On Light Hooves I Tread 2: Homeward Bound
A Fanfiction by Adam Nelon
Chapter 4: The Hunt
As the old proverb goes, my friend and I went out of the frying pan and into the flame. In a way, history had repeated itself. We had encountered this very same conundrum but 48 hours ago on our way to Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. Jade was still very much asleep as I was only barely rousing myself from the sudden urgency for Princess Luna to awaken us both for matters of utmost importance. In a way, I found this to be incredibly jarring. Curiosity and annoyance led me to ask the most pertinent question that came to my mind.
"Pray tell, Princess," I yawned, still attempting to keep within the boundaries of formal conversation, "What brought you to bring us here?"
The princess lowered her hood slowly with a somber expression.
"I suppose that thou art correct. However, this information is to remain solely in the hooves of the Royal Family, yourselves, and our two charges...whom, If I am not mistaken, you have already had the pleasure of meeting," muttered the mare as she craned her head to the two Pegasi guards manning the carriage.
For a moment, I was not sure as to what Her Majesty was referring to, until I saw the two's faces. For a moment, I had trouble recognizing their faces, but as I kept looking, my mind suddenly lit a bulb of remembrance in my head. These two Pegasi were Steel Sabre and Iron Sides! I knew these two from my last excursion to Equestria! They were the two ponies that brought me to and from Canterlot!
"Aw...I think the kid's Nostalgic!" Cooed the mare of the two of them.
"Shucks. I think you're right, Double-S," grunted her stallion comrade. "Hey, kid! Are you getting flashbacks back there?!"
I blushed and chuckled a tad. "In a sense, yes."
With that out of the way, Luna chuckled a tad herself before quieting down and returning somber. "Right, with that out of the way, allow me to explain," she stated in a straight manner, prodding Jade to awaken him before speaking.
"While it is true that Equestria is meant to be a bastion of peace and tranquility, there is not always that luxury. You see, in the five-year span in which you have been absent, there has been a string of very strange and inexplicable events..."
"Strange events?" queried a weary Jade. "How strange are we talking?"
"From what I have heard, there have been reports of docile, or at the very least, neutral creatures turning feral and attacking ponies with reckless abandon and unknown reason. We do not know what all is being affected, or what the cause of it is, but reports from our neighbors in Gildedale, draconic creatures non-native to the lands have become enraged and are attacking the villagers indiscriminately. From what the aforementioned reports have told us, the creatures in question are not the komaga which usually stampede through Gildedale, but rather, their full-blooded cousins; The Dragons themselves!"
Luna's eyes flared as she uttered those last few words.
"So what are we doing out here, flying into the mountains?" I asked, shrugging off fatigue.
"It is simple," Luna said, raising her head. "From what the Lord of the Dale, Hammer Hoof has told us, there is to be a Red Dragon entering this mountain range. I don't believe I must inform you that this mountain range is but a stone's throw from Canterlot. Therefore, it is our duty to stop this beast in its tracks and find a way to correct its ails."
"And that would be...?" Jade hummed, raising a brow.
"Put simply, we must, by any means necessary, incapacitate the creature without killing it. Then, we will restrain it and bring it to our experts in Canterlot," Luna explained.
"Experts?" we asked in almost complete unison.
"Indeed," replied Luna in a formal fashion. "In Canterlot, we have assembled a team of experts in the field of Draconic Studies, varying from Dragon Physiology, Psychology, Biology, and so on and so forth. They may be able to decipher what has been occurring in these creatures so that we may be able to solve this crisis that is occurring."
"And you brought us for what reason, exactly?" Quipped I, before letting out a yawn.
"Simply put, you have faced a dragon once before. You should be able to figure out a way we may incapacitate this creature."
Okay, just to clarify, just because I was able to fell a dragon once does not directly mean I can do so a second time. But, if it is the will of Her Majesty, I suppose I must comply.
"Okay...so exactly are we to undertake this endeavor?" I asked, looking Luna in the eyes intently.
"Once again, 'tis a simple matter. All you must do is divert the Dragon's attention, or at the very least, disable it for long enough to where we can apply a heavy enough dose of sedative. This sedative has been touted to be strong enough to incapacitate an Ursa Minor with a no less that a few deep breaths. If we can manage this, we may be able to decipher just what seems to be taking place in these lands. Does that sound simple enough?"
I nodded nervously. In my opinion, this would be easier said than done, but I suppose if I was able to defeat a dragon once, than a second time would be more than an easy feat.
Oh, how stupid and wrong I was to think that way.
As the carriage landed in the Drackenridge Mountains, which as Princess Luna pointed out earlier, were a stone's throw away from Canterlot (well, more like a short flight, but that was a moot point), the party began to divide and choose their stake-out points in the stones on the mountain. Luna took to one of the larger rocks, Steel Sabre and Iron Sides hid atop a cloud, and the two of us...were completely out in the open. In hindsight, I should have thought ahead to where I was to go before we landed. But, in any case, there was no way out of this. I made my bed, and now, I was to lie in it.
Jade and I kept low, our ears open for any sign of the dragon that Luna had said was to be here. For a while, we heard nothing more than rushing air and the low whistles of what few birds could stand this climate. It was, for lack of a better (or rather, less cliched) phrase, the calm before the storm. It was that kind of calmness that was eerie and unnerving. It was like I was a soldier, tasked with guarding not only Princess Luna, but all of Equestria with my life, and while I was not the former, I was most certainly the latter. I was almost tempted to ease the tension by initiating small talk, but the loud, dull roar of a beast not but perhaps 200 meters away cut any opportunity of doing so.
Cutting through the clouds like a knife was a large mass of red. Red on a large creature, to my native understanding of fantasy, was almost never a good thing. A soaring mass of red, hardened flesh soared overhead, its wings sending gusts of great winds across the stony mountainside. It took all we had to stand firm as the giant landed, its reddened eyes staring at us with a face of utter contempt. It surveyed us for mere moments before snorting a plume of hot air in our faces. Dear God, what had I gotten myself into?
"Um...what ho, o great one?"
Obviously, the dragon wasn't quite amused. He chose to blast the two of us off our hooves with one mighty burst of hot air. I knew i couldn't speak dragon; It was all too silly for me to even think that. Even if I did, I doubt I'd have the capacity to shout some random draconic gibberish and expect to return the favor with a wave of unstoppable kinetic force. So instead, I got back on my hooves, getting Jade balanced along with myself.
"Well, that could have gone better," I groaned, catching my breath.
"Oh, gee, YA THINK?!" snapped Jade, glaring daggers at me, only to be interrupted by the dragon suddenly turning one-eighty and slamming down his tail, knocking us both on our flanks again.
Thankfully, this knockdown wasn't quite as debilitating as that of the dragon's initial landing, but it was still fairly powerful. The both of us had just enough time to roll back onto our hooves and scatter as we tried to formulate a proper plan of attack. However, with the beast thrashing about, It would be an exercise in frustration. We weren't exactly any kind of hunter, lacking any and all kind of weaponry. Thus, I and Jade were forced into a wild bullfight. The armored lizard kept with an assault of tail swipes claw rakes, but it wasn't until it began to reach noon that the dragon decided to do what all dragons do: Attempt to burn the thing between its eyes to a cinder.
If you recall, the last dragon (i.e. the only other one) that I felled was a blue dragon, which breathes very intense bursts of ice and frost. Most people who are well-taught in the realms of fantasy, including myself, know for a fact that red dragons, more often than not, breathe that most classic of breaths, flame. I swear to Celestia, I was this close to becoming a pony BBQ, what with my flanks being burnt. It was in this midst of chaos that I heard Princess Luna shouting.
"Be wary, friends! This beast appears to be in a blind rage!"
Well, no shi-wait a second. "Blind rage"...That particular phrase rang in my head for a few moments, as I began to recall what I had managed in the desert, slowly chancing looks at the sun. Blind rage...
BLIND RAGE! That was it! I remembered what I was able to do a few days ago! I was able to collect and weaponize the power of sunlight! Then, as I looked to the dragon, it reminded me of the cardinal weakness of most dragons (or, more broadly, most reptiles in general): This dragon lacked eyelids! The solution was all so obvious now!
"Jade!" I called out, barely dodging another tail slam.
"What?!" Jade shouted, ducking beneath a curtain of flames.
"How good is your telekinesis?!"
"What?!"
"HOW GOOD CAN YOU LIFT THINGS WITH YOUR MAGIC?!"
"I'm good, I guess! Why?!"
"I want you to shoot me into the air!"
"WHAT?! Are you nuts?! What are you thinking?!"
"I need to get up to the thing's eye level!"
"Are you sure about this?!"
"Sure as I'll ever be!"
"You'd better be going somewhere with this!"
"Oh, I'm going somewhere, all right!"
When time allowed us, Jade and I joined forces, Myself hopping on his back as he focused his spell, forming it around me so that he could shoot me into the air, the momentum of my initial jump sending me just a few pony lengths higher than the Dragon's head, giving me more than enough distance between my form and the sun as I began to call forth as much energy as I could muster. I emptied my mind of all thoughts, with the exception of one word: Blind.
I aimed to send that beast into a world of blinding lights and sweet dreams. One quick spell would seal its fate. I slowly heard my horn emit its harmonic hum of magic, and I kept focusing on the spell I was forming in my head. I kept uttering that word in my head, and as I felt I was at my peak, I unleashed that power I had collected.
"CONTINUAL LIGHT!"
I felt once again that familiar heat a few days ago. The my horn lit up as bright, if not brighter, than the sun itself, and because as a result of my proximity to the massive beast before me, he, and just about anyone else who was stupid enough not to turn their eyes away, were all assailed by such bright rays that it would take perhaps a whole day, maybe even a week, to reach recovery. When it was all said and done, the glorified gargantuan lizard was left flailing, unsure of where to go or what to do, leaving Steel Sabre ample time to clime onto its back and crammed a large, mint-green ball into its mouth, which, upon its instinctual consumption, released a cloud of gas that the poor thing ended up inhaling until it keeled over.
When the giant finally took its fall, its meeting with the ground sent a quake through the mountainside that could easily have carried to neighboring territories! Jade and I barely cold hold ourselves to the stone, what with our possession of hooves. But, once the giant was felled, it did not rise for any reason. It was now sleeping under the spring sun, while the rest of us were wide awake with adrenaline.
Of our three escorts, her majesty rose first, smiling profusely. "Very well done, friend! That was aw-I mean..." Luna chuckled, realizing she was about a syllable away from dropping her formal voice, "That was most ingenious, Adam. Where in Equestria did you get the idea to blind the creature?"
I chuckled a bit before curtly answering, "You'd be surprised what biology and fantasy can teach you after so long."
Not but a moment later, it dawned on me that this was only the first half of my mission, and this was the easier of the two affairs. The second task lay still ahead: We had to get this colossus back to Canterlot for interrogations, and considering that this thing weighed approximately the weight of 5 buses, that meant we'd have to (pardon the pun) hoof it back to Canterlot. May Celestia's graces save my back from snapping in twine.
Thank the good graces of whatever deity these ponies pray to that I was able to go about the return trip easily. My more logical me apparently had forgotten that we were going downhill to reach Canterlot. My condolences to the grey, wall-eyed Pegasus whom I had compared myself to. However, the massive weight upon our shoulders made us have to slow our descent. I was unsure which was going to give up first: my hooves, or my legs! If it were not for that, than the winding mountainside also worried me. The fact that I was going downhill rather than up didn't seem to help, either. As we descended, I kept teetering closer to the edge of the mountain face, to the point where my worries of falling were growing by the minute. At one point, I distinctly recall having fallen, only to have the princess herself catch me a moment later.
For a moment, I kept to Luna's side, looking into her brilliant emerald eyes in wonder. Luna in return gazed into my eyes in an analytic manner.
"A Bit for thy thoughts?" She inquired.
"You...you saved me, your grace..." I stammered, still amazed.
Luna cocked her head toward me, raising a brow.
"Didst thou think that I would let thee fall to thy death?"
We said nothing more in the rest of our descent.
Thankfully, after that one mistake on the climb, we had no further troubles descending the Drackenridge Mountains to return to Canterlot. While we did have to worry about the dragon awakening from its slumber, it thankfully did not. That made getting it into the medical wing of the main Canterlot castle. The scaled creature was restrained down by long, thick cords and coils, all of which were bolted to the cobble. In a way, it reminded me of that book, Gulliver's Travels, in how all of us wee ponies were surrounding one massive scaled body. Aside from the clopping sound of pony hooves to cobblestone, most of the large room that we had taken to storing this massive creature was dead silent. Princes Luna stayed with Jade and I as she flipped through page after page of text, before stopping on one particular paragraph.
"What are you doing, Princess?" Jade asked, peering to try and see inside the pages.
"'Tis simple, my dear student," Luna said, producing a pair of reading spectacles. "As the beast we have captured was in a blind rage, I intend to cast this spell of mental repair and clarity to clear its thoughts. Only then, at least I hope, shall we be able to discover what sent it into its maddened stupor."
"Ah....and that means what exactly?" Jade asked, a bit thrown off by her majesty's advanced vocabulary and vernacular.
"It means she wants to fix the thing's brain so we can find out what made it crazy," I pointed out, bringing the speech to layman's terms, allowing Jade to express his understanding proper.
A moment later, from the other end of the room came a Lunar Guard, bowing before his mistress before declaring that, "The circles are ready, my liege. Shall I inform the chef to produce some nourishment for you and your students, milady?"
"Make it so," said the night's herald, shutting the book in her magic definitively.
"Right away, milady," said the guard, quitting the room to inform the chef.
With his exit, most of the other ponies left the room, as well, most of them maidservants of the castle, serving no genuine purpose in this exercise, so they logically saw no reason to watch as their mistress worked to weave magical spells. The last of them even had the courtesy of shutting the door on his way out.
"This may take time, friends," Luna pointed out, stretching and shrugging as she prepared herself mentally and physically. When she was finally in good enough resolve, she shut her eyes and began to focus, a blue aura surrounding her horn as it traced into the lining of the floor, causing a massive array of runes, glyphs, and symbols to become illuminated, a bright blue aura filling the room to each corner, almost blindingly so. Their bright rays began to converge upon the cranium of the incapacitated dragon, clearing it of all of its cloudiness. The beast was still fairly still, but began to stir as its body began to shudder. The bonds on its body shook in turn, but stood firm in the face of destruction, as they should.
Within mere moments, the spell was seemingly completed as the runes began to draw into the subject's body, the light from them fading as the beast let out a chilling deep breath.
"The spell is cast," murmured Luna as she looked to us. "Let us be cautious, as we have no idea if the spell worked as intended, producing a small dagger and beginning to cut the cords restraining the dragon so that it could properly interact with us.
"Dearest sir or madame, if thou can hear us, please rise and speak," said her majesty in her Traditional Royal Canterlot Voice, minus her actually shouting at full blast. Oddly, the creature was compliant enough to obey, considering it was in a place completely foreign to it. What enhanced the oddity was its next action.
"W....Where am I?" it asked, in a surprisingly demure, tender voice. It came as a shock to us all. This large, lumbering beast, responsible for the supposed deaths of several ponies, was a female dragon. A spitfire, if you will. I think I was the one with his jaw highest from the floor at that moment. Was my inner nerd really that jaded, that the thought of a giant, lumbering, fire-breathing, eat-you-in-one-gulp dragon didn't stir any emotion at all? Part of me chuckled at that notion.
"Thou stand in the largest room that we have in the Royal Canterlot Hospital. Do you know who thou art speaking to?"
The dragon paused for a moment, holding her head. "I'm going to guess...royalty?"
"Thou art correct," Luna said, smiling. "And dost thou know why thou art here?"
"I have no idea," replied the dragoness, still confused.
"You stand in this hospital because you have been charged with the destruction of several cities and states in and around Equestria. Reports say that you were enraged over something, but attempts to calm you previously have all but failed. Can you tell us what you remember?"
For a prolonged moment, the moon mare's question was left unanswered. The lady dragon kept busily wracking her mind to try to recall anything she knew, but nothing came to her mind. She kept drawing blanks every time she attempted to read into it. She only saw vague glimpses of what could be her memories, but nothing meaningful surfaced. Just blank pages in a large tome.
"Nothing comes to mind, milady," she said, lowering her claw from her head to her chest. "I only conjure blank memories..."
Noting this, Luna gave the next five minutes as a moment of silence so that she could contemplate the logical solution to our conundrum. Her brow was out, and every now and again, we each heard her hum as she kept to her thinking. This was perhaps as pensive as we two ponies had ever seen the princess to this point. Eventually, she brought her pondering to a conclusion as she smiled a tender, genteel smile.
"Please, miss. Tell us what you can most recently recall."
Another pause came following this request, as the female dragon compiled her thoughts together.
"Well, Your Majesty," started she as she twiddled what were perhaps the draconic versions of her thumbs. "I am a lone mother. I have spent my life in those mountains since I was a wyrmling. I originally bore five eggs of an unknown suitor, but to this day, only one of them is still with me...the others...were taken by Kirin.
"Kirin?" Jade asked.
"It is a creature that is-"
"-Half Dragon, Half Pony!"
"Indeed, and I- pardon?" Luna asked, turning to me.
"What is it, milady?" I asked back.
"How doth thou know of Kirin?"
I chuckled at that question for a moment, as this felt in a similar vein to the events that had transpired this morning. Much like with how i stunned the dragon due to my knowledge of biology, this was more of a knowledge of mythology.
"Let's just say I'm quite fond of fantasy and leave it at that," I chuckled.
"I shall hold you to that notion, Adam. Now then, proceed, Miss..."
"Mirlain," replied the dragon plainly. "In any case, I wanted to make sure the last of my possible next of kin was not kidnapped, so I spent every waking moment with it, even at the cost of my health. I was doing well, until one night, something spoke to me."
"Something...spoke to you?" Luna asked, raising a brow. "Do you know what this...thing appeared as?"
"To be honest, Lady Luna, if I am not mistaken, I have no idea as to the appearance or identity of this creature. To me, it was but a shadow, and it spoke in a most deep and enticing voice. It warned me that another tribe of Kirin was coming to take my last of kin, and I didn't want that to happen. The voice offered to give me the power I would need to defend myself and my child to be...and i accepted...after that...I don't know what came after...until I ended up in this room..."
Luna hummed as she tried to piece together the beautiful beast's alibi. This was quite the ambiguous tale, and not the best told one, if Luna had anything to say about it.
"Hm...tis a very cryptic tail thou doth tell, Miss Mirlain," She said, a stern, somber tone in her voice. "However, given the circumstances, we've no reason to doubt you."
"So what will you do, your grace?" murmured a melancholy Mirlain.
"We shall not press charges on thee, if that is what thou thinks. We would say that given how you have described your circumstance, we have reason to believe that thou art not directly responsible for thine actions. For now, thou art acquitted of thy charges. However, I would suggest that thou see thyself to an apothecary. Chances are, thou hath encountered injuries that may hinder thee. Thou art free to go."
For a moment, neither Jade nor I could hold back our laughter as we saw the mother dragon hugging Luna in a vice-like grip.
"Oh, thank you, Your Majesty! I am ever grateful! I'll be on my way at once," She cried, before then leaving the room.
For moments, Luna lied there, catching her breath before coughing up the last of her choked breath and smiling.
"Phew!" Luna huffed, chuckling. "At least that much is over with. You would not believe how difficult it can be to sustain that voice. At least my common tongue is improving..."
"Indeed...you sound much more informal these days," I said, nodding and smiling.
"In any case, I shall get to researching into the incident more specifically. See if any precedent was set. Meanwhile, you two should return to class. If anypony asks where you've been, simply say that Princess Luna asked you for your assistance," smiled Luna curtly as she produced two documents, stuffing them into our saddlebags.
"Those documents shall assure your validity. It would be to your benefit that you went on your way now," She asked, nudging us like a deer and her fauns.
"Right away, Luna," Jade and I both answered, going off on our way, as we left.
After a few moments, and the closing of a door, Luna sighed.
"Tis a dangerous omen...I fear this may be only the beginning."