"Twilight!"  A voice emanated from the doorway just a few steps away from the foot of the bed.  Twilight blinked a few times, trying to coax the tears away from her eyes, though her frantic and uncontrollable breathing refused to cooperate.  "Twilight, calm down.  It's me. You're safe."

The unicorn turned her head toward the voice, only to be greeted by a very large white blur imposing itself over the soft gradient of the entire room.  After her vision focused, however, she made out the sight of a very imposing, very stressed, very upset looking Princess Celestia.  Twilight, naturally, reeled back and tried to escape.

"Get the hell away from me!"  The purple unicorn shouted, scrambling over the sheets and using her hoof to whip a lamp from the Princess's bedside table at her.  Lying still for nearly two full days hadn't exactly done well for her aim however, so the thing just shattered on the floor in the middle of the room.

The Princess inhaled sharply in a brief expression of her annoyance with that little act, but she just gritted her teeth and sighed through them.  "Twilight, I need you to stay calm and listen to me right now.  I know you must be very confused, but I'll do my best to answer any questions you have if you'll just listen to me, okay?"

Twilight tried to keep her eyes locked with the Princess' but found herself forced to look away and shield her eyes from the bright light around her.  "Is this Canterlot?  Why am I here?"

"What do you mean?  I brought you back here after the incident at the Library."

"Tell me the truth, Celestia."  Twilight sat up and took a stance slightly more appropriate for her assertive tone of voice, and the little unicorn's refusal to use her former mentor's proper title caught the Princess off guard.  "I died. I know I died.  I remember what it's like being dead..."

"I wasn't lying to you, Twilight.  I did bring you back here...  It's not my proudest moment, but Equestria needs you.  I used the same magic that Iago taught you to bring back your life, or at least an effigy of it."

Twilight was awestruck at this gesture; not only did she not expect the Princess to be so honest, but she certainly didn't think that the tyrant of "new magic" would even have the capacity to use such ancient and profane powers.  "F-first you kill me...  the-en you bring me back?  What kind of sick..."  Twilight didn't want to let down her guard, but the anger and grief building up inside of her was too much to bear.  Twilight never wanted to hurt the Princess, and before she met Iago she never would have thought that the Princess could hurt her...  Now that Twilight and the rat were separate, though, neither her nor her memories were being manipulated.  She had a perfect recollection of the things she did, but she didn't have Iago inside her mind to filter what she felt, so she got to watch herself sadistically and brutally slaughter all of her friends, and even to remember how good it felt, but with the renewed capacity to feel remorse and empathy.  

The anger, the pain, the cold and calculated execution of dozens of ponies for absolutely no reason, and the manipulation of her friends up until their own murders just to tie up some loose ends all tore the unicorn up inside, but the last straw was her memory of just how willing she was to kill both Spike and the Princess at Iago's whim.  She felt weak, used, vulnerable, and utterly defeated, so she did the only thing she could do in such an instance: she broke down.

Celestia inched her way across her bed and tried to wrap a wing around Twilight, hoping to calm her down and keep her attention, but the weeping unicorn had retained a few habits from her time with Iago.  The instant Twilight felt the Princess' body close to hers, she flew right back into a conditioned rage.

"Get the fuck away!"  Twilight wrenched herself out of the Princess's grip and jumped out of the bed.  She wasn't very used to walking again, so she naturally fell to the floor as soon as her hooves bore weight.  This didn't stop her escape attempt, however, which only brought her to the pathetic state of crawling away.  "I'm a monster!  I'm a monster and you did this to me!"

"How dare you blame me for this!?"  Celestia immediately stood up, spread her wings, and spoke in the most intimidating voice she knew.  She desperately wanted things to go well, but the state of the world had taken its toll on her resolve, and her student had still committed treason.  "Do you have any concept of what you've done?  Do you even know why I brought you back?"

Twilight curled into a fetal position and stared in fear and anger just as a cornered animal might.  She'd never seen Celestia as angry as she was, which only added to the tension that had been situating itself between the two of them since they had locked eyes.

"You made a blood pact with Iago!  You slaughtered more than a score of ponies in Ponyville, you murdered your friends, the defenders of order in this realm, and you tried to kill me!  I loved you, Twilight Sparkle...  I loved you like my own daughter, so to see what you've done just breaks my heart in ways that you cannot even imagine.  Had you not been dead before your trial you'd have been burned at the stake for your crimes, do you understand me?"

"So what?  Did you bring me back just so that you could have me executed properly?"

"No. I brought you back because I know you, and I know you wouldn't ever have done those things if it weren't for that little...  Fucking rat.  I brought you back to prove to me that what I saw for myself and what the autopsy reports from Ponyville showed me weren't the actions of my most cherished, trusted, and beloved student alone."  Celestia's guard never fell for an instant during her entire rant, though Twilight could still see the pain in her eyes as clear as day.  

"It was me, though..."  Twilight refused to move herself from her position on the floor.  She glared up at Celestia, fighting back the well of tears growing behind her own eyes as her anger was, for the first time in months, directed back at herself.  "I made all of those decisions of my own free will...  I ignored some of Iago's advice and orders. I even fought back against him once or twice...  He showed me real power and I couldn't handle it... that's all he did."

"Twilight...  You're underestimating what he's capable of.  I've seen him trick good, upstanding ponies into doing some very dangerous and terrible things."

"No, Princess. I remember when he took my body away from me once...  He killed at least two police ponies while I was trapped away somewhere... I'll never forget that feeling.  I did what I did."

The tall, regal white pony, standing with a visage that had been a living metaphor for the strength of the very sun itself, had to force herself not to cry.  She had not suspected that Twilight's actions were entirely Iago's, but the possibility of her student having remained pure and good all throughout her confrontation was the single beacon of hope that Celestia had been wishing for.  However, as all good rulers ought to, Celestia could handle having her hopes and wishes shattered.  She had to for thousands of years.

"I suppose it's a good thing I brought you here for more than just a confession, then..."  Celestia's voice cracked during the subject change, but she managed to regain her composure before her disappointment became too much of a guiding force for her.  "Do you know exactly what Iago is?"

"I just thought he was a dragon that was too ashamed to admit he'd been beaten."

"He's not a dragon, but he's not entirely distinct from them either...  Iago is the most dangerous monster our people have ever faced, Twilight.  I'm sure he's told you things about me... some of which are true and some of which are exaggerated.  The point is that because of your actions, whether you're aware of it or not, he's back now."

"I assume you want me to take care of it?  That's why you couldn't just let me stay dead?"

"As a matter of fact, yes.  That's exactly why you're here.  You have two things now that I do not: an immunity to the plague I thought I had rid the land of two thousand years ago, and an intimate knowledge of how Iago thinks.  You spent three months with him, longer than any other pony since his birth, and diseases don't really do much to walking corpses.  Not only are you perfect for the job, but should you so choose, you'll have the chance to prove to me that you're not a cold blooded abomination like him."

"Couldn't you have taken me alive instead?"

"I was several months too late...  I assume he had you perform some rite involving your own blood, correct?"

Twilight froze and remembered the ritual with the candles.  "He asked me to slit my wrists...  How'd you know?"

"He preys on powerful unicorns. Their blood gives him the ability to use the kinds of magic that you witnessed.  The only problem is that he doesn't need their blood if he's walking around on his own, though that certainly doesn't stop him from gaining strength from it, and I've been seeing evidence of him being very much alive.  What do you think that means?"

"It means...  I resurrected him?"

"Well... yes... but there's something you're forgetting.  You can't truly resurrect someone without very great cost.  You need a sacrifice, life for life, which is why I put down that kind of magical practice a very long time ago.  You died months ago, Twilight. He just fooled you into thinking you were still alive."

"H-how is that even possible?"

"Iago is ancient and patient.  He's learned tricks that baffle even me, and he's grown so jaded and cold that I'm not even sure he knows the meaning of the word remorse anymore.  Regardless, your body died and he occupied a portion of it. The rest of it was saved as an empty vessel that he bound you to."

"How do I know you're not lying to me?  I-I-I ate... I drank...  I had sex, I felt it all!  How could I possibly have been dead!?"  This bit of information only added to Twilight's feeling of defeat.  She looked around the room, unsure of the reality of anything anymore.

"He used you, Twilight!  I told you.  Whatever he told you about me pales in comparison to the things he's done."  Celestia tried to make eye contact with Twilight, though the unicorn was staring off into the center of the room, seemingly unaware of everything that was going on around her.  "What did he tell you about me?"

"H-h-he said that you only lived this long because you refuse to have children..."

"That's true.  Once we have children we become mortal.  One can't bring life into this world without letting it go...  it's kind of a theme of nature, it seems.  What else did he tell you?"

"That you burned the Library of Ruthe...  The knowledge of eons along with anyone who worked within the entire archive."

"That's only half true.  I did have that library burned, yes, but that's because of the plague.  I saved as much literature as I could, but that wasn't very much, unfortunately.  Any book that was touched by the plague had to be burned lest it spread to the healthy.  For safety's sake we left the bodies of the staff in the library and performed their last rites from afar."

"You keep mentioning a plague, but Iago didn't say anything about that...  What's this plague?"

"In order for me to explain the plague I'll have to explain a little bit about Iago, but you'll have to trust me, I'll be saying things that sound... strange."

"Considering the circumstances I think I can give you the benefit of the doubt..."  Twilight tried to force a smile as she said this, slowly opening herself up to the princess and coming out of the fetal position.  Even though Twilight could feel the disappointment and heartbreak emanating off of the Princess, she still felt at least somewhat loved, much more so than when she was Iago's student.

"A long time ago, immortal dragons used to roam the skies of this world year round.  You couldn't look one place or another without seeing one of the beasts. It was terrifying.  They had a society all their own that ran on money and might.  That said, the weak and the foolish had no place among the dragons. A child who wasn't very big was always thrown into the forest and left to die, but as I'm sure you know, dragons are very hearty creatures.

"Dragon children left in the woods rarely actually died, and created a bit of a society of their own, unexposed to education or love, and left to their own survival in the extremely dangerous world within the Everfree Forest.  These runts, fools, weaklings, and other dragon rejects simply bred amongst themselves, eventually becoming so separate from dragons that they're now remembered as pseudodragons.  They were about as big as a pony's skull, temperamental as a sleepless Manehattanite, and usually not very intelligent.  Despite all of these familial disadvantages, one pseudodragon in particular thrived in the woods.  His name was Rylk, and he took after his dragon ancestors more than his immediate family.

"Rylk, like most dragons, was fascinated with the forces of life.  They're immortal creatures, so sooner or later they start looking into how they can create or preserve life indefinitely, though most don't get very far.  Rylk, the perverted imp that he was, loved to 'create' life in the slightly more natural sense...  He found out from a relatively early age that those of dragon blood are physically capable of breeding with almost any living creature.  He made hundreds of little bastard pseudodragon children, all of whom died from some horrendous defect or other, until he brought an abominable child into the world that I cringe to this very day just to think about.  He created the world's first magical rat.

"The first of these creatures we called the Harridan, and her children are known as the Rylkar.  She was a terrible creature, the size of a large dog with no eyes, no legs, and no tail, who gave birth from fissures and wounds all over her body, but only when she was burned by a terrible flame.  Rylk was happy to oblige her, so he sat in the woods, ever so proud of himself, burning his child until he was surrounded by grandchildren.  These grandchildren killed and ate Rylk, but the Harridan knew how to lead them.  They collected nesting material, found out how to bring fire into the world, and then propagated their own race.

"The Rylkar spread, grew, and produced more intelligent rats than the world had ever seen.  One of these rats, a natural born leader and one so intrigued by magic that he'd give anything for its pursuit, united the species under him.  I'm sure you'll recognize his stature as a large, dexterous, white rat."

"Iago..."

"Indeed.  He didn't want to be like his brethren at first however, and he came to me in order to learn.  I was happy to oblige for a time, until I realized just how twisted he really was.  Every single piece of magic that I taught him he used irresponsibly, so I kicked him out of my school.  Back then I wasn't Princess, but I did run a university for the magically inclined.  He took his own removal personally and swore vengeance against me, so he decided he'd bind the bodies of some of his deceased brothers and sisters, have them march to the center of town, and jump into the well...  Considering those creatures spent most of their time in their own filth, this spread a disease that was very lethal, very volatile, and very hard to control.  Within days a third of the city was sick, and within a week that third had died.  As far as anypony was concerned, that meant war."

"War?  But they're rats...  Aren't wars supposed to be fought by big pony knights in shining suits of full plate, gloriously battling on beautiful green fields until one side's strength and tactical intelligence outshines the others'?"

As precious as your naïveté once was, I'm afraid I have a few things left to teach you.  That's a somewhat idealistic presentation of war, Twilight.  It does nothing to explain the feelings of death that you'll be seeing from now on.

"Well of course ponies die. I died, Princess. I was never that sheltered.  I just don't see how you can go to war with a species smaller than my hoof."

"I understand that you know what death is Twilight, but until recently you've never even been inclined to kill.  You've seen a pony die by your own hoof, and from what I understand you consider yourself a monster for your actions, am I incorrect?"

"I don't suppose we can just let that little episode die along with me, can we?"

"That excuse would be a little more clever if I hadn't just brought you back up."

"Touché...  but yes. I do think I'm a monster for it...  Since you really want to know, now that I have my feelings back, the worst memory I have is hearing a colt's voice begging me to stop and I just... wouldn't."

"Twilight, here's a piece of advice I'd really appreciate it if you took.  This feeling of guilt that you have can do only one of two things; it can either ruin you, or remind you of who you are.  I suggest you not let it ruin you.  Keep that memory, though, because that's the smallest taste of war...  War is murder on a national scale, when two societies or races want the other dead and they collectively become animals to do it.  War isn't shining steel clashing against steel, it's rusty iron splitting open something's belly so that its guts, vomit, and any other fluids released by the blade mixes with the mud on the ground and seeps under your horseshoes; war isn't glorious, it's groups of foals as young as sixteen hacking each other apart, making their enemies beg for their mothers as they die screaming and crying and choking on their own blood; war is having to decide to execute prisoners: men, women and children, because you only have enough rations for your own men and you'd rather spare them the pain of starvation; war is the single worst thing that could ever happen to a civilization, and unfortunately you've already had a taste for it, so you're closest thing to a soldier I've had the displeasure of ordering around in two thousand years."

"What about the guards?"

"You've killed more ponies in the past three months than my entire guard has since you were born.  They take others alive and uphold rules and justice.  A soldier differs from a guard in that their loyalties lie only to those above them in rank, not to a doctrine or a set of beliefs.  If a leader orders soldiers to kill children, poison wells, or take royal family members prisoner for torture, interrogation, and eventual public execution, they do so.  Whether you accept it or not, you're a soldier now, Twilight; I brought you back, so you're my soldier.

"The Rylkar have returned, and Iago's found a Harridan, or made one, or something, but I've seen the plague first hand and it's exactly what I remember from my nightmares. I've seen the rats running in organized patterns, I've even begun to see common materials that the Rylkar of my day hunted for disappear from storehouses...  He's back, they're back, and this time I don't have an army to help me.  Everyone will die, Twilight.  Everyone is going to die a horrible, agonizing death unless you help us."

"What can I do?"

"Like I said, you know Iago and you're immune to the plague.  You can go into his nests and kill him, but you'll need to use this."  Celestia used her magic to levitate a small, pewter knife over from a drawer in her bedside table.  "This dagger has been enchanted to defend against the Old Magic, which makes it the very bane of dragonspawn.  It's lethal to Rylkar, and is something that I kept at my side day and night during the War of the Rats two thousand years ago.  I want you to have it, and I want you to cut off Iago's miserable little head with it."

"What if I fail?"

"You won't. You're bound by the same magic that Iago loves so much, so you can't die unless your phylactery is broken.  As it just so happens, I've got that right here."  Celestia nodded her head, showing Twilight that the inside of her golden tiara was engraved with the same runes that Twilight had spent hours memorizing in her basement laboratory.  "Unless I'm killed and this thing is destroyed, you can't be slain.  And I fully intend to keep myself and my subjects safe until the bitter end if I have to."

"I don't even know where to start...  Princess I've been dead for--"  Celestia interrupted Twilight's objections with a simple raised hoof.

"You don't have a choice, Twilight.  You did this, so you get to fix it, and you can't go back to sleep until I say so, understand?  We're at war, and I've done some pretty disgusting things already.  I brought you back from the dead, a fate that would seem a mercy to anypony who's done what you have, so damn it you are going to do as I say until I order you to die again, is that clear?"

"Princess..."

"Shut up.  When I give you a direct order, you obey it.  You are no longer a pony as far as the world is concerned. You are no longer my most promising student, and you are no longer even a subject of my merciful rule.  You are a tool; a tortured spirit whom I am giving the opportunity to take revenge on the individual who tormented it, so you will do exactly as I tell you when I tell you, and you will be grateful.  If we're going to have a problem with this I'll have you put down again and brought back without your free will.  You and I both know that I can do that."

Twilight, more than a little annoyed by Celestia's tone, wanted to come back with some kind of retort, but she couldn't.  She agreed that the Princess was right about her being a monster, and she wanted nothing more than to watch Iago's head roll, so she was more than willing to give in to her new status as supplicant.  "Alright, Princess, we won't have any problems.  I swear on my grave."  She did, however, crack a smile after that statement.

The Princess wasn't exactly amused, so she kept her tone formal and her body language firm.  Since Twilight had thrown diplomacy back in her face, she took her military training out of the vault to show her new soldier exactly what she'd be dealing with.  "The most recent reports of the plague have come from a city to the north and east of Ponyville. If I know Iago he'll skirt the forest hitting every single settlement he can until Canterlot is virtually surrounded.  He's raising an army, Twilight. Try and catch up to him."  Twilight didn't even acknowledge Celestia's words, but she did understand them.  "This is very secret.  If anypony finds out that I brought someone back from the dead to be used as a soldier in this war it'll mean my end... and now I don't have someone lined up to replace me, so I can't exactly have that happen.  Not even Luna is to know that you exist, are we clear?"

"Crystal..."

"Good. I've packed a few things that you'll need, as well as some literature on the Rylkar and on the plague from my private collection of notes.  Read it on your way, there's a chariot waiting for you on the royal balcony."

Twilight looked over toward the two glass doors that led out onto Celestia's porch.  Sure enough, two of the Princess's most trusted guards stood at the ready with a chariot.

"Princess?"

"Yes, Twilight?"

"I know you'll have trouble believing it, but...  I really am sorry.  For everything."

The final gesture had managed to touch Celestia's heart, regardless of the kind of scarring that Twilight's disposition had left on it.  "I'm sorry too...  We can't turn back time, though. You saw what happens when we try, so we'll just have to fix this the old fashioned way.  I promise you, Twilight, if you follow through with this, you will not be remembered as a butcher.  You'll be remembered as my beloved student and a tragic casualty of Iago's malice.

Twilight smiled and started to cry, but she turned her head toward the doors and stood to walk.  Celestia quickly wrapped a cloak around the unicorn and handed her a large satchel, trying to hide the tears welling up in her own eyes.

"You'll do excellently, Twilight. I just know it."