In one of many realities, in one of many planes, in one of many places, sat the largest city on the largest landmass in a world that didn't have a name other than 'here'. In that city, a rough circle 400 miles wide, was a single huge cathedral dedicated to none of the thousands of various gods that existed in this reality. This made them very upset, as one would imagine. This cathedral serviced the entire metropolis, all their dead were interred here, regardless of their preferred means of burial.

One might think that such a busy location would have hundreds, nay, thousands of workers, and that the various gods would constantly be in conflict over the place. If you thought that, you would be wrong. A single man, well, what was once a man, runs the entire shebang while still maintaining the place as neutral ground from all the gods. That ex-man's name is Bob, and Bob is a Lich.

He was fretting, Bob that is, over the various minor inconveniences that marred his otherwise perfect un-life. The rodents were breeding like mad, there were two break-ins in the crypts in the past week, and, more disconcertingly, no irate god had shown up in over a month to extoll their own virtues in a mad bid to get Bob to turn the church's control over to them. Most of all, though, Bob was incredibly, inconsolably, truly, bored. Adventurers and Alchemists used to be beating on the cathedral doors almost constantly looking for work, but no more.

It was quiet in Bob's office, hidden deep in the crypts. The room was smooth stone with no windows or doors, he was a Lich of course, a skilled wizard who traded away his humanity for unlife, so that was hardly an inconvenience. A real honest-to-goodness fire, not any of that silly ever-burning stuff, cast flickering light onto a table, empty, save for a chessboard abandoned mid-game.

All of a sudden Bob felt all the wards around the room fail at once, and arcane energies build up around him. It was a familiar sensation, the feeling of some upstart god trying to send him to some far-flung plane that they think he can't escape from. It was amusing, if nothing else, so he played along.

“Oh, which god is trying to dispose of me today I wonder? It doesn't matter, though I might end up somewhere funny like last time. It took weeks to get the smell out of my robes! Maybe Wee Jas is sending me away this time, she always had the loveliest ti--” There was a loud crack as air displaced, robbing the nearby fire of oxygen.

What Bob didn't know, of course, is that a god wasn't trying to be rid of him in order to claim his cathedral. All the gods were trying to be rid of him, and this trip might be a bit more one-way than he was expecting.

=====

5-Minutes before 'The Incident', Twilight Sparkle

It was Nightmare Night, and Twilight Sparkle was fretting. Normally she would be worried about her studies, or the tidiness of her library, or even the progress on a research paper she happened to be writing. Unfortunately, today's problem was another 'Zecora-level event' except with Princess Luna being shunned instead.

Shunning anypony was bad in Twilight's mind, but shunning the god-princess of the night?! Okay, most everypony didn't really think of the princesses as goddesses, but technically speaking it was an accurate description. Even ignoring the 'god' and 'princess' parts, it was still really out of line to shun Luna, given how hard of a time she was having fitting in anywhere. Thankfully Twilight managed to convince Luna to stop moping, speak a little quieter, and rejoin the festivities. It was just a matter of showing up before Luna did, and talking sense into everypony before she arrived.

As planned, Twilight reached the town square well before Luna. Most of the attractions, however, were poorly manned at the moment, a 'skeleton' staff if you will, and the party-goers seemed clustered close to the edge of town. A few moments was all it took to get close enough to see what was going on, and oh what a strange sight it was.

Dozens of ponies crowded around a tall lanky figure and a mint-green unicorn. 'Must be one of Lyra's 'hyoomahn' illusions' Twilight surmised. It looked awfully solid for an illusion though, and Lyra shouldn't be able to create the illusion and make it solid and give it completely separate light spells to juggle.

It was wearing something like a high-fashion suit, the kind that Rarity occasionally made at the behest of a beleaguered groom or noblestallion. The clothing seemed well made to her untrained eyes, but it also appeared to be cobbled together from all manner of color and type of cloth. More distressing was the sickening way its skin seemed taut and dry, its eyes desiccated and unnatural. She wasn't an expert on any of this, yet, but she couldn't suppress the gut reaction of it looking like a walking corpse.

Twilight would definitely have figured out what was going on if Luna hadn't shown up at just the wrong moment.

“BACK CITIZENS, YOUR LIVES ARE IN PERIL AT THE HANDS OF THAT DISGUSTING ABOMINATION! FLEE WHILST I DETAIN IT!” she yells as a thin line of inky black streaked with the stars of the night sky springs from her horn. The yelling was loud, the hostility in her voice was palpable, and one got the impression that anypony struck by the beam of blackness would be in for a bad day.

Fleeing is a diplomatic way of describing what the gathered ponies did in response.

The creature threw its hands up in front of it defensively. Luna's attack seemed to dissipate harmlessly a few inches away from the thing's body, and it called out in a raspy and distressed voice.

“Hey! Whoah! Hey. Whoah, hey. Calm down, I'm not doing anything bad! Five minutes and I'm already being attacked! It's almost a record.”

“YOUR LIFE IS FORFEIT, MONSTER!”

“B-b-but... I'm already dead!” it cried, almost with tears in its eyes... probably.

Twilight Sparkle, Prodigé of Celestia, friendship researcher, Element of Magic, and concerned bystander could only sigh. It's going to be a long Nightmare Night.

=====

30 Seconds before 'The Incident', Bob

He had only been on this plane for a few minutes, but once he had shaken the jet-lag from the teleportation off, he had deemed the place 'acceptable'. He hadn't seen a single slaad, which ranked this place in the top twenty percentile of places he'd been disposed of to. There were lots of quaintly constructed houses of varying styles occupied by multicolored horses, or ponies as they had referred to themselves as. They also didn't seem particularly horrified by his presence, a little squeamish maybe, but they obviously aren't aware of the connotations of his form.

When he'd first arrived, there was something of a language barrier. They didn't seem to understand him, and he definitely didn't understand them. That particular problem was solved with Speak, and Comprehend, languages spells. The success of the casting meant that magic worked here, and that was also a point in favor of this new land he'd been exiled to.

After introductions had been made, the ponies started asking questions. They weren't particularly offensive questions, more like the kind of things you would ask a new neighbor... he shuddered at the pun. They seemed largely intelligent, though not of genius levels, so there were parallels to be drawn with the average human. They were also gregarious, looking him over and generally being extremely polite.

He could only conclude that this was a place largely untouched by evil.

It was then that he saw a purple one with a horn standing far away from the group, leering at him. This pony was intelligent, and not in the same way as the others. This pony had a thirst for knowledge that Bob could almost feel. This pony was not looking at him, this pony was studying him. It made him chuckle.

At the edge of his mind was the constant buzz of power trying to push him out of this realm. This world had gods running around all corporeal, two of them he wagered, and one of them was very close by. Very close, and getting closer. Bob readied himself for defence. It wouldn't do for him to be seen as an aggressor or for him to tragically fail to survive.

The god, -dess he noted, arrived in short order, screaming at the top of her lungs and shooting spells off like a petulant child. The ponies around Bob scattered, and only then did he realize that he had been enjoying their relatively naïve company. It was laughably easy to resist the spells she had flung at him; these were the gods of this plane? Indignance and bad jokes did not seem to deter her, and so battle was joined.

Bob was determined to end the encounter as non-lethally as possible. If the gods here were really so weak, he might actually be able to kill them, and that would leave a bad taste in his mouth. Assuming he could still taste.

A few more pitch-black rays were handily deflected this way or that, or outright absorbed. The problem wasn't the power per se, and she seemed to have some experience fighting 'creatures of darkness', but there was a lack of finesse that made the attacks easy to dissipate. Like the energy was in such a tenuous state that it was almost eager to turn on itself and sputter out.

It was getting tiring, on the both of them it seemed, and Bob's attention waned. He noticed that the crowd of ponies hadn't even poked their heads back out from where they had hid, but that purple... horse, horn, unicorn, that purple unicorn had continued watching the exchange, almost rooted in place. Her eyes still held the glint of study, but also a frantic twitch like she was thinking of some way she could help her goddess.

Speaking of, said goddess is starting to look pretty haggard, and Bob grimaced for a different reason. He was running out of spells that don't have 'Death', 'Kill', or 'Disintegrate' in their names. Time to end it.

“Oi! Purple unicorn whose name is wonderful, I assume, but that I don't know. Do you have tea? Perhaps?” Another blast hits one of his shields and explodes quite spectacularly. “Point me to where you live, go and make some tea for me and Ms. Grumpypants here. We'll be there in a few minutes to talk this out like the peace-loving immortals that we are. Thanks!”

This was turning into an incident, and he once visited a world where every incident was, in the end, resolved peaceably over tea. It was surprisingly successful in his experience, and it was preferable to committing deicide in his first hour here.