"So, why can I remember you when they can't?"

"You've already seen me, so there's no reason to waste my magic on you," Dusk said wearily, looking around the room as the ponies getting outfitted continually saw and forgot about him in rounds. "A simple filter on your magical signature lets me save a little bit of power."

Steel Stance looked over the stallion in front of him, frowning. "Anything I can do?"

"Sure," Dusk nodded before flicking his head towards the front of the room. "Brief your colts, get their attention off of me. I'll start casting that magic-nullification spell, get the unicorns that are closest to us. Being out of sight will help."

Steel nodded and started to stride towards the front of the barracks.

"Hey," Dusk called out, most of the room ignoring him as Steel looked over his shoulder. "No lethal measures. There shouldn't be any more death than there already has been."

Steel kept the gaze for a moment, long enough for Dusk to narrow his eyes, before nodding sharply.

Dusk watched him walk the rest of the way to the wall and whistle for the room's attention. Turning, he sighed as most of the spell's expenditure eased to a trickle as he stepped out of the room.

"Alright, so," he muttered to himself, calling forth magic into his horn and letting it pool loosely in the keratin, "I want something that will stick to aura but also spread..."

Glancing back through the open door, he spotted the two unicorn guards on the ground, still breathing but battered and bruised.

Working the energy into a net, he cast it on one of them and nodded when his horn lit up with a gentle yellow glow. Reaching out, he picked carefully on the bands of magic making up the net until they started giving off a trickle of their power. Observing the strands, he smirked when he saw the filaments begin floating over to the other unicorn and begin coating his horn as well.

It took about five seconds of magical cross-contamination for the other horn to begin to glow, and Dusk watched to make sure that the new filaments picked up and drained off of the new magical pool before he nodded.

Lifting the two in his telekinesis and making sure to keep a negative field around his own horn, he started trotting towards the grounds in the middle of the fort.

Opening up the double doors that led outside, he tossed the unconscious duo out and closed the doors.

"Patients Zero, welcome to the area," he muttered before walking towards the officer's barracks where he'd left the three uniformed ponies to their inventory of the magical supplies.

He only paused twice, both times to cast his new spell directly at a very surprised unicorn. The first tried turning to run but caught himself in a loop of turning away to forget Dusk, turning back and remembering he was there, before turning to run again. Dusk passed him, looking over his shoulder to see him pawing at a glowing horn with a hoof.

The second one nearly fainted before leveling his spear at Dusk. Dusk simply gestured over the pony's shoulder and flew over him when he looked behind himself.

Rounding the corner to the inventory room, he glanced at the single guard on the door and cast the new spell before magically jamming the lock on the barracks. The guard jumped and looked at him, starting a double-take that was abandoned halfway through as he raised his hoof to pull at the net covering his horn.

"Captain!?" he called out, turning around and spotting Dusk again. "Captain, unidentified hostile un—"

The guard's lips kept moving, but Dusk's new silence spell clung to them and swallowed all noise before it could get any further. The unicorn turned to the door and paused for a moment, touching his lips and trying to speak before trying the door again, rattling it in its frame before he began pounding on the planks.

Taking a moment to close his eyes, Dusk pieced both spells together before casting the amalgamation over the unicorn again.

Starswirl would kill me if he saw that sloppy mess, he thought before moving over beside the guard and watching the magic on his horn. Tartarus, so would Rarity.

He twitched when the door rattled again, but this time the other way.

"What is the meaning of this?" he heard the stallion from earlier call out before the door rattled again. "First, you startle us in the middle of our survey and make us drop hundreds of bits' worth of components, then you rattle the door half-off its frame, and now you lock us in here!? Poorly planned revenge, idiot!"

There was another moment of the door rattling in the frame before Dusk heard the scraping of hooves on the other side, and a monstrous blow cracked the planks that made up the middle of the door.

Dusk watched the guard back up and followed him to the other side of the hall, taking a moment to push the guard's head back towards the door and away from him.

Another two blows shook the door, the last one sundering the middle plank and displaying the gray rear hoof of the commander Dusk had left in the magical armory. The hoof was quickly withdrawn, and with a last kick, the door was reduced to splinters being held in place by Dusk's magical lock.

Battering them aside, the three officers entered the hall and paused at the sight of Dusk.

"Hello," he said lightly before blasting all three of them with his improvised silence-and-nullification spell before teleporting back to the double doors that led to the central yard again.

Looking around, he made sure there wasn't anypony looking at him before he cracked the doors and checked on the duo he'd tossed out earlier.

They were almost exactly where he'd left them, just laying in a different configuration. On the other side of the yard where a quartet of unicorn guards in the process of trying to break down the other set of doors. Dusk watched them for a bit before he began cantering through the halls towards the other set of doors.

Zapping every unicorn he came across, he reached the other side of the fort and nearly laughed aloud at the sight of six more unicorns barricading their fellows in the courtyard out. Casting his spell on a single one of them, he paused long enough to watch them notice and begin to panic before he teleported back to the earth pony barracks.

Sagging under the sudden weight of a room's worth of looks, Dusk nodded at Stance.

"They're panicking. I got three officers, one of them a captain, as well as approximately twenty regular unicorn guardsponies. The spell is holding firm and is infectious with a transfer period of roughly ten seconds, depending on spacing." He paused and watched Steel blink slowly before breathing out. "Spell takes about ten seconds to spread; I used it on twenty hostiles," he said with a choppy salute.

"Excellent," Steel said with a grim smile. "Previous to the whole uprising, we had ten unicorn officers, five pegasi, and two earth ponies, with roughly fifty unicorn guard, twenty-five pegasi, and a hundred earth pony units. After the capitol turned upside down, all the pegasi flew it, and the unicorns sent an additional five officers and seventy-five soldiers. Most of my earth pony soldiers either fought back or ran when it was clear the horns would win, so before your delivery, we had about..."

He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment as he thought.

"Including me, we had fifty-three earth stallions still at the fort. Over the next week, those numbers were trimmed further, and we got down to forty-four. So with your wagon-load of untrained stallions, we're sitting at seventy-two stallions versus the hundred and twenty-eight horn-heads that're left."

"And at least twenty-five of those don't have magic anymore," Dusk said, nodding slowly. "As long as we're careful, and I lead the 'charge' as it were, we should get out of this without any more casualties."

Steel nodded, waving Dusk over to a spot on the floor that had been cleared of beds and dust. As he neared, Dusk saw a piece of sharp wood and some scratching on the floor. Looking it over from above, he realized what Steel had done and used a pulse of magic to deepen the map's lines on the floor.

"Thank you. Now, you said you were able to lock a captain's magic? Where is he now?"

"I," Dusk started before gently smacking his forehead with a hoof. "I don't know; I nullified him then teleported to the yard."

Steel sighed. "Then he's probably in the command offices right now, with the other captain. Hopefully, spreading that spell of yours around, at least. Do you know which one you got?"

"Uh, the one who's a jerk to everypony around him, including the other officers?"

"Oh, probably Gilded Spoon then. He's a royal with a couple of accolades, so he's definitely got a superiority complex, even over the other unicorns around him. He also has a decent head on him, unfortunately. He's probably smart enough to figure out that your spell's contagious, even if he can't dispel it."

"It'll take longer to figure out since I added that silencing element to it and compounded the complexity. That said, it'll wear off by itself in time; it's too unstable."

Steel's ears perked. "How long do we have?" he asked, a little bit of nervous adrenaline creeping into his tone.

"Oh, two weeks or so?" Dusk said, scratching his head. "It's not that unstable."

Steel let a long breath whisper between his lips as he closed his eyes and his shoulders slumped. "Okay, I can work with two weeks."

Steel reopened his eyes, looking around at the confused mass of ponies that were constantly looking at them, turning away, and looking back. "That's not going to hurt them, is it?" he asked.

"Maybe their necks," Dusk sighed, looking at the group and feeling his mana pool rippling as ponies looked at him before looking away and being forced to forget him. "A little bit of whiplash, you know. Mostly it's just a giant drain on my energy resources."

Steel looked at him, then back at his group of soldiers. After staring at them for a long while, he nodded slowly.

"Hey, alicorn," he said softly. "You've already helped us immensely. You've outfitted us, and you've started a complete nullification of the enemy's greatest weapon. I can see those wings on you." He took another breath in before looking at Dusk with a firm gaze.

"I think you can leave us be, here. The capital needs you more than this little fort on the edge of the map does."

Dusk frowned and immediately opened his muzzle to reply but stilled himself at Steel's raised hoof.

"Don't get me wrong, alicorn," the officer said, looking around the mulling room of ponies. "I could use you here, and it would certainly keep things cleaner and quicker. But," he said, shaking his head before looking back into Dusk's eyes, "Celestia wouldn't do this to us. She wouldn't allow something like this to happen. Something happened to her, and I think you know that as well as I do."

Steel smiled gently.

"I think she could probably use another alicorn right now."

Dusk opened his mouth again, pausing for a second before biting his bottom lip and looking around the room.

"How sure are you that you can take the other hundred unicorns if they still have magic?" he asked. "I saw them already starting to quarantine the affected ponies. They might have cut off the spell's transmission completely."

Steel shrugged. "They're still caught on their back legs. I figure we can hold them off long enough," he chuckled before nodding at Dusk, "long enough for an alicorn to free Canterlot."

Dusk chewed his lip for another moment, thinking of all the things that could go wrong and how terribly these earth ponies were outnumbered.

Eventually, he nodded. "Alright. Here," he said, ripping a pair of smaller stones from the floor with his field and enchanting them with a two-way vocal resonance. "Keep a hold of this, and say my name if you need to talk with me. It'll last long enough for me to get to Canterlot, so if you can't reach me, then you'll be on your own."

Steel nodded, taking the frog-sized rock in a hoof before saluting. "May the wind guide your wings, alicorn." His gaze softened. "Thank you for the chance to fight back."

Dusk saluted him back before casting a simple sticky spell and temporarily gluing the stone to the hollow of his throat. "And I'll thank you for your temperance," he said with a tiny smirk. "Remember that most of these soldiers are just following orders and most probably just swept up in this horse-apple hurricane."

Steel bit back a reply and just nodded.

Dusk sighed, dropping the salute before nodding back and turning to trot towards the door. He lifted a hoof and paused, feeling the wood under his frog before looking over his shoulder.

"Live through this Steel. All of you."

And with that, he was out the door, galloping through mostly empty hallways and throwing spells at the few unicorns he ran past. He saw the doors that led into the yard ahead of him once again and lowered his head as he kept building speed through the halls. Reaching the double doors, he leaped through the air with his shoulder leading the way.

Thanking his earth pony stoutness as he passed through the wood with barely a shudder, he let his legs bend beneath him as he landed before keeping the momentum as he threw himself into the air, his wings snapping out and pulling him higher into the air.

Flapping twice, he took a deep breath of the cold, salty atmosphere before looking back down, taking in the state of the fort from three hundred yards in the air.

He smirked at the sight of unicorns trying to pass through the open door of the fort, throwing themselves bodily at the layer of magic Dusk had built to keep both them and their magic in. He noted with a snort that none of them were using magic, a good sign for his spell's transmission. He watched a unit of soldiers on the walls scramble from point to point on the tops of the fortifications, and he saw the rippling of magic as the spells they were trying to send against the barrier be absorbed.

Then he looked up, at the horizon, and pointed himself at the range of mountains in between him and the tallest peak in Equestria before lifting his hooves in front of his muzzle like Dash had taught him. Then, like a diver through water, he flexed his wings and pushed himself through the air, feeling the air push over the keratin of his hooves.

In moments, the fort was out of sight, and he was flying through the air like an arrow, pushing himself harder and harder towards the city of his mentor.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

General Stone Blood sighed as he sat back in his canvas and wood stool, staring up the mountain he'd forced a march towards.

"General Pearmain?" he said casually, barely inclining his head to the right. "What in Her blazing, blue, gloriously sagging teats is that bucking thing?"

"Damned if I know General," Pearmain Platinum said, his gaze recovering from the open mouth and wide eyes as he scanned the city before them carefully. "Nothing I've ever seen coz do, definitely, and not something I think any old unicorns could do. I'd say they mayhaps pulled together the best shield casters in the land and put their heads together, but..."

He trailed off and chuckled as he waved a hoof up the mountain.

"The color of the aura makes it quite clear who's casting. Or who's magic is being used to cast, as it were."

Stonehoof grunted, nodding slowly.

"Yeah, that's definitely Auntie's," he said, tracing slowly over the brilliant, glimmering dome with his eyes. He started at the base, where his ponies were busy digging to see if the magnificent dome completely surrounded the mountain or if it just reached the ground. They had made sure to keep at least ten meters between themselves and the glowing barrier after the first fool to touch it was incinerated by what seemed to be some sort of solar flare.

"It looks like a goose egg," the pegasi Lieutenant Steel Gaze grumped, scowling darkly up at the stretched orb.

"Big damned goose," Stonehoof muttered before smirking. "About the right size for a certain swan I've met before, I suppose."

Steel Gaze blew briefly through his lips, but Pearmain smirked.

"So, they're definitely using Princess Celestia's power somehow. The question is, then, what the buck do we do about something like that?" He glanced at Stonehoof. "Unless your Gran passed some wisdom down that nopony else knows about?"

He shook his head. "Not to me, at least," he muttered before standing and whirling his chair back into the tent where the set-up crew had just exited.

He walked in and planted his chair at the head of a long, fragmented table that now had its legs attached. Planting his hooves on the wood slat, he lit his horn and activated the enchantment to lift the blocks of the tabletop, recreating an aerial view of the mountain and the city on it. Glancing at the empty field, he rose up a square to represent the walls of the temporary fort he'd assembled on the grass at the foot of the mountain before sighing.

"Sergeant Adler!" he called out as the other two commanders joined him. A third pony quickly followed them, the gray and tan pegasi saluting as they set up their chairs. "Any reports of the surrounding area?"

"I'm afraid they've seemingly just done the obvious, General," he replied, his words slightly slurred from a deep scar that gave him a cleft lip. "Err'y pony has just been gathered up beneath the ball. So far, the orb goes all the way into the ground, and ah've been told there's evidence of it arcing already, so it likely meets up beneath the mountain some 'ere."

He scowled and spat before muttering, "An' we've already got a couple of fliers back from the other forces. Righ' now, the north an' the east aren' acting either way."

Steel swore, but Stonehoof sighed before nodding. "Unfortunate, but it's better than moving against us. What about the scouts we sent out to the populace? Did they find anypony that wasn't in an internment camp?"

Adler actually smirked a bit. "Yes an' no, General. We found ponies aye, and a magnificent flock storming forts and camps to release them. Free'om fighters that moved in cells to free anypony they coul' get hooves on. Nearly three hun'red pegasi and another five hun'red earth ponies. Most'a those are the elderly though, and the chil'ren, but a good hun'red strong of stock that di'nt get sent away yet."

"Good," Stonehoof said with a grin. "Offer them all enlisted pay, and get them ready for a siege. We may be here for another few years before we burn those idiots through their storerooms, but with the back-up of the freed earth ponies, we can feed and outfit this unit for the next—"

He paused, and his eyes widened as he was staring out of the tent flap, watching the golden orb suddenly ripple and almost jiggle in place.

"What the bu—"

There was a flash of brilliant violet light before the air itself shuddered under the force of the loudest sound General Stone Blood had ever heard; the clouds themselves blasted to particulate as a streak of light remained in the sky, tracing from the northeast and directly colliding with the dome.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

The two royal guards tasked with guarding the second most important room in the castle (currently) nearly ripped the double doors off of the hinges as they rushed into the room just over the crystal harvest room.

Their ears clamped to their helmets as the mare took in another ragged breath before once again releasing a blood-filled scream, her throat coating the white curtains all around her with a fine mist of red that soaked into the cotton instantly.

"Ma'am, what—" one of the guards started before falling silent as he ripped the cloth aside.

The pony sat on what amounted to a small throne made of the finest, most delicately filigree silver, shining brightly in the white illumination of the room.

But the silver that had so recently been filigreed with fine runes and enchanted scroll-work was starting to drip onto the floor as it melted, and the pure white unicorn's fur was turning black as she sprayed another mist of blood into the air with her banshee wail.

Still, that wasn't the sight that had the guards shivering in their own skin, yellow flowing freely down one of their legs.

It was the sight of her horn, melted onto her face, as she screeched again from lips that were starting to drip onto her chest and the boiling gelatin that had been her eyes popping and sizzling on her cheeks.

When she paused once again to take another breath, both guards turned and ran; not stopping at the door, or the end of the hall, or at the rushing back-up that tried to stop them with questions and hooves and magic.

They ran while her screams flooded through the halls behind them.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

The large doors to the room crashed open, and the pudgy unicorn beside the throne squeaked as he threw one of his gilded daggers with his field.

The guard barely glanced as the piece of silver flew into the door several hooves to the right of his head. "Your Majesty, status report from the mages!"

The tall white stallion nodded, reaching out with a hoof and patting his counselor on the shoulder as the guard approached the throne. "Good job, Soft Shoe. Next time, more to the center, I think."

He then made a show of straightening his back and tilting the new crown he'd commissioned back on his ears. "Report," he commanded as the guard dropped to his knees before him.

"Sire, I hesitate to report this, but the conduit to the dome has been compromised. The dome will likely only last another hour, and that is at optimal conditions. We have no way of knowing what would happen if General Stonehoof attacked again."

Spoiled Platinum scoffed out loud, waving a hoof at the guard.

"Then tell that wench of a sister of mine to get back on the conduit throne. I don't care how much it hurts her bony flank; she will sit there and channel—"

The guard slowly raised his head and a hoof, interrupting the prince through sheer gall. "My apologies Majesty, but it's not that simple. She was channeling when the impact struck, and I'm afraid that the conduit—" He paused long enough to gulp before meeting Platinum's eyes.

"I'm afraid the entire conduit array has melted, Majesty. All of it."

Platinum was silent for a long time, simply staring into the guard's eyes. He then rose from the throne and walked past the guard through the doors. His gait sped up once he'd turned past them, and by the time he'd reached the conduit room, he was in a full gallop.

"Your highness," one of the two guards at the doors said as he tried to stop the prince, but the rest of the sentence was cut off as Platinum grasped him in his magic and threw him to the side. The mage beside the other guard tried to speak as well, but Platinum ignored him for the doors.

He coughed lightly as he opened them, frowning at the acrid air. Waving away the stench of burnt hair and bone, he walked slowly up to the chair on the dais in the middle of the room. Mounting it, he slowly placed his hoof on the cheek of the mare sitting there, breathing shallowly and moaning as blood trickled from between her lips.

"Brother?" she whispered. "Brother, it hurts so much—"

She whimpered as he pressed a hoof to her lips, gently shushing her. "It's okay, sister; I am here. What happened?"

She groaned before breathing out, "Somep-p-pony hit the sh-shield. Her magic flared t-to cover the new b-burden. Please, brother, it burns so m-much, heal me—"

He gently shushed her again, looking over her body and the chair she was sitting in.

After a moment, he nodded and slowly leaned forward, pressing his lips to hers for a long moment before whispering, "They will pay for what they've done to the line of Platinum this day."

Then, leaning away, he grasped the mare by her throat and pulled her away from the chair, ignoring the ripping noise of her hide as the melted silver claimed much of her back and tail. Ignoring her refreshed wails, he threw the mare's body away from him into a corner before turning to the guards and the mage gazing in through the door.

"Get another conduit in here," he snapped at the mage, gesturing at the melted throne.

"Yo-your Majesty, with the way the current array is placed, it will burn through a unicorn in less than two hours—"

"Then you had better have a replacement before then," Platinum growled, trotting over to shove his muzzle into the mage's. "And if you don't want to be the one nailed to that damn chair, then I suggest you do it quick."

He then whirled away, walking back towards the throne room, his lips still soaked in his sister's blood.

Author's Note

ugh, sorry for the long time between updates, allergies and sinus infections have been kicking my ass