It was gone. It was all gone. Twilight Sparkle wasn’t exactly sure how long she had sat in the spiked, iron cage, hanging from the edge of the Canterlot Castle, but it had to at least have been twenty-so years. The Caribou had left her there, alone. She couldn’t die from exposure. No hunger would end her life, no thirst could consume her soul. Only a blow to the heart could hope to kill an alicorn, and there was nothing quite long enough in the cage for Twilight to finish her tortured existence. Not that she hadn’t tried, many times, in the past twenty years. Since the Caribou obliterated the Equestria she loved with all her heart. Since the thermo magical bombs scoured all life, all hope from her home. Since Caribou spears had impaled her mentor, her friends, her neighbors, in a vast field in front of her very eyes, letting the blood wash over her stunned, mad eyes. Since the Caribou High Priest, in an act of utmost cruelty, declined to end her suffering, and left Twilight to watch the fate of her people for all eternity.

Madness. It had been all-consuming, all-powerful. She had screamed, she had raved, she had tried to power past her snapped horn to do magic, to fly with nubs that were no longer wings. Twilight had pounded her hooves into the cage till they cracked and bled, slammed her head about till it too bled, filling her eyes past the point of seeing. She had hallucinated her friends, many times, prancing about her, awash in blood, chanting. Always chanting.

Your fault.

Your fault.

Twenty years, alone with her guilt and her mind. No Caribou could approach the city on pain of death, and they didn’t need to. It had long been stripped of anything valuable. It was a dead city. Twilight’s perch. ...it was a folly. Madness gave way to boredom, which gave way to the one solid rock left in Twilight’s mind. Logic. Knowledge. Twenty years is a very, very long time to think. And for an alicorn, it is a very long time to heal. Had the Caribou kept a guard on the fallen princess, they would have noticed the slow, gradual regrowth of her horn, and the jerking ugliness that were her wings, pulling and tearing from her back till they spread wide once more, the tips of her feathers now tinged red. They may have even noticed the madness in her eyes die away, and fill away with hate. But hate is a fast-burning fire, and it soon gave way to grief. Then thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness… to hope. And hope, to determination. Twilight Sparkle was an alicorn princess. THE alicorn of friendship and magic. The quintessential bookworm. She knew everything in the Canterlot library by heart, from Starswirl’s Grand Epic, to Celestia’s Memoirs, to Luna’s fiction section. And the entirety of Lovelight’s Treatise of Unlife.

Unlife. Undeath. Necromancy. The word of that particular branch of magic sent shivers up even the most radical of unicorns’ minds. To rip a soul from the aether, and to shove it into a body, bound only to the will of the caster… it was anathema to everything ponies stood for. Countless necromancers had risen time and time again, and even with their dark powers of death, they had fallen to the forces of the light. Of course, this had inevitably led all thought on the subject of bringing back the dead to be placed firmly in the realm of forbidden magic. But Lovelight’s hypothesis had intrigued Twilight Sparkle when she was just a filly, hiding in the bowels of the Royal Library, a miniature light glowing from the tip of her horn.

Love conquers all. Even death. The final sentence of that Treatise had stuck with Twilight, and it had been that line that slithered up in the depths of her madness, and tapped the logical core of her soul.

You can bring them back. All of them.

Could she really? But they would be shells of their former selves, undead. No more births, no more-

The Elements.

Are with the Caribou. Twilight angrily stomped a hoof, making the cage sway lightly in the breeze.

Whom are at war again. You can hear the cannon blasts, the thermo magical explosions. Could they truly fight a war against you again?

The death toll had been horrific on both sides, it was true. Pony magitechnology had been at its prime, and it had only been the use of the thermo magical weapons that had stopped the ponies from slaughtering the more numerous, but less-advanced Caribou. Seemingly less advanced, at least.

You know how they work now. You can stop the weapons, or make them yourself. An army of vengeful ponies, cutting into the heart of the Caribou nation, to take back the Elements.

Twilight had gulped thickly, temptation forming. The Elements of Harmony could bring her people back to life, once they had them again. Their magic was second-to-none, and undeath had been “cured” by them before. But the psychological damage…

Will be massive. But revenge is a powerful motivator, as is a promise of a return to the old Equestria.

But even if Twilight Sparkle, could raise ponies back from the dead, she certainly couldn’t from the cage. It repelled all magic, and she had no reach-. From high above, there was a soft, feminine squeak, and the cage rose a few inches.

“Again!”

“Come on, hurry! Put your flank into it!”

Another tug. For a few moments, disbelief warred with apathy, but another jarring tug broke through the fog, and Twilight jerked her head up. The spiked chain was slowly disappearing into the fog above, and hope slowly began to swell in Twilight’s greyed heart. Ponies HAD survived! Through all the hell they had gone through, her ponies had managed to survive it. The idea began to cement itself on her soul. She owed it to these ponies to bring back the Equestria they had lost so suddenly, to protect it. To protect them. The cage slid into the fog above, and its misty coolness swirled around her, residual sky magic infusing Twilight’s cramped wings. Tears formed in the back of her eyes as memories of her pegasi friends rose up…

The cage suddenly yanked itself up and over the edge of the cliff, clanging loudly and tossing Twilight against the side.

“G-got her!”

“T-thank the Princesses…”

“Tw… twilight?”

Colors burned into Twilight’s deprived eyes as she looked up at her rescuers. They were mares in their prime, four of them total, all of them dusty and haunted. Recognition struck in an instant. Dressed in a dark red cloak, her barrel covered with metal plates and a spear jutting from her saddle, was Applebloom. She was taller and broader than Twilight remembered, and just the sight of her haunted eyes, steeled with a bitter determination. Grunting softly, the young mare got to work trying to open the cage door, giving Twilight time to look at the rest of her rescuers. Sweetie Belle was, frankly, a bombshell now. All long legs and slender horn, she had wrapped herself in a pale white cloak, a pair of swords hooked onto the sides. Her wide, expressive green eyes were hollow- the poor mare had seen, and likely done, horrible things.

Standing close to her side, a slim wing gently hugging the unicorn mare close, was Scootaloo. Lanky and tall now, she had wrapped herself in a dull grey cloak, and her barrel and head were both strapped into the armor of the old Aurora Guard, cyan blue metal and rainbow crest. Hoof-blades were strapped to her forelegs, wickedly sharp and well-polished. Judging from the look of relief and the strain lines down her face, Scootaloo had gotten her friends through much to get them here. And the scars on her face…

Something blonde shifted beside her, and Twilight’s head snapped around… and she stared, a smile, for the first time in years, spreading over Twilight’s cracked muzzle.

“D-dinky?”

The tiny apprentice she had taken in all those years ago had certainly grown. As tall as Sweetie Belle, Dinky was wrapped tightly in a black cloak, a red choker on her neck, gleaming softly with active magic. Leaning against her shoulder was a bladed staff, the pommel of it being a dark red ruby the size of a bunched hoof, also gleaming with magic. Her blonde mane was tied back into a ponytail, and her golden eyes shimmered with tears. As the cage door finally fell open- Applebloom muttering in relief- the unicorn darted to the opening, holding out a hoof.

“P-princess,” she whispered, voice tight with emotion, “L-let… let me help you.”

Help her? Peering around slowly, Twilight gazed long at each of her rescuers. Ponies, dressed for battle. Scarred, wounded, frightened… Twilight could still remember them all as carefree fillies, more concerned with cutie marks and understanding their feelings about other colts and fillies. Now they were fighters all. Survivors of a holocaust unlike anything ponykind had ever been through before in its history. They all looked to her now, trying to show that strength, beneath a consuming ocean of loss. With a soft grunt, Twilight extended a hoof, pushing herself out as Dinky tugged her up firmly.

Freedom. Pops and creaks echoed through the stillness of the Canterlot Castle as Twilight stood tall for the first time in ages, rolling her neck and stretching her wings wide. There was a small squeak from Scootaloo, and Twilight peered at her.

“T-they… c-cut those off,” she murmured, eyes wide in awe, “I-I s-saw them… at…”

“The Caribou know nothing of ponykind,” Twilight replied firmly, a small smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth, “Leaving me alone was their biggest mistake. Come here, my little ponies. Please…”

Dinky was kneeling in front of her in the barest instant, trembling slightly. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo were next, heads bowed, and Scootaloo’s wings spread wide. But Applebloom stayed put, ochre eyes boring into Twilight with the power of a diamond drill. Twilight met her gaze full on.

“Can you… fix, any of this, Twilight?” she asked softly, the only sign of stress being the tremor in her hooves as she stood tall, “Can you make any of this better? Ponies are… gone. Dead, here. Imprisoned with the antlerheads.”

She closed her eyes, an interplay of emotions racing across her face before she decided on bravery.

“I ain’t gonna just sit back and play hoofmaiden to you, Princess. E-either… either you help us f-fix this, or I’m leaving. ‘kay?”

“Applebloooom,” Sweetie Belle squeaked out, looking equally flabbergasted and incredibly nervous as she peered back and forth between her and a bemused Twilight.

“Just as stubborn as Applejack,” Twilight whispered, smiling at the deep blush that raced over Applebloom’s face.

She scanned each of them, twitching a hoof to bid her rescuing ponies to rise. With a sweep of her wings, Twilight tugged all of them close to her chest, nuzzling their cheeks soothingly.

“I’m going to fix this, girls,” she promised solemnly, “And I’m going to bring back everypony that we lost. That… is a promise.”
***************************

Canterlot had been spared destruction by a direct thermo magical strike, but instead had been hit from within. Dozens of small biomagical devices, hidden by Caribou infiltrators, had activated during the bombardment, casting a green fog over the city that choked all life out of those that breathed it in. When refugees, survivors of the thermo magical devices that had obliterated life in the rest of Equestria, made it to their capital, all they found were the bodies of thousands of stallions, mares, and foals, impaled on the front gates amidst a cloud of death. The poison had long since faded away, but the bodies of the fallen remained, kept intact by the properties of the magical fallout that had blanketed the nation days after the Final Attack. Left as a shrine to the death of ponykind. Soon to be the catalyst for its return.

As they approached the wall of stakes, the mares winced and turned away from the bodies. Sweetie gave a small sob, and Dinky closed her eyes tightly, tears dripping down onto the soiled street below. But with twenty years of madness and sight behind her, Twilight fought down the horror of seeing her subjects so mercilessly treated. It was time to end it. Activating her magic, Twilight revelled in the euphoric feel of the arcane slithering up her spine and horn, pooling at the tip before blazing forth in innumerable tendrils of power, carefully picking the bodies off their stake prisons and holding them up to catch the light of the Sun-Moon. The dual orbs gleamed in a strange twilight above the city, and the sickly light combined with Twilight’s violet glow to form an ethereal aurora above the magical display.

She gazed up at the broken bodies above her, letting the tears flow as they rose up, but keeping her emotions in check. Drowning now would do no good for anyone. Not for Dinky and the Crusaders, and certainly not for these ponies. None of them deserved this. Certainly not the filly with the purple mane and blue body, sightless eyes twisted in agony. Not the older stallion, muzzle broken in pain from falling during the agonizing throes that the poison had put them all through. Not the young green student, still dressed in her uniform, a messenger bag hanging from one shoulder, bulging with the works of a lifetime, trying to make herself better. Twilight’s ponies deserved better. With a small gasp and sob, Twilight let the love for her ponies bloom from her heart, tapping into the magical stream of her horn. Keeping her eyes wide open, she watched with satisfaction as her magic began to glow cherry red, surging into each and every pony body hanging in the air. Red energy filled their eyes and covered their wounds, and more than a few began to stir, gasping or crying out as memories raced back to their long-dormant minds. Foals sobbed and cried for parents, and parents screamed for their foals. Soldiers cried out in surprise, looking around for weapons that had been stripped by Caribou looters. Panic and fear surged through them all, a cacophony of sounds that threatened to overwhelm them all, to activate old pony stampeding genes, to-

“Be calm, my little ponies.”

Quietness rippled through the ponies as they stared down in awe. Twilight was taller than she once looked to them, taller and more regal. Her mane and tail billowed without a breeze, auroras mingling with streaks of purple-red magic. Her eyes, once a soft violet, now glew with a bright red aura, radiating power. The crowd was slowly lowered to the ground, and practically fell to their faces in front of their Princess, some still openly sobbing. The scorched bodies of Celestia and Luna, impaled, bloody, broken, and alive, had been showed to them all before their own impalement. It was a spirit-shattering move, crippling even. So to see a Princess of Equestria, alive and somewhat well… With a clatter of hooves, a little colt broke free from a clinging teacher. He was a little ball of brown fur and blue mane, his eyes and the impalement wounds on his neck and belly glowing bright red, and he latched tightly onto Twilight Sparkle’s leg, crying loudly.

And the Princess didn’t hesitate. With a single scoop of her broad wing, she lifted the colt onto her back, coiling her living mane around him possessively. With tears in her eyes, she turned to look each and every pony in the eyes, to let them see the love and determination that burned in her very soul. The soul of Friendship, of Love. Of ponykind itself. They were Reborn.

Author's Notes:

Necromancy... that's good? My word! Let me know what you all think!