The Red Dusk

by Barony

Prologue

It has been four hundred ninety nine years since I have been imprisoned after being defeated by Princess Celestia on a mission.

I knew it was going to be risky, too risky infact.

My name is Red Dusk, a former synthetic alicorn servant and knight of Nightmare Moon.

I still remember that day, when I tried to cave in a part of Canterlot from inside the caverns.

It was a tragic failure. I bit off more than I can chew and Celestia made me into a damned ornament.

But for some reason, something told me that this was a blessing. My lack of access to Nightmare Moon and the pharmaceutical supplies she had instructed me to take has seemingly allowed myself to think freely and clearly after a month in my tomb.

Using this freedom, I thought my life over, and my more rational side took over, my own mind insulting myself.

But it would probably be in vain. Nopony wants to see me, a monster.

I was a bigger monster, serving the Nightmare who sat on the throne on the moon, directing me to wreck havoc on Equestria.

Tomorrow will be the anniversary. Wont matter anyway.

All of this thinking would be in vain.

"Alrighty, everypony, gather around!"

An earth pony stallion with clipboard, reflector vest, and helmet calls out to the rest of his crew. As a forepony, he would have to brief his crew to get things going, so shouting out to the rest of your crew was part of the job.

A good six ponies, mostly earth ponies, walk around the clipboard wielding forepony, who looks at all of them with his large, gruff looking face.

"Is that everypony?" nods come from all around him, the grass green stallion with a blue and white mixed mane smiling to himself.

"Any questions about what we'll be doing? This is not your typical job and I also will plan to live up to my name, Risky Endeavour." Risky Endeavour smirked as two ponies, both unicorn mares, shifted in their places.

Going down into the crystal mines to deal with structural issues when doing construction topside always held danger. But it was necessary, to keep the bigger, more gigantic buildings that are not your typical wooden two story building holding a shop, from falling into the caverns in an embarrassingly horrifying and deadly accident.

"Are we assured to live, Risky? I have heard of some accidents that happened under your watch before." one of the unicorn's asks him, Risky biting his lip as he looks everywhere with his eyes.

"Those were their faults, not mine. Atleast they did not get any life threatening injuries, or both them and I would be in deep shit." a gasp escapes from the earth ponies, the green stallion rolling his eyes. He cursed sometimes, it being customary at his favorite place, a casino black jack table. He was a gambler, who also played roulette and sometimes the slots.

However, he had to pay for his gambling habit, so he found out that doing dangerous construction work payed well, well enough for him to not sink from his bills and gambling debt. Ever since then, he's been able to curb financial crises that could have happened if he did not have the job.

He looks around the group that surrounded him. Nopony was going to ask questions, so why bother waiting anymore? He had work to do, so did everypony else.

"Alright everypony, we will be going into there." he points with his muzzle, his eyes darting from one pony to the other in the group as he saw their eyes all shift towards the open entrance of the cavern. He looks back on the clipboard that was tucked into his fetlock and put up against his foreleg thigh.

"We should expect to maybe set out on either doing a controlled detonation for the construction site to sink down to be filled in, or for the area to be filled inside. Dont touch anything, none of the crystals, nothing. We're just seeing what will have to be done to deal with our problem and then go and work from there." Risky clipped his clipboard to his toolbelt, its pouches full of different materials needed for this line of work. He looks around at the other ponies, who all nod.

He throws up a hoof, flapping around his fetlock to signal for the group to follow him. He puts it down, trotting towards the entrance of the cavern and activating the magically powered lamp on his helmet. The sounds of hooves impacting the dirt behind him indicates that they were all following him.

He enters the darkness of the cave with only the lamp's light guiding him. His head moved back and forth as the light shined off of the crystals.

The space he was in was pretty big, colossal in comparison to some of the other parts of the cavern he entered. There were big ones, and this one was one of them.

He continues to walk, looking behind him to see the others beginning to do their work, measuring and just in general exploring the place to make way for the project. Shushing can be heard as an experienced worker put a hoof to his mouth to the two new unicorn mares. The echo is annoying, and dangerous, there being confirmed tales of crystals collapsing ontop of miners when they were way too loud in their work.

As he walks by a wall, he notices something rather odd. The scorch mark of what would be something really hot impacting the rock. It was faded and seemed to be years after years old, but it could be seen by the lamp light. He looks behind him and makes a noticeable, but quiet clicking noise with his tongue to the stallion he saw earlier.

The stallion's head jerks towards him, and he daintily trots over to his colleague.

"What?" the earth pony stallion asked, standing close to Risky. Risky gets a hoof and points to the scorch mark on the wall, his head, and thus, lamp, looking after it. The stallion's face turns to one of worry as he gets closer to it.

"We have to investigate, we dont know whats down here. I'm kinda worried." Risky whispered to his friend, who nodded.

"Whatever it was, its not natural. It could be magic for all we know." both stallions nod to eachother, both going seperate ways as they go farther down into the cavern.

He could still hear the hushed whispers of the ponies at the other end of the cavern, which was reassuring. If there was something down here that could hurt him, he could run back to the group and being in a group is always better than being alone.

He keeps trotting, seeing more scorch marks and what seems to be a golden hoof guard? It looked just like one Princess Celestia would wear, only now it was faded, scratched up, and bent. He takes a hoof, picking it up and examining it, an awed look on his face. The decorations were just annihilated, almost as if she had been taken down.

What was she doing down here anyway? The stallion asked himself this question in his mind, shaking his head and stuffing the hoofguard into a large pouch.

He continues walking, sweat appearing all over his head. He bites his lip, daring to continue walking into the unknown.

He stops again, to see a faded, yet still quite sharp looking and very geometrically designed, halberd. It's metallic parts were a dark crimson, which was fading away to reveal grey in the paint, or whatever it was. Its handle was carrying all sorts of decorations, with crescent moons all over, and...

The four pointed star of Red Dusk.

He backs away, yelping as his ears pin to the sides of his heads at the speed of light. He looks back and forth around, before finally happening upon a large crystal. There was something inside of it, something he could not see.

He moves his lamp towards it, sweating now. The silhouette turns out to be...

An alicorn stallion in full armor. His helmet was not on his head, so now he could see the snarling face of Red Dusk and his sharp teeth. His body seems to be locked in a pose of running, and his head seems to be angled down, almost as if he was going to impale somepony with his horn. The horn ran through the hole in the chainmail coif that went all around his body, the only notable holes in the mail being a round one for his face and ones for his ears, which had a protruding portion that went halfway up his ears.

The alicorn's facial features were terrifying to a normal ponies, having sharpened, carnivorous teeth, a large, square face. His ears were furrowed forward in an aggressive pose and his expression of absolute anger added to his fear inducing image.

His jaw dislocates itself from its fixture as he looks in utter fear, awe, and confusion. The alicorn's shrunken down iris' conveyed insanity, but with a peculiar hint of fear mixed in.

The stallion backed up, looking behind him to see the other stallion coming towards him. He wheels around, running to his friend.

"Alert the guard! I think I just found where Red Dusk has been all those centuries ago!"

"Its a nice day out, Luna, why dont you get some sun?"

A groan escapes Princess Luna's muzzle as she lightly punches her sister in the leg. Her older sister only laughed, taking a sip of tea as she looks down at her little sister. She woke up not too long ago, as per her sleeping schedule that dictated 8 hours of sleep from dawn to early afternoon, from which then she does whatever.

"Dear Sister, prithee, stop with thine foul bouts of... 'joking'. Tis most irritating." Luna asks her sister, who only smiles and takes another sip of her tea.

"Ah, Luna, I keep forgetting to stop my use of sarcasm when talking with you considering you take everything literally. But you did spot the joke, I give you that." Celestia spoke, shifting on the cushion she was sitting on. She looks to the other side of the sitting room, a guard at the door.

The guard was motionless, typical as always due to training. However, it did sometimes amaze her how they could stand so still for such a long time everyday.

A sip from the side of Celestia brings her focus back to her little sister, who continued to drink her own tea. She had a rather blank face with what seems to be folds under her eyes from tiredness.

Luna was not a pony for waking up at all. She did enjoy her sleep, just like others did, but it always seemed she was more irritated than others when woken up. She sometimes found it rather adorable.

The sound of some rather heavy shuffling and the creak of armor erupts from outside the door in the hallway. The guard at the door is unmoving, while the two princess' look at eachother with questioning looks.

Finally, it comes. The door flings open and the guard at the door gets crashed into by the door, effectively being reduced to a confused heap. The enterer was a lieutenant, who cringed at seeing the confused door guard laying on the ground. He looks back at the Princess', shrugging.

"Is there something wrong, Lieutenant Berry?" Celestia asks with a hint of worry, putting down her teacup. The lieutenant bites his lips and walks closer.

"A construction crew that was sent to the caverns beneath the new apartment construction at the west side of the city made a discovery." the lieutenant's face seemed to squirm, almost as if he was thinking about how Celestia would react to what they would have discovered.

"Another dragon nest?" Celestia asks with now a hint of disappointment. The lieutenant shook his head, now regaining Celestia's attention.

"Then what is it?" Celestia presses on, the guard deadpanning.

"Well, replace that what and it with a who and he. We uhh... We found where Red Dusk has been for five hundred years..." the guard softly blurts it out, the message seeming to shock all in the room.

"What?" Luna asks, the guard nodding. She puts a hoof to her horn.

"He's encased in crystal, with full armor on. He seemed to be frozen in the middle of running. Evidence indicates a large battle, but whats most disturbing is that we found one of Princess Celestia's golden hoofguards there. It was pretty faded and scratched up, but we assume anything but the worst." Celestia tenses up as she remember's the fateful battle those five hundred years ago. None know of the battle, as of yet, but she knows she must reveal the truth some time soon, the jig was up.

"What of the construction crew?" Celestia asks, the guard smiling a bit.

"They're in our hooves, and we're quite lucky that they did not immediately run off. The leader was smart enough to get them all to calm down and not run screaming into the city. We've got them under control and their lips shall be sealed." the lieutenant answers, rubbing his left foreleg with his fetlock. "Kind of proud that we handled the situation so well."

"But, the more important thing at hoof is what we will do with him. We know he's evil, but we don't know whether or not its a good idea to keep him under Canterlot in case he gets out somehow. We have not really assessed what really went down and Captain Shining Armor is on the scene to help try to reconstruct what happened down there." the lieutenant continued, walking in place with high knees. Celestia looks at Luna, her sister likewise, and Celestia turns back to look at the guard.

"Take us there, now."

The cavern entrance was a place of controlled chaos. There was about a platoons worth of guards at the entrance, securing the perimeter while there were some dealing with the construction crew, all of this happening as the carriage touched down and its doors opened to reveal the two Princesses.

"Dear Sister, what doth thou thinketh of doing with him? Surely, We mustn't endanger Our subjects." Luna looks at Celestia with a questioning look and inquires, the big sister's head and eyes unmoving as they move towards the entrance of the cave. A guard side steps to allow the two Princess' through, bowing.

"I'll tell you what I think we should do when we get to him." Celestia responds, entering the now magically lit interior of the cavern. There were still a lot of guards, but less then outside. An armored Shining Armor was over by Red, looking up at the alicorn stallion along with another guard.

The sounds of the Princess' hoofguards clinking against the stone grabs Shining Armor's attention, as well as the other guard. His face has a frown on it as he bows.

"Your Majesty's." Shining Armor says, looking up at Celestia who raises a hoof to signal for him to rise. He rises, his armor creaking and clanking as he moves alittle bit in his place.

"How is the situation, Captain?" Celestia inquires, Shining Armor looking around. He looks back at her.

"Everything seems calm, I'm just alittle distressed being next to him. I can feel the intense presence of magic coming from him." Shining Armor shifts in his place as he turns his head around to look at the frozen alicorn. Celestia and Luna look at eachother, Luna turning her head to look at Red.

"What shall We do with him?" Luna asks Shining, asking for his opinion.

"Im not sure. For some reason, I feel some kind of sympathy for him, he just has this look of... Fear mixed in with something else..." the unicorn responds as he steps back from the crystal itself.

"The real question is, why is he here and how did he get down here?" a guard inquires, another coming to him, a female.

"Maybe this was a lair of some sorts for him." she said in her opinion, earning an unamused "Psssh!" from another guard who walks up.

"Nonsense! He's not that stupid to base in the caverns here under Canterlot, and besides, does this look like a place that he had a lair inside? Maybe he was forced in here by a unicorn or something, maybe he was going to do something around here and ended up in this cave?" the gruff male presented his explanation, adding to it a spit towards the frozen stallion himself.

Meanwhile, Celestia paced in her place, becoming anxious. She had to tell them, she had to.

"We should all know that a pretty hefty battle took place here. No normal unicorn or pony for that matter could have survived a battle that this seemed like." Shining says, looking over at Red Dusk's unusual looking helmet that lay on its side. There was a scorch mark that ran across its width, which added with all the faded old paint that had been falling off made it look more like some kind of weird, unusual steel pipe reject.

"The captain doth raiseth a point on the matter at hoof. Surely, only an alicorn might wieldith enough power to face such a foe in a one on one." Luna speaks, looking at Celestia, whose eyes clench down.

"Dearest Sister, what doth thou say about this?" the lunar princess asks, her sister sighing, a slight shudder in her. The blue princess shakes her head, looking up at the crystal once again.

Finally, Celestia falters, knowing it is the time.

"Everypony, I have a confession." Luna and Shining Armor look at Celestia as she gets closer to the crystal. More of the guards around them gather around her aswell. She puts a hoof on the crystal, closest to his body.

"I am the reason he's here, I am the reason he disappeared." she blankly says, silence reigning over the cavern as her voice echos around the cavern.

"What?! What doth thou mean, Dear Sister?" Celestia looks at the inquirer, her sister Luna, and looks back at Red.

"He came here to use explosives to make a part of Canterlot cave in. However, he let his guard down, and I saw him. I confronted him here, and tried to reason with him, but his fanatical mindset prevented him from surrendering, including his sense of ...Ehhhh... honour, and... maybe some kind of magic from Nightmare Moon." some gasps erupt, while Luna hangs her head and backs away at the mention of Nightmare Moon, basically because it was her who sent him to do this task. Celestia turns her head to Shining with a stern face.

"Shining Armor, your sympathy is well founded." Shining tilts his head in confusion.

"Why?"

"Because he does have a personality, like we all do. I've confronted him before, and the way he responds to what he had to do. He felt disgust when killing, he felt sadness and fear at the notion of being shamed by Nightmare Moon - sorry Luna -, I have seen him express joy at things other than what he does usually." Celestia clears her throat, indicating a pause.

"What Im trying to say is is that if he were given real free will, he would have stopped. He would have stopped doing all of this, but..."

Shining Armor gives Celestia a questioning look, the alicorn noticing. She looks at Luna, then back at Red Dusk.

"His brain was clouded, artificially. I have evidence that is gone now, but he was under the influence of drugs of all kinds and psychological magic. Psychological magic and drugs that would have made his mind go against him, convincing him that he did the right thing, persuading him to do horrible acts of violence, all with the promise that Nightmare Moon wanted that to happen." Celestia shakes her head as she looks at the alicorn again.

"I want to believe that his five hundred years might have done him a justice and that the spells have worn off by now. Maybe..." Celestia's muzzle scrunches up.

"Maybe he will take my mercy gratefully and has learned his lesson." Luna gasps as her head jerks up towards Celestia.

"Sister! Thou cant be suggesting...?" Luna trails off as Celestia nods.

Shining Armor and the guards give soft grunts of confusion, until one by one, Shining Armor first, they gasp or make a shocked face as they realize what she's proposing.

"Your Majesty! Are you sure about this?!" a lieutenant behind Shining Armor speaks up, the alabaster alicorn nodding.

"It is time. It is time to shed mercy upon one who desires and needs mercy. He must see the light, for all ponies,even he himself, deserve multiple chances. It is more than likely not his fault that he was the way he was, for he served a ruler that sought only for her control over Equestria, possessing my sister and manipulating one who she herself summoned and sent out to do devious deeds. He did this all in the name of blind loyalty to the one he called his leader, his...God..."

A few gasps and "Whoa's" of amazement are uttered by some of the guards, all of them looking at Celestia like she had finally lost her mind. Some stepped back from her, while others bravely stood where they were in proximity of the monarch. Her sister stood by her, shaking her head in disbelief. Celestia opens up yet again.

"His sentence ends now, and I will show him forgiveness. So will all of you!" Celestia jerks her head back, yelling. Her voice, one like thunder for she was close to the Royal Canterlot Voice, echoed through the caverns. Quite a few of the guards shudder in their places from the sheer strength of the sound.

"You cant expe---." a guard is cut off by Shining Armor clasping a hoof over the stallions mouth.

"Shush. Just follow orders and be...Uhhh... I guess, forgiveful. I honestly trust the Princess on this, but Im also as nervous as all of you. That still does not mean that you can ignore him and be pricks to him. Show him some hospitality..." Shining gives alittle speech to the guards behind him.

"That is, if things go to plan." Shining turns his head back to look at Celestia, his hoof coming off of the muzzle of the stallion. Her horn was surrounded by an aura of her magic, while her eyes begin to glow.

She bares her teeth, her head bowing down to point her horn at the crystal. In an instant, a beam of light hits the crystal, and due to the refracting and reflecting properties of the crystals in the caverns, bright light spread everywhere. The groans of guards are barely heard over the rush of air all around them, all of the guards and Luna putting their legs up to their eyes.

The crystal began to melt away, slowly revealing bits and pieces of Red Dusk's body to the outside world. His right foreleg and his face were first, and instantly, they began to move. His eyes instantly closed while his mouth seems to move as if he was talking, no words coming out, or if there were any, were probably really weak and drowned out. His foreleg seemed to weakly nudge at the air, its muscles practically asleep, a consequence of the five hundred year freeze.

Within five seconds, the sound of a heavy suit of armor impacting stone echoes through the caverns. The sound stops as Celestia stops her magic, the princess panting, looking at Red's body that lay there. His legs weakly twitched as he stays silent.

Celestia bites her lip, walking over to his body. His mail and plate heavy armor coated him everywhere on his body. His helmet was somewhere around there, relatively faded, but able to be easily waxed and shone.

Celestia bows down to his ears that twitch as she gets nearer, going past his horn and moving her muzzle next to his ear.

"Wake up..." she whispers, the red alicorn's limbs only twitching along with her ears.

"Is...Is he dead?" a female guard asks, Celestia still looking at his face.

"No, his mouth and legs were sort of moving on their own as the crystal melted away." Celestia calls out, her head moving slightly to her right to look at the guard before she hears a sound.

A weak groan and some tiny sounds of metal moving across stone. Her head jerks back to him as she looks at him slowly start to wake up. Why he was talking when he was being brought up, she doesnt know, but what she really wanted to know was how he could sleep with his eyes open. Unless...

The magic could've been keeping him generally just above alive enough to think consciously, while he also may have shut down his eyes through his magic, to prevent unneeded wasting of energy on them.

The alicorn continues to squirm, his eye lids slowly starting to part. Luna begins to walk over, looking down at him. Celestia opens her mouth to talk, but Luna puts a hoof across her legs, looking at her bigger sister.

"Wake up, Red Dusk. Tis time to awaketh from thine slumber." she says in a soft, beautiful voice.

The reaction from the stallion was immediate, his mouth slowly beginning to smile and one of his forelegs slowly inching closer to one of her legs. She is unmoving as he touches it with a hoof, blushing actually.

His eyes are open halfway, looking at Luna with a tired expression. She wondered if he could recognize her through her looks now.

The stallion weakly sniffs in her direction, his smile getting wider as he also looked at her and saw her cutiemark.

"You...You came back..." he says in a raspy voice, trying to inch closer. Shining Armor walks up from behind Luna, looking with amazement as the alicorn tries to inch closer to his Princess.

Luna backs away, much to the dismay of Red. His ears pin down again, his face hitting the floor. He picks his head up to look around with his eyes, the two eyes happening upon Celestia.

His face instantly evaporates into an expression of fear and begging, his red eyes shrinking to the sizes of pinpricks. A tear streams from his eye as he weakly puts his two hooves together and faces Celestia.

"No... No... Please... Please no... Dont..." he weakly begs, his spirit obviously broken as he set his eyes upon the unarmored mare. The alicorn's expression becomes a horrified one as she lowers herself down to look at him.

"Do not worry... For I have let you out as mercy, to release you from pain." she tries the best she can to maintain a genuine looking smile. The silence was creepy, and added to the seriousness of the situation. The red alicorn continues to squirm, looking up at the celestial alicorn.

"Oh... That... But... But why? Im a..." a hoof to his mouth silences him, a blue leg with a silver hoofguard on it silencing him. He looks from the hoof up to Luna's now smiling, forgiving face. She makes a shushing sound as Celestia begins to speak.

"No, you are only misguided, used, your emotions suppressed. We can reform you, we can show you the ways of harmony and friendship. Please stay with me." Celestia continued to soft talk him, the stallion smiling in both the comfort of Celestia's voice and Luna's contact.

In response, his legs slowly wrap around Luna's leg, much to her surprise as he rubs her coat with his cheek.

"Guards, get the medics. We must take him to the castle infirmary without anypony seeing him." Red looks at Shining, unknowing of who he is. The unicorn looks at the alicorn stallion, his head tilting as he sees not a face of anger and supposed "insanity."...

But one of hurt, fear, and unconfidence.

A broken soldier, ready to be brought back up again.

But will the path be simple and straight?