> Rising Under Dawn
>  by Draknus2009
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Rise
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The wind was rushing through through my mane, the clouds wipping past my body at high speed. I couldn't be stopped, I was moving to fast. I couldn't even slow myself down... wait, what?
I wasn't slowing down, I couldn't slow down! My wings would not move, I couldn't even feel them! What's going on? The ground was rushing towards me. At the speed I was moving I only had a few seconds before I became a puddle of goo on the the ground. Come on wings! Respond! I command you too open up and break my fall!
No matter what i did they wouldn't budge. I looked back behind me and... oh. My wings weren't there. They simply. Weren't. There. Utter shock caused me to slow my frantic movements, but my mind was moving faster than before. What was I going to do? My wings were gone, I couldn't stop, move, or do anything!
The ground was so close, only a second or two now. I closed my eyes, preparing for the inevitable impact, resigning myself to my fate. I felt nothing. No crack of bones on solid earth, no wind, not even the sun on my fur.
I waited a few seconds and some feeling came back to me. Slowly, but surely I felt my heartbeat, my breath, and, thank Celestia, my wings! My eyes came open and I jumped up from my position on my back. Before I even realized it I had noticed the first pony I saw and delivered a flying wing powered kick into their side. Needless to say, they went flying into a group of others that had been right behind me a moment before.
"Please Stop."
I turned around at the voice and saw a blue unicorn  stallion with a green and blue mane and a red cross cutie mark. "Who are you?" I asked with a bit of an edge in my voice.
The unicorn raised his head high, "I am Dr. Blight Cross. I was called here when you collapsed."
I opened my mouth to speak, but in a sudden flurry of dark brown the dojo master kicked me in the side in the exact same way I had kicked him just a moment earlier. I ended up flying across the dojo that I only just realized I was in, and hit the wall. I then collapsed on the floor, suddenly dizzy from the sudden hit.
"You had me worried you idiot," Master Earth Bane said, or rather yelled, at me.
Dr. Cross hurriedly trotted up to me and helped me up. "Mr. Bane! This young stallion just underwent a terrible case of severe trauma. Your actions could have caused him to faint again, and I,m actually not sure if he'll get up again if he goes under from one of your kicks."
Earth Bane just kept on yelling, "This dojo has no room for weakness and you are no exception! Just because you have a strange reaction to magic doesn't mean you can just faint whenever you want!"
"Wait a second," I said. "What reaction to magic?"
Bane was about to speak again, but Cross pushed him out of the way. "You collapsed from an excersize that was meant to help you fight off magical attacks that target the mind. The excersize was meant to cause an illusion of your greatest fear."
"I think that part worked." I said, shuddering at the thought of free falling with no wings to save me. "But what went wrong?"
"Your body rejected the magical influence. It treated the magic like a virus and the cells in your body attacked the magic," Cross explained. "This is normally impossible since magic in itself is not a physical thing, but somehow your body has developed a way to do such a thing."
I thought hard about his explanation. "So my body flushed the magic out like some sort of cold?"
"Not exactly. Since magic isn't a physical thing like a virus such as the common cold, it, well..."
"What is it?" I asked. 
Blight Cross looked hard at me, and I got the feeling that he was almost studying my reactions. "First let me just state that I don't have any evidence to support this theory yet, but I beleive that your body absorbed the energy from the magic. The reason I'm not sure that this is the case is because your body should have shown signs of increased energy levels for at least two to three days. Any extra energy that you had disappeared after the first hour Where it went I can't be sure, but it might have just been a glitch in the machine."
My head was really spinning now. Energy absorbtion? Machines that are malfunctioning when attached to my body? Wait, machines attached to my body? "You didn't give me any drugs did you?"
"No, why do you ask?" Cross asked.
"Just wondering. Anyway, what do want me to do? Go to some lab so that they can study me? I'd like to find out what this is doctor."
Cross smiled, "Oh, good. I won't have to work very hard convincing you then. I would like to have you come to my office once a week, preferable thursdays for some tests."
"Thursdays, got it," I said.
"Good, now I suggest you go home and get some rest. Your going to need it."
I waited until almost everypony was gone. Then I turned to Earth Bane and asked, "Do you mind if-"
Earth Bane interuppted, saying exactly what I was thinking, "Do I mind if you skip work on Thursdays? No, no I don't."
We sat next to each other for a few moments, staring into the sky that was just visible through the window of the dojo and over the skyscraper that was in the way. Princess Luna had really made the sky pretty tonight. 
"Just one more thing before you leave," Said Earth Bane.
"Yeah?"
"Don't tell anyone that I'm giving you Thursdays off work."
I smiled to myself. It was just like Earth Bane to worry about his image like that. " I promise."
Earth Bane trotted to his room in the back of the dojo, I stayed in front of the window for a moment longer, then headed out into the dark streets of Las Pegasus.
*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*


My apartment was on the top floor of a building located on the eastern edge of the city. I would have flown to save time, but sometimes I felt like walking home. It felt good to fly and be above everything at times, but I liked having some down time every now and then. Seeing the skyscrapers that populated the sides of the streets towering above you...
My thoughts were broken by the sound of scurrying behind me. I turned around and to see a brown hoof disappear behind a trash can.
"Who's there?" I called out. No one answered.
I paced carefully toward the trash can, and keeping my distance I peered around it. No pony was there. Instead there was a fake brown hoof on a stick just sitting there. Then an alarm went up in my head, I spun to the the side just in time to avoid the spinning blades that had almost decapitated me.
I followed the pair of bladed disks as they flew up and around. They flew like frisbees, but they were coated in a brownish aura, signifying that their movement was being controlled with magic.
The blades spun back around towards their owner, a brown unicorn with a bloody skull as a cutie mark.
"Nice to meet you, Pegasus. It'll be fun to cut you up."

END. Chapter 1
> Blight
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I dodged to the right, underneath a precariously stacked long box supported by only two long posts. Whoever did it, was mad, and a genius. Not that it mattered. In less than a second the box was cut in half by a flying buzzsaw disk that was aimed for me. 
"Come out pegasus! You can not hide forever!" The brown Unicorn cried out chuckling as he did so.
" You do know I'm right here right?" I said.
The Unicorn smiled and without even a blink of his eyes the second flying disk swung down from it's position and rushed right at me. I waited until the last moment, just before it hit me. Then right when it would have gone through my head I opened up my wings and pushed myself upward off the ground and into the air just above the disk. Then with a quick hit from my back left hoof I hit it dead in the center.The disk got thrust downward imbedding itself into the concrete road.
The unicorn stared at the disk in the ground in shock. "How did you do that? The speed required..." He looked at me as I landed on the road. "Your not dizzy."
"What? What is that supposed to mean?" I asked, but his answer was not an answer to my question. He swung the other disk at me.
"Fine," I said. "I'll attack first and ask questions later!" I prepared to take down the second disk the same way as first. Almost upon my head, and then... up! Only to have to suddenly veer to the right and smack into the wall in order to avois getting cut in half by the disk above the one I had originally seen.
"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, surprise! Were you expecting that?" 
I groaned. The impact into the wall had hurt almost as bad as when Earth Bane kicked me earlier. Almost.
"Now how do you feel now that it turnes out that I have more than two of my beauties?"
I looked at the disk that were now casually floating in the air. Then I looked closer at the one on the left. "More than two?" I said, then smiled, "You only have the one in the ground and the one on my right. That last one is only an illusion." I then launched off the ground and jettisoned up and through the disk that I had geussed was a fake.
The unicorn was shocked, almost falling off his perch from the alley-way balcony. "H-How did you know?"
I looked at him, wondering how he might not know his illusion had been slightly translucent. I pushed it out of my mind. This was the time to fight not ponder why something happened or not!
I rushed towards the unicorn. He was only two stories up and about thirty feet away. I could finish this! I flapped my wings as hard and fast as I could, quickly building up speed, but the unicorn's reactions were remarkably fast and the one real disk came at me almost immediatley. I did a quick barrel roll, dropping about a foot in height, the spinning blade just barely missing me. The disk didn't falter and swung around, cutting through a balcony railing in the process. I sped as fast as I could manage to get the unicorn. He was the controller of the disk; take him out and I take down the disk as well.
Almost there. The blade was almost on me. 3 feet. 2 fee- got him! I slammed into him at tremendous speed, literally breaking through the wall behind him and coming out on the other side of the building. Then we hit the ground in the middle of the road. Hard.
The brown pony wasn't down yet though. He had created a shield with his magic as we went through the building, and he was now already back on his feet. I jumped upward just in time to avoid a blast of some sort of magic that created a small crater in the ground. I flew quickly towards him and punched him in the snout with my front, right hoof and then quickly flew away again. I didn't want to stay in his line of sight for too long. I started punching and kicking him with quick barrages from the air, making sure to keep moving as much as possible.
Unable to keep up with me, he started firing blasts in every direction he could. I knew this meant he had started panicking, and he would only become more predictable because of it. I flew towards him again, dodging the few blasts he had managed to get close, but a moment before I hit him with a huge kick in the face I got intercepted by the disk he was controlling. I couldn't stop and collided with it head on.
I fell to the ground, my head pounding from the impact. I looked up to barely see with blurred vision that the Unicorn was stumbling around as if he had gotten hit in the head as well. Then I realized that in a way, he had. Unicorn magic was connected to their mental stamina. If enough force is applied to their own magical force they could get really tired and even get headaches as if they had been physically hit. That disk was being levitated and held in position by his magic. I hit it extremely hard and no doubt he was already tired from the rest of the battle. When I hit the disk, yes I hurt myself, but I also had broke the hold he had on it and sent it flying into a building. If their was going to be any openings for me to utilize against him, this was the best I could ask for.
I stood up on all fours, but found out quickly that I was still unbalanced. I had to take this chance however, so I stumbled forward as fast as I could. I could barely hold myself up, but I had to finish this. I got right next to the Unicorn who had collapsed. I raised my hoof, preparing to bring it down and end this.
"Don't," A voice behind me said. "He's already out cold."
I looked down at the brown pony and realized that it was true. He wasn't trying to get up anymore, but instead was laying there, unconscious. I lowered my hoof and relaxed, then promptly collapsed. My legs wouldn't support me any longer.
I looked around to see police-ponies already walking around and I saw for the first time the pony who had been behind me. A purple mare with a long sparkly mane that reminded me of the night sky, and right before I succumbed to the void of sleep, I noticed one last thing about her. She had both a horn and wings.

End. Chapter 2.
> Sight
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The sound of a siren. Movement around me, a glowing disk, like the moon. I couldn't make any sense out of it. My mind was everywhere and I wasn't able to pull it in. I was unconsious, yet I wasn't sure how I knew that. There was a slight beeping, on and off. A rythm that was both soothing and annoying at the same time. Eventually I couldn't stand it anymore, and woke.
"Turn that Celestial damned thing off!" I yelled, jumping out of my bed and smashing down on the source of the sound: a life support system. A life support system hooked up to me.
"I do believe that my sister never damned that device that is helping thou recover," A familiar voice said.
I looked over at Princess Luna and stared. I had never seen the Princess of the Night before. I had heard stories of the events in ponyville, but her presence was completely new to me. I did hear that her grasp of society was still old, but she seemed to talk okay.
"I'm sorry Princess, I didn't realize you were there." I said apolegetically as I bowed before her. "And I did not mean to reference Princess Celestia. It was just a statement."
"It is of no consequence." She said turning around to face the window. "We simply came to check on you and see if you'll answer my quarry. It appears thou have nearly fully rejuvanated, so do you mind?"
It took me a moment to figure out what she meant by quarry, then once it hit me that she meant "questions" I agreed.
"First, you should know that the individual who attacked you is known as BlightEyes. He has murdered several other ponies as he nearly did to you. The local forces have been trying to catch him, but he has proven to be most difficult to detain. You've saved them the trouble of continuing their search."
"It wasn't on my mind when I did it, but I'm glad to have helped," I said.
Luna glanced back at me, "One of the reasons BlightEyes has been so difficult to detain is because of a particular spell that he created. When somepony simply looks at him, they become assaulted by headaches and loss of balance. You however, suffered none of these effects."
I thought back to the battle, "Actually, I believe I did. Near the end of the battle I was suffering from exactly that."
"You suffered those effects due to natural causes. Or at least as natural as banging your head into a metal disk can be," Luna said.
Luna's remark of humor actually caused me to chuckle a bit, but I quickly thought back to the battle again. "Near the beginning of the fight, right after I disabled one of the disks BlightEyes had asked how I wasn't dizzy..."
Luna picked up for me, "He must have been just as surprised as us that you weren't suffering the effects of the spell. We havn't been able to develop a counter measure for the spell and so we naturally believed you might have that answer."
"We as in who Princess? The police force?" I asked.
"No, me." Doctor Blight Cross walked into the room. "Although Princess Luna does still use that old terminology 'We' every now and then," He chuckled. "Anyhow, I have been trying to find a solution to this spell that BlightEyes created for a while. Not only did the solution show itself to me just yesterday, but that solution also went out of the way and retrieved my son as well as test my theory."
It hit me like a train, that was the reason for my supposed immunity to the spell! I was immune. That whole thing about my body absorbing the magical energy was true! Then another, even larger train hit me right in the face. "Your son?"
Blight Cross looked back at me with a guilty smile on his face. "Yes BlightEyes is my son. BlightEyes Cross. His mother wanted to name him after me, so we went with that. Although if I could I would have-"
"That's enough Dr. Cross," Luna interrupted. "We understand that your demoralized about your son, but now is not the time to be getting off topic."
"Yes, yes your right," Cross said with obvious remorse.
"So I really am immune to magic?" I asked, actually excited about his answer.
"It would appear so," Cross responded. "Your body takes the magical energy and simply breaks it down and turns it into energy. That would normally cause a spike in your energy levels as I said before, but it actually takes the energy and channels it so it actually strengthens the process."
"So in other words..." I said questioningly.
"In other words, the more spells you get hit by and absorb, the stronger your immunity gets. I was wondering why at first that your immunity hadn't worked on the original dream spell that revealed this in the first place, but that is because your body hadn't been in contact with magic of that caliber before."
I ran it all through my head again. It was almost too much to take in right now. Then yet another train hit me. "Doctor? Would this immunity prevent me from Illusions?"
Cross rubbed his muzzle thoughtfully, "No, it shouldn't at least. My research so far indicates that the magic would have to physically touch you to be countered. Why?"
I was thinking of the battle when BlightEyes had nearly tricked me with that illusion of a third blade. I had seen through that, if it wasn't the immunity what was it? "It was during the fight, I-"
My sentence was broken off by a sudden rush of hot air from the window followed by an explosion that surely could have been heard for miles. The three of us rushed to the window to see the commotion, only to be meeted by another explosion of huge magnitude.
"Where is that coming from?!" I yelled over the sound of explosion after explosion. 
"From the military station," Luna said. She sounded calm and unsurprised, her eyes undetered from the fires in the distance. "BlightEyes is escaping."
I didn't even think, it simply happened. My wings flared up, my body tensed and I pushed forward. In less than a second the hospital was already in the distance. The station was about a mile away, yet I managed to get there in only about  half a minute. Explosions were still ripping apart the station. Throwing hot air and debris everywhere. I barley managed to dodge a chunk of concrete that had been sent up by the last blow.
Peering down through the smoke, I managed to make out a few shapes. I swooped down to investigate a few shapes that looked like ponies lying in the wreckage. I wasn't wrong. Several military ponies as well as a few citizens were lying in the wreckage. Some were quite obviously dead; burned or crushed, some even sliced by what I could only guess was a disk-blade.
"Over...here." I turned at the sound. A blue and black earth-pony was lying under a pile of wood shafts. I rushed over and pushed the wood off of her. She was injured, a sharp piece of wood was sticking out of her side. I went to pull it out, but she stopped me. "No- wheeze- don't...it will only bleed worse." She was out of breath, the wound obviously had already sapped much of her energy.
I pulled her up and rolled her on my back. As I carried her out of the burning building she whispered faintly, but clearly. "So many... so many dead. A monster... a monster."
I got out onto the road where a whole squadron of fireponies and medical doctors with carriages were rushing to put out the fire and get survivors. A few doctors saw me and rushed over with a medical cart.
"Here quickly! Put her on the cart!" I obliged, but refused their attention to me.
"I don't need your help! She does!"
I followed them as they rushed her to a carriage and quickly started treating her. As they were working I noticed her trying to say something. I leaned in to listen. Her voice came even fainter than before, "more than one. helped... by a demon... death. so much death."
"What do you mean?" I asked, looking her in the eyes. "What do mean more than one?"
She stared back, trying to say something, but she struggled to get anything out.
"What is it?" I prompted.
She tried one last time, but her body tensed up, her eyes glazed over as if staring into space, then she went limp.
"We've lost her," A doctor said. "The wood shrapnel was the least of her problems. Her lungs and organs were crushed, not even magical treatment would have helped her at this point."
I walked out of the carriage slowly. Gazing around I saw other patients, other dead ponies, and in the distance, I saw yet another explosion. It started as a feeling of fear, bubbling inside me, but as the feeling grew I realized it wasn't fear, but anger. Anger that was directed towards the source of that fire, and I knew exaclty what to do.
I launched into the air, rushing towards the east of the city, following the path of destruction. Another explosion. Another death surely. And I dived towards my target. I didn't know where he was exactly among all the smoke, but I was beyond caring anymore, I would find him and I would finish him.
I landed on the ground and peered around, not that I could see anything through the heavy smoke.
"Stop throwing around your ridiculous spells and get over here now!" I whirled towards the voice, desperate to see who it was. I didn't recognize who it was, but they seemed to be talking to someone.
"Oh, come on! I'm having so much fun! The fire! The explosions! The screams of agony! They're so beautifal!"
Now that voice I recognized. That was the voice that I hated so much. BlightEyes Cross.
I started to move forward, but then a hoof grabbed my shoulder. I spun around with a flying kick, only to have it blocked by an expert double-leg hook. I took a good look at the pony who grabbed me and saw that it was Earth Bane.
He let go of my leg and whispered, "You might want these."
I looked at what he had on his back, two balck scabbards with golden etchings, one a dragon, the other a pheonix. My swords.
"Where did you get these? I had them in my apartment." I whispered to him as I took them of his back and strapped them to my sides.
Earth Bane looked at me in all seriousness, "The remains of the dojo and your apartment are about a mile behind me."
That hit me hard, it had all been destroyed?
"It would appear we have visitors," That unfamiliar voice said. With a sudden rush of wind that came from the center of the huge cloud of heavy smoke, the fire's around were all put out, the smoke was pushed away and the enemies revealed themselves.
On the right was a very familiar looking brown unicorn, he seemed slightly different though. Some sort of energy seemed to be bursting from his body, his horn was twice its normal size. An Earth pony stallion was on the left, he had a black coat with silver markings along his body. The markings themselves were in a language other than normal equestrian, and seemed to all begin with one large marking. The stallion's cutie mark. 
Even stranger was what was in between the two. A purple vortex of smoke was slowly growing behind them. It started as a small disk and was growing larger and larger until it was big enough to fit a whole pony through it with ease.
"You!" BlightEyes glared at me with pure and utter hate. I stared back just as intensly.
"You know them?" The other stallion asked, his voice was casual, yet absolutely menacing. Even though he sounded completely normal, his voice left a chill running down my spine.
BlightEyes continued to stare at me, "Yes, I know the pegasus, he's the reason I was captured." He sounded insulted, even though he was the one saying the words.
"Well then, lets give them a friendly farewell wave." With his words the strangley marked pony waved his hoof horizontaly out in front of him. I felt a huge wave of pressure coming towards me at tremondous speed and prepared for the worst, but then it seemed to bend around me, leaving me unharmed.
Earth Bane did not fare as well. When the force hit him, he was sent tumbling end over end until he finally landed with a sickening crunch of bones.
The black pony looked at me with an eyebrow raised in surprise. "Interesting, you appear to be immune to the effects of my magic. Is this how he defeated you Blight?"
"Isn't it obvious?" BlightEyes responded, spittle coming out of his mouth due to the pressure he put behind his words.
"Interesting, I wonder how far his immunity goes?" The black one said.
I was done listening, I rushed the earth pony, wings flared, swords drawn. I wasn't going to give him any chances. Not that it mattered apparently. With a simple motion of his front left hoof, a huge invisible force smashed me into the ground.
"So apparently you aren't actually immune to magic, just highly resistant. I am having to put an enormous amount of power into this simply to keep you down."
BlightEyes turned toward the purple vortex, "The portal won't stay open for much longer John. We need to go!" He put a hoof into the vortex and got sucked into its abyss.
The earth pony turned to leave through the vortex, but that unbearable force was still pushing down on me. "It will be most interesting to run into you again pegasus, but until then I must return to my own world and prepare. Eventually we will meet again. When that time comes I will be at full power, the power that only your gods possess. You should spend your time in preparation." With that he stepped through the vortex and disappeared.
The moment he stepped through, I felt the pressure holding me down get removed. I got up and looked at the body of Earth Bane. The sight of his crushed and mangled body angered me, and I would have been the same if I didn't have that ability to resist magic, why couldn't I save him? Why did I have to survive blows that would kill all my friends? I turned back towards the vortex, or portal as BlightEyes called it. It was shrinking, but I could still make it through if I wanted. I flew right next to it, close enough to put my hoof through in one step. John. That was the name of the strange earth pony that seemed to be able to do magic somehow. I had to remember it, it was my only chance to find him, stop whatever it was he was planning, and if possible, avenge Earth Bane and all the other deaths caused by BlightEyes. I took one last look at the destroyed city around me, and stepped through the portal.

Chapter 3. End.