It took three days to reach the coast from the hills, though it was hard for Dusk to tell the time accurately since he spent most of the journey curled up on the floor. It took two prods from a lightning rod to get him out of the carriage near the end of the first day when they allowed the ponies in the wagon a stop at a creek and switched out the pulling team.

He awoke in the middle of the first night to a flurry of whispers.

"I'm doing it," the young stallion was saying, nodding to three other ponies that looked about the same age. "If we all jump out at the same time, they won't catch us all. We can run and get some help, try and find some of the outlying farmers like this one, and—"

"Don't cross the wagon walls," Dusk said, reaching out and grasping the leader's foreleg. "Those collars are enchanted, and I don't know what'll happen if you cross the border with it on."

Scowling, the young stallion (barely old enough to have a cutie mark, Dusk thought) shook off the hoof.

"Whatever it is, I can take it. It took three of their magic sticks to get me the first time, this can't be much worse," he said, hunching and getting his rear legs beneath him.

"Wait," Dusk tried, attempting to sit up, but it was too late.

The young pony's legs tensed and he leaped towards the back of the wagon, his front hooves coming together before him and turning his body into a spear, as though he would break through whatever magic they had through sheer power.

The wagon didn't stop him from jumping out, but all of the ponies in the cart heard a sizzling of magic as the collar passed over the wall before they heard a rolling thud noise, followed by another smaller thud.

The unicorn escorts started chuckling before the driver pulled the reins of the four pulling the wagon to force a stop.

One of the escorts stepped into the darkness for a moment before returning with the collar across her back and something large in one of her forehooves. Pressing her other hoof against the wagon for balance, she lit her horn before impaling the head of the jumper on one of the studs that used to hold a cover on the wagon.

"Looks like your friend took a tumble," the mare said, smiling at the group in the cart. "Here now, he's pretty secure then?" she asked, tapping on the top of the head with a hoof. "Shouldn't happen again."

And then they were forced to just sit there, in the darkness, as the blood of one of their own trickled into the cart.

The next day they only stopped to change out the ponies harnessed to the wagon, letting the prisoners sip from muddy waters held in a nearby ditch after rain that had passed who knows how long ago.

The unicorns ate and drank from their own canteens and rations as they took turns riding on the bench over the team of stallions pulling the wagon, leering at the ponies grabbing a few mouthfuls of grass as they drank, something that Dusk stayed away from.

As it turned out the grass, while sweet, was of some breed that seemed to disagree with most of the stallions, and soon the bottom of the wagon was covered in filth as the unicorns ignored the urgent cries of the ponies holding their cramping stomachs. Dusk risked poking just his nose over the sides of the wagon just to get away from the smell.

At the end of the second night, the unicorns apparently got tired of it as well. Pulling onto the side of the road near a green-covered pond, they pulled the earth ponies out of the cart and dunked them all under the water to get rid of the mess before blasting the filth out of the back of the cart.

Dusk was chosen to pull the wagon this time, and he lost himself in the bends of the dirt roads as he tried to keep with a pace that the other three ponies could maintain.

He walked all through the night, the only light coming from the stars that glittered coldly above them.

When they started to disappear, and the sky in the east began to tinge pink, the drivers pulled the wagon over for the last time and allowed the ponies out for a meadow break, blithely watching the group graze and water themselves in puddles.

After everypony was back in the wagon, the unicorns paused before starting a headcount.

The largest unicorn turned from the wagon and yelled into the meadow, "We're down one! I have about thirty seconds worth of patience, and if you get back to the wagon before I reach zero, we won't punish you!"

He waited for five seconds, before starting to count down from twenty-five. He paused when he reached ten, looking around before shrugging.

"Your head then," he said, before turning back to the wagon and lifting a hoof to the enchanted field on the wall.

"Wait!" came a panicked voice as one of the friends of the first pony bolted out of the woods. "I'm sorry, I had to crap, I'm—"

The unicorn ignored him and tapped a couple of runes Dusk couldn't see.

He heard a humming and saw the collar begin to light with an emerald green hue before he tucked his face into his barrel and covered his ears.

He couldn't block out the sharp sizzling, or the thud as something solid impacted with the side of the wagon.

"Shame," the stallion said blandly. "He almost made it back in." Turning, he motioned to one of the other guards. "Go ahead and dump this one off the main road, so anyone else passing by doesn't have to look. Wouldn't want a lady to have to see a ground pounder, eh?"

There was a round of chuckling before Dusk heard the tingling of magic and a crashing of undergrowth as they threw the corpse into the woods before they tapped on his flanks as a signal to get the wagon moving.

The last stop they had was comparatively uneventful, and Dusk eagerly laid down in the back of the wagon as his hooves pulsed unpleasantly from the walk.

He gazed up into the night sky, well on the way towards midnight, and looked wistfully at the shape of a mare's head still on the low-hanging moon. She may have been a bit strange at the beginning of their companionship, but Luna had quickly become just as a stalwart of a friend as Celestia had been, and he missed her nearly as much as he missed her sister.

He sniffled before wiping at his eyes, concentrating on his breathing for a bit before he straightened and looked over the wall of the wagon, towards the north-east.

"Can ya smell the salt air yet?" a small voice whispered beside him.

Looking down, he saw the last remaining colt of the trio that had been so harshly trimmed away over the last two days.

Lifting his muzzle, Dusk breathed in, and indeed felt the tang of a warm breeze under the cooler currents of the land, the wilder salt-green smell fighting heartily with the wildflower pollen in the air.

"Yeah," Dusk whispered. "I can smell the ocean."

The colt sniffled. "My da' died out there, on it," he said, not bothering to wipe at the muddy tracks flowing down from his eyes. "He served out of the fort we're headin' to now, and the griffons got jumpy one day and sunk his ship." He scowled down into the darkness of the wagon. "Only the unicorns survived to tell tha tale, 'course."

Dusk swallowed dryly, trying to come up with any words to ease the ache in this colt's heart and having to relegate himself to using a hoof to gently rub his back as his quiet tears turned into sobs.

After another hour or two of jostling the unicorns started to whisper among themselves and clean up their gear. A few minutes later the wagon rounded a turn in the road and began a sharp climb up to a squat square fortress on a cliff. Dusk was able to hear a harsh clashing of waves against the stone wall of the cliff and idly wondered if the fortress would still be there in his day.

Then he reminded himself that there wouldn't be any earth ponies then at this rate.

He struggled with his internal impulses; between saving Equestria and righting the imbalance in power, and keeping himself hidden. The way he'd wiped Lily's memory had been bad enough; he didn't want to have to do that to an entire platoon of ponies.

But would the deaths of their, well, slaves, be any better?

Looking up at the large walls as he passed through the open space he started planning. Barely noticing the large metal lattice slamming into place behind the cart, he perked up enough to look over the walls of the wagon and apply some of the mental math he needed.

I'll need components, but with this many unicorns around it shouldn't be a problem.

He paused when the wagon came to a stop. The unicorns in the seat hopped down and a moment later he heard the magic runes being used.

The tail of the wagon dropped and he saw a quartet of fully armored unicorns brandishing spears behind heavy helmets that allowed their horns to poke out of the top.

"Come on then, out with you," called one of them, gesturing with a spear. "Nice and orderly, two rows, hup now."

A few of the others in the wagon were slow to move, but Dusk was among the first few that slowly clambered down and into a couple of shoddy rows between the spears. The rest followed after the two front spears thudded into the bed of the wagon menacingly.

"Right then," called the same unicorn as the four ponies from the front of the wagon wandered around it to join the lines. "You've been conscripted for service in her majesty's northernmost navies. You'll be trained in marine warfare, maintenance of your vessel—"

Dusk ignored the drillmaster as he droned on about what was expected of them, instead taking careful measure of the walls and yard with his eyes.

"We'll start tomorrow," the drill pony said, tapping his spear on the ground. "You have mostly free reign here, as everything sensitive has been hidden behind the runes that react with your collars. If you try and start anything, every unicorn here has agency over punishing you through said collar. If you wander too far from the walls, your collar will activate.

"Questions?" he asked dryly.

"Princess Celestia won't allow this," whispered one of the ponies near Dusk.

The guard's ears perked up. "What was that?" he asked, waving a hoof after a moment. "Go ahead, what did you say?"

"Ah said Princess Celestia won't allow this treatment of her subjects," the older stallion said, standing a little straighter. "Ah know she's roving right now, but when she hears—"

The guard lifted his visor, displaying dark emerald eyes and no expression whatsoever.

"Haven't you heard?" he drawled slowly. "She's back. Has been for a couple of weeks or so now." He leaned forward, getting closer to the stallion who'd spoken. "And she hasn't done anything yet, has she?"

The stallion was quiet for a moment, before saying, "Y-you're lying..."

The unicorn snorted, shrugging. "Believe what you want to, I suppose," he said blandly before stepping back to address the group again. "Canteen is in the northwest, bunks are on the northeast side. Three meals a day, Reveille is thirty minutes before sunup. If you're late, you'll be punished. The rest of today is yours."

The guard smirked. "Rest up," was his last words as he turned around and trotted away with the rest of the unicorn guards.

Dusk watched them walk away before he began trotting towards the northwest.

"Hey, wait," yelped the young pony he'd been trying to comfort earlier. "We should stick together, as a group—"

"It won't matter," Dusk said, looking over his shoulder. "Either we'll just be a bigger target, or we'll annoy the unicorns and they'll zap us until we break apart. If anyone wants to join me, I'm sure that the gruel here will be better than that gut-grass some of us had on the road."

He turned back and started trotting forward again, hearing some grumbling behind him before a few sets of hooves joined him.

The food in the canteen was indeed better than the grass on the road, if not much more so, and they at least had fresh water. Dusk ate his ration quickly, dropping the heavy hardtack into the bowl of watery oats and letting it break apart before wolfing it down. He turned in the bowl at the kitchen and made his way towards the barracks.

He found it already half-full of stallions, most of them weathered and beaten-looking. He spotted one idly turning over a polishing kit in his hooves.

"I was an officer, until about ten days ago," he said when Dusk neared. Glancing up, he looked Dusk over before nodding. "You're a bit small, but ye're solidly built. You'll do well enough out here."

Dusk swallowed heavily, glancing around the room full of ponies. "I appreciate that, sir, but I was hoping—"

"Don't," the ex-officer interrupted, sighing. "We're stuck here, until—"

"Until tonight," Dusk whispered, stepping closer. "Look, I get that you've probably been through some of the worst of it, but I'm busy trying to do something, so please?" Dusk asked with eyebrows raised. "Do you know of somewhere I could disappear off to for, say, an hour? Where they won't see?"

The stallion sighed again, before shaking his head. "You wanna disappear, you talk to the right unicorn the wrong way. But if you wanna hole up somewhere for a bit, then the young studs coming in used to hide in a closet near the officer's quarters. There's a cubbyhole in the back with a few stones that've been moved.

"It's about your size if you want someplace to hide," the stallion gave him a steady look, "but if you're gone at lunchtime, they'll lock down and search for ya, so get whatever it is out of your system by then."

"Thank you, sir, that's all I needed," Dusk said before turning and wandering out of the barracks, ignoring the muttering voice behind him as he left.

Dusk found the closet easily enough, just out of sight of the two unicorns that glared at him when he looked up the hallway towards what he assumed to be the officer's quarters. He'd slipped into it easily enough and found a couple of soft brooms, a larger stiff broom, a couple of wooden buckets, and a patched-up back wall.

Sighing as he used his magic to make one of the bricks temporarily see-through, he smiled thinly when he saw that the hollow was still there and had just been covered over.

Casting a small spell, he set up a marker of sorts behind the wall before making himself invisible.

Walking out of the closet, he made his way around the corner before poking his head around it. The same unicorns were there, talking quietly between themselves and laughing every now and then. Dusk looked behind himself before he used his hoof to tap the ground, making a firm thud-ing noise.

Both guards looked his way for a moment before one of them shrugged and started talking to the other again.

Trotting up as quietly as he could, he got to about ten paces away before he pulled his secret weapon off of his back; one of the buckets, also temporarily invisible.

Cocking his hoof back, he chucked the bucket towards the other end of the hallway, the missile becoming invisible to him as soon as it left his hoof. After a couple of heartbeats, he flinched as it loudly clattered down the hallway and impacted the wall.

Both unicorns jumped as well before their horns lit up and they both took up position. To Dusk's surprise, they didn't both look down the same way, but they put themselves back-to-back looking up either way.

Dusk shrugged and waited until one of them started calling down the hallway before moving up towards the door, pressing himself against the wall to skirt the stallions in the middle of the hall, before opening the door a sliver and slipping inside. Closing it, he put his ear to the wood and waited until he heard a singular pair of hooves move up the wall before he heard a pony sit directly against the other side of the door.

That makes things a little more difficult. Glad I hit the closet first, he thought, before turning around.

There were only two other ponies in the room, and one of them was lowering his head back onto his cot. The other seemingly hadn't even lifted his, as he was still snoring away.

Waiting until the first stallion had returned to sleep, Dusk quietly lit his horn in a simple divination spell.

Letting his head turn, he saw a lock-up at the other side of the room and shook his head before returning to gaze at the wooden door with a large bolt and padlock on it.

Makes it easier, he thought as he snuck across the room. Investigating the lock, he found that it had been linked to a few different magical signatures instead of a key. Giving it a couple of different frequencies with his horn, he shrugged before just teleporting the entire ordeal away and quietly moving the latch and opening the door.

Inside he found exactly what he'd been hoping for; spell components. Chalk, powdered gems, specifically treated herbs, and a few other things he didn't need but grabbed anyways, snatching up a cloth sack and filling it with anything that caught his eye.

Walking out of the room, he closed the door and the latch before teleporting back to the closet, securing the bag behind the bricks, and walking back to the earth pony quarters.

Walking into the bathroom (little more than a hole in the floor that he presumed led to the cliffs outside) he dropped the invisibility and made sure that his disguise was in order before walking out and taking up an open cot until lunch.

"I see you made it back in time," the officer he'd spoken to earlier murmured, sitting beside Dusk at the table. "You get it all out of your system?"

"Not yet," Dusk said back, taking another spoon of the boiled corn grains they'd been served.

"You better cut it short, then," the officer whispered harshly, stomping the floor threateningly. "If they get wind of whatever you're doing, you ain't the only one going down, they'll punish all of us."

Dusk snorted and pushed away from the table, turning his back on the stallion and taking a step away before he felt a hoof on his flank.

"I ain't done talkin' to ya," the officer growled, pulling Dusk back by his coat.

"Well I'm done listening," he said back, pulling away from the stallion and trying to walk away again.

"You're gonna listen if I gotta beat it into ya," the officer yelled before tackling Dusk, the two ponies wrestling in the dirt floor of the canteen until a pair of unicorns ran up either end of the aisle, waving their lightning rods and yelling at the duo to separate.

They had to prod the pair a few times before they could pull them apart with their magic, both panting from the exertion.

A minute later the two of them found themselves in a darker hallway on the southeast side of the fort, and Dusk watched as the unicorns threw the officer into one heavily bolted and reinforced door before he was thrown into the cell next to him.

He heard the unicorns trotting away before the gruff voice of the officer came echoing under the steel door.

"Ya happy, new blood? Hope you ate enough lunch. They only feed the solitaries every couple of days," he called before Dusk heard him spitting. "Least now you can't do whatever fool thing you were planning."

Standing up and rolling his neck, Dusk sighed. "Actually, now I can do it much easier. Thank you."

He heard the other stallion scoff. "What the tartarus you gonna do in here? You must've been dropped on your head right outta the womb. May the horns take you, you damned idiot."

"Ya know," Dusk said, shaking the illusion off of himself and lighting his horn, "you're not the first pony to accuse me of that. Not even the second, though you might be the third." With a nod towards the wall they shared, his horn shimmered as he turned translucent and walked through the rough stonework.

The stallion was laying on the ground with his snout pushed against the crack in the bottom of the door, away from Dusk's entrance.

"You deserve it, you damned wanna-be upstart," he called through the crack. Dusk couldn't help but see the small smile on the stallion's face. "Comin' in here and stirring up trouble." The pony was quiet for a moment, before chuckling and whispering, "Reminds me of somepony, though."

Letting the spell fade, Dusk waited and watched the despondent stallion lay on the floor.

"You gonna be quiet now?" the stallion called out into the hallway.

"No," Dusk said, letting his voice come up from his diaphragm and ring through-out the tiny cell. As the stallion jumped upright and spun, he flared his wings and straightened his neck, allowing a bit of mana channel through his horn for effect. "I do not intend to be quiet any longer."

The stallion squinted at him, rubbing his eyes before slowly moving towards Dusk.

"You're not real," he whispered, looking the alicorn up and down before shaking his head and reaching forward with a hoof. "The unicorns knocked me out, and now the corn grain is giving me some kind of nightmare."

Dusk reached out and let their hooves meet, channeling a little mana through his frog into the stallions, a trick Celestia had taught him.

"I'm no undigested spec of corn," Dusk said firmly, smiling. "Your eyes are open and do not deceive you. I am Dusk Shine, alicorn of Friendship and Magic, and I—"

He was interrupted by a hoof connecting to his jaw.

"You bastard son of Discord," the officer whispered as Dusk massaged his cheek. "You know how many of my soldiers I saw killed? You know how many of my friend's heads top the walls of this fort, where some of them worked—" The stallion's breath hitched, his voice roughening as fat teardrops started to fall from his face. "They worked to make this shithole livable, workable, and now they're dead.

"Why?" he asked, pleaded as he stared up at Dusk. "Why now? Why not when this started?"

"I couldn't," Dusk whispered. "I shouldn't be showing myself now, but I can't... I can't watch anymore."

The officer spat between Dusk's hooves, some of the spittle landing on his fetlocks.

"I hope it was enough to keep the guilt of hundreds, thousands of earth ponies' lives out of your dreams." The officer let a moment go by before he admitted, "No, I don't. What's the plan now?"

Author's Note

Not much to say right now, see you lot next chapter