You.... died? But mama, if you died, how can you be here?
I didn't die, Apple Blossom. I was asleep, put in a three hundred year long slumber by Wantall's spell. The wizard had hoped that would be the end of me, as no pony could live for three centuries. But Wantall didn't know about my extended life span, and I merely slumbered for three centuries. It was actually refreshing, and I awoke feeling renewed after such a long nap.
So what did you awake to?
A world only slightly different to the one I left behind. But I quickly found out that ponies had fallen back on hard times once again...
Sugar Apple's eyes suddenly fluttered open, and she stretched her body out lazily. Her muscles creaked and groaned in protest, as if they had not moved for a very, very long time indeed. She found herself covered in cobwebs, and coughed at all of the dust filling the room. Lifting her head and looking around, the mare found herself surrounded by total darkness.
"Ugh, where am I?" Sugar Apple groaned, pulling herself back to her feet, and flexing her wings. "Oh great, did Edwina stick me into a barn or something as a park again?"
Stumbling forward, the Pegasus felt around at the surrounding stone walls. Finding a spot that was weaker than the others, she began to kick, push, and pound against the stone surface, which slowly gave way under the powerful blows of Bucks McGillicuddy and Kicks McGee. Ignoring the soreness of her unused muscles, she kicked again and again until the stone wall crumbled before her, sunlight trickled into the room, and Candy Apple was unexpectedly blinded for a moments, causing the mare to flinch and look away.
Moving to the back of the cave, Sugar Apple slowly waited for almost an hour for her eyes to adjust to the light outside. She also began flexing her wings and stretching her legs to get the stiffness out, before finally taking a slow and wary step out into the world before her. Warm sunlight bathed the drowsy Pegasus, and it wasn't long before she felt awake and alive again.
"Ahhh, that's much better!" Recognizing the spot where she was as a small cave outside the human village, Sugar Apple trotted towards the small clearing where everybody's houses stood. "Edwina? Wantall? Is anybody here?"
It was much to her surprise, then, when the mare found the entire village was gone! Every house, barn, and fence was missing... with no trace that anything had ever been there at all! Sugar Apple looked on in horror for a moment, before everything that had happened all came rushing back to her.
"Wantall... the spell.... oh no, I've been asleep for three hundred years!" She wailed aloud, collapsing to the ground in grief.
She lay there like that, weeping bitterly the tragedy that had occurred. She had lost family and dear ones before to the slow decay of time, but this? She hadn't even had a chance to say goodbye, and all of her friends had simply passed away while she slumbered. It really just didn't seem fair, after all the misery she had already endured. But fate just seemed to keep coming after her, hell-bent on making her as miserable as possible.
Getting her wings flapping, the mare slowly took to the sky above Ponyland. Still in a depressed state, Sugar really wasn't sure what she should do now. Head towards Fort Rainbow Dash? She wondered in anybody there would even know who she was. Dream Valley? At least she could find out what had happened to her human friends there. But as she tried to think of what she should do next, Sugar Apple came to realize that part of her really didn't care anymore. So onward she flew, wandering aimlessly with no goal or direction in mind, for several days. Stopping only to rest and eat when she needed it.
Her routine and trance-like stupor could have gone on like that forever, had not she heard a commotion coming from some nearby trees one particular day. Piqued out of her depression by her curiosity, the Pegasus flapped over towards the underbrush. It was there hat two other Pegasus mares suddenly came bursting through the trees, nearly knocking Sugar Apple out of the air.
"Hey, move it or lose it, grandma!" The yellow Mare with a red and green striped mane yelled angrily. "Unless you want to end up as strydon food!"
"Hurry up, Floater!" A pink mare with a yellow mane cried, following hot on her hooves. "They're gaining on us!"
Having been chased by monsters and other dangers things enough times in her life, she immediately took off after them, without looking back to what the roaring and bellowing creatures chasing after them actually were. In fact, everything around her moved so fast, that she barely had time to take notice of the fact that both mares were speaking english.
"Blast it, Floater! Can't you fly any faster?!" The pink Pegasus yelled angrily. "Who knows what Tirac's beasts would do if they got their claws on me!"
"Well exuuuuuuce me, Princess!" The one called Floater snapped back, practically shouting her lungs out to be heard over the roar of the approaching strydons. "I don't exactly see you breaking any speed records here, Glttering Gem!"
"Excuse me, I don't mean to interrupt you two's conversation, but..." Sugar Apple interjected, finally flying close enough to the fleeing pair to be heard. "But what exactly are we running away from?"
"From the Strydons, stranger." Glittering Gem replied, not daring to look back. "From the fierce pack of fire breathing dragons of the dark lord, Tirac."
Looking back over her shoulder, Sugar Apple saw four small winged reptiles chasing them, one inhaling a breath to send a stream of fire at them. And suddenly the Pegasus mare realized that she may have just woken up from a long and dark sleep, only to be sent to a final and eternal slumber by Tirac's beasts...