How Moonstruck Got Her Groove Back

Finite Sledgehammer

Disclaimer: Hasbro's toybox, I'm just playing in it.

---

Chapter 8

Nothing happened. Nothing at all happened; something had to exist in some fashion for it to happen, but this was most definitely a case of nothingness. Nonexistence. A glimpse into the void perhaps, although even the presence of a void seemed to somewhat contradict that idea of nothingness in that if there was a void, there must be something for that nothing to occupy, and something or someone to witness it. Moonstruck wasn't sure where she, or the limited plane of existence that most considered reality had gone - or even how long it had been gone (seconds, years, centuries?), but it was certainly back. There was grass, still wet with dew, beneath her; and the sounds of birds; and a faint breeze she could feel brushing past the hood of her cloak. It was warmer than it had been shortly before the world broke.

No, the mountains broke. The rest of the world was fine. It was just here that had splintered, and twisted, and ceased to function the way worlds are generally supposed to. She blinked a few times and carefully peeked out from under her hood. A tiny spider stared back at her from a blade of grass. She lifted her head and looked around, noting that she was in an entirely new place that seemed no closer to the higher mountains that she had been. Heaving a sigh, she climbed shakily to her hooves, taking inventory of herself and the contents of her saddlebags. Amazingly she was unhurt, and nothing was missing. She shrugged out of her cloak and vest, clumsily folded them up, then placed them in her saddlebags after a few awkward attempts.

"That was kinda anticlimactic, now that I think about it." Moonstruck muttered, shaking out her messy mane and starting forward at a slow, unsteady walk. "Get to witness the end of the world, and I didn't even get a lousy t-shirt."

A patch of white caught her attention on a nearby hill, she squinted at it, and realized there were actually a number of white blobs over there. After a few moments her heart started beating faster in her chest. They were mountain goats! Creatures who usually lived at much higher altitudes! If there were goats here, they just might know the way to the high country, and even beyond. They could be her ticket to the mountains!

She grinned and picked up the pace, determined to see if the goats were of the talking variety, and if they were willing to lead her into the mountains. After stumbling a dozen or so yards, she was forced to sit down as the world tilted ominously and her stomach churned and rumbled. She had forgotten that she hadn't had breakfast yet, which was probably why she hadn't recovered from the mornings disorienting excitement. Deciding that the goats probably weren't going anywhere anytime soon, she treated herself to a hearty breakfast, with some extended foraging in the general vicinity, then set off again once the shaking died down.

The ground stretched out before her at a gentle slope, the goats were perhaps a mile away on a neighboring hill, leisurely browsing among the lush spring growth. It was a picturesque day, all and all; warm, with a faint breeze, and a few white puffy clouds drifting leisurely overhead. The higher hills in the near distance had rocky summits, and she could see trails criss-crossing the landscape. If she didn't know better she'd say ponies had made those trails, but they were more than likely goat trails, for many of them zigzagged up inclines too steep for a pony to pass easily, or butted into rock formations where only the goats could pick their way up the sheer walls to reach the nutrient rich lichen and moss that grew in the crevasses and overhangs above.

The going seemed easy at first; she made it down into a little valley, then meandered her way up the next hillside, but when she reached the area where the goats had been, they had already gone. Or so it seemed, at first. Moonstruck followed their trails up over the crest of the hill to see that they were on the next hill over. Shrugging, she continued on her trek, following the trail down the other side of the hill, through a small patch of woods, then up the next hill. Again, she just missed the goats - they had shifted to the next hill after that. After the third attempt at reaching the goats, Moonstruck started to detect a pattern. Attempt number four confirmed it; she could not directly approach the goats.

She devised a plan over lunch, then spent the rest of the afternoon trying to circle around the goats to approach them indirectly. This did not work either, nor did pretending to accidentally stumble across them, nor did flying over to the goats - either directly, or by drifting almost aimlessly into their general vicinity. They would simply meld into the grass to pop up on a nearby hill. She didn't attempt to teleport to them until two days later, and she did so with great reluctance. She ended up teleporting to the next hill over, while the goats remained where they had been - which was not where she'd intended to go, but better than some sort of magical backlash.

It was toward sunset when she suddenly remembered a movie she saw once when she was a little foal. Feeling entirely goofy, she trotted up to the top of the hill she was on, stared long and hard at the goats, took note that there was no wind and that she could faintly hear them bleating to one another, and assumed they could hear her in turn, if she shouted loud enough. She cleared her throat, stretched up tall, fanned her wings, and tried desperately to remember all of the words:

"Baa ram ewe! Baa ram ewe! To... uh... your sheep? No - fleece! Yeah! Your fleece, your clan be true! Sheep be - er goats! Goats be true! Baaaa ram ewe!" She pricked her ears forward, and listened for a full minute for a reply, feeling entirely silly, and glad - for once - that she was out here by herself. The goats seemed unimpressed. They didn't even look at her.

She let out a weary sigh, settled back down into a slouch and flicked her ears to the sides.

"Worth a shot, I guess." She muttered to herself. Deciding to call it a day, she wandered down the hillside to search for a place to set up camp.

---

The next morning, she woke to several somethings milling around her tent. Moonstruck stared into space as those somethings let out various bleats, and baa's and other conversational goat type noises. Biting her lip, she very cautiously unzipped her tent and peeked out, half expecting the goats to vanish as soon as she did so, but they continued ambling around inspecting the ashes of her campfire, and eating the vegetation that grew around her tent.

"Good morning!" She said softly, poking her head out of the tent. A few of the goats raised their heads to look at her, decided she wasn't a threat, and went back to browsing. Moonstruck stifled a giggle and hastily packed her things. It was clear that these were not talking goats, but she might be able to get them to give up some of their secrets anyway.

Once she'd eaten breakfast, and had everything packed and ready, she settled in to wait for the goats to go wherever it is they went. And wait she did; it seemed that when not trying to evade her, the goats actually didn't move around much. They spent the morning browsing in the thicket that Moonstruck had chosen to camp in. In the afternoon they meandered uphill to nibble on the wildflowers that grew on the tops of the hills. And in the evening, they moved back down into the wooded areas to eat the tender new growth on the various shrubs and trees, then sleep when the sun went down. She was hesitant to wander far from the herd, so she followed them closely for the better part of three days; but the goats did not seem inclined to head towards the higher mountains, and instead seemed to be traveling in a big loop around the rocky hills.

Her initial hesitation wore off; she decided to range further from them, investigating their well worn trails alone, wandering well out of sight for a few hours at a time. The trails led to a number of places relevant to a goats interest, but they didn't seem to leave the area.

Except they did. She knew they did, she could see trails leading deeper into the mountains (complete with other herds of goats), from a number of points on the ground, as well as from the air, in the odd places she could gain enough altitude to get a clear view of the lay of the land. That was one of the many strange things of this area - she couldn't fly very high, the wind was intensely strong not far off the ground, and highly unpredictable, which made cresting some of the taller hills extremely hazardous. She'd mostly been using her wings to aid in scaling the more treacherous goat trails up various rock faces, and to glide back down to the herd to check in periodically. Not that the goats seemed to care at all.

As the days stretched on, and Moonstruck routinely failed to find a way to the paths that seemed to go somewhere, she began to sense that she had reached the point where she was merely wandering in circles. She was becoming quite familiar with certain stretches of trails, and of the impossible places they led, and the very logical places they seemed to avoid. Heading down a steep trail should not lead one back to the meadow from which they started some three hundred yards above.

The goats, for their part, seemed to know where to go, but they also didn't seem inclined to show her how they got to some of the places she occasionally found them. Whenever she just traveled with the herd, they never wandered far from where they had started, but when she left for the bulk of the day, only checking in occasionally to keep track of where they were, they would be quite a ways away from where they had bedded down for the night.

Occasionally she couldn't reach them at all, and would simply camp wherever she could, only to meet up with them later on some well trodden stretch of dusty path to follow them back to one of their favorite haunts. After nine days of this, she was loosing her cool, and decided - on an exceedingly foolish whim - to attempt to simply teleport to the distant mountains. It was safe to say that this did not go well. The resulting magical backlash left her curled up in a ball of agony in her tent with a horrendous headache for two days.

---

"So, I was thinking," she said a few days after her teleportztion debacle, ambling up to a doe who seemed to respond to her in a vaguely friendly way, as the herd meandered up a rocky slope. A muscle around her eye twitched a bit; an after effect of the botched teleportation. It'd wear off eventually. Probably.

"Maybe I'll just start a new queendom here and be Queen of the Goats."

The doe did not respond, but she never really did.

"I'd be a fair queen, keep predators away and all that." Moonstruck continued, nodding to herself. "No taxes to speak of, free health care. Probably build a nice water park for the kids. How's that sound, eh?"

The goat did not seem impressed.

"Eventually we could try to conquer the sheep. There's gotta be some sheep around here. Make some nice wool coats for everyone, right?"

The goat gave her an odd look. Moonstruck wondered, not for the first time, if the goats actually could understand her, but were choosing not to speak the common language. Before she could possibly call shenanigans on them, something rather large sprang out of the bushes ahead, tackled a young buck to the ground and snapped its neck in one crushing bite.

Moonstruck felt her jaw drop open as the herd scattered, bleating in terror. So much for keeping predators away... I had been thinking more along the line of wolves though....

The creature was some sort of dragon as near as she could tell, although she'd never seen one like it; it was more like an archaic, semi-scaly, six limbed bird than the usual titanic monstrosities that occasionally terrorized ponykind. While very birdlike, it was only partially feathered; just its wings and parts of its tail. It was fairly small as dragons go, only perhaps twice her height, but lean and lanky, and roughly three times her length with a long tail and neck. It was a mottled green and brown, with intense amber eyes that were now turned towards her. She gulped and took a step back, trying to activate that flight-or-fight response all herbivores had in spades. Hers did not seem to be working at the moment, so she was stuck in stand-in-shock-and/or-abject-terror mode.

The dragon opened its jaws to let the goat drop to the ground, licked the blood from its scaly lips, lifted a brow, then scratched at its chin with one clawed hand.

"Need something?"

"I - uh... er... you killed the goat." Moonstruck said lamely. Sure, the dragons around here talk, but not the goats...

"It's a carnivore thing." It - he, she thought, going by its voice, and its horns (did the females have horns too?) - said wryly.

"R-right." Moonstruck grinned sheepishly.

"You don't have to worry," said the dragon, rolling the goat onto its side so that its belly was facing the beast, "I don't eat ponies."

"Good to know." She took a small step back and folded her wings, which she now realized she'd been holding open in alarm.

"There's been a lot of you buggers running around here lately. What with that pegasus from the other side of the mountains crash landing, and some patrols from one of your villages down in the lower hills, and now you - kinda surprised you're this far in." He grumbled.

Moonstrucks brain came to a complete standstill for a few moments as the dragon breathed a small gout of flame over the goat to remove the hair. The smell of burning hair, and goat-stink got things started again. She coughed and took a few steps upwind.

"You! You're the dragon who helped Sarah!"

"Sarah?" The dragon looked up for a moment. "Oh, the pegasus? I never got her name."

"Yes! You saved her life!"

"Mmm, I figured she'd survive," he said absently, nudging the singed goat carcass with his snout, "she seemed like a fighter."

Moonstruck's mind was racing as she scowled at the ground. This was all really too much to take in, she opened her mouth to ask something as she looked over at the dragon, saw that he was eating the goat, then promptly looked away again, fighting back a wave of nausea. Instead, she kept her eyes down and paced back and forth.

"So, uh, why did you help Sarah?"

"I saw her come over the crest of the mountains," He said around a mouthful of meat, "I've been hunting out here for years, and I've never seen a pony come out of those mountains before - much less being chased by some sorta airship. Was kinda curious so I checked it out. She was hurt pretty bad. Didn't think it was right to leave her there after she went through all of that trouble to escape."

Moonstruck jerked her head up, looked over at him, saw all of the blood, then hastily looked up at the emerging stars. This was going to be difficult.

"Where did you find her?"

"Well, that's kinda hard to describe." He said. "Just this side of the highest parts of the range, kinda on the side of a steep canyon. It would take a few days to get there from here."

Moonstruck resisted the urge to look over at him again and risk giving her stomach another reason to twist itself into disgusted knots.

"You can get there from here!?"

"Yep."

She couldn't resist this time; Moonstruck whipped around and gaped at the dragon, goat guts and all.

"Can you get through the mountains? To the lands on the other side!?"

"Yeah, I've been over there a few times. Why?"

Moonstruck was fairly certain her brain had just exploded. "Can you show me the way!?"

He stared at her a for a few moments, brows furrowed. "Why? It isn't a sunshine and rainbows kinda place like this side of the mountains."

"I know! That's why I need to get over there! I'm on a mission!" Moonstruck said, prancing in place. "Roanamia's been sealed off from the rest of the world for a thousand years, and from what Sarah said, it's pretty messed up in there! If the barrier is breaking down we have to know about it and make preparations for... well, we don't know what! That's what I have to go and find out! Plus all of the magical distortion out here is creeping outward and effecting a bigger and bigger area!"

It was his turn to gape at her. "You seriously want to go in there?"

"Yes!"

"In where that crazy alicorn queen is?"

"Yes!"

"And where Magmanus is sleeping?"

"Ye - who's Magmanus?" Moonstruck stopped prancing.

"Only the biggest, most horrible and powerful durgaklech of all time." The dragon snorted a laugh. "He's been asleep in there all this time. Youngsters dare each other to go beyond the mountains, but once we get older and gain some sense, we steer clear. We don't want to wake him up by accident or something. Big dragons like that are more territorial than a duck in heat."

Moonstruck furrowed her brow. "Durgaklech?" Duck in heat?

"Our name for the monstrously huge dragons." He shrugged. "I'm fully grown, in case you're wondering. We're one of the smaller types of dragons."

"Oh, I hadn't realized there was more than one species." Moonstruck shook her head. "I've really only encountered the huge ones."

The dragon rolled his eyes, and went back to eating.

"Well, can you show me the way, or not?"

He sighed. "You don't want to go in there."

"Of course I don't! It's just something I have to do. I've been out here for weeks trying to find a way through the mountains." She stamped a hoof.

He looked her up and down. "By yourself?"

"Yup."

He worked his jaw around a little. "I suppose... you did manage to make it to the goat trails. How'd you get here anyway? The lake by the sideways forest, the rocky path, or the village where the cataclysm is still happening?"

"The village, I guess? I just woke up here after things ran their course." Moonstruck grimaced.

He let out a low whistle. "That's the rough way." He furrowed his brow. then shook his head. "No, no, it's too risky. I don't even go past the second circle anymore."

"I can pay you! I'm a princess, I'm totally loaded!"

"I have no need of money." He said flatly. "Or gems."

Moonstruck bit her lip, looking away again as the dragon went back to his meal. There had to be something in it for him. If whatever evil, or magical disturbance that was lurking in there got out, it had to effect the whole world, not just ponykind. He had to know that, right?

"What if Magmanus is waking up, and that's why the magical distortion is expanding?" She blurted.

The dragon froze.

She donned her best poker face as she started pulling some choice bits of nonsense out of her proverbial hat, an odd thrill racing down her spine as she did so.

"I remember reading somewhere that really big, really old dragons can distort magic itself if they aren't careful to maintain their personal magical fields. If Magmanus is as big, and as old as you imply, he must be able to influence a massive area."

"I hadn't realized ponies knew that much about dragons." He said slowly, giving her quite the side-eye.

"We know enough to survive." She said, remaining cool on the surface; inside her head she squeaked nervously. She hadn't expected her bluff to turn out to be true! Unless he was bluffing as well. She shoved that thought aside.

"If he's waking up, wouldn't it be prudent to investigate, and warn your people? If Magmanus is still allied with Queen Lucena, there's no telling what they could do."

The dragon rocked back to rest the tip of his tail on the ground, and stared at her for a long moment.

"Okay, lets say I lead you in there," he waved a hand towards the crest of the mountains, and ruffled his wings, "and Magmanus wakes up. Whaddya gonna do then? You can't just come and go as you please in there. We'd be sitting ducks - as would anyone living in there."

"Pff, no problem. I'm a dragonslayer back home. I can figure something out." Moonstruck shrugged.

The dragon burst out laughing. He even fell over and rolled around on his back for a few moments, before rolling onto his belly and pounding a fist into the rocky ground.

"Oh, that's a good one!" He chortled. "I mean - I mean, okay! I get that you're an alicorn, and alicorns can be immensely powerful but - I mean, come on! Ha ha!"

He sat up and wiped tears from his eyes with the backs of his hands. "Even if you've managed to kill a dragon or two, we're talking about Magmanus here! He's the size of a mountain! His fire breath can melt stone! He has a magic field around him that protects him from all harm, and his scales are so strong that most projectiles will bounce off of 'em anyway!"

Moonstruck wondered how much of that was just rumor, and smirked. "I happen to know a way around all of that."

"Oh, please." The dragon giggled.

"I do! It's rather simple." She shook her head, amused that the truth was less believable than the bluff. If Magmanus did actually have some sort of powerful shield that might prove troublesome, however. She'd figure something out, if it came to that.

"And what would that be?" He snorted.

"Like I'm going to tell you!" Moonstruck laughed She waved a hoof flippantly. "Anyway, that's not the mission - it's strictly reconnaissance. Get in, look around a bit to see what we're up against, and get out. I shouldn't be there more than a month, tops."

The dragon gave her an amused look, still dubious, it seemed.

"What, do you doubt your own stealth? You said yourself that you've been beyond the mountains a few times already. Getting rusty are we?" She teased.

"Hardly." He huffed, turning his head to the side to look at her with one large, amber eye. She noted that he had round pupils, not slitted the way most dragon eyes were. At least, the dragons she had encountered. Even little Spike had slitted pupils.

"I was doubting your stealth."

"Ha! I made it all the way out here without you noticing, didn't I?" Moonstruck snorted.

"True, but that's not exactly difficult here, and I wasn't looking for you. Over there, the mountains are under constant watch." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the higher peaks. "You won't be able to slink around without catching someone's attention."

Moonstruck smirked, hoped that magic worked mostly normally here and summoned up a quick, illusory disguise. Something that most ponies wouldn't notice, nor care about if they did.

"Not bad." The dragon said, taking a small step back and gaping at the large raven that now stood in the place Moonstruck had just occupied.

"Just a little something." Moonstruck shrugged, remembering to bob her head a little, then turn it to the side to look at the dragon with one eye, then the other. Illusions were only as good as the performance, after all. It wasn't enough that she looked like a raven, she had to act like one as well. It was really akin to puppetry.

"Hmm." He scowled and twitched his wings a few times, then flicked his tail in a very catlike manner. Most of his body language seemed to be an odd blend of feline and avian, but not in the same way that a griffon moved. Griffons almost had a pasted together sense to their gestures, whereas the dragon was more smooth, and fluid. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.

"I suppose I can show you how to get in and out." He said slowly, after a few more moments of internal debate. "You're on your own for anything beyond that."

"That would be awesome!" Moonstruck grinned, dropping the illusion. "And I will find some way to pay you for your trouble."

"Eh, don't worry about it." The dragon shrugged. He offered a bloody hand. "The name's Joseph."

Moonstruck lifted a foreleg, glanced down at the goat carcass, the blood dripping from the dragons clawed hand, and hesitated. The dragon looked down as well, grinned sheepishly, then dropped his hand.

"Right, nevermind."

"I'm Moonstruck." She said, also grinning sheepishly.

"Moonstruck? You ponies and your silly names." Joseph chuckled.

"Pfff, what kind of a name is Joseph? I knew a cat named that once." Moonstruck scoffed.

"Moonstruck sounds like something a whelpling calls a pet beetle." He snorted.

They eyed each other for a few moments.

Moonstruck was the first to crack a grin. "Do you play cards?"

---

A/N: My Little Pony: Friendship is Giving Each Other Shit.