Shadows

For quite a while after Dash carried Death's debt, Death was lonely. The whole having emotion thing was something that he still hadn't quite dealt with in the entirety of the 75 years or so he had been in this dimension. The odd pang of having nobody around to share the monotony of his existence with almost drew Death to call upon his debt quite a bit sooner than he intended. The previously completely omnipotent being was now a slave to the hand of fate, his endless machinations with the world being limited to fitting with the other gods' plans.

Sure, he and Time occasionally got together and talked about their jobs, but Time existed in another dimension and gave He-who-takes-you-where-you-go-when-you-die a headache. Time could best be described by using extra dimensional terms, so when Time complained about how the pseudoparabola of the Xeinty's Tangent was being disturbed by some moron with a wand, Death just nodded. And smiled.

For that matter, smiling was something different. Apparently, the peoples of this planet wanted his service with a smile. For instance, when the wife of the current Griffon king decided to finally die, she rebuked him for not coming sooner. It might've been that she was senile, but she dared to insult Death!

Her soul made a tasty snack. It was corrupt with the weight of her misdeeds in life anyway and he would later send it along to the god of life.

It was odd though. The king who was present at the death bed of his wife, Gloria, had written him a note! Someone actually knew he existed! It was amazing to be acknowledged! It was like someone had filled his nonexistent body filled with the light of a million warm suns and replaced thoughts with the energy from a fusion reactor!

Wait. They don't have fusion reactors here. Got to remember that.

At any rate, The king wanted to Death to take mercy on his poor daughter. Something about Gilda not quite fulfilling all of the requirements to be a proper griffon warrior or something. Death had to wonder just who Gilda was.

So the-one-who-is-inescapable graced the mortal king with his presence.

"Who is this Gilda? Why should I care for her, lowly mortal? I follow who the list chooses, not what any mortal wills to happen." Death decided on showing up as a griffon with a dapper looking fedora on his head for a change. Despite his urging to the sun goddess, fedoras never really caught on outside of the griffons. Something about it making it harder to hear or something. Honestly, why there were so many species with ear adorning the very top of their fragile heads was just another thing that confused Death.

"Please, have mercy upon her, Gilda will soon be parentless." Death took this moment to slip out of phase with the world. He took a particularly cruel dictator's soul from him and had it for another snack. While he was back in his little out of reality home, he took note of the time of the king's demise. It was barely a month away from the conversation he had just paused. Though paused is a bad term. Time would yell at him if he actually paused a medium that was not his own.

He also took his look over on the list to check on Gilda, Dash, and Sparkle. To his annoyance and even more so his confusion, none of the names were on the list. It was clearly the powers that were above him's way of messing with him.

They never liked Death that much.

He rejoined the regular speed next to the king.

"I will be as merciful as the situation allows." Though it really wasn't because the king had asked. No, it was because the king, in his odd knowledge of the existence of Death, had held a death appreciation day. Death had never seen so many fireworks before, and surely griffons had the best firework displays in all of the seven kingdoms that this world was made of!

Certainly, it was better than the tiny display the donkey's gave him.

Death, while all these admittedly odd and fantasmic things were happening, was still lonely.

And Death was growing bored.

In some odd cosmic coincidence, Dash was also growing bored. Of being in the hospital that is.

"Really? I save Equestria and almost DIE in the process and you can't even get me out of the hospital a day early?" Celestia had decided to visit, her apprentice Twilight Sparkle following like a purple dog. A purple dog that she had tried to kill herself to protect, that is. Apparently, as the story was going around, her noble and LOYAL sacrifice had been enough for the elements of harmony to awaken and do their thing through what small cut she had opened in Nightmare Moon's body. Her resurrection was thankfully not garnering quite the same amount of attention that she had half feared it would. There would be no cult of Dash anytime soon.

"We must make sure that whatever process gave you life again does not leave in a place where we cannot easily help you. You must understand, ponies aren't supposed to come back to life." Celestia had not, in quite a long time, experienced a pony that would talk to her so informally. The lack of respe-, respect was a bad word to use for Dash's behavior. The lack of reverence almost certainly proved that Dash had met Death, and Celestia would have doubted it even then if Dash had not said that she had met Death. Though of course, that was not what she had said in so many words.

Dash really wanted to explain to Celestia just why there was no need for her continued stay in that lonely little hospital room, with the single bed and single windowed barred from the outside world. But Dash had a feeling that Celestia knew that she knew Death. That this was some overly elaborate test designed to bring about Dash's confession that she knew Death. This odd cyclical thinking almost made the blue pony's head hurt.

"So I can leave today right? I can stay with my friends?" She made an awkward annunciation on the word friends, probably to stress her surprise that she even had friends. That was Celestia's take on the issue. Being a not-so-omnipotent sun god did have it's draw backs, and Celestia would be the first to point out a few of them. Luna would probably be second, with Death being a close third. Such drawbacks included the natural seclusion that develops as everypony you know dies a slow death from age, until you finally begin to view the act of living as a slow phase of dying. Making her new apprentice immortal would be one of her top priorities.

"We can have a sleep over! It will be my first one! I still haven't gotten a chance to thank you for saving my life, you know." Twilight was completely ignorant of the silent tension that was being created of the knowledge of knowing that the other knew. Such was the affairs of gods, over complicated. Such was also those who had been touched by gods and it was something that Twilight would soon be blessed with the knowledge of.

"Very well, if Twilight will accompany you, I'm sure she should be able to contact me in time if you drop dead." She said the possible death sentence in the same tone as one would talk about the weather. Dash responded in kind.

"I don't think you have to worry about that."

And to Death's surprise, he found that quite a few of the names of ponies he had encountered in his meetings with Time were not on the list. The normally complete and reliable list was missing the names of at least 8 individuals.

But that really wasn't his greatest concern.

Death, or rather another Death from another Dimension, was coming to visit. As was customary for Death, he gave little to no warning and only said that it would be a week or so before he showed up. Though the bright flashing lights read him as coming with another. And thusly, the message changed to mention that he would be bringing his apprentice and that he looked forward to meeting Death's avatar. He also said to call him Dying.

Which left Death with a bit of an issue. All of the other gods had avatars. Celestia was in the process of getting her avatar ready. Luna was in the same predicament, her newly cleared mind had latched onto a certain pony and had convinced her to be her avatar.

Even Space had decided to get an avatar.

But Death didn't particularly care for Space. He was a bit of a braggart.

But he really didn't want to disappoint Dying, or maybe Dying had gotten a foretelling from his Time that he would have an apprentice.

Or maybe Dying wanted to talk about the meeting that was coming in the next year. Death was in the clear with that, but apparently there were going to be quite a few universes destroyed because one of the higher powers had gone bad and started to play around with the series of worlds it was in charge of. Something about letting some human world know of other worlds.

Nothing that Death really cared about, but Dying might be part of one the soon to be destroyed worlds.

Which was why he was going to call in one of his favors with Dash.

Surely she wouldn't try and do something stupid and refuse.