"I wish it was that simple," Twilight said before Pinkie could speak. "They'll be taken to High Rock, which is a highly defensible and mostly magic proof keep. We struggled to capture it from a hooffull of demoralised and half starved earth ponies, so trying to take it from a experienced army of thousands of earth ponies and unicorns who have back-up from an insanely powerful alicorn like Faust? We might as well shoot spit wads at them, make rude gestures, and say unflattering things about their mothers for all the difference it would make."