From the Ashes

by Keeper of time RD

Chapter 1: The Wanderer

Author's Note:

For those keeping track of my grand design story telling, this is not part of it even if I did play off of it. Consider this an alternate future more or less in it’s own time line, not anything relevant to the actual grand design.

Also, I’m certain that there are better post-apocalyptic Equestria stories out there. If for some reason you still want my take on it, read on.

Rust colored hooves plodded along the narrow mountain pass. A wall lay on one side, a shear cliff to the other. Ten years of neglect had almost erased the rail line, but every now and then bits of the steal track poked out from the dirt and ash that had covered them.

As for the young mare with the rusty brown fur, she wore a yellow cape that covered her back and sides. Every so often one of the few not so dirt stained patches would catch the light and glimmer, proving that once apon a time the cape had been gold. An old set of goggles hid the mare’s eyes behind dusty lenses. A messy purple mane sat atop her head. Finally, she wore a set of saddlebags on top of her cape, thus pinning it down. At the moment the bags drooped low, hinting that coming this far had already depleted most of the mare’s supplies.

If one bothered to look out over the cliff they’d have seen a withered land, dominated by browns and grays, maybe a few sickly trees or bushes clinging to life down by the river adding a few sparse spots of green to the otherwise burnt out valley below. Although the lone wanderer’s gaze remained fixed on the path before her.

Rounding the corner quickly challenged the mare’s status as lone wanderer, as another pony stood not far from a battered, but intact, old rail bridge. This pony was a turquoise mare, the horn on her head marking her as a unicorn. The hoofprints of burning purple flames she left in dirt as she walked marked her as somepony who’d spent way too much time in someplace tainted by the demon war.

Yes the demon war, the gift that kept on giving.

Sure the demon army had been defeated, but by the time the remnants of the guard had won, the damage to Equestria had been done. Within the first week of the war the princesses were dead, within the month all of the royal families had been wiped out. Needless to say, a land that had been ruled by an immortal monarch for generations had given little thought as to who would rule AFTER Celestia.

And by the time what was left of the army had vanquished the last of the demons, anarchy had already consumed most places. And as is always the case with anarchy the thugs and the brutes who believed in the folly of ‘might makes right’ restored ‘order,’ crowning themselves as kings and warlords. Whatever the title they chose for themselves, those who clung to the ideas of civilized behavior only called them what they really were, thieves, murderers, raiders or slavers. But mostly those last two.

But raiders and slavers were just ponies, so they could be dealt with like ponies. The Tainted on the other hoof… They were the gift of the places where the demon’s dark magic lingered, twisting and corrupting those who lingered there into creatures of evil.

“Anypony home?” the rusty mare called out, although there was little hope in her voice. Those who hadn’t been fully corrupted by the taint yet could potentially be saved if they could be brought to a unicorn who knew how or if they could be brought to one of the few places of strong light magic. Anything to purge the dark magic from the afflicted’s system.

But in the mare’s experience, by the time a tainted was leaving hoofprints of flaming dark magic, they had usually succumbed to the corruption so fully that their soul had left the mortal realm and their body was nothing more than a soulless creature of pure darkness. Such creatures sought only to create more of the suffering and death that darkness seemed so fond of.

Unfortunately for the mare in the yellow cape, she wasn’t a unicorn so she couldn’t just read the magic of a tainted pony to see if there was still a soul in there or not. Although, from what she’d learned, if they could still string a sentence together than there was still a mind in there somewhere.

As for the pony who was a unicorn, she gave an incoherent, gurgling war cry and charged at the earth pony before her.

“Guess not,” Rusty sighed.

The bad news was the unicorn was certainly dead. The good news was that those who’d been killed by the corruption where basically mindless zombies. Ironically enough, when it came to ponies at least, it was the mostly corrupted that where the most dangerous, not the fully corrupted. Those were the ones that still had mind enough to use magic and/or weapons.

With a shift of her weight, a silver barrel appeared from one of the caped mare’s saddlebags, revealing that one of the few things left among her supplies was a battle harness built into her saddlebags. While most such harnesses where usually attached to a saddle and thus worn out in the open, it wasn’t unheard of for such a weapon to be built into a set of saddlebags. Uncommon, for sure, but not unheard of.

The tainted unicorn continued to charge like a feral beast, with her head lowered and aiming her horn like it was a spear.

Proving her agility, Rusty leapt to the side, bounding off of the wall to sail over the top of her foe. She landed several feet behind the tainted pony. Both mares spun around to face one another once more. That was when a shot rang out through the mountain pass.

The tainted one looked down quizzically to examine the feeling in her chest. What she found was flames of purple and mixed with flames of bright blue spouting from a hole. The blue flames were because of the light magic infused into the bullet now lodged in her chest. For a moment the tainted one’s eyes registered pain before the dark magic giving them life left them.

The rust colored pony was already galloping across the bridge before the tainted one fell. And the unicorn’s body had hardly enough time to hit the ground before exploding in a wave of dark purple flames, scaring the ground with both fire and dark magic. Although the dark flames would reside in time, the magic would linger on, poisoning any who lingered in the now tainted patch of ground.

The blast wave of dark magic hadn’t even made it a full third of the way across the bridge before petering out, but the mare continued to cross the entire bridge in haste before she felt safe enough to stop running.

Pausing for a moment she reached up and used her hoof to scrape the words ‘Taint on other side of bridge’ into the stone wall near by. With the warning left, she continued up the path at a walk.

She continued on for a short while. Luckily it turned out she didn’t have too much farther to go before reaching her destination. Not that she knew it was her destination right away as all she saw was a cave entrance.

But when a stallion called out, “Halt! Who goes there?” it was a safe bet that the rumors of an outpost in these mountains were in fact true.

As for the stallion perched on a watch post above the cave entrance, he had a white coat and blue tail. He also wore guard armor of the E.U.P. Guard. Although a recent addition to his armor were a set of rifles mounted to the sides, just under the wings enough to stay out of the way of flying. Yet despite the combat helmet, current attire, and the new scar on his right cheek, he was still easily recognizable as the Wonderbolt named Soarin.

“A friend of Rainbow Dash!” She answered him. “Is Spitfire here?”

That proved enough for Wonderbolt to bring the wondered in.

After a few bends in the path, the cave opened up into its first major chamber. Positioned near the back a deck made of clouds was manned by a mare with a yellow coat. Much like Soarin, this mare’s Wonderbolt jumpsuit was long gone and she wore the gray and blue armor of the guard. Although in this mare’s case her helmet was sitting on the desk and she wore an officer’s cap atop her orange mane.

“Who’s this?” Spitfire questioned of her subordinate.

“She say’s she’d a friend of Crash.”

“If that’s so then you should be able to tell me what Crash really thought of the Wonderbolts.” With her implied question, Spitfire eyed the mare before her with a feeling that she did know this caped pony but couldn’t quite place where from.

The mare gave a bit of a smirk and confidently answered, “That you jerks spent too much time trying to be the best that you frequently forgot to keep your moral compass clear.”

The cold fire that one might have expected in the eyes of a pony who’d just been insulted never appeared in Spitfire’s eyes. Instead she raised an eyebrow. This mare’s voice clawed at her memory but again she couldn’t place a name on who it belonged to.

Nodding she said, “Yeah that does sound like something she’d have said.”

With that Spitfire got up and approached the rust-colored mare.

That was when the light from the nearby field lanterns caught the mare’s yellow cape at just the right angle for her to notice that it would have been gold if it were clean. Than she noticed another detail, the edge of the cape was burgundy in color, and wrapped around enough to give away the fact that the cape was being worn inside out, the gold lining of the cape was what was showing.

“Wait a second. The pony who wore a golden cape with a hidden shield…” Spitfire muttered the rumors that had reached her ears.

Now beside the mystery mare, Spitfire suddenly whipped out her wing and lifted the stranger’s cape. On the underside of cape was a blue shield with a yellow silhouette of a caped pony. On the mare’s flank was the cutie mare of a tri-colored shield of red, white, and purple, with two more shades of purple forming a lightning bolt inside of a wing. And if that wasn’t enough, now that the cape was lifted the tips of the wings tucked under the saddlebags revealed that this pony wasn’t an earth pony at all but a fellow pegasus.

“Scootaloo!” Spitfire gasped. “You’re the hero who whipped out the slavers of Las Pegasus?! You’re the hero of Las Pegasus?!”

Scootaloo lifted her goggles, allowing her purple eyes to finally be seen. “Everypony keeps saying that like I set out to free the city. They got in my way. I got them out of my way. That’s all there was to it.”

A hint of fear entered into Spitfire’s eyes, then she asked, “What are you even doing out here? You’re supposed to be safe on Storm Breaker Island! If Rainbow Dash knew I’d let you fight an entire army of slavers by yourself she’d skin me alive!”

This time it was Scootaloo who raised an eyebrow. “Then I guess you’re lucky she’s dead. Or where you lying when told me that during the evacuation of Ponyville?”

Spitfire hung her head and sighed. “I with I were.” A haunted look entered the older mare’s eyes. “But even if she somehow survived the fall, and somehow didn’t get trampled to death under the ground battle… Surely you know what happens when a demon dies by now…”

“Demon fire.”

Spitfire nodded somberly. “Exactly. No there were no ‘injured’ at the battle of the demon gate. Even if it did take us months to get back there, and I may not be able to tell you which set of blue hooves we pulled out of the ashes were hers, I can promise you that hers were among them.”

For a moment the two mares stood in silence, paying their respect to the fallen with their thoughts and prayers.

Then Spitfire continued, “But seriously, what are you doing way out here? Islands like Storm Breaker and Trotingham are the only places we’ve been able to restore real order. It’s just not safe around here on the mainland, especially not this far inland.”

“In case you’ve forgotten how you yanked me out of my home and dragged me off, yelling for everypony to evacuate Ponyville, I still haven’t ever heard what happened to my friends. So does it really surprise you that I came looking for them as soon as my wings were strong enough to get me off of the island?”

Spitfire shook her head. “I won’t apologize for that, Rainbow Dash made me promise to keep you safe if something went wrong at the demon gate. What choice did I have but to grab you and bolt for the safest fallback location?”

“I know, you did what you had to. But I’m not a little filly anymore.”

To that the elder mare gave a laugh. “No kidding. If the rumors about you from Las Pegasus are true then you can defiantly take care of yourself now. So other than getting you a bath, what can we do for the hero of Las Pegasus?”

“I was hopping I could buy some supplies from you, and maybe get some information.”

“Sure thing, I’ll make sure the quartermaster gives you the Wonderbolt rate. So what did you want to know?”

“What can you tell me about Ponyville? Or my friends, their names are Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom. Have you heard anything about them?”

A frown appeared on Spitfire’s face. “Ponyville is run by slavers these days. I’d help you out with that but we’re still trying to get Canterlot back from the raiders held up there. I can’t say the name Apple Bloom has ever crossed my ears… and I’m not sure you’re going to like where I heard the name Sweetie Belle.”

“Please I have to know.”

Spitfire took one look into the pleading purple eyes of the younger mare and sighed.

“Alright…”