The constant gnawing ache in her stomach, the blurred vision, the giddiness, the sharp focus pointing down her cheekbones and tingling up to her eyeballs. That was what it felt like saving the world.

Twilight needed it like a junkie needs drugs, and her daily fix of Princess Celestia was in another castle.

She couldn’t stand Ponyville. Nothing ever went wrong! The town was stupid, like every week two ponies would get in some ridiculous argument over something utterly dull like who could run the fastest or whether some pony had blabbed another pony’s meaningless secrets. Nine times out of ten it was resolved when the ponies stopped acting like blamed foals.

Twilight couldn’t call it childish. Her idea of childhood was it being harder to get the heavy books down from the high shelves. But that summoned thoughts of her brother, which she swiftly dismissed with the automated efficiency born of practice, and she moved on instead to Ponyville’s macroeconomy.

Interests rates were…normal. RGDP ticking steadily up. Inflation was…whatever it was supposed to be.

The darned thing worked! Ponyville’s stupid, no-good economy ran itself!

Next week, I’m going to the moon.

The floor shook, and Twilight heard a distant rumble like a monster exploding out of an enormous tree. Exactly like that.

“I’m so excited we have our own Daughter bank,” Fluttershy said as she set out food for the chickens. She smiled at Mr. Cow eating the grass. “Don’t you think everypony is so relieved after the Great Succession? Twilight is going to make sure ol’ Nightmare Meanie stays far away from Ponyville.”

Mr. Cow took some time to swallow what was in his mouth. He lifted his head from the grass. “Ponies aren’t the only naturally evolved organisms who are affected by recessions, Fluttershy. Instead of saying ‘everypony,’ which is exclusionary, we critters prefer the term ‘everyone,’ which is inclusive. Check your privilege.”

“Oh my goodness!” Fluttershy said. There was a note of pain in her voice. “I’m so sorry. I’ll be sure to check my privilege and say ‘everyone’ instead of ‘everypony’ from now on.”

A shadow fell over the field of grazing animals.

“That’s odd,” Fluttershy said. The hair on her back stood up. “It’s not supposed to be cloudy today.”

The sensation of something looming—a blast of dislocated air the size of a house—heat like a furnace—Fluttershy was flung over the grass; her ears caught up with the vibrations crushing them and helpfully translated everything into a tornado’s roar; the ground came into focus, and then her hoofs, and the sky, where Fluttershy saw something she hadn’t thought she would ever see, not until Spike grew up.

Then she saw the field where the grass was pink.

“MR. COOOOW!”

Peargrass Puddle had a list, and that meant Applejack wouldn’t be out of the shop for a while.

She watched, bemused, and amused, as Peargrass Puddle strutted around the shop, looking with an eye so critical Applejack was surprised the tables hadn’t collapsed from all the extra damage they were taking. It was enough to make a pony sing the blues. At least he had brought some interesting news.

“Yup, Appleloosa’s really booming these days,” he said, giving the fresh-baked apple pies a hard stare. He took a long look at the list in his hoof. Maybe the effort of reading made him hold his breath, because his large stomach seemed to protrude as a single whole, looming over the pies. “The buffalo don’t cause any problems.”

“How’s cousin Braeburn?” Applejack said.

Peargrass Puddle straightened himself up, an impressive balancing act considering the weight hanging from his waist. “I saw him just last week when I was there. He’s good. Not playing any of his pranks anymore.”

“That’s good. He doesn’t have much sense for that sort of thing.”

Peargrass Puddle fluttered his piece of paper and started to strut around the shop again.

“Okay, okay, you’ve got a list, I can see that,” Applejack said. “Can I help you get everything you need?”

He hoofed it to her. “Got everything except for a dozen bushels of your best red delicious apples.”

Applejack took the note in her mouth and motioned for him to follow her outside.

“Is that your apple pies cooking?” he said. “Sure smells good.”

Applejack opened the door and stepped outside.

The note fluttered to the ground. Applejack’s mouth opened and closed like a baby’s hand grasping for its stolen nose.

In the distance a giant, three-headed dog was howling. Sweet Apple Acres was on fire.

“No no no no no!”

Rarity seized a dozen dresses in the blue glow of her magic and hurled them aside.

“I need something beautiful!”

A parasprite floated beside her, attracted by the violence like a fly to vinegar as Rarity stormed down the aisles of the Carousel Boutique. Flashes of blue lit the dark, lightning storms of magic and the accompanying thunder of hangers and racks crashing to the floor.

“Color….”

“I have color!” Rarity snapped.

“Fabric….”

“I have the finest silk!”

Frustrated with conversation, the parasprite hovered over Rarity and touched her horn. She brushed it away like an irritating mosquito.

It landed on the loom. “Suri Polomare….”

“Yes, Suri Polomare! Oh, Suri Polomare!”

Rarity’s horn flared. Blue light reflected off the glittering glass and crystal set everywhere around the room and off the gemstones on the dresses.

They say a witch should never be caught between two mirrors. Rarity wasn’t a witch, but she was an enchantress and a worker of glamors and illusions. Reflections were not a danger but a facet of her power. And Rarity had many facets.

“That Suri Polomare thinks she’s so great!”

Some of which were quite immature.

“Just because she has an exclusive line with Fleur Dis Lee—I’ll show her—“

“Gala….”

“Yes, the Grand Galloping Gala. Twilight’s invited us all this year. It will be the perfect opportunity to show off my dresses!”

“Could…destroy her….”

“No, no, I must do it properly.” Rarity’s eyes gleamed. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t be able to find a use for you at the Gala.” The parasprite floated to her shoulder. Rarity nuzzled it, cooing. “Oh, you’re a horrible little monster, aren’t you?” The parasprite chirruped happily.

Her pet mind-reading self-multiplying feared-on-the-level-of-Alicorns-and-the-draconequus monster perched on her shoulder, Rarity burst outside, looking for inspiration.

On the ground, right in front of her, the rainbow danced like crabs covered in oil at a rave. She gasped. And looked up.

Something glinted in the sky. A distant figure, flying in front of the sun. Not a bird…not Rainbow Dash….

“It’s beautiful!” Rarity cried. “And I want it!”

The harder Rainbow Dash was thinking, the faster she liked to fly. And she was thinking really, really hard.

Every month the Equestrian Puzzle Club sent out brainteasers, riddles, and problems to its members. Anypony who answered before next month’s set of puzzles got points for every puzzle they got right. Whoever had the most points was Number One Puzzler and got a star next to their name in the monthly listings.

Rainbow Dash wanted that star.

She was almost all the way through this month’s set. Tank helped, which wasn’t cheating—the rules didn’t say that a tortoise can’t play. If she could get all the points for this month, she just might pull ahead of somepony named Big Strongheart, the second-best puzzler in Equestria. Unfortunately, the monthly listings had her as first….

The last puzzle was a real doozy. Sometimes there were economics questions, and those were always just common sense. And sometimes there were math questions, and those were easy—what about some dumb old multiple derivatives was supposed to be difficult, anyway?[3] Rainbow Dash computed square roots in her head the way other ponies computed the time until lunch.

[3] That’s what Tank called them, anyway. To Rainbow Dash these things rarely had names. It was all just ways of figuring things out.

But this puzzle combined economics and math in a way Rainbow Dash had never considered before. The challenge was to find a method to describe and solve a system of linear equations[4] showing how every sector in the economy depended on each other.

[4]“Oh, those things have a name?” Rainbow Dash said loudly when Tank finished explaining. “That’s like giving a name to walking. Look at me, the Left-Right Left-Right method. Gosh! This is why school is so stupid!”

The idea was simple enough. Firms produced things for other firms to use, so you just had to figure out how much stuff was needed to make other stuff, and how much the former cost and how much the latter could be sold for. The trick was to work backwards from what people wanted to buy to what it took to make it, and you could see what a firm would choose to do if it wanted to make any money, and on down the chain to the firms that did the most fundamental work.

The problem was that the economy was big. Tank kept finding new kinds of businesses Rainbow Dash had never even heard of before. She remembered something about a pencil they all had to snap in school, but that was just a dumb old story. It hadn’t really happened, and Rainbow Dash hadn't really been listening.

Rainbow Dash was faster at math—faster at everything—than any other pony she knew. But even she couldn’t compute the sheer masses of numbers Tank was digging up. There was just too much.

Tank said the problem wasn’t tractable. Rainbow Dash said it was too big to grab a hold of. Tank said that was the same thing, and Rainbow Dash said she wasn’t in the mood for a lecture, and that was when Rainbow Dash knew she needed to take a flight, because if you’ll shout at your tortoise you’ll shout at anypony.

The blue skies were so empty and peaceful Rainbow Dash didn’t hear it until it was almost on her. The sound that she had thought was the whine of her own flight belonged to something else. A shadow fell over her.

Rainbow Dash dodged right, so fast the rainbow streak behind her nearly missed the turn. Something clipped the end of her flank; she spun wildly, her wings flapping helplessly. Finally she oriented herself and looked up, furious.

The skies were hers, like the top of the monthly listings of the Equestrian Puzzle Club or half the equity in Equestria. No pony could just knock her off course like that.

"Hey! What's the big...big...."

That was when she really saw it, looming over her: the beast.

She gawked. “Fluttershy’s sky serpent?“

But it wasn’t. Its tail whipped through the air like a cat baiting its prey, but so fast and heavy the gusts of air kept knocking Rainbow Dash off-balance. The tail curved up into a body that glowed red in the belly amidst the brilliant serpentine scales that dazzled her with their light. Then Rainbow Dash looked up to the grinning, horned head and the malevolent orange eyes that glowed with millions of years of evolved murderous efficiency, and 12,000 years of learned malice.

The eyes were, Rainbow Dash realized in that frozen moment, decidedly male.

Then everything was giant snapping teeth and rippling fire, and Rainbow Dash learned that ponies really did piss themselves.

Claws—teeth—her tail, burning—its own, whipping—a series of rainbow explosions in the sky, and Rainbow Dash careened toward the wreckage that had been Twilight Sparkle’s treehouse, yelling.

“IT’S A—“

“It was a dragon,” Pinkie Pie said helpfully.

Twilight looked, aghast, at the exploded wood and the tattered, burnt books that had once been her treasure.

“The fillies are fine,” Pinkie Pie said. “Me and Spike too. Got real lucky. It burst out of the ground and ripped and burned through everything.”

Twilight held up the charred remains of a book cover.

The rest was burned off.

“You can sleep at my place until Princess Celestia finds you somewhere new to live,” Pinkie Pie said.

Rainbow Dash touched down, rubbing her tail against the dirt. “I just got attacked by a—whoa, what happened here? What about the fillies? Are they safe?”

“They’re fine,” Pinkie Pie said. “I sent them home with a book from the library. It might be the only one that survived!”

“Rainbow Dash, get the others,” Twilight said. “We have a dragon to slay.”

In the distant sky to the west, a trail of smoke was visible, and spreading.

“What’s that?” Pinkie Pie said. “Some kind of omen?”

“No,” Twilight said. “It’s an externality.” Next Chapter: Subjective Information Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 24 Minutes