Duskfall was quickly realizing that for all her power, the only thing she knew how to do with it was brute force. Sure, she knew all the spells Twilight had known and many more besides from her exodus, but she had been supplementing her Magic with Darkness for so long she had very nearly forgotten how to cast without Darkness. Duskfall couldn't remember when she had started casting with Darkness because she hadn't even realized she had been doing it until almost the very end of her exodus.

In almost any other circumstance, that would have been a non-issue. Even in places that claimed to be warded against Darkness, they typically were only warded against Evil and Chaos type Darkness and sometimes only Evil type. But mind control, without knowing exactly how it functioned, threw everything into disarray.

Duskfall was worried that if she used her Darkness or Insanity on any of the mind controlled soldiers one of three things would happen. One, her power would override the mind control but not break it; leaving her with a servant she had no idea how to free. Two, her Darkness or Insanity could come into conflict with the mind control and shatter the pony’s Mind, Heart, Soul, or a combination of the three. Three, her Darkness in conjunction with the Darkness that fueled the Dark Magic would harmonize and overwhelm the pony, resulting in the creation of a Heartless.

Of course, there were a myriad of other, lesser concerns Duskfall had, but those were the big three Duskfall worried about the most. Thus for the past three days she had been splitting her time between getting back to basics with her Magic and being taught how to fight by Lightning Dust.

Speaking of Lightning, she had been surprisingly quiet ever since Duskfall had revealed that she could die without permanent repercussions. The Alicorn had expected Lightning to immediately jump on the subject, yet the Pegasus had yet to bring it up. Duskfall knew the other shoe was going to drop, but was content to wait for Lightning to make the first move.

“Come on, Lady Duskfall, if you don’t do it like you mean it, you’re just going to get in the way!” Lightning taunted as she dodged a kick from Duskfall.

“I’m not trying to hurt you!” Duskfall shot back.

“That’s cute, you think you can hurt me without your magic,” Lightning smirked, “I’ve been in more than my fair of scraps, Lady Duskfall, with Earth Ponies a lot stronger than you. I can take a hit, assuming you can even land one m’lady.”

“Don’t underestimate me!” Duskfall put all her speed into a full body lunge at Lightning. The Pegasus easily dodged and Duskfall ate dirt.

“Maybe don’t shout your intentions to attack, Lady Duskfall?” Lighting suggested.

“I know that,” Duskfall pouted, “This isn’t a shonen anime, after all.” Lightning didn’t get what Duskfall was talking about, but that wasn’t too unusual.

“Maybe we should look into getting you a weapon? I don’t think you’ll be able to improve enough to be more than combat fodder for a few weeks otherwise, m’lady,” Lightning suggested.

“That would somewhat bypass my magical issues. It would need to be something blunt, maybe a mallet?” Duskfall considered.

“I was thinking more along the lines of a bokken. Ideally it’d be made of oak to absorb enemy magical attacks at least somewhat,” Lightning said as if that were just common sense.

“Oak wood absorbing magic? That’s odd, because ash wood is the only wood that has any kind of innate magical properties in my world. It’s used for absorbing Dark Magic and that’s it,” Duskfall noted.

“Every tree in my world had some kind of magical relevance. Hmm, if we’re going to make you a bokken, we should probably check what kinds of wood have what properties,” Lightning mused to herself.

“Lightning, Duskfall, get ready! We’re ready to march on the enemy!” Rainbow appeared to interrupt their discussion.

“OK!” Both mares chorused. Lightning bolted off to equip some light armor she had gotten prepared while Duskfall started weaving those few defensive enchantments around herself she was confident she didn’t need Darkness to cast. Of course Duskfall could have gone into battle with nothing, but while dying and coming back would shake Sombra, it would also send Equestrian morale into a nosedive. So Duskfall was trying to mitigate the chances of her dying on the battlefield.

An hour later and Duskfall was exceptionally nervous. She had never taken the battlefield as an active participant before. The closest she had gotten was the one time she had gotten involved in a turf war between three of the biggest gangs on the planet she was on. However at that time she had been mostly screwing around and had had full access to her Darkness to subdue anyone who was getting too rowdy. Duskfall had also been free to die whenever she felt like it.

Duskfall cast her eyes around. She could just make out Lightning already in the air, Sombra’s mind controlled troops on the other side of the clearing, and a bunch of nervous ponies all around her. It was a pity that little, if any, of Tom’s knowledge of ancient battles was applicable when the enemy was mind controlled and everyone was the cavalry, after a fashion.

Everyone had their marching orders. Given this was more or less just a minor skirmish over a supply line; neither Sombra nor Celestia was here. Duskfall privately wondered at what point during a multiyear war the leaders started running out of rousing speeches. She was thankful she’d probably never get called on to give such a speech.

Some might wonder as to the wisdom of sending Duskfall to participate in such a battle when she could be used as a stunning trump card. Celestia was of the opinion that it would be better for the army to get used to Duskfall, both her presence and fighting style, and for Duskfall to get a taste of real combat before entrusting her with anything too major. After all, if Duskfall shocked the army too greatly that would be very bad. If she was utterly incompetent in combat, that would be an issue as well.

Still, all these thoughts were just window dressing for Duskfall. Something to get her mind off the fact that she was really very nervous and wondering when exactly the fighting was going to start. Was there a signal? Was someone going to yell ‘charge’ like in one of those old movies? It wasn’t like everyone was carrying shields to shove against the opposing army like something out of ancient Greece. Were they just going to run at each other and try to take out whoever got in their face? Duskfall was suddenly of the opinion that three days wasn’t enough prep time.

“ATTACK!” A moment or two of being shoved by the ponies around her and Duskfall finally got her own legs working again. A wall of mind controlled ponies charged to meet them. In a snap decision, Duskfall went full speed ahead, trusting her Alicorn durability to see her through.

Being mindful of her horn, Duskfall plowed into the frontline of Sombra’s army. It was panic, chaos, confusion, in a word…insanity. Duskfall was feeling things she had never felt before. It was invigorating, empowering. Submersing yourself in Darkness without hurting people was a relatively trivial matter. Doing the same with Insanity was virtually impossible. Even now ponies were in pain around her yet Duskfall had never felt more alive.

Her euphoric high died a painful death when Duskfall spotted something that made her instantly sick to her stomach. It was a young child with one of Sombra’s helmets on. Duskfall wasn’t quite able to tell if the child was filly or colt, but that didn’t matter. The purple Alicorn broke from the fight, spread her wings, and flew at top speed for the child. She grabbed up the filly, for she was definitely a filly, and teleported back to base camp.

The filly was struggling like she was possessed by the Devil himself, which wasn’t far from the truth when Duskfall thought about it. Still, the strength of a young Crystal Pony was no match for Duskfall. As much as Duskfall hated to do so, she placed the filly in a bubble and returned to the fight. She wasn’t about to start experimenting on a child and that meant she needed someone else to serve as test subject. Well, no matter the outcome of this particular battle, Duskfall was somehow even more motivated to bring down Sombra.

Author's Notes:

Uh, I'm slowly getting better, but my head still feels like melted cheese, so hopefully this is at least serviceable. I wanted to make this a pretty long chapter with Duskfall observing the filly she's captured and some other stuff, but honestly I'm just going to leave it here for now. It'll still probably be three or four days before I'm back to 100% and I'd hate to leave you guys hanging that long.

Also, I suck at fight scenes, so I thought I'd be clever here and get around that subject by focusing on how being immersed in the Insanity of real army-on-army combat would set Duskfall off a bit.

In other news, I'm frustrated with myself. I won't go into details, but there's this one author who's an egotistical sexist jerk but I can't stop reading their work and I hate myself for being of such loose morals that I can't put my foot down and say "I love the work but I won't read it because this person is an asshat".

Finally, I've started some role playing again. It's something I've always enjoyed doing even if I rarely get to indulge. I know huge shock, the guy who literally has his characters arguing in his head 24/7 enjoys acting out as those characters. I even enjoy doing canon characters. My one weakness is that RP makes me a bit... thirsty and so the kinds of RP I want to do reflect this. I'm perfectly capable of doing wholesome/friendship role plays, but they aren't my favorite.

I'll do my best to not let my RP get in the way of my writing these stories, but if things slow down a bit then that's why. Apologies in advance.