White Sun

by The Psychopath

Green

It was a very familiar sight to Twilight Sparkle to climb down a spiral staircase engulfed in darkness and stale air. Checking the metal door that was meant to act as the proper entrance to this area, she realized that it had been sealed shut and likely walled off. The ponies really didn't want the princess' body to be found, but that wouldn't stop her former student. Spike walked in front while the mare illuminated everything with a few wisps of light that revealed the gunk and grime that had built on the walls over the years.

Little particles of dust floated about, revealed only by the wisps' intense light. As Twilight and her undead continued to descend, the sounds above became quieter and quieter, but the tomb guardian was still able to cause tremors with its stomping and mace, shaking loose errant bits of debris and congealed dust that had accumulated over time. Several cobwebs also decorated the staircase and often got tangled in Twilight's mane, making her panic silently and quickly brush the strings out in a panic.

"I don't want to stay here any longer than we need to, Spike," Twilight said. "Let's get to Celestia and then leave this place," she said eagerly.

The group continued their descent, going lower and lower until Twilight's strand of Celestia's mane started glowing wildly and trembling within its resin prison. She brought the wisps forward, revealing multiple dark tunnels and used the strand to navigate through them. Everything here was dark and musty, drying out her sinuses and the back of her throat and prompting fits of coughing. There wasn't much here save for the leavings of some critters that had scurried away when Twilight had approached them. Finally, she reached an opening and let the wisps loose within it. She now found herself within a tomb of sorts with a pyramidal ceiling. The mare could feel that the walls around had been inscribed with multiple spells meant to hide the presence of Celestia's body seeing that the strand was reacting violently to a black sarcophagus in the middle of the room.

Twilight scoffed. Whoever planted the spells in this tomb had done a very poor job, and it explained a lot to her as to why she never found her former teacher or why Luna never felt her until now...unless there was another reason? The mare shrugged it off. She was literally at her goal and didn't need to waste her time theorizing about unimportant bits of information. With her heart pounding wildly in her chest, the mare slowly approached the sarcophagus, and when placed a hoof on it, her precious treasure burst into flames and disintegrated in her hoof. She felt an extreme sense of loss and felt herself tear up at seeing what happened to what kept her company for so long. The mare grit her teeth and pushed the lid off her teacher's sarcophagus and almost collapsed if Spike hadn't intercepted her and held her up.

She was right there. After all this time. All that searching for so long, and her teacher was right there. Her head lay next to her body, eyes closed and face serene, but a lot of her flesh had disappeared, leaving behind sections of skeleton. Because of the inherent dryness of this place, the corpse had only partially rotted before drying out. Twilight wiped her forehead of sweat and gestured her undead aides to bring her everything. The mare had them lay out a large, thick sheet of resin-covered parchment onto the floor and placed both parts of Celestia there as she fully illuminated the room with dozens of wisps. She didn't have time to be exhausted. She had her teacher to resurrect, and went straight to work. She analyzed the damage, saw what was missing or had to be replaced and wrote it all down. As she did all of this she struggled against her own fears lashing out at her. The screams from that day, the heavy thuds of hooves hitting the stone floors as the revolution thundered through the halls. She could hear it all in this deathly silent location where even her breathing sounded like cannons firing their round shots into the air.

On the surface, the undead continued to pour out of the breach and the ponies couldn't do anything about it nor the tunnel that had been dug due to its distance and their cannons being destroyed by the giant that was swiping around randomly as a distraction, destroying everything with ease and ignoring any attack against it. The ponies were growing exhausted while the undead felt nothing and continued to move forward further and further to block anypony from reaching the spiral staircase. Hours flew by as the undead overwhelmed the attackers and continued to invade the castle grounds until no pony was left near the stairwell, causing them to go passive and wait in place. The troops had pulled further back, far away from the dead, and several of them had been shaken up. In the undead hordes they had spotted and recognized members of their own family: Cousins, aunts or uncles, grandparents, and even their children and parents. A few of the level-headed guards had found it curious that a necromancer wouldn't use foals as so many had already done in the past.

The soldiers barricaded themselves using magic to force the roots of bushes that had been pulled out to form into barriers that blocked them from the undead, leaving them time to regroup and plan a new strategy. Meanwhile, Twilight was hard at work digging into the body parts and organs she had and evaluating their value and compatibility with Celestia's body. It was grueling work, but she had to be very meticulous about this. One wrong step could jeopardize everything. She restored the tissue that was already present and the cardiovascular system to see where everything went before digging into her replacement veins and arteries and meticulously sowed them in place and reattached them strand by strand until the blood present was flowing freely, but loosely, through the veins. Next was a heart since a false heart of magic would never last long. She grew it to fit the alicorn's needs and placed bits of Celestia's now-living tissue onto the heart, using spells to slowly replace all the native tissue into that of the alicorn's and forced it to grow.

Twilight's work continued like this easily for three days while the undead above continued to lay siege to Canterlot Castle and sow panic in the ponies of the city below. It was a great contrast to the bright and sunny sky above filled with just a hoof full of clouds. When there were no more of the necromancer's dead coming out of the tunnel, Shining and his soldiers peered out to see what was happening. They couldn't do anything since they were in the heart of Equestria, and if everything blew over there would still be an international incident, so against their better judgment and for fear of what was going to happen to the Crystal Empire, the ponies abstained from moving from the tunnel entrance. Besides, they had no way of getting through that many dead let alone the giant thing they could see keeping guard.

"What do we do now?" one of the guards asked.

Shining sighed and sat down. "We wait. Twilight didn't have them destroy the entirety of the castle, so she isn't there for revenge, but what would she be wanting in the castle of all things?"

After waiting around for a few hours and writing down reports to send back home, the group noticed the sky vaguely changing color before returning to its usual hue.

"What is happening?" Shining asked.

"What do you mean?" one of his guards asked.

"I just saw the sky change color."

The ponies looked up and flinched when they, too, saw it happen. Twilight was doing something she wasn't supposed to.

The mare had completely restored Princess Celestia and was still running on her adrenaline, even if it was just fumes at this point. Now the alicorn was sitting back in her sarcophagus as it was in the center of the room, and she had drawn over the entirety of the tomb: Floors, wall, and even the ceiling. The ritual items were placed at the locus points of the spell and were kept in place through even more magic, but this was it. This was the final moment. The penultimate spell to undertake, and it would require a lot of time to do right. One of her aides gave her a very long parchment covered in ritualistic text that she couldn't fumble or everything would be ruined. It was a good thing she was so good at studying and repeating everything. The mare could recite everything by heart now.

Hours and hours of reciting, pooling in the ambient magic into Celestia's corpse, reigniting her horn with magic and filling it with life again. The walls trembled and the entirety of Canterlot shook as the sky started to change from Twilight's ritual, prompting the soldiers of the Crystal Empire to start panicking.

"We can't just sit here!" one of the guards shouted.

Her comrade grabbed her and locked eyes. "And do what? You have a way to grind through hundreds of the dead? What about that giant?!"

"But we don't know what she's doing!" the mare continued. "I don't want to sit behind in some kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare and say that 'I was there but did nothing'."

"Neither do I," Shining interjected. "But if we go in now they might overwhelm and kill us. Twilight commanded them to storm the castle, which is exactly what they did and likely why they ignored us in the tunnel, but she's clearly unstable now more than ever. Dying wouldn't serve a purpose and would likely feed her horde," the stallion lamented. "There's nothing we can do but prepare for what comes next."

The tomb glowed brightly with the golden light that was characteristic of Celestia's own magic as her body filled with so much of her magic that had permeated the walls and broken every spell placed around her corpse. Twilight felt her body aching from the extreme fatigue, screaming at her to rest, but she couldn't. Not yet. Just a bit longer and Celestia would be back. She restored her body, converted the parts to match the alicorn's needs, and got her magic back. Now it was just a matter of bringing her soul back.

The unicorn was so focused on her ritual that she didn't realize that the light had slowly shifted to a neon green and was damaging the surroundings and overwhelming the light of the wisps that dissolved under it.

"It's okay...princess," Twilight thought "I'm...I'm almost done with the ritual, and then...Then you'll be back with us! With me!".

She continued the ritual, finally nearing the end, and collapsed onto the floor when the final words were spoken.

Outside, everypony bore witness to the sky growing a sickly green as the sun, in enlarging spots, changed a sickly green shade and its flares were slow and visible to everyone. They watched in horror as the air seemed to become heavy and thick, like wading and breathing gelatin. The ground in Canterlot burst apart as the lost changelings and ponies dead from the war emerged, destroying the streets and damaging the foundations of many buildings. Specters gradually became visible to the naked eye and, worst of all, tangible. Realizing this they started harassing and attacking the living to sate their broken minds full of hatred. More strange spirits started to emerge throughout the land, each with a more twisted and otherworldly figure than the last. Around Canterlot mountain was a strange, two-tailed entity that seemed excessively stretched downwards like a crossbow bolt's head, with two dead eyes pulled too far back to blink. Its three-digit hands gripped the mountain tightly as it gazed at the green star and found itself dissolving almost instantly while the air became filled with its shrieks that harmed even the specters.

"I knew we should have gone in!" the previous mare said as she stomped around.

Shining looked up in horror, feeling his heart sink. "Twilight...what have you done?!"

Twilight started to bawl like a young foal, unable to contain her emotions when she saw Celestia standing in front of her, having flown out from the sarcophagus.

"I thought I was never going to see you again! All these years of being terrified and hiding, and learning necromancy to bring you back!" The mare jumped at Celestia and hugged her legs, her tears still flowing and her voice getting caught in hiccups. "I'm so soooorry I couldn't help you!" The alicorn statically placed a foreleg over Twilight's head and remained silent.

Through Twilight's eyes, Celestia was back, but through Spike's 'eyes', he saw something else. While the alicorn was indeed standing, her eyes had been burned out by green fires, her mane and tail were three rings of green light that turned brighter at the smaller rings around the edge. They flickered like ghostly fire that left behind little wisps of green light that reflected the same light coming from within her. Even her cutie marks hadn't returned, leaving green imitations grown into her own skin.

But she was back now. She was back.

Comments

[Cherryflav003]

Oh my god I KNEW something would be wrong with celestia. I hope the elements of harmony can fix this...

[adamsafran]

Wellp, looks like less Celestia and more something out of Tartarus.. Hopefully the Elements and Luna will be here to save the day!

[Zeprto678]

It's possible that something else got revived instead.

[DarkSnowGaming]

Ok this is worst than what I thought was going to happen.

So Celestia because some sort of Allicorn of the dead now? Is she controlling the dead? Twilight no longer has any control of the undead around her, except maybe for Spike. Well lesson learned, don't bring back an Allicorn from the dead, I don't know if either Twilight failed bringing Celestia completely back or if this is what simply was meant to happen without Twilight even realizing what she was doing.

[The Chronicler]

Well... Hopefully the Elements of Harmony can fix this?

[DarkSnowGaming]

11859508
I just hope Twilight doesn't get blamed to much for this, everyone makes mistakes, sometimes there bigger than others, the more powerful you are, the bigger the mistakes will be, if Celestia ever made a mistake, it could topple an entire empire with just a letter and probably a grammar mistake.

[The Chronicler]

11859518
She might have the insanity plea going for her. Twilight appears to at least be delusional and really thinks all her zombies are completely alive and free-willed. She's probably looking at lich!Celestia and seeing her as exactly how she remembers.

[DarkSnowGaming]

11859571
I doubt that Equestria has a plea deal for insanity patients, plus the guards were talking about the rulers of the crystal empire to exacute Twilight and in Equestria they exacuted Celestia although she litterly did nothing wrong tells me that you can get exacuted even for the smallest of crimes even if you don't kill.

Simply put it, if you look sinister, and you act sinister, and the magic you learn is sinister but yet you don't harm others, your going to get exacuted. That's what I'm getting from the way everyone acts in this story.

Actually now I'm curious how many get criminals gets sentenced to prison and how many criminals gets sentenced to death. My guess would be around 5-30 going to prison to 70-95 getting death.