With the herbs in her saddlebags, along with some additional bits and pieces (including some apple cider vinegar, Applejack said that she ought to take some, as it's what Granny Smith always used for the Apple Family's Ponyville branch when they got sick), Twilight began to mix the potion.

It was intended to be a general healing potion.

Perhaps Zecora was right about this. Twilight desperately hoped so, as it was entirely possible that she wouldn't get another chance at bringing the only pony that knew how to properly wield dark magic back from the dead.

She tested a little bit of the resulting mixture on a small graze she got from tripping over her own hair.

(Gosh, it had grown so long these days.)

The graze stung. Quite badly, there was an urge to scratch at it, but just as quickly, the stinging and itchiness was gone.

The stinging must have been from the apple cider vinegar.

It did feel a lot better, though. Much less irritated.

Twilight smiled, before getting back to carving out the runes for life, reversal and death on slates.

She'd broken these when she fell.

A minor setback, all things considered.

And this is why you keep spare slates.

The other three runes were 'magic', 'temporary' and 'cancel', meaning that there'd be a temporary effect on Sombra's magic to disable it.

She paged the 'temporary' rune in a spell matrix, and managed to get a whispered answer back that it would wear off in a week.

The Elements had a sort of sense for things. Applejack could tell when someone was lying. Pinkie Pie would know who would need cheering up.

Twilight, however, could hear the whisperings of magic. These were usually felt in her bones. It was how she could detect leylines, magical hotspots, and discern important details about what spell someone had recently used by gut feelings.

Some unicorns could do a few of these things. Twilight could do more than just these things, but often had to forcibly dull her senses because the flow of information would become too much otherwise.

Paging the 'temporary' rune was one thing, setting these up in the right order was another.

She was very likely going to have to acquire more material. The potion she'd made should be shelf stable for quite some time, given that the base for it was apple cider vinegar, a fermented product.

More slates, possibly a book or two on wards, and a book on runic circles.

Actually, on second thought, if she cancelled out his magic with the runes on the slates, she might be cancelling out all forms of magic, including his reserves, and that could go very badly.

She took to a book on runeworking, trying to find a particular rune for her purposes.

Ah, there.

The rune for 'active', three lines, the top one swirling upwards, the bottom one swirling downwards, double circle.

It was actually a 'wind' rune, but runes can mean different things in different placements.

So, the correct order of runes would be 'active' (or 'wind'), 'magic', 'temporary', 'cancel'.

Hopefully the runes could figure out this order. She might not have the time to test it.

Sombra would be able to passively generate magic inside of himself for his reserves. Oftentimes, extensive reserve magic depletion could take a week, maybe longer to recover from.

(Twilight hadn't investigated any cases of total magic depletion.)

She was doing him a favour, really, making sure that he couldn't use magic by accident and risk cracking his horn or hurting himself or his body cannibalizing itself to try and perform a spell.

Everything would go perfectly. There was no other option.

She could probably assemble some medical equipment to keep him hydrated. Saline solution. But then that risked the populace knowing what she was doing.

She couldn't quite trust that a nurse was bound by the long arm of the law to not talk about patients. Or, at least, reveal identifying details.

No, she should do this by herself. She was decently certain that she could read up on medical textbooks, learn where to place the needle within a body. Test it on herself first.

It would be easier than involving someone else with this, wouldn't it?

After all, what she was trying to perform is undoubtedly necromancy of a sort. The most forbidden of forbidden magics, simply because of the mental torment that many have put themselves through to try and bring back their loved ones, or to get free labour out of beating a dead horse.

However, three deaths. That doesn't feel like enough. Especially when he had previously done, enslaving hundreds, no, thousands of ponies within the Crystal Empire.

Sombra had the title of the Mad Unicorn King for a reason.

And Twilight would be his judge, jury and executioner if it came down to it.

Perhaps he could spend eternity within the Canterlot Dungeons. After all, she was immortal. And she could probably revive him again once she got the techniques down, right?

Enough of that.

Twilight had slates to carve, and additional herbs to procure.

She made sure to carve a few spares of the runes she already had, just in case any more accidents happened from her tripping on her hair or some other Celestia-forsaken object in her way.

Surely some of the Everglow Seeds that she'd mixed in the healing potion would also kickstart the reserve magic regeneration. Those were difficult to come by, but were often abused by unicorns that were hoping to come out on top in magical duels.

...Actually, she did have one more item to procure, now that she thought about it. The runestones might disable any active spellcasts from him on a temporary basis, but past that? She'd be relying on wards, which could give out.

While wards were more in the 'set and forget' category of defensive spells, they could still be bypassed, particularly if Sombra did that sneaky little trick of growing his crystals on her horn.

Additionally, if she placed a 'no magic' ward down, she might be affected too, even if she was the caster. It might not be possible to tweak the spell matrices to make sure that she wouldn't be affected.

This is why she needed to acquire a magical inhibitor ring.

Traditionally used for prisoners sent to the Cantetlot Dungeons, these rings were made out of black crystal growths that came from the Northern Wastes.

These would disable any and all magic casting, but not any passive magical effects.

Curiously, they weren't possible to enchant with wards to assure that they wouldn't break or couldn't get taken off, but a simple perception spell could be cast on the prisoner to make it more difficult to notice.

The first drafts of these rings, she'd read about it, had spikes on the inside band, to make the ring outright impossible to remove.

Perhaps these drafts were from Sombra himself? Was he planning to take prisoners of war, if he hadn't been defeated so quickly?

These days, they coat the crystal rings in gold after carving them, which improves their ability to be enchanted, and offers a little more durability.

(There's a market for them on the black market. And in particularly... interesting stores. Twilight Sparkle has never publically commented on where those stores get their supply of them from.)

Twilight leaves to see the Canterlot Guard about possibly acquiring a magical inhibitor. For enchantment, she tells herself.

A little white lie.

Author's Note

ok i was writing this when i was waiting for decretum to be accepted.

i'm surprised they did. pleasantly, i mean. mostly because i have impostor syndrome and don't think my work is great, even though it's perfectly decent. shrugs. there's things that can be done better and i invite people to give writing their own version of this a shot, as long as it fits within fimfiction's rules.