I’ll Bring You Home
Prologue; A Lonesome Shack
A small, wooden shack sat alone in the middle of a barren landscape. The ground was brown and lifeless, not a single blade of grass daring to break through the surface and touch the light baking the land from high in the sky. This place was not tainted by an evil or scorned for its people's deeds. Rather, it was simply forgotten and left to rot alone in its own small corner of the world. Unable to support much in the way of life, civilizations largely overlooked what known to the rest of the world simply as “the badlands”.
A figure made its way slowly through the sun-scorched land, shrouded in a tattered, midnight blue cloak to ward off the heat of the sun. The figure, equine in body but otherwise unrecognizable, trotted slowly towards the seemingly abandoned shack sitting atop a rocky mound. Heat radiated from the land waves, distorting and bending the image of the rickety old home.
Before the figure even reached the door it opened with an ear-piercing creek, the noise cutting through the silence filling the void of land. The figure halted momentarily, before proceeding towards the door, much more cautiously than they had been. Through the doorway blessed shade could be seen; the promise of a reprieve from the unrelenting sun.
With a few more steps they were inside the rickety building, shrouded in the cool darkness that masked everything inside from their unadjusted eyes.
“It is not very often that I see another roaming these lands,” an old, feminine voice croaked from somewhere within the darkened depths. “Not very often at all... rarer, still, are they a pony such as yourself.”
The figure's hooded eyes narrowed as they slowly adjusted to the dim light within the shack. It was plain, with only two doors in the main room; the one they had just come in, and one on the far wall. All around the small central room were shelves stocked full with boxes and bottles, most having totally blank labels or no labels at all. The clutter was kept to the shelves, the center of the room clear of anything except a small, circular rug. There were only a few dirty windows, closed by wooden boards rather than the last remnants of the shattered glass that still clung to the frames.
The voice had come from a crotchety looking mare sitting in a rocking chair in the corner. Her coat was a dull grey either naturally, from age, or simply from the dust. Her mane was thin and straight, white hairs streaming down her back and over her shoulders. The ghost of a golden hue still clung, but it had long since faded and been bleached by the sun.
“No one comes here without a reason, and that reason is always to find me. So tell me, what is it you seek?” The old mare asked, blinking her pale blue eyes as the pony shut the door behind themselves.
The cloaked pony hesitated, instead opting to look around the room they found themselves in.
Smiling, the mare stood from her chair. “Come now, rainbow one; you reek of desperation. Why have you come to me?”
The pony started at such an identifying trait, one they had thought well-hidden. The old mare just laughed a wheezing, breathy laugh. Sighing, the cloaked pony lowered their hood and revealed their dulled, dusty rainbow mane.
The old mare grinned a toothless grin. “There you go, Miss Rainbow Dash, isn't it so much nicer without that hood of yours? Now tell me what ails you.”
Rainbow gave the mare a suspicious glare. “How do you-”
“I deal in secrets, dear. If you wish for it to be hidden, I see it plain as day. Of course, I do have some troubles dealing in the unhidden aspects of life,” the mare cackled, motioning to her dull, lifeless eyes as she moved carefully across the rug on her floor.
“Then you already know why I'm here,” Rainbow deadpanned, examining the old mare's cutie mark as she went over and started rummaging around on her shelves. It was a half of a pomegranate, with three seeds laying in front of it starting to sprout. .
The old mare pulled a jar off the shelf, too coated in dust to see its contents. She took off the cap and sniffed it before nodding in approval. The cap was put back on and it was carried with her back to the rocking chair. “I might, but you'll never get anywhere in this world without having to ask for help from time to time.”
Rainbow frowned, but eventually relented, sitting down on the carpet in the middle of the floor. “I need you to bring somepony back for me.”
“Back from where, my dear?”
“Back from the dead.”
Again the mare laughed. Or perhaps it was a coughing fit. “You know that’s impossible. I’m afraid your search is futile.”
“Please,” Rainbow seemed unphased by the answer. “I need your help. Please.”
Perhaps it was the desperate, pleading tone or the look in the pegasus’s eyes, but for a moment the elder frowned, looking straight at Rainbow despite her lack of vision. “I gather she was very important to you.”
“Please,” was all she replied, hanging her head.
There was silence for a time, while the grey coated mare seemed to consider the request. Eventually, she said; “It’s no easy task, you know. There’s a reason it’s called impossible.”
Rainbow shook her head. “It wouldn’t be the first impossible thing I’ve done.”
She took another long moment simply gazing at Rainbow Dash, nursing the jar in her hooves. Eternities of silence passed before she spoke again. “Are you prepared to give your very soul to bring this pony back? Should you fail a fate worse than death awaits you.”
“I need- Equestria needs her back. I don’t care what happens to me,” Rainbow Dash responded firmly, a fire burning in her voice that the old mare seemed to pick up on.
“I can help you,” she said slowly, “but it won’t be easy, nor do I work for free.”
“Name your price. Anything.”
The mare chuckled quietly. “You are far too eager, but you’ll soon be needing a little confidence, I suppose. Tell me, have you heard of the titan arum? It’s commonly referred to as the corpse flower after the stench it emits. There’s more to its secrets, however. Secrets that only those who know the truth of the badlands can hope to discover.”
Rainbow frowned, looking out the window at the dry and desolate landscape. “A flower? Nothing grows out here.”
“Look again,” she prompted, waving her hooves around, gesturing beyond the walls of the shack. “What do you see?”
Unsure what she was supposed to be looking for, Rainbow complied, moving over to the window and looking out. She was used to the landscape by now; it had taken days to find this place. Outside was nothing but dry, cracked dirt and dead or wilting plants. “Nothing,” she answered, “all the plants out there are dead.”
“Exactly!” The mare shouted excitedly, though it was no less breathy than usual. “All the plants are dead. But dead plants don’t grow. That is the secret of these lands; it’s not that nothing grows, it’s that whatever grows here dies. Or, more accurately, whatever grows here is killed. These badlands are like a vacuum; anything that resides here too long has its very life sucked out of it into the land, where it lays dormant, just waiting to be tapped into.
“And that is what we can use to bring your dear friend back. The titan arum can use that magic to grow an actual corpse; the smell is no mere coincidence.”
“I don’t need a corpse,” Rainbow growled, “I need a pony.”
The mare made a show of sighing. “I can grow your friend a new body, but her soul is another matter entirely, which brings me to what I need from you; first, you must venture to the Land of the Dead and find her soul. Second, I need a particular flower that grows only in the Fields of Elysium to bind her soul to the new body. Lastly, as payment, you must bring me a special fruit that grows only in the underworld.”
“Deal,” the pegasus said without a second of hesitation. “How do I get to the Land of the Dead?”
“You haven’t even begun to grasp the task ahead of you,” she said, shaking her head sadly, “but I suppose we have a deal. Come back to me in one week prepared for your journey; I’ll have everything ready for you to cross the Acheron. Oh, and one last thing I need; a sample of your friend’s magic. Anything will do - a feather, a clipping from her hoof, a strand of hair - anything so long as it was once a part of her. The flower will need a base to begin growing the body.”
A saddle bag hidden beneath her cloak was flipped open and Rainbow rummaged around in it for a moment, finally extracting a blackened brush. A few hairs were still clinging to the bristles. She tossed it into the mare’s lap. “Will that do?”
She examined it with her hooves a moment, carefully plucking a strand of hair and smelling it, noting the faint scent of ash that clung to the brush as she handed it back. Eventually, she nodded. “Yes, that will do.”
“Good. I thought I might need something like that. I’ll be back in a week,” Rainbow dropped the brush back into her bags before turning away. She was already on her way out the door, once more flipping up her tattered hood, when she stopped. “Thank you, Miss-”
“Harvest,” she replied with a small smile. “Just call me Harvest.”
“Thank you, Harvest.”
Harvest laughed as Rainbow took off, a rainbow trail arching across the sky. “Don’t thank me just yet,” she muttered, standing from her chair and selecting an empty jar off one of the countless shelves, safely stowing a few strands of purple mane. “You have no idea what’s coming.”
Rainbow Dash soared as quick as her wings would carry her across the brown skies of the badlands. Even the air here felt wrong; thick and oppressive. Her mind wandered as she set her sights on the distant mountains of Canterlot as a marker, hurrying back to Ponyville.
Ponyville…
How long had it been since she’d been back home? More than half a year, at least. She’d all but circled the world, tracking down every rumour, every story or legend or fairytale. Her search in Equestria had led her to the Gryphon Kingdom, then to the sands of Saddle Arabia, to the dense jungles of the Zebra homelands. Dead end after dead end.
Yet every story and legend held one thing in common; an elderly mare with knowledge no ordinary pony could possess. The descriptions changed from place to place, but it was always a pony mare with a pomegranate cutie mark. Seeing that mark was when she knew she’d finally found it.
She’d finally found a way to bring Twilight Sparkle back to life.