Equestria Revived

"Zombies?" Luna froze stared at the Night Guard reporting.

"Yes, Princess. It is the best way we could put it. We secured the great Canterlot graveyard on the hill and hurdled the creatures into a corner. We lost Celestial Guard Early Bird. So far, that appears to be the only Canterlot casualty." The lunar guard sighed. "What are your orders, Princess? The infestation has been handled but we can't keep them subdued forever. Should we attempt to annihilate?"

Luna shook her head. "Perhaps we should test them, to better understand the degree of magic we're dealing with. Is there any way to safely transfer them to the sub dungeon?"

"Well, yes, but...," the guard tensed her wings, "Some of the guards in my team are more... reluctant. They were once our family, ponies, citizens of Canterlot! I was hoping perhaps your highness could assist."

Luna frowned. "I cannot change the morality of my guards. But, maybe I could transfer them safely to the sub dungeon." She shrugged her shoulders. "Let me see if I can talk to my sister. In the meantime, make sure the creatures do not leak their way into the streets."

"Yes, my princess." Luna watched as the Guard flew quickly into the night. She trotted over to the study where Celestia was still locked away in.

"Celestia..." She said, knocking her hoof gently on the old door. "I could use your help."

Celestia cracked open the door. "I couldn't help but overhear."

"Well, things are going a little crazy out here."

"I know."

Luna winced. "Do you have any solutions?"

"Well, I've already been working on something," Celestia said with a light smile across her face, "but it's not really your concern at the moment. However, if you could help them transport the afflicted members to the dungeon, I would be much appreciative."

"You sure are good at being calm in these times, sister. You frighten me a little with that sudden optimism." Luna gave a nervous laugh as she tried to look over Celestia's shoulder to the study. "Should I gather the elements of harmony?"

Celestia's eyes widened. "No!"

"Huh? Why not?"

"Well..." Celestia sighed. "They're busy doing something. I already sent a letter to Twilight, and so far no reply." She adverted her eyes. "The Ponyville Stationed Guards said that there were minimum casualties, and that the Elements were out at the moment, but if anything happened to them we would be able to tell, right?"

Luna crouched. "I suppose your right again, Celestia."

"Why don't you attempt to contact them tonight? If they are somewhere safe they might go to sleep, right?" Celestia insisted.

"I'm going to have a very busy night tonight. I already have plans. I think I'll send out a message tonight once the dead have been dealt with and sent to their proper place." Luna gave her sister a grave look. "Just what do you plan on doing to them, Celestia?"

"Oh, just some tests and studies. I'll summon some of the higher of the magical students to assist. Remember to have the unicorns keep the field up." Celestia glanced out the window and smiled at the light pink glow. "Remember, keep your chin held high, and don't cry in front of the citizens."

"This is going to be a rough night for every pony." Luna grumbled. "I doubt I'll be able to rest for even a second."

Celestia laughed a little. "Talk about irony!" She smiled and tapped a hoof on her little sister's shoulder. "We will make it through this, Luna. Just try to stay optimistic."

Autumn had no idea how a five-year-old orphan could be more relaxed than her at a time like this. Every pony decided to wait for the zombies to dissipate, but that didn't seem to be happening any time soon so they decided once the sun came down just to stay there for the night. She watched Cherry, who had fallen asleep on the couch and wrapped herself in a throw blanket. Looking around her, she noticed that Whirlwind periodically stared out the front window, shaking his head, while pacing back and forth.

Autumn could hear the zebra in the kitchen, she thought she heard the filly call her 'Zian', though the zebra hadn't said anything since Cherry started crying. Once Cherry calmed down a bit, Autumn noticed that she had made herself scarce, although she questioned on whether or not the zebra was a girl, but it was a fair assumption. Lost in thought, she looked blankly just past the other pegasus, who had helped himself to a bottle of hard apple whisky stored away.

Mech gave Autumn a smirk. "Something on your mind?"

Autumn popped out of being zoned out when the stark silence was broken. "Of course something is... this doesn't exactly happen every day."

"Yeah, I figured." Mech sighed with a smile. "Well, I certainly can't wait to see Canterlot again. Them rich unicorns may be stingy assholes, but sometimes they can make something good. I remember this one place... had really good pretzels... and the work uniforms weren't too shabby neither'." He laughed.

Autumn looked to her hooves. "I just hope my parents are okay. My mom went to Canterlot for a baking convention."

"You a baker?"

"You could say that." Autumn shrugged. "Well I guess I was."

Mech took a long drink of his apple whisky. "Yep. Life sucks."

"Huh?"

"Whelp, ponies are coming back from the dead, we're doing nothing about the wars going on in the country right next door, Depression is at an all-time high, so I guess I am feeling fan-tas-tic, if I do say so myself." He laughed a little. "You think I'm lying, too! But I'm not!"

Autumn frowned at the old stallion. "How can you be happy?"

"Don't mind him- Autumn is it?" Whirlwind said, trotting over to her and sitting next to her on the couch. "He gets like this after he takes his LUV."

"LUV?"

"Yeah, from his doctor back in Cloudsdayle. He's been on them for a little over a year now, twice weekly." Whirlwind glared at him. "But you really shouldn't drink after you take them, dad."

"Oh, I have a little to drink at the end of the world, sue me, I am shaking!" Mech got up and went upstairs. "I'mma only gonna be a minute, okay? I'm..." Mech yawned. "I'mma gonna lie down. Goodnight..."

Whirlwind rolled his eyes. "Sure..."

Autumn leaned over. "So... What's LUV?"

"Oh, it's a medication the changelings made. It needs to be better regulated, though. Who the hell even knows what's in them things." He sighed. "I'm guessin' once this rolls over half of Equestria will be hooked on the stuff." He rolled back his shoulders and looked over to Cherry, who was still fast asleep. "Poor kid."

"Yeah." Autumn said, leaning back, her hair bun falling down and resting at her shoulders.

"So what's with that fancy- dancy get up?"

Autumn tilted her head. "Huh? Well, it's not like I'm wearing a dress. It's just a jacket." She shivered a little. "It is pretty cold. I should really thank...," she frowned a little, "... well, I guess I can't really."

"Doesn't really answer why your wearing that, but okay."

"Oh, I was at a party. When it happened."

"I see." Whirlwind glanced over at Cherry again. "I wonder what she's dreaming about."

"Could you wake her up a minute?" Zian said, coming out of the kitchen. "I made something to eat, she hasn't eaten all day."

"I doubt I could eat anything ever again after what I've seen." Autumn said, sighing a little to herself.

"Oh, hush now. You should eat something, it’s not healthy to skip meals." Zian gently smiled and trotted over to Cherry, gently tapping her on the side. "Cherry, I made something to eat, are you hungry?"

Cherry swiftly smacked Zian away. "I could hear you..." She yawned, then cringed in surprise. "Oh, I'm sorry, Miss Zian! Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, see? No Cuts, no bumps, no butternuts." Zian said softly.

Cherry smelt the air. "Wow! That smells so good!"

Zian offered a small smile. "It's cooked Vegetables. I hope you don't mind."

"Daddy won't mind!" Cherry smiled.

"Oh, um..." Zian left the room.

Cherry looked over to Autumn in confusion. "Miss. Autumn, why is Miss Zian upset? Did I make her sad?"

"Hey... I know we talked about this, but..." Whirlwind couldn't stop himself. "Do you know what 'dying' means?"

Cherry paused then smiled. "Oh, yeah, I know! He's where mommy is, but that's okay!" She shrugged it off.

"Your mom?"

"Oh, yeah! Her name's Sour Cherry! She looked like me, but liked sour candy... wait, but I like sour candy! So I guess she was a lot like me!" Cherry smiled and looked over at Zian balancing out two bowls of cooked vegetables and set them on the coffee table. "Oh, that smells super yummy! Thanks Miss Zian!"

"Your welcome." Zian smiled as Cherry ate. "Autumn, that bowl is yours. I'll go get yours, Whirlwind... hey, where did Mech go?"

"He's upstairs taking a nap. I'll go wake him up and get him to eat something." Whirlwind said, getting a bowl from the kitchen and fluttering upstairs.

Zian sat by Autumn, giving her a soft smile. "Surely you must be hungry?"

"Um... I mean, it does look and smell good... but..."

"No buts."

"But..."

"No buuuts~!" Zian shushed, smiling. "Come on, why don't you just take one little bite, huh?"

"Well..." Autumn blushed furiously and took a bite of a potato, then the world blurred as she hastily devoured the entire bowl, her eyes wide in pleasure, juice from the bowl dripping down her chin. setting the bowl back down, she blushed. "Do you have a napkin?"

Zian laughed a little as she wiped a cloth napkin on Autumn's chin. "I told you you were hungry, Muffins."

Autumn shied away. "I can clean myself, you know."

Zian giggled a little. "Oh, sorry, I've been living in the woods for, like, a year."

'Should just be common sense,' Autumn thought, but instead just smiled a little. "Uh... woods you say. Doing what?"

"I'm a student. Well, an independent student. I have my own shack in the Everfree forest not too far from here." Zian smiled. "I guess you could say I wanted to get more in touch with my roots."

Cherry looked over at them. "You should go to sleep."

They both looked over at her, but Autumn was the one that spoke up. "It already feels like I'm asleep. Hell this..."

Cherry glared at her, "...swear word..."

"... Dang this might be a bad nightmare."

"I'm pretty sure I'm awake." Zian said.

Cherry nodded. "You really should go to sleep."

Zian shrugged. "Well, I guess we should rest up until tomorrow."

"I don't know; I think I'll stay up a little." Autumn said.

"Well... I guess we could sleep in shifts incase those monsters outside find out we're in here. That would be terrible." Cherry offered. "I can stay up a little with you and wake up one of the others when you get sleepy!"

"We're probably going to be doing a lot of moving tomorrow, you guys can get your stuff together..." Zian frowned a little. "Are you sure you don't want to take a nap first."

Autumn rolled her eyes. "Fine, but I doubt I can get to sleep. You didn't even see the worst of it, it was terrible out there at the park!"

"I can take first watch." Whirlwind said, making his way downstairs with an empty bowl. "My dad's asleep in our room."

"I think we have a spare room you can sleep in, Miss. Autumn." Cherry said, getting up.

"Oh, is this some kind of hotel, too?" Autumn said, looking around. "I never really went here before..."

Autumn thought the room was nice, especially compared to her closet-sized room in the bakery. The drapes were long and surprisingly airy, taking a moment she opened the drapes and peeked out the tall window. She wasn't exactly sure what she was expecting, maybe hoping she'd realize she was asleep the whole time.

The outside was much darker, they had been using candles since the moon went down, they figured that the magic power grid, at least for their area, might have been down with the current events. Judging by how the street lights were dead and the outside was a barren void, Autumn assumed that perhaps the ponies at the power plot must have decided to screw doing their jobs and huddle waiting for death.

'Or maybe they're already dead...' Autumn felt like slapping herself at how morbid she'd been thinking that night. And so she did, and she frowned at the pins and needles pain in both her face and her fore hoof afterwards, then sighed. Well, at the very least that meant she wasn't dreaming. She wondered if that was a good thing or not.

She went back to the window and, out of the corner of her eye, something stuck out. She looked over, and there it was, just barely there yet such an important focal point. It was the moon, illuminated a bright strawberry red.

Autumn had seen harvest moons, sure, but nothing quite like that. Harvest moons were orange, not red. Was it a coincidence? A sign? Maybe a warning? Maybe it was a sign from Luna. Autumn sat on her thoughts while staring at the moon, the distant sounds of the night soaking into the room.

"Maybe I should go to sleep," she thought, trotting to the bed. She laid down on top of the blanket, waiting.

Mild light washed the room from the slightly opened drapes, just enough that she could blow out her candle and still just barely see the rest of the room. Working her way under the throw, she relaxes and embraces the dark into a calming slumber.

"Please, remain calm!"

Autumn found herself in a large space of a room, a swirling purple void. looking around her, she saw several different ponies looking just as confused as her, or furious yelling questions into the void.

Looking where most of them were looking, she saw her, the alicorn princess of Equestria, Princess Luna.

"Why is this happening?!" Yelled a confused older earth pony.

"Please, I know every pony is very confused and upset." Luna said. "I merely wanted to urge every pony to head towards the nearest sealed city, they are safe and the dead seem to not be able to break the seal..."

"You want us to abandon our homes?!" yelled out a pegasus.

"Is Appaloosa safe?" said a mare around Autumn's age.

"Yes, only momentarily if you live in a small village. Stay somewhere sheltered at the moment, tomorrow we will be sending our search parties to take you to protected cities. And, yes, Appaloosa has grown large enough to be considered a major city, so I have sent several guards there to raise an alicorn level threat shield, it should be safe now."

The mare sighed in relief.

Luna smiled. "We are working out solutions, I cannot stay long, and I will be leaving soon to speak with another quarter of Equestrian citizens. I just wanted every pony to know that we have the situation under control, and once this is over, we will all be able to go back to work and our homes."

"What about the power plants?!" Said a mare about the age of Autumn's mother, several others chanting in agreed uproar. "The power in Stratusburg has been out for hours!"

"The power plants in Cloudsdayle, Newhorseleans, and LasPegasus, are temporarily down, however we have ponies who will be working on it after the threat level has been lowered. Just remain calm in the meantime and relax." Luna insisted. "Powerful magic is responsible for this. But we will prevail and live another day! We will survive!"

The dream void seemed to fade away, giving way to an inky black.

Cherry smiled and brought Whirlwind upstairs to help her pack her saddlebag. Whirlwind looked around at the pastel green walls with purple black cherries about the boarders. "Cute room," Whirlwind said.

"My grand mare helped paint it!" Cherry smiled, getting out a small saddlebag. "We used to use this to go camping, so it has a lot of extra space!"

"That should be helpful." Whirlwind looked around at her things, piles of small folded pieces of paper on shelves. "I didn't know you knew origami..."

“Huh? Oh, yeah! Mr. Ori showed me how. He stayed at the inn a while ago…"

“Really now.” Whirlwind glanced outside. “Dang that moon is unsettling.”

“Swearword!” Cherry huffed.

“Huh? What ‘dang’?”

“You get away with it this time, but next time you won’t get off so easily!” Cherry giggled. “You should be going to bed after Miss. Autumn gets up for her turn, Mr. Whirly!”

“‘Whirly’? You can call me Whirlwind, you know.”

“I know! But I like Mr. Mech’s name for ya’ better.” Cherry tilted her head. “Is Mr. Mech really your daddy?”

“Well, of course he is!” Whirlwind said with a smile. “Couldn’t you see the striking resemblance? Well, I suppose I am a little more on the washes my mane side of the style spectrum…”

“Is your mom back in Cloudsdayle?” she said, curiously packing away a bright red umbrella and a pink raincoat.

“Oh, well… I guess. In a way.”

“Why didn’t she come with you? Is she sick?”

“Well… I lost my mom a little while back. But it’s okay, sometimes that kinda thing just happens, you know?”

Cherry frowned a little. “Did I make you sad? I’m sorry!”

“Just a little. But it’s okay. It’s a good kind of sad.”

She paused a bit, sitting by him on the floor. “How did she die?”

Whirlwind laughed a little. “I probably shouldn’t be discussing death with a four-year-old foal…”

She huffed in rage. “Hey, I’m fine, thank you very much! I turn six in spring, but I get to go to school a whole year early! I’m practically an adult!” She turned her face in frustration, gently punching him in the side.

He shrugged. “Well, good enough for me. To tell you the truth, she just kind of… faded away. After she got sick she just kinda… shut herself off from every pony. She probably could have lived longer if dad or I actually did something… but I guess it was her choice. I knew she still loved me… even if her decisions were a little bad at times.”

“Oh.” Cherry wiped the slightest mist of tears from her face. “I never really knew my mom. Daddy never told me how she… you know.” She patted his back and smiled. “I guess that means we’re the same!”

“In some morbid way, I guess I can’t disagree.”

Cherry got up and stretched, then something important flashed in her memories, something she almost forgot about. “Oh! Come with me, I almost forgot something very, very, super-duper important!”

“Huh?” Whirlwind followed her out to the master bedroom at the end of the hall, where she had already dashed in and made a dash for the closet, lighting her way with her little lantern she used to catch moths with in the summer.

“It’s in here!” Cherry smiled, finding a shoe box labeled ‘pictures’. Opening the lid, she found only a couple old pictures she could barely see in the low light, but she knew enough. “Hey, look Mr. Whirly!”

Whirlwind trotted over to look at the picture Cherry floated out with a smile. In it was a young stallion that looked like a younger version of Flambe, but… happier, less old and exhausted, and next to him was a pink mare with a dark red mane and a short stubby horn. “Well, It’s a good thing you didn’t forget this! You almost forgot to pack the most important thing!”

“Huh? What do you mean, pictures?”

Whirlwind smiled. “Your family.”

What they saw that morning was not exactly what they were expecting. Of course, they were not exactly sure what they were expecting, but it most definitely wasn’t that. Opening the window, looking over the street, they expected to see the mural of macabre from the day before, but to their shock it was a lot, well, cleaner.

It most certainly wasn’t how it was the day before, scorch marks from the explosives and the blood stained into the cobblestone roads were proof enough that something fowl and disturbing happened the day before, but everything else- the zombies, the stray body parts, the guts and gore, seemed to just be hauled off somewhere like a custodian just cleaned up the town while every pony slept.

Regardless of how strange the outside world looked that morning, they trudged off onto their first day towards Canterlot, and things seemed to be looking good, but just in case something did happen, Mech made sure to arm every pony with something from the museum, and Cherry agreed, so long as they all agreed to return them when they were done. And so every pony started their trek to Canterlot, taking the main road through the Everfree Forest, armed with several deadly weapons and an optimistic attitude. Things finally seemed to be looking up, and the world seemed a little less grey and blood splattered.

But optimism is a privilege. And privileges and just as easily be ripped right from under your hoofs in a blink of an eye.