Planning.

It all comes down to planning.

It always comes down to planning.

It's what he'd learned after choosing to join the Lunar Guard. His first debriefing with the former Lunar Commander; the properly named, Commander Night Ire; consisted of two hours of roared insults concerning his incompetence at leading his team on their first mission, his briliant achievement of allowing his comrades to be taken hostage by Gryphon Raiders, and his glaring inability to formulate a proper plan to extract said comrades without placing their lives in danger.

To be perfectly honest it wasn't realiy his fault. He was just following the lessons Princess Luna had taught him. Lessons about being self-sufficient, independent and never relying on others. She never said anything about falling back, signaling for reinforcements or things of that nature. So, naturaly, Sword Shade, Lunar Apprentice and, at the time, reckles and arrogant team leader, chose to shoulder the burden of rescuing his apprehended teammates by himself

How noble...

He decided to go about this problem the way Luna taught him. Evaluate, analyze, execute; so what did he have to work with ?

An abandoned outpost located in a large cave sistem. Six Raiders. Four were atop an elevated platforn built on sturdy wooden pillars and two below. The Raiders below were patrolling on steady routes around the pillars, covering the single tunnel entrance. One of them male, the other female. Both armed with wing blades, claws, dagers and swords.

Of the four above, two were resting in a pool of light suplied by some candles, playing a game of cards on an old table. One was standing sentry in a guard booth, watching the station exit with tired eyes.

The sixth Raider, the most alert and probably the leader, was sitting on his bench overlooking the cave floor far below. Tinkering with a large crossbow and ocasionally sparing a glance at his soldiers.

His squadmates were nowere to be seen. Curious.

As with eliminating well-positioned pawns in a game of chess, the trick is to simply start with the one covering the others.

He could practicaly hear the Princess's voice in his head.

The vision of the guard in the booth blurred for a moment. He rubbed his eyes to clear them. He felt a prickling pressure in his side, and his head bowed forward. To the average watcher, it looked as if he had fallen asleep.

He had, in a broad sense, and his passing left the sentries on the floor below unprotected.

Less than 30 seconds had passed. On the floor below, the female gryphon was aproching the end of her patrol route, passing one of the wooden pillars and dissapearing from view. There was a soft noise, barely a flutter of feathers, and she vanished in the darkness.

One minute had passed. As the male Raider passed underneath the platform, the blade of a steel dagger buried itself at the base of his head, severing the spine. On the way down, something caught his collapsing body, preventing it from touching the ground and alerting the last three enemies.

Upstairs the leader was thinking of the of the captives. He still could't believe their luck. The ambush they'd prepared was for a random scouting party they heard was skulking in the area. They asumed there were just a few weak pegasi with basic survival equipment, not fully trained Lunar Guard armed to the teeth.

"We lost three men in this stunt..." , he thought bitterly. "Still, maybe it was worth it." , he tried reasoning, his mind wandering to the honor he would recieve upon his return and, more importantly, the information they would garner from the captives.

He didn't notice the shadow that crept behind him, until a gloved hand clamped around his beak-like mouth. He had no time to try and scream as a dagger sliced his neck open.

A small clang echoed in the silent cave, the last two gryphons looking up from their cards.

"Sir," one shouted towards the bench, "is everything alright?" His tired eyes tried piercing through the surounding shadows but it was for nought. The pool of light suplied by the candles, was only strong enough to allow them to see each other. The contrast between the yellow light and the darkness turned the rest of the cave into a black void.

"Sir, are you...", he tried again, moving to sit up, but was interupted by a crossbow bolt jamming itself in his neck. The last one dove backwards, barely dodging the bolt aimed for his forehead. Pushing the table over he scrambled behind it and with shaking hands, drew his sword.

"Intruder! There's an intruder in the cave !" he shouted in a panicked voice, expecting to hear the thundering sound of his comrades footsteps. The silence that greeted him was stifling. He was surrounded by darkness, the candles had been extinguised when he'd fliped the table. His eyes were slowly adjusting, but it would take a few seconds.

"Your friends are dead" a voice that belonged to a demon escaped from Tartarus itself echoed in the nearly abandoned cave. The last griphon took deep breaths to calm his racing heartbeat and slowly peered behind his makeshift cover to try and locate the intruder. His eyes were adjusting and he could barly make out the body of his commander, collapsed on the ground unmoving. No intruder however.

"Do you want to live?" the voice echoed again, resonating in the silent cave, and impossibe to pinpoint.

"What ?" the Raider asked in a panicked voice.

"Do you want to live?" the voice repeated with an edge.

"Yes !"

"Will you answer my questions?"

"Yes, anything!"

"Where are the prisoners?" the voice was growing impatient.

"They're chained up in a secret room at the back of the cave," the panicked griphon confessed, "but the entrance is hidden by an illusion that only the captain could dispell." the panic was taking over.

"Please, we didn't hurt them," he cried "they're just knocked out. We thought you we're just a small scouting party." only silence greeted his pleas. " Please, we didn't know !" he colapsed with his back agains the overturned table, his body consumed by terror induced fatigue.

"We didn't know." the last words were whispered, resigned. He never felt the magic infused bolt that pierced the rickety defence and exited through his right eye socket, ending his life painlessly.

Sword Shade was startled out of his focused writing by a short series of knocks on his chamber door. He quickly put the finishing touches on the latest entry in his journal before moving to answer.

On his doorstep he was greeted by a young chamber maid bearing a small note. With a polite "Thank you." he accepted the note and sent her on her way. The note only bore his name in a distinctive, curved handwriting, cursive to the point of absurd.

With movement born of practice he made a small motion with his hand over the almost blank piece of paper, the words changing to reveal a series of numbers and letters. The Court Magician had proposed this method of corespondence to maintain a relative level of secrecy when informing him of the location and time of their next 'tutoring' session. The cypher could only be cracked by infusing magic in the words in a certain order and in a specific amount.

Though, the word 'secrecy' was used lightly. There was no such thing as complete secrecy in The Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. If the Empress grew suspicious and wanted to know something, she would. He shuddered at the thought of her discovering his mission. Years of tireless effort would go to waste in the blink of an eye. He'd be executed on the spot and Starswirl would likely be tortured and set as an example for future would-be rebels.

Frowning at the dark thoughts now floating in his head, he turned back to the small leather bound book on his desk. It was less of a journal and more a collection of memoirs of his years spent in the royal court. A written narative of his experiences, from his arrival in at the castle at the begining of the war with the Griphon Kingdom, his recruitment to the Lunar Guard, his thoughts on the catastrophic aliance between the Griphon Kingdom and the shamanistic Zabraca and of course his recolections of the battles he'd fought during the last five years.

He knew without a shadow of a doubt that they were losing this war. Zabracan magic was slowly adapting to Equestrian unicorn spells. Skirmishes between equestrian soldiers and griphon warriors often ended in stalemates now. With time the Solar Guard would eventualy be pushed back and the ponies will begin to lose ground. Inch by inch.

The night-time raids and sabotage operations the Lunar Guard were conducting evened the odds. But for how long?

He wasn't sure why he decided to pen his experiences. Fear that Equestria's side of the story would never be heard? Perhaps. History is, afteral, written by the victors. But no, it was something more personal, more selfish.

It was his hope that, for all the evil he had done, for all the atrocities he had comited in the name of his home and country, some griphon scribe or some zebra librarian sometime in the future would read his words and feel a shread of sympathy for those on the other side of the battlefield. And maybe, just maybe, he or she would think 'Perhaps they weren't all the same'

Sighing, he placed his hand on the smooth leather and focused. An unpleasant burning sensation enveloped his forearm as his natural magic was chaneled through it and into the journal. He knew that at the moment the words he'd been previously writing were slowly fading, replaced with blank pages.

Once finished, he got up, made sure he was presentable and left for the next torture session that Starswirl liked to call tutoring.

Surprisingly, this time Starswirl chose to have their session in his personal office. Shade had to admit, despite all the things he had seen in the last few years, the Court Magicians office will always remain awe inspiring. The office itself was quite large, one room with a tall ceiling. Bookshelves lined each if the four walls, with large shelves above them containing all maner of curious and exotic trinkets.

A large beutifully crafted desk stood at the far back of the chamber, covered with paperwork and official looking documentation. And of course currently scribing away at said desk was none other than Starswirl the Bearded himself.

Raising his head at the sound of the opening door, the ancient unicorn gave him a brittle smile and rose.

He was a short pony, regal of bearing, with a long white beard and long white hair to go with it. He wore a blue robe with various twinkling stars sewn into it, forming constelations. Proped by the desk next to him was a staff of elegant length made of pure white wood, completely free of any marking, though Shade always wondered why he would need such an instument when his horn could do the job just fine. Strange wizards. All in all, Starswirl was every inch the archetypal magus and commanded respect just by sharing space with another person.

"Sword Shade, my boy, it is good to see you've returned safely," he greeted "how was your journey?"

Starswirl never liked calling them missions, prefering to refer to them as 'journeys' or 'expeditions' .

His wanted to respond with something along the lines of, "I survived so it was a resounding success."; fortunetly his brain caught up with his mouth for once and a much more polite "We won and the casulaties were kept to a minimum." left his mouth.

"Marvelous, simply marvelous," he replied. His voice took a much more serious tone

"And how are you feeling? Have they gotten any more painfull?"

"Honestly Sir I can barely tell sometimes," the youth answered "the burns are a constant however."

Rising from the comfortable armchair and winching at a few bones popping, Starswirl quickly rounded his desk and aproached Shade, gesturing to his forearms. Now used to the routine, Sword Shade lifted both his sleeves, reavealing his secret weapons and the fruit of decades worth of research. Starswirl named them 'Artificial Runic Channels of Arcane Magic'.

The results of decades of research, the intricate runes inscribed on both his forearms allowed Sword Shade to channel his natural Pegasus magic outside his body resulting in various effects. Actual spells were still impossible for him to perform, his magic being different from that of a unicorn, but the result's were none the less impressive.

Strangely enough, telekinesis was a form of magic he could perform. Starswirl hypothesized that the pagasus ability to fly is somewhat derived from telekinesis.

The Court Magician scanned over the the runes with a crittical eye for a few moments. Watever he saw seemed to satisfy him as he simply noded once before releasing his hold.

"The runes apear to be stable, however I am still worried about the ones on your left arm." a concerned frown marring is features, "They are still incomplete and the possibility of a backlash is something I do not agree with. I believe it is time to finish what we started."

Without waiting for a response, Starswirl strode with purpose towards the large oak door of his office knowink Sword Shade would follow. The aprentice let out one last long-suffering sigh before following, knowing what would come next.

"This is going to hurt."

'Artificial Runic Channels of Arcane Magic'.

That's what Starswirl called them. A complicated name for what was honestly, a relatively simple idea.

A pony's magic is produced at it's core and circulated through the blood. A unicorn can channel this magic in the physical world through a foci, his horn, resulting in spells. Pegasi use their wings, resulting in flight, and earth ponies their entire bodies resulting in strength and endurance. Now if one was to find a way to create an alternative foci, then theoretically any tribe could harness their magic outside their bodies.

Theoretically.

Practically... it's not that easy... or pleasant.

The ritual consisted of carving special runes into a subject's forearms using special knives. While doing this, the subject harnesses his magic and saturates his blood with it resulting in a connection between the runes and the core. The actual runes used are the diagrams of the unicorn circulatory system present in the horn. How long it took Starswirl to make those diagrams, Shade didn't know.

But he suspected it took quite a few tries

And quite a few horns.

The knives used had to be made from a material that channeled magic easily and were coated in an anticoagulant solution, to encourage bleeding.

In the end it was a messy affair that resulted in more failiures, uncontrollable blood loss and healing spells than Sword Shade cared to keep track of. To make it worse, the runes had to be placed in layers, resulting in various layers being placed in various sessions. In the end, if all went well and he didn't collapse from anemya or pain, then the runes would glow a pale white before healing, signifying his success and his cue to crawl in a fetal possition and faint.

"Why in Tartarus am I doing this?" Sword Shade asked himself as ke knelt in the arcane circle carved in his private laboratory. "Right, to free a nation from the rule of a tyrant"

He took a deep breath as he brought the blade closer to the expsed skin of his forearm.

This was the final layer. After this he could move along to planning a deed that would either mark his name in the history books as Equestria's greatest hero or it's greatest traitor. There was a lot of work to be done, a lot of sacrifices to be made and a lot of preparation to attend to.

Because afer all, in the end...

"It all comes down to planning."

Author's Note

This took longer than expected...

I wonder if anyone will read it?