Warmth. For so long, cold had dominated every inch of Rainbow Dash’s mind and body. Mind-numbing, painful cold. So when that first ray of warmth caressed her cheek, the young flyer leaped in surprise. The warmth did not leave, instead curling around her warmly; a second ray wrapped around Rainbow’s stunned mind, feeling all the world like a hug. It had been so long since she had been hugged. Memories, so long forgotten in her bid to stay warm in the bleak emptiness that had been her home, began to resurge. An older male, purple furred and rainbow-maned, carefully preening her little wings when she was a foal. Rainbow Dash gave a small whimper, closing her eyes. A tongue dragging over her ears. A soft muzzle nudging and massaging her wings joints. The laughter of her friends… Her friends…

The warmth began to pull, and Rainbow opened her eyes in surprise, peering around. For the first time since she had been trapped in this cold nightmare, Rainbow Dash could see light in the distance. A bright, cherry red light, pulsing like a heart, gleamed in the far-off distance, and the loving warmth was pulling Rainbow towards it. Voices began to trickle down from the light. Yells, whispers… crying and laughing, the sounds of crashing hammers and wood being sawed. Where was she going? Was she finally going to the Summer Fields? Had Rainbow Dash finally served whatever penance was needed? As the light began to overtake the young pegasus, a single, familiar voice rang through her mind.

“Welcome back, Rainbow Dash.”

“Twi-?”

Waking up hurt. An involuntary groan forced its way past Rainbow’s cracked lips as consciousness reared its ugly head. Every inch of her body hurt, especially her chest and… her… side… Memories, so long submerged underneath the cold and the dark, surged back with a vengeance. The cold, oily grasp of the Caribou magic on her beaten, exhausted body. The heat and the scent of sweat and blood as Rainbow was mounted in the mud by a snarling, ugly Caribou male. Her tail involuntarily flicked down immediately to cover her shame.

“R-rainbow?”

That got the mare’s attention. The voice was huskier, sounding remarkably like Spitfire from the Wonderbolts. But the tone was different, and that little crack near the end… Ignoring the pain of the twilight around them, Rainbow Dash forced her eyes open. Scootaloo’s face dominated her vision, eyes wide and ears splayed to either side of her head. She was definitely different. The scar running down her left cheek for one, or the red, slitted eyes, and definitely the cute little fangs poking past her lips… but, still.

“S-scoots,” she whispered, voice dry and near-silent, “Y-you got big.”

Emotion rolled over Scootaloo’s face- surprise, indignation, humour… it was enough to force Rainbow to, painfully, roll to her side, hissing at the numbing ache that arced along her hooves. The movement triggered more memories. Screams as ponies all around Rainbow were beaten and abused, and utter shame from not being able to help them more. The horrific screams coming from a pile of Caribou around Fluttershy. A hiccuping sob broke through Rainbow Dash’s memory, and an orange blob immediately attached itself to the cyan pony’s side, soft, leathery wings curling around her back.

Feathers, softer than air, caressed Rainbow’s cheek, and she peeked shakily through her stringy, matted mane. Twilight was kneeling down on legs far longer and more slender than Rainbow Dash remembered, and her face and eyes were… different. Older, crinkled at the edges with pain and long-held anguish, but tempered by recent smile lines. Her barrel was wrapped in iron barding, ruby-red lines and pentagrams burning along it. Her mane was the biggest change. Instead of the two-tone, well-brushed length that it had used to be, Twilight’s mane now mirrored that of the Princesses, flowing in an ethereal breeze, with nebulae and small stars drifting through it. To Dash’s surprise, for a moment she saw her own cutie mark mirrored in the shifting, beautiful depths.

“It’s so good to see you again, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight whispered, voice shaky as she nuzzled along Dash’s cheek and ears, giving the fur a tender lap.

Cracking a weak smile, Dash lightly smacked her muzzle with an ear.

“D-don’t, I’m a-all gross,” she muttered, grinning up at her best friend with as much cheekiness as she could muster in her tired frame.

“Pfft...ahaha… ahahahaha!”

“Snrk…”

It probably wasn’t the time, nor the place, for it, but the two friends burst headlong into soft, hysterical laughter, darting forward to hug each other tightly amongst the forest of returning life.
********************

Reanimating her friends took a little more time than Twilight Sparkle had imagined, but that was mostly from the emotional weight of each spell. Their last memories were burned into Twilight’s mind each time, and tears were flowing thickly down her cheeks in the first few minutes. Rainbow Dash’s memories had been regret and horrific anger, emotions Twilight was quite familiar with, and had long since learned to channel. Moving over to Fluttershy, the Princess of the Dead was bombarded by utter, all-consuming fear and agony. Fear that causes one to lash out, to protect oneself and their friends with mindless abandon. Battering through the residual emotions with sheer force of will, and a soothing nuzzle from Rainbow Dash, Twilight poured her love and adoration for her quiet friend into her broken body.

To her surprise, a slim blue wing stretched out, primaries intertwining with the magical stream. Rainbow Dash’s head was bowed, and Twilight could sense every nuance of her passionate friend’s loyalty to her friends as their natural magics co-mingled. Even in death, Dash had never let her true Element be broken. As a gasp and an almighty shake ran through their buttery friend, Rainbow was the first to hold out a hoof to help her. And as they worked, each of her friends lending their strength and magic to Twilight, the Princess allowed herself to glance around the Forest.

Crowds of ponies were slowly gathering, watching their work silently. The young pony they had saved during the Battle, a slim unicorn mare with a grape cluster cutie mark, was sobbing into the flank of a pair of recently raised mares, her horn being re-attached by their powerfully glowing magic. Colts and fillies were clustered around Cheerilee, almost all of her body glowing red as the Love Necromancy covered the burns she sustained when she and her class were trapped in the schoolhouse to be burned alive. A white unicorn mare, both forelegs nothing more than red energy, stood beside her charcoal mate, nodding respectfully to Twilight and the Elements as they passed. Some ponies, like the Cake family, had already began to repair the damage dealt to their homes and businesses, dragging Caribou bodies out to be disposed of like so much trash.

Ponyville would rebuild. Equestria would rebuild. Twilight smiled as she nuzzled along Applejack’s cheek. Her friends were reborn. And soon, she hoped, they could return their homeland to the idyllic paradise it once was. Once watered by the blood of Caribou.
***************************

The Great and Powerful Trixie allowed herself an inner snort of derision as the Caribou mounting her tried desperately to drag a response out of her. The showpony was a master of body language and her own body however, and she could return a passive, calm face even if she was on fire. She knew from experience. Despite the size of the Caribou males, Trixie had long grown accustomed to their size, unlike the first few weeks of her internment in the Southern Breeding Camp.

Breeding Camp my flank, Trixie silently snarled, They can’t impregnate one of us. This is just one big brothel.

Brothels weren’t unknown in pony society. Indeed, among unicorns, it was something of a respected work program, as ancient unicorns had needed sex as a vital reliever of the stress that naturally builds from casting spells. Of course, earth ponies and pegasi saw it differently, and that affected the culture over the years, but that was beside the point. But this was hardly the clean, respectable place unicorn brothels had been, and still (normally) were. The ponies were penned in rows upon rows of gigantic stables, each mare locked into place by oaken beams placed around their bodies. Sitting down wasn’t allowed, and they had been forced to learn how to sleep standing up, or else be choked to death. Trixie had seen it happen.

With a contemptible snort of pleasure, the young Caribou blew his load inside of the mare, hind hooves stamping around on the filthy hay beneath them both. Trixie shivered a bit, rolling her eyes at the antics of her “partner.” She hated this part almost as much as the rape itself. The stupid self-assured look the Caribou had about them, the preening and relaxation they had from taking advantage of Trixie, and her fellow ponies. For once, this Caribou had nothing to say to her, merely smacking her rump with a shark hoof, leaving a sizable cut and welt. Never noticing the gleaming rune forming on his dick as it shrank back into its sheath, nor the sly grin spreading over the unicorn’s muzzle.

For you see, the Great and Powerful Trixie had a secret. A very naughty secret. She still had a horn. When Trixie had seen the Caribou sawing off the horns of other unicorns, she had formed a plan. When her turn came, oh, she screamed and cried out all right, but the horn that fell away was merely an illusion, her real horn notched, but still very much intact, and hidden by an invisibility cantrip. It had been touch and go, and many times Trixie feared she had been discovered, but the Princesses were seemingly with her. And it had lasted long enough for Trixie to form her plan.

For twenty years, she and her fellow ponies had suffered at the hooves of the Caribou. At forty-two, Trixie Lulamoon was nearing middle age, and it ate at her core that she had never been able to do anything with her life, her career… because of the Caribou. They had destroyed… everything. Her wagon. Her mother’s hat. Her homeland. Possibly, her chances at children. Bitter, angry tears formed in Trixie’s eyes, and power began to fill her horn. So very soon…

A buzzer rang in the distance, and every mare in the stable perked up. As much as they hated the reason, they all still loved to see more of their kind. Stallions, torn and exhausted from days of working in the quarry outside of the camp, were prodded in by Caribou guards. They wanted the ponies to breed, in order to have more mares and stallions to use for their breeding programs. Already, a generation of ponies was at the time to be placed into stables of their own. Trixie had not contributed to that. As much as she wanted foals of her own, she could not in good conscience bring them into this kind of life. So, very carefully, she always had a magical condom formed around the stallion’s member when they used her. No… not ‘used.’ They were prisoners, as much as her.
But today, there would be no breeding time. With a shake of her head, she released the cantrip about her horn, letting the magic glow brightly as she activated her runic spell. It had taken nearly twenty years, but Trixie had finally managed to “service” all the guards at the camp, before any could be transferred out. Service… and curse. Explosions ripped through the camp. In her magical sight, Trixie could see each Caribou as they screamed, magic tearing through their members with white-hot power, before causing each of them to explode in a shower of gore. It was very hard not to cackle evilly.

But their deaths were most certainly not the end of it. This kind of magic was… forbidden, but Trixie did not have the luxury of rules. With a snarl, she tossed her head, drawing in the black, shrivelled souls of each Caribou, and the gleaming, oily power of their blood. Cracks the color of ebony ran down Trixie’s horn, but she couldn’t let that stop her. If she was going to get them out, she would have to give up… everything. Power flooded into Trixie with a magical roar, burning away every inch of fear and self-loathing that had festered in Trixie’s soul. With a sickening crunch, two wings burst from Trixie’s back with a spray of blood, causing the stallion in her stall to neigh in surprise, rearing back.

Putting her hoof up on the stall, Trixie let the building pressure scream out, magic shattering and breaking every lock and chain in the camp. The wooden walls rippled and crunched , warping as the magic rolled from Trixie’s changing body in waves. With cries of surprise, pegasi watched in shock as their wings, sliced off for years, regrew, blood and viscera from the Caribou congealing and rebuilding the limbs they had lost so long ago. Horns reformed, and unicorns sobbed openly as their link to their magical birthright was restored. Pegasi wings flared and flapped, blowing ash-laden wing through the stable, shattering and carrying away the roof to crash yards away.

Trixie grit her sharpening teeth as she stumbled out of the stable, glaring through teary eyes around at the so-hated camp. The four separate stables had seemed to shatter as well, allowing the pony occupants to stumble out in a daze.

“TO ME, PONIES!” she roared, trained stage voice combining with her spiking magic to come out as a royal roar, “TO ME!”

Trixie hadn’t expected for things to work as well as this. Indeed, she had never truly expected the ponies to follow her lead once they were free. But follow they did; all three thousand, four hundred and twenty-two survivors of Equestria raced to gather around her, all deathly silent. Glancing back at herself, Trixie took in her twitching, blue-red feathers with a hesitant eye.

An alicorn, huh? ...very well then.

“Gather every weapon and battlewagon you can find,” she told her gathered people, wiping her eyes free of the tears that threatened to fall, “We’re free… and we have only one chance. We make for the Crystal Empire at first light.”

Author's Notes:

Phew! Just a few things.

(1. Judging from Granny, the ponies have a longer lifespan than humans. I believe their "prime" years go from about 20-50, before middle age sets in.

(2. Yes. Trixie is an alicorn.