Binky Pie

by Miyajima

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Comedy, Pinkie Pie, Crossover
Length: 52654

Pinkie Pie is visited by a strange customer whilst working at Sugarcube Corner. Hilarity ensues.

Published 2011-08-18 09:34:44 UTC
Last updated 2017-01-09 16:46:30 UTC

Binky Pie

It had been a slow day at Sugarcube Corner. Mr. and Mrs. Cake were away on business in Fillydelphia, and had (reluctantly), left the shop in the competent hooves of their lodger and employee, Pinkie Pie. She had been up since the crack of dawn, baking and decorating the day’s stock, and now stood to attention behind the counter, staring at the door and willing it to open, letting in a flood of hungry and soon-to-be satisfied customers. Pinkie’s attention span was not perfect at the best of times, but she did possess a remarkable amount of patience.

However, it was now past lunch, and not a single pony had walked through the door. Even for her this was getting a bit much. Her stomach growled, drowning out the slow tick of the clock. Pinkie glanced up at it, and it suddenly struck her how hungry she was. She had been so intent on running the shop perfectly that she’d neglected to eat anything since she’d woken up.

Torn between her hunger and her duty, she finally succumbed to temptation and headed into the back room, where the Cakes kept the stock from the previous day that had gone a little stale, though still edible. As she tucked in to the cupcakes and confectionery, she heard the ringing of the bell above the shop’s door. Gulping down one last mouthful, she skidded through the kitchen and back to the shop-front. There, facing away from her, was a pony browsing the shop’s wares. She saw that the pony was wearing a hooded cloak, that hid it. Knowing of only one pony that regularly wore a hooded cloak in Ponyville, she jumped to the logical conclusion.

“Hey, Zecora! Need any help? You’re the first customer I’ve had all-” Pinkie was cut off as the hooded pony turned to face her. It wasn’t Zecora. In fact, Pinkie certainly didn’t recognize him. His coat was a brilliant, almost polished white, with a short-cropped mane and brilliant blue eyes.

“Oh, sorry! I thought you were Zecora, she normally wears a cloak in town. Hi! I’m Pinkie Pie! I haven’t seen you in Ponyville before, what’s your name? Can I help you with anything?” she asked, brushing off her mistake. The pony paused for a moment, before answering:

Door. Bill Door.

The words seemed to enter Pinkie’s brain without first going through her ears, and had a strange atonal quality, like the grinding of one rock against another. She took a longer look at the cloaked pony, and noticed that he seemed thin. Very thin. Gaunt.

“You look like you must be hungry. Here, I’ll get some free samples!”

She ran behind the counter and appeared mere moments later with a tray of cupcakes balanced on her head. She set them down on the counter and beckoned Bill Door over.

“Come on, try some! They’re free! New customers always get a free sample, and so do new ponies! You’re both, so you get twice as much!” She nudged the tray towards Bill Door, helping herself to one as well. She noticed Bill Door take a cupcake, and she noticed a few seconds later that it had gone, but she couldn’t remember him picking it up or eating it. Pinkie had always been very perceptive of what was going on around her, even if sometimes it seemed like she had no idea. She could tell there was something... off about this customer. The way he stood, still as a statue. His eyes, a deep and blazing blue that looked like the depths of the ocean. His coat was unnaturally white. His voice was... Almost unreal. She felt like she was in the presence of somepony powerful, like Princess Celestia, or Luna, or even Nightmare Moon. She thrust the thoughts into the back of her head and kept smiling, determined to treat this customer properly, whoever or whatever he was.

“So what brings you to Ponyville? Where do you come from?” she asked, looking at Bill Door.

I am just visiting. I come from a place far away. Bill Door answered, again in that strange non-speech. Pinkie was sure that his jaw didn’t move. Conversation sat at a lull for a few seconds.

“Who are you visiting? I know everypony in Ponyville. I can help you find them!” Pinkie ventured, trying to stir her customer’s interest a little.

That won't be necessary. Bill Door replied, again cutting the conversation dead. Pinkie felt him regarding her for a few moments, even though it seemed that his head didn’t move. Tell me, he said suddenly, Do you remember your grandfather?

Pinkie cast her mind back, thinking back to her days before moving into Sugarcube Corner, when she lived with her parents and sisters outside Ponyville. She had never met her grandparents on her mother’s side, they had died before she was born, but she remembered her Granny Pie fondly.

“I remember meeting him a few times when I used to visit Granny Pie, he was always busy. He was big and tall, and never looked old. He was white, like you! Very white, that I remember. Like Princess Celestia, shining. Granny Pie used to tell me stories about him, how he went on long journeys and fought monsters, but was always there to help everypony. He died when I was still a young filly, though. Dad never talked about him much. Did you know him?” she answered, bringing herself back from her memories and looking at Bill Door.

Yes. Very well. We went on many journeys together, he and I. I did not know he had passed away. For a brief moment, Pinkie saw a flash of sorrow in the emotionless pony’s eyes. Then his words sunk in.

“But you don’t look that old! Then again, Princess Celestia is over a thousand years old and looks younger than Mrs. Cake, and Princess Luna is nearly the same age but looks barely older than me. Are you related to them, Bill Door? A prince?” she asked.

No. I am just the one who gathers the Harvest. Though I do not age. Pinkie suddenly felt uneasy. It seemed that the room had grown colder. She looked again at Bill Door, and gasped. There, before her, stood not the thin, white pony from before, but a hooded skeleton of a pony, polished gleaming white, with tiny blue pinpricks in its eye sockets that burnt like stars. She didn’t feel scared. She never felt scared. She just felt strangely calm, and time seemed to slow, all around. She suddenly realised she couldn’t hear the ticking of the clock.

… You can see me. ‘Bill Door’ stated, without surprise. You have more of your grandfather in you than I thought.

Pinkie looked long and hard at the skeletal pony’s eyes, those blue dots shining from a vast and unnatural blackness in the sockets.

“Who are you?” she said at last.

Death.

“Then, am I...?”

No. I am Death, but I am not your Death. Your grandfather taught you something, once, when you were young. Do you remember? Death looked at Pinkie with those cold eyes and she cast her mind back once more.

Pinkie Pie looked out from behind her father’s legs, up at her grandfather. He was tall, far taller than any pony she had met, and his coat was a brilliant white, as was his mane and tail. He looked down at her and smiled.

“So this is your youngest? Come on out, little one. Don’t be scared of your Granny and Grandpa. What’s your name?” he said, in a deep, rich voice.

“P-Pinkie,” she stammered, hiding behind her father again. Her grandfather chuckled, while her father just scowled a little, nudging Pinkie out and in front of her grandparents. Her two sisters just stood silently looking at their hooves.

“Well, Pinkie, around here they always called me Binky. Binky Pie. Your Granny and I are happy to finally meet you.” He smiled and nuzzled the little filly’s straight-combed mane, frizzing it up a little.

She and her family stayed a few days with her grandparents, their home being much more vibrant and colourful than the drab existence she lived out on her parent’s own farm. One sunny afternoon, her grandfather found her sitting out in the garden, enjoying all the colours and sights and sounds. They talked for a while, him telling her nonsense stories about the world, and listening to her talk about her life back home. Eventually he stood up and turned to her.

“Pinkamina- Pinkie. How would you like to see a little magic trick?” he said, winking at her. She nodded, vigorously. Her parents never allowed anything like that. All work had to be done by hoof and mouth, ‘the Ponyville way’, as her father always said. Pinkie watched her grandfather walk up to a large rock sitting off to one side of the garden. He stepped behind it, his head and neck still visible from where Pinkie sat.

“Now you see me...” he said, and knelt down behind the rock. “... and now you don’t!” he finished, hidden behind the rock. Pinkie frowned.

“That’s not magic! You’re just sitting behind the rock!” She got up and trotted over to the rock, and looked behind it. Her grandfather had vanished.

“Am I?” he said, suddenly appearing from behind a tree at the other end of the garden. Pinkie blinked in disbelief.

“How’d you do that? You’re an earth pony like dad, how did you do that?” she asked, not sure what to make of her grandfather’s display of power.

“You don’t need to be a unicorn to perform magic, Pinkie. There are some types of magic not even they can do. I tried to teach your father, when he was your age, but he could never do it. Your sisters never showed any interest in the wonders of the world, so I never tried with them, but you, Pinkie, you’re like your Granny. Full of joy and wonder, even if your father does like to keep a lid on it. Shall I teach you how to do this trick?” he said, walking over to Pinkie and smiling at her.

Pinkie nodded, slowly at first, but then with enthusiasm. His smile breaking into a grin, her grandfather sat her down and taught her how to perform the ‘trick’.

Coming back to the present day, Pinkie looked back at Death and nodded.

“He taught me how to move around without being seen. It was scary at first, but Granny Pie and Grandpa Binky said there was never anything to be afraid of. He told me not to use it unless I really had to, though. … I got into trouble a few times when I didn’t listen to that piece of advice. But how did you know that? And what do you mean, not ‘my’ death?” Pinkie Pie said, her normally cheerful and care-free demeanour replaced with concern.

I am not the Death of this world. That is not my role. I come from another place, where the world is... different. Your grandfather, Binky, was my companion for countless aeons in that place, though as he grew old, he wished to leave my service and live a mortal life. He chose this world, and settled here. Death replied, his unfailing gaze never leaving Pinkie.

“S-Service? He was... Death?” Pinkie stammered.

No. In that world I am not as you see me here. There I walk upright and stand on two feet. Your grandfather was my steed, and indeed, a great friend to me. Death looked away, finally, casting his gaze around the shop. He chose an interesting world in which to live out his days.

“So you came to... visit him?” Pinkie asked.

No. I came to visit you. Death replied, looking back at her.

“Why me?”

You bear the same gift as he. He learnt to walk the paths between spaces when in my service. He taught it to you. Why, I do not know. Perhaps he expected that I would return some day, or wished to train a successor. But I come to you with a proposal, Pinkie Pie. Will you return to that world, your grandfather's world, and serve me in his stead? Death’s eyes seemed to bore right into her as he stood there awaiting a response. She was acutely aware that all noise outside had ceased. She could hear nothing except her own breathing.

She thought of her grandfather, trying to imagine him as Death had described him, but couldn’t. Her smiling grandfather, always ready with a helping hoof, the steed and companion of Death himself? She thought of her father, and realised why he’d never spoken about ‘Grandpa Binky’, and why he was so insistent on doing things without magic. She realised that he had known, all those years, and had been trying to protect her and shield her. She thought of her friends, and all the joy and laughter they had shared with each other in Ponyville. The thought of giving all that up...

… It wasn’t her.

“No. I won’t. I can’t. I couldn’t live like that. I understand why Grandpa Binky came here. He wanted some joy and laughter in his life after all those long years. … I’m sorry, but I won’t come back with you,” she said, for once completely sombre.

Death held her gaze for a little longer, then his shoulders moved a fraction, as if he was shrugging, or trying to shrug.

As you wish. Your grandfather was dear to me, and I would never force his granddaughter to do something she did not freely choose to do. You have nothing to fear from me. He turned, and headed towards the exit, the clop of his hooves on the tiled floor ringing out like the ticking of the clock. Indeed, Pinkie noticed she could hear it ticking once again, and the noise and chatter of Ponyville outside the shop’s windows washed over her.

Death opened the door with one hoof, and turned his head back.

The cupcakes were delicious.

With that, he closed the door behind him, and was gone. Pinkie looked down at the counter, and saw a shining gold bit sitting there. She picked it up in her teeth and placed it in the register, grinning to herself. Death liked her baking.

Sometimes, however... Fate has other ideas...

Part-Time Work

It had been a slow day for Gustav Gutsworth, proprietor of ‘Gutsworth Pies & Pie Accessories’. His humble shop in the backstreets of Ankh-Morpork had its fair share of customers, and he had never been left wanting. He even spent money on such luxuries as importing real meat for some of his fare, instead of the State-Recognized ‘Meat Product’ that made up much of an Ankh-Morporkian’s diet.*

And well, while it had been a slow day, he couldn’t help but feel it could have done with being a tad slower.

He stared in mild bemusement at his corpse, slumped over the counter, an assassin’s dagger sticking out of his back. He noted, with the eye of a trained merchant, that it was one of those single-use disposable models that the Assassin’s Guild favoured for... less-important clients.

Still, he was forced to admit he felt a sense of pride that he had been taken out by an assassin of the Guild, instead of a common thug. He supposed it might’ve been related to that recent incident in which he had, accidentally, mistaken the rat poison for the jar of Klatchian Curry Spices he kept on the same shelf when preparing a ‘Gutsworth Kurried Kidney Pie’. To be fair, the two were interchangeable when it came to killing rats.

“Well... Now what?” he said to himself.

“SURPRISE!”

Suddenly, all around him were colours. Vibrant colours, impossible colours, fantastic colours that one certainly didn’t see (legally) in Ankh-Morpork. He spun on a ghostly heel to see two figures standing before him. One he had been expecting. The other he definitely hadn’t.

I am terribly sorry about this. She insisted.

The tall, slim, hooded fellow, Gustav supposed, was Death. He seemed to fit all the necessary criteria: scythe, dark robes, malnutrition, voice that entered one’s brain without stopping by the ears first.

The other...

… Well... It. It was pink.

Very pink.

And suddenly it seemed to be standing right in front of him.

“Hi! I’m Pinkie Pie!”

And apparently it could talk. If Gustav had still been fully functioning, he probably would’ve fainted by now. The colours flying around him solidified into streamers and confetti, that somehow managed to land on his ghostly form.

“I- … Juh-... Wha-” he stammered.

“Aww, he’s speechless! Oh, wait! I have some cake and punch here, and your complimentary balloon!” The pink thing, which Gustav realized was vaguely horse-like in shape, ran behind Death and reappeared a split-second later carrying on its head a tray, containing a slice of cake and a cup of fruit punch. Held in its mouth was a balloon suspended from a string. Death looked on with what could be called mild embarrassment.

Gustav found the tray shoved into one hand and the balloon in the other. The pink thing grinned happily.

“Y'see,” it began, “I heard about what was going to happen to you today and I thought that, well, you might be sad about it, and that made me sad, and when I want to cheer up I throw a party! So this party is just for you, to help cheer you up, too!”

Gustav heard a rasping whistle and felt something touch his ear. He looked sharply to his right to see the pink thing standing there, now sporting a conical hat and blowing a party whistle.

He looked up at his balloon. It read: Happy Deathday!

He looked at Death in utter confusion. Death shrugged.

He finally managed to say a flat “... What.”

The pink thing was now suddenly next to Death again, head leant against the skeletal figure in a somewhat affectionate matter.

“I'm doing part-time work!” It said.

It is a long story.

* No one asked what "meat product" was made from. After witnessing the process of its manufacture, its inventor buried himself in the River Ankh.**

** Strictly speaking, you can't drown in a colloid.

Albert stood in front of Death's desk. The sound of a billion hourglasses surrounded him, and was somehow drowned out by his sheer frustration.

“Master, gods know I've put up with a lot over the years, but I cannot abide this... This... Invasion of my personal space!”

But it is not your personal space. It is the kitchen.

“Exactly! The kitchen! My kitchen! Do you know what she did?”

The question is rhetorical, you will tell me anyway.

“She cleaned the pan! Cleaned it! Took me near a year to get the grease to just the right consistency and it's gone! What's more, she's been making... cakes! Muffins! Baked goods!”

Do the baked goods offend you?

“And outside! Have you seen outside?”

Often.

“It's... Colourful! I don't know how she did it, but it's alive! Vibrant! Real!”

… She said it needed lightening up a bit.

“That's right! All that black was just creepy! Now it looks much better! I left the fields though, like you asked.” Pinkie Pie was standing right there, next to Albert, tray balanced on her mane. Three bite-size pies rested on it.

”Oh! Here, try this! New recipe! I got it from that chef we met yesterday, the one who drank too much coffee!”

“And she keeps doing that!” Albert finished, exasperatedly waving a hand at Pinkie Pie as she scoffed her own sample. He sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose as he turned to leave, slamming the door behind him like a coffin lid.

“Aww, he didn't try the curried vegetable pot pie!” Pinkie said, looking at the door sadly.

It is rather good. Death intoned, his sample having mysteriously vanished. Klatchian?

“Yes indeedy!” she beamed in reply. The smile fell into a sad frown shortly after. “I'm not... Upsetting him, am I?”

Albert?

“Yeah. He seemed angry when I used the kitchen. I suppose I should've asked first, but I didn't think it'd be a problem...”

I would not worry. He disliked my daughter, and my son-in-law, and my granddaughter when he first met them. In fact, I believe he dislikes everyone. It comes of his profession, I suppose. They can be a disagreeable sort.

Pinkie's ears pricked up and her eyes sparkled. “Maybe I should throw him a party!”

… I do not think that would be wise.

She deflated just as quickly. “Well... If you say so. Is there anyone else today?”

There is always 'someone else', but your work today is sufficient.

“Right. I'll see you next week, then.”

There was the slightest suggestion of movement that indicated Death had nodded. Pinkie turned and stepped out of Death's study, re-emerging at the empty stable adjoining his house. She looked up at the walls (black), at the roof (black), and at the hay (black).

Death could not grasp the concept of colour, and despite Albert's complaints, Pinkie had actually done nothing to change that. It was merely that she was so alive that it brought even Death's imagined images to a kind of life. Every hoofstep was a splash of colour that spread out and turned a lawn a lush green, or made the fountain of white marble flow with cold and clear blue water.

Even now the walls of the stable had imperceptibly become whitewashed. The hay was a golden-yellow, and the roof timbers a rich oak, varnished and topped with red slates.

Yet, even as colours swirled and changed all around her, her own seemed to become dull. She slumped onto the hay and heaved a great sigh.

Squeak.

“Oh. Hi, you,” she said to the little robed figure that had appeared from the hay.

Squeak?

“No, no, I'm fine.”

Squeak?

“Yes, really.”

Squeak...?

“... Well, alright, no, I'm not.” she sighed again. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the roof, while the Death of Rats jumped onto her belly, looking at her intently with two tiny, blue pinpricks of light. “I dunno, it's just... This place is so different from Equestria...”

Squeak?

“What made me change my mind? … Y'know, it's funny, he never actually asked me that.”

Squeak.

“Yeah. I suppose. Well... After he visited me, I got to thinking, and then I thought about my cutie mark, and the promise I made to myself when I got it, and – Wait, did I tell you the story of how I got my cutie mark?”

Squeak.

“I really should sometime. It's a gem! But anyways, I was so happy when I discovered parties that I wanted to spread that happiness and make everyone as happy as I was!” She gestured with a hoof as a section of the wall suddenly bore the image of a rainbow.

“So I thought and thought and thought and thought and thought about it, and then realised, 'why can't I be in two places at once?' He never said I had to stay here to help.”

Squeak.

“So I came over and asked him about it, and he offered me a part-time job!” She grinned to herself as she thought about it. She had almost forgotten the Death of Rats was even there, and was talking more to herself than to anyone else.

“It was pretty gloomy at first... People seemed so... Sad about it all. Back home we just... Well, we don't really think about it. Mom and Dad said that after it's all over we go to join everyone else in a new life, where everyone's always happy...”

She rolled over again, toppling the Death of Rats into the hay. There was a muffled and disgruntled Squeak as he dug back out.

“I asked him about it, but he said he didn't know. He's never been there. But it's gotta be something similar, right? It's nothing to worry about, at least. So I try to make things happier. I talk to them, I throw them a party, it's all in good fun! And I do love to have fun...”

Squeak.

“... You're right, I'm rambling. I should just get back home. See you next week!” Her perky demeanour seemed to re-assert itself as she got up and turned to face the wall. She readied herself for a leap, gave her rump a wiggle, and jumped through reality. All that was left behind was the imprint of two back hooves, burning with a bright pink flame.

The Death of Rats watched her leave, and shook his head.

Squeak.

“... And that's the lot. My, Pinkie, I didn't really put you down as such an avid reader!” Twilight Sparkle smiled as she levitated a rubber stamp over every piece of paper, slipping them back into their respective book jackets. A large stack of textbooks and reference books sat atop Twilight's study table, currently doubling as the library's front desk. An exhausted Spike was panting heavily for breath on the floor.

“But... I must say...” the unicorn continued, looking at the spines of the books. “... That's an odd selection y'got there. 'Burial Practices & Rites in Ancient Equestria', 'Ghosts, Goblins & Ghoulish Figures'... And what was this one again? 'Necroponicon'? Hay, I didn't even know I had half of these. Whatever do you need them for?”

“Research!” Pinkie beamed. When no further information appeared forthcoming, Twilight pushed for more.

“... About...?”

“Oh, it's... Something for... uh, Nightmare Night!” She grinned disarmingly. Twilight seemed to accept this, to Pinkie's relief. She stacked the books on her back with the skill of a waitress balancing plates and turned to go.

“Wait!”

She stopped just short of the door.

“It's the middle of spring!”

“OhwellIliketoplanaheadyouknow?AnywayIthinkit'sharvestinuhStalliongradorsomethingheyIthinkIhearmymuffinsburningseeya!”

A pink streak shot down Ponyville's main street, leaving a baffled purple unicorn in its wake.

It had been a busy day in Ankh-Morpork's newest temple. Well, perhaps 'temple' is a little generous; it was really a front room hired from a kindly old woman who lived near the Temple of Small Gods, which had refused the application for a shrine.

The High Priestess, and currently only devotee, was the (Late) Aminata Odham, who, due to a slight quirk of Fate and a misplaced slice of cake, had found herself back in her body shortly after relieving herself of it, but with a firm resolve to make the most of unlife and preach what she had seen on The Other Side.

She had just put the finishing touches to the altar (a table covered in cheap gingham cloth, also on hire from a kindly old woman) and a statuette of the object of worship. It could, charitably, be described as equine in shape. It could also be described as very pink.

High Priestess Aminata Odham hammered the last nail into the lintel of the door, pinning up the new sign. She stepped down from the stool and looked, proudly, upon her handiwork.

“ THE FURsT TEMpEL OF THE pINK pONY OF DEAf ” *

* "TREsspAssERs WILL bE HuGGED"

Pink is the Colour of Death

The sun was shining down on Ponyville for another beautiful spring morning. Foals ran through the streets, enjoying their mid-season holiday, while ponies finished setting up their market stalls in Ponyville’s town centre.

Pinkie watched the town’s busy life unfold from the window of her room atop Sugarcube Corner. Below her, she could hear the sounds of Mrs. Cake in the kitchen, making the stock for the afternoon’s sales, while Mr. Cake served hungry customers at the front of the shop.

Part of her would rather have been out in the sun, enjoying the weather, or downstairs helping in the kitchens, but there was one task she felt compelled to complete before her shift began.

She drew back the curtain, shrouding the room in darkness. Filtered pink light barely illuminated her way as she plodded back across to the centre of her room. The table had been pushed aside, and in its place sat a small pile of sticks, a pot of jam, and a large, black book. The gold letters of the title glistened in the low light: Necroponicon. … Or was it Neighcronomicon? They shifted whenever Pinkie tried to look at it. She didn’t like the feel of the book, but it was a necessity for what she planned to do.

She flipped open the book with her muzzle, stopping on a seemingly random page and tracing down it with her hoof. She nodded to herself, satisfied, and began to lay out the sticks in a pattern corresponding to a diagram in the book.

Flicking the lid off the jam jar, she dropped a spoonful of it in the centre of the sticks, nodding once again.

“That should do it... Now then...” she muttered, going back to the book and skim-reading. “Ah-ha! There we go.”

She stood in front of the book and stick-diagram, and spared a glance at the curtained window. She had no idea if this would work or not. After all, she was an Earth Pony, not a unicorn, and this was magic she was dealing with. At the same time, hadn’t Twilight told her that pegasi, and even Earth Ponies had a little magic in them, deep inside? Maybe they couldn’t focus it without a horn, but it was still there.

It was worth a go.

She read the words of the book. They were in a strange and ancient tongue that, surprisingly, she found she had little difficulty actually pronouncing. Each word seemed to hang in the air, like a physical echo one could feel and see as well as hear.

The room began to blur. Pinkie could hear a dull rumbling noise in her ears. In the centre of the sticks, a dark form began to coalesce into the rough shape of a pony - featureless, nebulous, like a cloud.

Pinkie’s head span and thumped like it was being put through a taffy puller. She felt herself slipping, not on the floor, but rather through it. The room dissolved into nothingness as she felt a sharp tug pulling her away...

In that same instant, the sticks were scattered as a skeletal pony materialized and solidified. It stood still for a moment, taking stock of its surroundings, pale blue pinpricks of light scanning every facet and surface.

Its gaze fell on the black book, the sticks, and the small puddle of jam smeared over its hooves.

… Oh bugger.

A similar room. A different place. People shuffled about in the dim light, handing out plates and cutlery. From the centre of the room, a cracked voice spoke up.

“Guest Jenson, did you bring the punch?”

“Yes, Grand Hostess. It’s the ‘Spring Has Sprung’ recipe. I made sure to remove the springs this time.” Jenson shuffled forward and deposited the sloshing bowl onto the table.

“Well done, Jenson. And Guest Bonhomie, you were in charge of the cake.”

“Triple-layer-vanilla-cream-jam-sponge, Grand Hostess. With butterscotch icing.” Bonhomie placed the cake in the centre of the table, striking a match and lighting the five black candles arranged in a circle on top of it.

“Excellent! Let us all join together in the chant.”

The congregation, dressed in their solemn pink robes and conical paper mitres, gathered around the cake. Grand Hostess Aminata Odham (she decided High Priestess was a little cliché) drew a knife from the sleeve of her robe. It glinted in the light of the black candles as she checked its edge.

She stepped forward, and raised the knife in the air. With one accord, the congregation drew a breath, and shouted:

“SURPRISE!”

The knife whistled as it plunged into the heart of the cake. The ceremony complete, Aminata proceeded to calmly slice and serve the sponge onto waiting plates, and they all sat and quietly chewed while discussing local news.

As they debated the rising price of onions and why it was affecting the stock cube market, Aminata checked over her order of service, making sure nothing had been left out. Since its inception, the Church of the Pink Pony of Death had risen from height to height. It was now well-known throughout Ankh-Morpork for the friendly atmosphere, free baked goods, and promise of a better, pinker life waiting for them on The Other Side. The congregation (referred to as ‘Guests’) had swelled, and donations had been so generous that Aminata had been able to afford to move into proper quarters.

They now had an entire Community Hall to themselves, which amounted to the entire ground floor of what used to be a pub. This was the Second Temple of the Pink Pony of Death. The First was kept maintained for religious reasons, and had recently started being honoured as the site of Aminata’s glorious revelation.

Of course, this wasn’t the case, but she wasn’t going to spoil their fun by pointing it out. Besides, Hostess Beauregard, keeper of the First Temple, made excellent cupcakes. There had been some brief altercations with the leaders of the major religions of the Disc, and Aminata had been forced to invite Hughnon Ridcully, High Priest of Blind Io, over for a cuppa and a slice of cake to explain matters.

Once it was made perfectly clear that this religion was in no way infringing on the rights, intellectual property or commandments of the other gods, they were accepted with open arms into the wider ecclesiastical community. It didn’t hurt that being undead gave one certain... advantages when it came to making the proper connections. Meetings usually went along the lines of “Oh gods please don’t eat me take anything everything arrgh faint”.

The Grand Hostess put aside the little booklet and adjusted her mitre, decorated in the finest colours the Alchemist’s Guild could supply. She slipped through a curtain into the back room while the congregation finished off the sacrificial cake.

Through here it was, if possible, even darker. Not only were the curtains drawn, the shutters were closed for good measure. In the centre of this room was another table, on which sat the effigy of a horse, almost fluorescently pink in the darkness. A second figure stepped out of the shadows, pink robes obscuring a second robe underneath, and a paper hat fitted neatly over a wide-brimmed, conical piece of headwear.

“Guest of Honour Terrak Keksy. I trust you’ve acquired the items I requested?” Aminata said, smiling at the young wizard. Given that her jaw was beginning to slough off the bone, this was more than a little unnerving.

“I took advantage of the fact that today is the Semi-Annual-Once-Centennial Hunt for the Megapode and made myself suitably scarce. They won’t miss me until Pre-Dinner.” Terrak Keksy replied as he retrieved a bag of reagents from somewhere within his robes. He tipped the contents of the bag over the table, revealing some assorted candles, incense sticks, a skull (fine condition, only one previous owner), some bits of wood, and 4cc of mouse blood.

Aminata’s eyes glistened in the dark. She watched intently as Keksy arranged the magical paraphernalia around the pony statue, quickly making a sigil-like shape from the wood. He lit the candles and incense with a mumbled word and complex gesture, bathing a small area around the table in light. He nodded at the Grand Hostess, preparations complete.

“It’s all ready, Grand Hostess. Just say the word.”

“Summon her, Keksy.”

The wizard smiled, pulling a roll of parchment from his sleeve and unfurling it. He squinted at the words on the scroll.

“... I don’t suppose you could...” he said, sheepishly, nodding at the windows. Aminata sighed deeply as she drew back the curtain and opened the shutters, letting the light into the room. Keksy blinked as his eyes adjusted.

“Ah, much better. Now then...”

He began to read, the ancient words of the Rite of Ashk’Ente filling the air as it took on a distinctly oily texture. A dark and formless shape began to appear in the centre of the sigil. It held for a few seconds before unexpectedly vanishing, putting out the candles as it did so. Keksy frowned in confusion.

“... Is that meant to happen?” Aminata asked, equally as confused.

“Well... … No, I don’t think so. Should I try again?”

“May as well.”

Keksy relit the candles and once more assumed the dramatic pose as he reread the spell. There was a short delay as nothing happened, but slowly a pink, fluffy mist began to form within the circle. It grew, coalescing as it did so, into a vaguely horse-like shape. With an audible snap, like an elastic band giving up the fight, the mist took on the form of Pinkie Pie, who fell onto the table, and subsequently onto the floor, with a loud thump.

Holy Moley, I wasn't expecting that!

Three grey figures floated in the nothingness of oblivion.

One said, There has been a change.
One said, He has been meddling again.
One said, He has gone. She has taken His place.
One said, She has even more of a personality than He did.

The three paused their conversation.

Three said, This will not be tolerated.

Death was... Confused.

He wasn’t often confused, but this was one of the few times he felt it was justified.

He was standing amid the remains of what had clearly been an attempt to summon him with the Rite of Ashk’Ente, but no one was present. The room was very pink. The curtains were drawn. Through the window, Death could hear the sound of voices and laughter. Below him he could hear voices talking amiably.

Oh yes, and he had hooves. This was unusual.

Clearly, someone had attempted to summon him, but whoever they were, they had since vanished. Secondly, he was clearly no longer on Discworld, judging by the sudden morphic change. He trotted, unsteadily, over to the window, and pulled back the curtain.

… Oh bugger. he repeated.

He stepped back and took stock of the situation.

Clearly he was back in Equestria. The realm was somewhat unmistakable. The view from the window of the streets below had been enough to confirm that the building in which he stood was Sugarcube Corner, where he knew Pinkie Pie lived. It was, therefore, a logical assumption that this was her room, and she had summoned him here.

That... was a problem.

Not many people knew how to perform the Rite of Ashk’Ente. Fewer knew exactly why Death was summoned by the rite (a slightly embarrassing secret he preferred to keep to himself*). Fewer still knew exactly how the spell worked.

The rite would summon and ‘bind’ Death. Most of its practitioners assumed that Death was bound to the circle he was summoned to, but this wasn’t the case. Death was free to move wheresoever he willed, but was bound to the plane of his summoning, until released by the summoner.

Pinkie Pie wasn’t here. And until he found her, he was stuck in Equestria.

* It involved a marmoset, a grinning monk, and an ill-advised wager.

Pinkie Pie blinked, looking up to find two people dressed in bright pink robes and wearing paper hats, bowing at her.

Hey! What're you doing? Did you drop something? I’ll help you look for it! she said as she jumped to her hooves, quickly dropping her head and staring intently at the floor. Her brain slowly made the connections, and she shot back up again.

Hey! My voice sounds funny!

“O Bringer of Joy and Laughter, we are honoured by your presence!” Aminata began, smiling broadly. Pinkie looked at her and squinted for a few moments, before recognition dawned.

I remember you! You slipped and fell back into your body! I never got to give you your present! she said, bounding in place. But you're new! Hi! I’m Pinkie Pie! she continued, turning to a stunned Keksy. He had heard the older wizards talk of Death as a hooded skeleton with eyes that bore into your soul and knew exactly how much time was left until it expired. The decription was nothing like the creature that stood before him. Instead of feeling terror and a sense of impending doom, he felt happiness, and the desire to go out and seize every minute of life while he still could.

“... I’m Terrak Keksy. Wizard,” he said, after a few moments of silence.

Ooh! Like my friend Twilight? She's a unicorn! She's super good at magic, but sometimes she spends too much time in her books and not enough time having fun with her friends! But we love her anyway!

Aminata cut in before Pinkie had time to go into more elaborate detail.

“Honoured Hostess, I seek your great wisdom on a matter of grave importance,” she began, bowing again.

Oh yeah! I was meant to be helping you look for something! Pinkie fell to her knees and stuck her head under the table, searching for anything.

“No, no! A different matter! It’s... Said that when the Rite of Ashk’Ente has been performed, you can ask Death anything. That you know everything?”

I’m not Death, silly! I’m Pinkie Pie! And I don't know about knowing everything, but then if I did know about knowing everything then I guess I would know everything wouldn't I?

“Your pardon, Great One, if calling you such offended you,” Aminata said. “I wish to ask... What awaits us when we’re gone?”

I don't know! But I bet it's great! After all... There was a twinkle in her eye. Everyone's dying to get in!

Keksy choked back a laugh, taken off-guard by the pun. Pinkie giggled and snorted, an odd sound with her current tone of voice. Aminata stayed smiling, the sort of smile that showed quiet acceptance of what was being said, rather than any mirth or joviality.

Oh, hey! I have something to ask you, actually! Pinkie said, leaning forward towards Aminata.

“I will endeavour to answer to your satisfaction, Great One.”

Where am I?

“Why, you’re in the temple, of course,” Aminata answered, gesturing towards the effigy of Pinkie Pie that had toppled to the floor with Pinkie’s arrival. Pinkie’s eyes widened.

You mean you threw a party for me? Aww! Thank you! She threw her forehooves around Aminata, embracing her in a tight hug. By this point Keksy had given up all pretence of seriousness and was laughing loudly. Aminata shot him a glare over Pinkie’s shoulder, a look that reminded him he was in the presence of a greater power, and should show more respect. He coughed and tried to look solemn.

I’d love to stay, but I have to help the Cakes in the bakery today, so maybe another time? Pinkie said, letting go of Aminata and looking genuinely sad at having to leave. The Grand Hostess nodded, still smiling.

“Of course, Great One. Do not let us keep you. You are more than welcome in these hallowed halls.”

Okie dokie lokie! Pinkie beamed, and with a hop, skip and jump, she was gone. The room, though filled with the light of the midday sun, seemed darker and more drab in her absence. Keksy and Aminata stood in reverent silence for a few moments, before the younger wizard turned to the undead priestess.

“... Bakery?”

“We are not privy to the thoughts and manners of the great powers, Keksy.”

“Of course, of course...”

Pinkie landed her jump outside a whitewashed stone stable, looking out over a neat garden and connected to an imposing black house. The scent of lilies filled the air.

Huh. That's funny. Pinkie said to herself. I was supposed to go back to Sugarcube Corner. Why am I here? She turned and faced the wall, jumping into the air and vanishing.

She reappeared no less than a second later in the exact same spot. She frowned.

Maybe my hooves are broken. Can you get that? I remember Applejack got a stone in her hoof once... Hrm. Oh, wait! I know! I’ll ask Death! He's bound to know what's going on!

She bounced through the lawn, coming up to the great door that lead into Death’s abode. She knocked three times with her hoof, for politeness’ sake, then pushed it open with her muzzle. Death didn’t keep the door locked. After all, whatever for?

Hello? Death? It's me, Pinkie Pie! I was wondering- Oh, hey! Albert! Hey! she cried, spotting Albert peeking his head around the kitchen door. He cringed.

“You’re not meant to be back ‘til next week! What’re you doing here?” he yelled down the hall.

I dunno! I was trying to get back to Sugarcube Corner and ended up here!

“You di- … Wait. Your voice, it sounds...”

Yeah, sounds funny, doesn't it? It's been like this since I tried casting that spell I learnt from one of the wizards!

The implications of ‘That spell I learnt from one of the wizards’ sank in to Albert’s brain, stopping briefly at the centres for panic and worry.

“... Oh bugger.”

Taking Up the Mantle

Albert sat hunched over the kitchen table, head in his hands, muttering and cursing to himself, stopping only to take a long drag from what was once possibly a cigarette, followed by half a minute of coughing.

Cupcake?

“No.”

… Sure?

“Yes.”

… … Completely super-duper-ultra-wultra sure?

“Yes!”

More for me!

Another tray of freshly baked confectioneries disappeared into the apparently bottomless stomach of Pinkie Pie. It was the third she’d baked since she’d returned.

Barely an hour ago.

But then, time isn’t so much a law in Death’s Domain as it is a suggestion. Despite this, Death’s home contained possibly more timepieces than actually existed on the Discworld, constantly emptying, measuring, and meting out precious seconds of life. There were two timepieces in particular that afforded special interest out of the billions that occupied its halls.

The first was the great grandfather clock in the hallway. Looking upon it, an observer would get the distinct impression that they were gazing upon a very large object that was very far away, yet also right in front of them. It had no hands. Its scythe-bladed pendulum swung back and forth, killing Time.

The second was an egg-timer. One of many. What was unusual about it was its fundamental lack of use as a timepiece. After all, it had no sand in it. It was forged from solid black... black, decorated in the ever-present skulls-and-bones motif that permeated the rest of the house, and like all the others, had the owner’s name emblazoned on its base in gothic block capitals; “Death”.

Albert had, by now, given up trying to find it. In its usual place on Death’s desk he’d found something far more interesting.

A balloon. With “Pinkie Pie” written on it.

Albert stared intently at an old grease stain on the table while his thoughts filtered, like cake crumbs, through the plughole of reason. Or, indeed, like sand falling in a timer.

The door of the oven slammed shut and Pinkie Pie was suddenly sitting next to Albert, gazing at him with deep blue, innocent eyes. Albert’s brain briefly protested at the thought of a horse sitting upright in a high-backed chair, but was silenced by what remained of his sanity.

“... This is serious, you know,” he muttered, at last.

Really? Super-serious or just serious like when Twilight says something is serious and usually that just means she's over-reacting about something like that time when Fluttershy stole the Princess' bi-

“Super-serious.”

… Oh.

“It’s not like it’s the first time. Gods know I’ve dealt with this before. Happens every time he messes with mortals, whatever breed they are.” He gave Pinkie a cursory glance up and down as he spoke. “He gets an idea in his head and off he goes, and who’s left to pick up the pieces? Old Albert, that’s who. Sometimes I don’t know why I just don’t take the damn job myself.”

What do you mean?

“I mean, he’s vanished like this before. First time was with his ‘apprentice’, right bl- … right old mess that was. Then there was the time he got fired... And that business with his granddaughter... and the Hogfather, gods, the Hogfather. One Backspindlewinter I’d rather forget.”

Oh, so he's missing? I just thought he was out.

“I don’t know. What I do know is that you performed the Ritual of Ashk’Ente, gods only know how, now you’re stuck here, his life-timer’s gone, and in its place is one with your name on it! Offler’s sandals, this isn’t supposed to happen! There’s fail-safes for this sort of thing! Like... Susan!”

That's his granddaughter, right?

“Mmrh. The last time he properly shirked in his Duty she... ‘inherited’. Like it was in the blood, but I always thought it was just that she was the most convenient person available. ... I guess, under the circumstances, that’s you now.”

Huh. So... I’m Death now?

“It would explain the voice.” Albert grimaced. Death’s voice entered the brain without bothering to go past the ears, and had the same intonation as two tombstones slamming together. Pinkie Pie’s new voice, on the other hand, reminded the listener of two balloons rubbing together.

Pinkie frowned, allowing a moment for this new revelation to sink in.

… Do I have to wear the robe?

“Well... It’s traditional. Folk put great store in tradition.”

But it's black!

“I’m sure we could find you a pink one somewhere oh gods what am I saying?” Albert pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling. “… No, we’re going to find out what happened when you performed the Ritual of Ashk’Ente, and bring the Master back. You’ll have to fill in for him in the mean time. He’s explained the Duty to you, hasn’t he?”

Pinkie grinned sheepishly.

“... Right. Well. Off to a good start, aren’t we.”

“Pinkie Pie? Are you alright up there, dearie?”

Death panicked as he heard Mrs. Cake’s voice float up the stairs towards him. He attempted to click his fingers, before the realisation that he was currently somewhat lacking in digits sunk in. He briefly contemplated leaping from the window, but wisely decided against it, as this would likely cause a greater commotion than he currently felt equipped to deal with.

Mrs. Cake rounded the curve of the building’s spiral staircase and stopped on the last few stairs, looking directly at Death with a mix of curiosity and confusion. From Mrs. Cake’s perspective, she could see a tall, skinny, white-coated pony in a black cloak standing in the middle of a small puddle of jam on Pinkie’s floor, and the pink filly herself was nowhere to be seen.

“... I didn’t know Pinkie had guests,” she managed, after a few moments of audible silence.

Yes. Guests. I am Bill Door. A friend from... far away, Death said, grinning. He was good at grinning. He could perform the entire gamut of human emotion with a grin. Pony emotion, too, apparently.

Mrs. Cake looked at him intently, eyes narrowing.

Perhaps at this point in the narrative, it is worth explaining the concept of convergent evolution. The phrase defines the set of circumstances that causes two unrelated lifeforms to independently acquire the same, or similar, biological traits. One well known application of this is the 'parallel universe counterpart', which has, by necessity, independently acquired a near-perfect copy of whomever it is acting as the counterpart of.

Less known, however, is that the same can also be true of non-parallel universes, and even universes with no real relation whatsoever. The multiverse is a strange place, and such things happen with shocking regularity.

You see, there lives, on the Discworld, a medium (really more of a small), known only as Mrs. Evadne Cake. Naturally clairvoyant, Mrs. Cake makes a living talking to the dead, which she finds an entirely natural thing to do. Everyone dies sooner or later, but that shouldn’t stop you having a good natter with them. This puts her at odds with most major religions, which is often seen as a blessing to the collective priesthoods of said major religions, as Mrs. Cake ranks up high on the list of divine punishments, alongside such old favourites as famine, pestilence, and loss of all left socks.

The Mrs. Cake of Ponyville was also clairvoyant. This was not widely known, as the question of the afterlife was one that most citizens of Equestria did not often contemplate. On the other hoof, being able to see roughly ten seconds into the future was an invaluable skill when your lodger was Pinkie Pie. It had saved Mrs. Cake’s well-being (and Sugarcube Corner’s fire insurance) more than once over the years.

I only pause to explain all this because the following conversation never actually took place. As both Mrs. Cake and Death possessed the ability to see into the future, both knew what the other was going to say before they said it, and indeed, even when they never did.

In fact, after taking a good long look at Bill Door, Mrs. Cake turned around and returned to the shop front without uttering a single word more.

If she had, it would have gone something like this.

“Bill Door? I remember Pinkie mentioning a Bill Door had come to see her some weeks ago. That’s you, is it?” she would have said, arching an eyebrow at Death.

Yes, he would have replied.

“Been in Ponyville long, Mr. Door?”

Just arrived.

“Might I inquire as to what you are doing in the middle of that puddle of jam?”

You may.

“What are you doing in the middle of that puddle of jam?”

Death would have looked down at his hooves.

Standing in it.

“I see. … Do you know where Pinkie Pie is?”

I would endeavour to say that she left shortly before I arrived.

“Right, right... I’m not going to ask exactly who you are, or what you’re doing in Pinkie’s room, or how you managed to get up here without passing by the shop front when you obviously lack wings, because I feel I’m not going to like the answers.”

The two would have locked stares for a brief moment.

… I’ll clean up the jam.

“Thank you,” she would have said, and, as she would have turned to leave, adding as an afterthought: “Dearie.”

Pinkie sat at Death’s desk, neatly fitting into the groove in what was supposed to be a high-backed leather chair. In reality, it was more like rock. Death could create anything, but he tended to misunderstand the principles at work behind an object. He could create a perfect copy of the appearance, down to the woodworm damage or rust on the nails, yet somehow entirely miss the point, like creating a chest of drawers that cannot be opened, or an inflexible towel.

She stared at the small group of life-timers before her. Each one had a name. Each one was subtly different. From her time with Death, she was beginning to recognize the basic styles of each race. There were plain, no-nonsense human timers, wood and brass, with simple, clear glass bulbs. There were stocky and ornate dwarven timers, gold and steel, stained glass and rocky salt. Set apart from the others was a troll’s life-timer. It was larger than the others, and consisted of two mossy stones enclosing a pair of smoky quartz bulbs, through which passed gravel, hitting the base of the bulb with a regular tok-tok-tok.

But even they differed within certain limits, much like their owners. Some taller, some shorter. Some more ornate, some plainer. The lives of kings decked in gold and red felt. The lives of paupers, cobbled together from broken wood and tied with string.

She glanced over at her own. Anywhere else, the pink balloon would have appeared cheery, but here it seemed out-of-place. She supposed that, over time, it would deflate, echoing the fall of sand, salt, rock, grain, eggshell and marble.

There was a movement in the air in front of the desk. Or rather, there wasn’t, but the universe was re-adjusted so that there had been.

A grey, hooded figure hung in the air.

It said, We have promoted you.

Oh, hey. Time for exposition, Pinkie said, without looking up. Her voice seemed to lack its usual note of glee.

It said, Your predecessor has been retired. We expect you to pick up the slack. Any questions will be directed to a board of committee.

I do have one question. Pinkie raised her head and locked gazes with the shadowy form of the Auditor. Although it had no eyes, she was looking directly at where they would have been, and her own blue eyes had taken on an icy glow. Strangely, she wasn’t smiling.

I... remember you. From his past. You've fired him, You've tried to have him assassinated, and now you come up again like a Baked Bad when he's missing. Where is he?

It said, That is not your concern. You will perform his Duty as his replacement. We are preventing travel between your world and this. Do not try to leave.

Is that a threat or a suggestion?

It said, Both.

Pinkie slumped back into the chair. Slumping is not something that comes naturally to ponies, especially in chairs designed for two-legged anthropomorphic personifications, but Pinkie had always had a knack of ignoring such petty issues as this.

It said, He always yearned to understand what it is to be alive. It brought his work into question. The living show great aptitude in the Duty, despite the apparent weakness of personality. We will monitor your progress with great interest.

Don't you have personalities? Pinkie asked, feigning ignorance.

It said, I’m a personification of physical forces and processes, why would I need a- Oh, blast.

It disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Pinkie smirked, and returned her gaze to the life-timers on the desk. Pulling one forward with her hoof, she read the name across the bottom carefully.

Terrak Keksy.

Frowning a little, she turned to the great jewelled globe that took up a good chunk of Death’s desk. It was a perfect reproduction of the Discworld, set in gemstones, as it rested on the back of four elephants and the shell of Great A’Tuin. She peered through the spyglass affixed to the celestial arch, at the intricate model of the city of Ankh-Morpork.

She gasped, knocking over the timer she still held under her hoof.

Oh no.

Realization

Death felt very out of his depth.

Of course, that’s not to say he was physically out of his depth, even though he was currently up to his neck in warm, soapy water, in the baths of the Ponyville Spa.

It had happened rather suddenly. He remembered cleaning up the jam from the floor of Pinkie Pie’s room, then carefully making his way down and out of Sugarcube Corner, the innate sense of all living beings to ignore what their eyes are telling them when they don’t wish to see it enabling him to sneak past the busy shop front and out of the door, leaving no evidence of his presence beyond jammy hoofsteps, a trail of flour and sodden, torn party streamers.

The next thing he knew, he was swept along by a white unicorn with a purple mane and an affected accent, into the spa to clean himself up.

There are few things as unstoppable and irresistible as Death.

Rarity is one of them.

“I must say, you look so much better without that cloak, although it certainly does add an air of intrigue and mystery about you! What’s the material?”

Absolute Darkness. The Fabric of Reality before the Universe began. Before the first ray of light began its journey from the-

“Yes, I can see it’s black, but is it silk? Cotton? It’s very unusual.”

Death was a little taken aback.

… Silk. he lied.

Rarity glanced over at the cloak as it hung on the rails beside the tub. It certainly didn’t shimmer like silk. In fact, it didn’t shimmer at all. There were no reflections, and neither was there any sense of depth. It was like a cloak-shaped hole cut in reality, revealing the darkness underneath. However, it was quite stylish. A touch macabre, perhaps, but it had a certain something.

Death himself was looking around at the spa, curious. The concept of bathing was barely understood on the Discworld as a form of necessary torture. The idea of taking that and making it into an act of leisure had yet to occur to even the most godlike and brilliant of minds. The water was pleasantly warm. Somewhere beneath the surface was a jet that gently churned the contents of the tub, creating bubbles from the various herbal soaps and mixtures that had been thrown in.

He had a bathroom at home, of course, because he understood that most wealthy, upper-class homes have one. Or at least an iron tub hanging above the fire in the living room. It was just that he’d never had cause to use it. Albert did, occasionally, and he recalled his ‘daughter’, Ysabell, having spent much time in there during her formative years. All thirty-five of them.

He observed carefully how Rarity acted, but had decided against attempting to emulate her behaviour. Despite her insistence, he could not quite understand the purpose in wrapping yourself in seaweed, placing sliced vegetables over your eyes, and then jumping into a pit of mud, in an attempt to get clean.

Rarity was busy observing him. He had such a beautiful, bleached white coat, and she simply couldn’t bear the thought of it being covered in jam, flour, bits of party streamer, and goodness knows what else. Besides, he was rather handsome, in a tall, mysterious stranger way. She was more than happy to pay for his bath. He didn’t seem to be much of a conversationalist, on the other hoof.

“So, where are you from, Mr. Door?” she asked, running a hoof along Death’s cloak as she peered over the railing at him.

Far away. he answered, after a slight pause. The conversation once again sat a lull. Rarity tried her luck with another.

“And... What brings you to Ponyville?”

A summons.

“... Ah, I see...” Rarity replied, the gears of her mind whirring and trying hopelessly to fill in the blanks of the dialogue. “A legal matter, is it? Well, I won’t pry.”

Like all things, the conversation died.

Rarity scraped her hoof on the wooden boards.

“... I’m afraid that as much as I would love to stay here, I really must get on... Drop by the Carousel Boutique when you’re ready, would you? I have something in mind for you. You’ll love it, I’m sure! And I so rarely get to make clothing for stallions these days... Well, I’ll see you there! Au revoir!”

And with that, she was gone. Death briefly wondered if he was meant to have interjected at some point. Mortals seemed to be such incomprehensible creatures, no matter what realm they hailed from.

Yet he had to admit... The bath was soothing. He could feel the warmth of the water soak into his coat, and the pleasurable shiver of the nerves that accompanied it.

He blinked.

Oh. … Bugger.

The Third Temple of the Pink Pony of Death* was in the process of emptying after a particularly successful high tea. The Reader of Etiquette said the final liturgy as the congregation filed out of the revolving door, each solemnly given, in turn, their little bag of leftovers.

As the Junior Hosts and Hostesses stacked the chairs on the tables and swept the floor of the hall, Grand Hostess Aminata Odham watched them with a practised gaze, the sort that long-suffering mothers give to their wayward children as they attempt to ‘help’ with the housework. You could have painted that smile on her face.

Beside her stood Guest of Honour Terrak Keksy, finishing his third helping of cake. It was a simple sponge with jam and cream filling, topped with a plain white icing and no extra frills. Remembering the reading from The Book of Proper Nourishment, 2:24 (‘thou shalt not talk with thy mouth full’), he swallowed before looking to the Grand Hostess.

“I must say, this cake is absolutely delicious. To die for, even. So, what did you want to talk to me about?”

Aminata turned to him, a slow and steady movement that seemed to affect only her neck and head, leaving the rest of her body rigidly still.

“Oh, I just wanted to thank you for your continual service to our cause. Your magic has been of great use in spreading the word, and I know you’ve received some persecution from the University because of your beliefs.”

Terrak paused. “Well... I wouldn’t call it ‘persecution’, it’s perfectly ordinary to wake up in the halls and find your slippers gained sentience overnight. And a taste for flesh.”

“Regardless, I feel I ought to reward you. If you would follow me...” she cut off any further reply and swept through the curtain that separated the main hall from the Blessed Sanctuary. Or the broom cupboard, as it was more widely known.

Terrak shrugged, gulped down another mouthful of cake, and followed. As he stepped into the enclosed space, Aminata drew the curtain shut and, turning, took a flask from the shelf.

“Punch,” she explained, at Terrak’s clueless expression. “A special mix, using some of the rarest ingredients on the Disc. I’d value your opinion on it.”

She poured out a glass of the stuff and handed it to the young wizard, who put his bowl on the shelf behind him and took it gratefully. He swirled it around in the glass, taking a sniff of the bouquet. Advanced Wine & Alcoholic Beverage Techniques was one course of the university’s vast and eldritch curriculum that he excelled in.

“Definite hints of Howondaland Swamp Boil... A pinch of Djelibeybi Sherbet? Ephebian Wine... Yes, quite the mix you’ve got here.”

Terrak knocked back the contents of the glass in one, a habit that all students of the Unseen University pick up eventually. If you linger with a glass of wine at the university’s dining hall, you’ll find there’s none left by the time you’ve finished.

He smacked his lips. “Odd taste. Almost a bit like...”

He paused when he realised Aminata wasn’t looking at him, but at a point behind him. He watched as she smiled. She was always smiling, but unlike the usual grimace, this smile seemed to show some actual emotion. Somehow, he didn’t like the look of it.

Without a word, she turned on her heel and walked away. Terrak made to follow, only to find himself brought up short after a few steps. He looked over his shoulder, his gaze following a thin, blue line tethering him to... to himself, lying on the floor, a smashed glass by his side and a very shocked expression on his face.

“... Ah,” he managed, as his mind, (or at least, whatever part of his now incorporeal self did the mental calculating,) joined the dots.

Before realization fully sunk in, there was a faint shimmer in the air to his left which soon resolved itself into the unmistakable shape of a bright pink, and profoundly worried, pony. She looked around frantically, trying to take in the whole room in a single glance, and spotted the corpse.

NoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNoNo... she repeated, running over to the prone body and kneeling beside it.

“... Pinkie Pie?” the ghost of Terrak said, moving towards her. As she heard him, she whirled around to face him, halfway between relieved and deeply upset.

Terrak! You died!

“Clearly.”

That wasn't supposed to happen!

This took him a little by surprise. “... Whyever not? I mean, not that I wanted to die, but...”

B-but, I knew you! You brought me here! You were nice! Why did you have to die? Why do I have to do it?

“... Well, isn’t it your... job?” Terrak replied, thoroughly confused. He knew, as all wizards did, that Death came to guide them personally for their first steps into the afterlife, but he didn’t expect the reaction to be quite so... emotional. “Don’t you do this all the time?”

Yes! … No! … I... I don't know! I just help! I don't know what to do! I remember things, but... Pinkie seemed close to breaking down in tears. She hadn’t known Terrak particularly well, but even that made the difference. She’d met him. All the times she’d helped Death, she was meeting these people for the first time, and giving them a nice surprise to what was, normally, a fairly unpleasant event.

But this was different. This struck a chord, deep in Pinkie’s heart. She’d never done The Duty solo, and the first time she had to, it was the pointless murder of a perfectly friendly and good-natured man who hadn’t seen it coming.

She couldn’t send him back. She didn’t know how. But she knew... she remembered, what would happen if she did. She couldn’t even share her own time, not now. She was Death, for all intents and purposes, and that balloon floating ominously in the Room of Hourglasses served as a constant reminder.

The ghostly mage laid an ethereal hand on her shoulder, breaking her train of thought.

“It’s alright. Truth be told, I was finding university life pretty boring, anyway. Spend the rest of my days cooped up in that dusty old mansion, nothing but fat tomes and mouldering old men to keep me company? I’d rather see what’s out there waiting for me. And personally, I’m glad you’re the one to send me off.”

Pinkie sniffed. Really?

Terrak nodded.

I’m... sorry I didn't bring you any cake...

“It’s alright, I’ve had plenty. … Could go for a quiche, right about now. I wonder if you can eat in the afterlife?” He shook his head. “Anyway, first I think you have to do something about this...” he said, pulling the blue thread with his finger so that it went ‘twang’.

Oh. Yeah. Right. … Uh. Pinkie concentrated, trying to will the scythe to appear. It seemed reluctant to answer her summons.

“... Maybe there’s a pair of scissors... Or a knife?” Terrak said, helpfully. Pinkie found one in the pile of dirty crockery and brought it back, holding it in her mouth. She carefully angled the blade above the lifeline, and cut it gently.

‘Ere. she mumbled through the handle, as the thin stream receded into Terrak. The ghost took a last look at his former residence.

“... Pity, that robe was new on six weeks ago. Could’ve saved myself thirty dollars. All those sequins going to waste. Eh well, I s’pose it’ll go to the freshers for fire spell practise.”

He walked around his body, examining it carefully, while Pinkie put the knife back. Despite the various Junior Hosts milling around the place, no one seemed to be able to see her, since, even in the Temple of the Pink Pony of Death, no one honestly expected to see the eponymous mare walking around with a cake-encrusted knife in her mouth. She returned to find Terrak amusing himself by waving his hand through the shelves, an activity he immediately ceased when he saw her returning, thrusting his arms behind his back, and taking on what he hoped was a dignified stance.

“What now?” he asked. Pinkie hesitated. She honestly wasn’t sure.

I... guess you go on to whatever's next. You don't believe in reincarnation, do you? That can get a little tricky.

“Nope, quite happy the way I am. Or was. … Is there a tense for referring to oneself after you’ve passed on?”

Present perfect. Pinkie replied, automatically. She blinked. … How did I know that? she said, half to herself, rubbing her chin with a hoof.

“Ah. ‘I am quite happy with the way I have been’. … Yes, that works.”

Silence descended as the conversation followed suit in passing on. Somewhere in the greater building, somebody coughed. Much like the little wisps of smoke from the boots of a man tragically struck by lightning, or the flaming wheel that rolls from the wreckage of a vehicle crash, the well-timed cough in a conversational lull is a fundamental law of the universe.**

“... If it’s too much trouble, I’m sure I can find my own way out,” the wizard said, at length.

Pinkie just nodded, smiling at him gratefully. The ghost of Terrak Keksy smiled, bowed, and exited stage left, through a wall.

The Pink Pony of Death was left feeling drained by the experience, emotionally and physically. She knew just enough to do The Duty, but not enough to really be Death. Although, judging by the new ‘memories’ that flooded through her mind, that wouldn’t be a problem for much longer.

The thought would have scared her. But Death was never scared. Instead, she thought about the young wizard who had been murdered, here, in a sanctuary built (or at least, cheaply decorated), in her name. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right.

This calls for extreme measures.

She turned, the glow of her sky-blue eyes piercing through the curtain that separated the cupboard from the rest of the building beyond. Somewhere out there, she knew, was the person responsible for Terrak’s untimely demise.

Pinkie Pie style.

* "NO LONGUR BLIT’ZS FIREWURKS! UNDER NOO MANAJMANT!! TRY OWR CHEEZ STRORS!!!”

** Of course, in some cases where coughs aren’t available due to the general lack of respiratory passages present, Tumbleweed fills much the same role. In fact, Natural Selection being what it is, a species of Tumbleweed has arisen on the Discworld that possesses specific powers of teleportation. It lives its life in waiting and breaks from its stem at precisely the most effective moment, before briefly popping into existence, just out of sight, to roll across the foreground before disintegrating from reality.

In Which Death Gets a New Suit

Albert sat in the kitchen of Death’s Humble Abode, leaning back in his chair, feet on the table. The comforting sound of sizzling oil filled the air, as another defenceless lunch was mercilessly drowned in congealed cholesterol. Despite setbacks, Albert was already well on his way to reproducing that unique blend of fats and lipids that made every meal a heart attack waiting to happen.

Licking his thumb, he slowly and deliberately turned the page of the Farmer’s Almanack. He’d read it so many times over the years that he could have reproduced it, woodcut for woodcut, whilst blindfolded, but decades-old habits are hard to break.

In precisely fifteen seconds, he would put the yellowing journal down on the table, get up, and turn over the sausage, adding another egg to the pan.

At least, that was the plan.

Albert!

The aged manservant fell to floor with a thump as his chair slid from under him. Quickly picking himself up and dusting himself off, he found Pinkie already standing there, glowering.

“You rang, mas- Miss?”

Albert. Bring a lantern.

Pinkie’s eyes shone fiercely in the dim light of Death’s home.

We're going into the library.

Thud.

Ow.

Thud.

Ow.

Thu-

“My dear, what are you doing?” Rarity asked, pulling open the door and giving Bill Door a slightly worried glance.

He was still dripping wet, with a visible trail of soap suds leading away from him, back towards the spa. He had, it seemed, been trying to walk through the walls of Carousel Boutique.

I was... Uh. Death didn’t think it would reflect well on this pony’s view of his sanity if he told the complete truth at this particular juncture. … Testing the structural integrity of your wall, he finished, lamely.

“... I... See.” Rarity said, raising an eyebrow. “... Do you want a towel...?”

Death looked down at the pool of water at his hooves.

Towel. Yes. It seems in my haste to make the appointment I neglected to dry myself. I do apologise.

“Oh, it’s nothing, darling. You needn’t rush on my account. Here...” Rarity led him inside, and drifted a towel over, giving him a vigorous scrubbing. Satisfied, she whisked the dripping cloth away into the laundry room, bringing her attention back to the bone dry stallion standing in her shop front.

“So, Mr. Door, I hope you won’t mind, but I’ve taken the liberty of putting together a little something for you...”

Rarity’s horn lit up as the screen separating shop floor from podium slid aside, revealing a mannequin (pony-quin? clotheshorse?) modelling a dapper pinstripe suit, with tails, a black top hat, white shirt and black cravat.

“I know it may look a little... Macabre, at first glance, but when I saw you I just knew it would be perfect!” she smiled, a genuine, slightly nervous smile of someone who hopes their work is appreciated but isn’t quite sure of the outcome.

Death looked at her. No one ever really smiled at Death. He smiled all the time. As has been noted, he didn’t have much choice.

He looked at the suit.

He paced around the mannequin, examining it from every angle.

I like it. He declared. Rarity let out a not-particularly-ladylike squeal and pulled the screen back across, obscuring her and her client from view.

What followed was unlike anything Death had ever had the misfortune to experience. All he could recall was the room growing dark, a rustle of clothing, a sudden force, and then he was standing there fully clothed. His admirable mental faculties wisely decided to ignore the problem of how Rarity had managed to dress him without him moving or lifting a hoof, and instead moved to admiring the seamstress’ hoofwork. Considering she hadn’t been anywhere near him with a tape measure, it fit remarkably well.

… A little too well.

It took Death a few seconds to fully realize why.

He was flesh and bone.

“... Is it too tight?” Rarity asked, a little concerned that the stallion seemed to have blanked out, staring, pupils shrunken, at some point in the middle distance.

Death pulled himself together.

“No, no, it-” I mean, no, it fits perfectly, thank you. He coughed, deliberately. How much do I owe you?

“Oh, no, no, darling, there’s no charge! I’m happy to provide for a stallion of means such as yourself! We couldn’t have such a gentlecolt walking around town without looking his very best, now could we?”

Death glanced at his reflection in the mirror.

“No, I-” I suppose not.

Rarity gave him another look of concern, sidling up to him. “Are you sure you’re alright, darling? You sound a little... hoarse.”

“I’m fin-” Fine. Really.

“And you look awfully pale.”

“That-” That's normal.

“And you’re sweating.”

“It’s- It’s the heat.” Death coughed, again, this time less deliberately. Now she came to mention it, he did feel a little weak. And there was a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach. It made him feel vaguely nauseous. “... I’m fine.”

“Now you’re swaying! Oh, darling, you must be coming down with something!” Rarity fussed, placing a hoof on Death’s forehead to feel his temperature. This was a completely futile task as the insulating effect of the hoof meant she couldn’t exactly feel anything, but it somehow felt like the right thing to do in the circumstances.

“We should go see my friend, Fluttershy, she’ll have just the thing, I’m sure. She takes care of all the animals around Ponyville, and more than a few ponies, when it’s nothing too serious. Or there’s the hospital...”

Death winced. “No hospitals.”

“If you insist, darling. Now, it’s not far to walk, but-”

A thud made Rarity turn back around, to see Death lying splayed out on the floor.

“... You know what, you just stay right there and I’ll be back tout de suite.”

Death’s Library was, perhaps, the largest collection of books in the Discworld. I say perhaps, because the dimensions of the library of the Unseen University have never been fully measured, and indeed, several cartographers have been lost to insanity, delirium, and malevolent tomes in the attempt.

Death’s Library, however, contained the autobiography of every living thing on the Discworld, or at least, every sapient thing. Unlike the library of the Unseen University, it did have a finite beginning and end, but no mortal had ever traversed the full length of those dark, unlit halls.

The books wrote and organized themselves. When their owner’s story had ended, they shifted down the corridors to the shelves and shelves of books that had long since ceased to record their tales. It was eerie, walking down the stacks, and hearing the hushed scratching of thousands upon thousands of lives being lived. Unlike the soothing noise of the falling sand of the Room of Lifetimers, the sound of the Library made the listener anxious. It was as if at any moment you might hear one book among many suddenly cease, and you would know another tale had drawn to its close.

Pinkie was making such speed along the stone flooring that she was nearly galloping, but, Albert noticed, in that strange, stalking gait the Master used. Indeed, the clip-clop of her horseshoes was even beginning to sound, to Albert’s old ears, like the click-click of bone on tile.

Hurrying to keep up with her, Albert lurched along by the smoky light of an oil lantern, fearfully glancing up at the looming shelves. The last time he’d been in here, he remembered, that Boy and the Master’s Daughter had presented him with his own life. Forcefully. To the cranium. From a great height. It was an experience he was not anxious to relive.

As the scratching became quieter, and finally ceased altogether, Pinkie suddenly stopped short in the middle of the floor, and Albert had to stop himself from running into her.

It's here. She said, the words falling into place in the silence like lead slabs.

“What is? Who are you looking for?” Albert asked, perplexed. She hadn’t spoken a word since dragging him away from lunch, and given his prior experience with the pink pony, this was worrisome enough.

She didn’t reply, but stared up at the shelves, her eyes blazing blue in the dark. Finally, she spoke again.

Normally I suppose I would click my fingers, but given the circumstances...

She raised her hoof, and brought it down on the stone tiles so hard that they crumbled into dust, the thunderclap echoing through the library and shaking the shelves. One single, solitary book slipped from its place, high above, and fell to the ground with a second loud thump.

Pinkie momentarily eyed the thin lettering on the leather cover. ‘Terrak Keksy’. She flipped it over with her hooves, nosing it open at the last page.

“... What’s so special about this one?” Albert asked, leaning over her shoulder and peering at the text.

He died, she answered, continuing to read.

“... Everyone in here is dead! All these books are is records of the dead! Why’s this one any different?”

He died. Because of me.

Her eyes burned brighter than any torch.

And now I know who did it.

No less than fifteen minutes later, the door burst open, threatening the continued health of its hinges, framing the heroic figure of Rarity, flanked by Nurse Redheart and Fluttershy.

“Have no fear, darling, I return with medical help!” she cried, while the other two mares made their way around her and into the building.

Death was still lying where Rarity had left him, although with the addition of Opal resting on his head, curled up and quite content. He was doing a remarkable impression of a corpse, which wasn’t too surprising, considering.

Redheart frowned and immediately went to check for a pulse, nodding to Rarity and Fluttershy some seconds later in confirmation that he was, despite all appearances, still alive. Rarity breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank heavens! I thought he might have... Well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Will he be alright? Oh, Fluttershy, be a dear and fetch a blanket for him, would you? Are you sure he’ll be alright, Nurse- Oh, Opal! Don’t get in the way! Tsk. Now, are-”

“Rarity, he’s fine,” the Nurse interrupted, smiling. “I can’t see anything immediately wrong with him, but he’s certainly still conscious, aren’t you, sir?”

“... Yes?” Death answered, weakly. He wasn’t too certain what she meant by ‘conscious’, given he’d never really been anything else and had nothing with which to compare it.

“And your ears are still working! Ah, thank you, Fluttershy...” Redheart continued as the pegasus gently draped the blanket over Death. “Now, I’ll just perform a few simple tests, and we’ll have you back on your hooves in no time, hmm?” She set to work while Rarity hovered nervously, eventually glancing up at the fashionista with a meaningful glance.

Rarity took the hint and scuttled aside, dragging Fluttershy (and Opal, resting on the pegasus’ wings) with her.

Once safely out of earshot, she gave another worried glance over at Death, then turned back to Fluttershy, grinning broadly.*

“What luck! Handsome, unattached stallion, and he’s ill in my boutique!” she said, making darting glances back and forth. Fluttershy blinked.

“... P-pardon?”

“Oh, Fluttershy, it’s wonderful! I mean, not that he’s ill, that’s terrible, and I wish him the best of health, but now he’ll definitely remember his visit here, and more importantly, me!”

“... I... see?” The yellow pegasus replied, perplexed.

“And he’s a lawyer! Oh, after that awful affair at the Gala, I was fearing I’d never find the stallion of my dreams, but there he is! In my boutique! Being nursed by another mare-” Rarity stopped, and frowned. “... Well, anyway, what do you think of him, Fluttershy? Be honest with me now, darling.”

Fluttershy looked over at where Death was being helped up by Nurse Redheart.

“... He’s... Nice.”

“Darling.”

“W-well, he’s... J-just not my type, Rarity. I’m sure he’s lovely, though!” Fluttershy said, trying to dig her way out of the conversation.

“Hmph. Oh, he’s back on his hooves!” Rarity observed, rushing back over. She was about to open her mouth when Redheart stopped her.

“He’s fine, before you ask, Rarity. And he’s not ill, either! He collapsed because he hasn’t eaten anything in days!” the medic said, smiling. “Stallion of your size, too, can’t think how.”

“... I had a lot on my mind,” Death replied.

“Oh, you poor dear! Let me whip something up for you! Fluttershy, Nurse, would you care to stay for a late lunch?” Rarity asked, zipping over to the kitchen door.

“Oh, that would be lovely, Rarity, if it... If it isn’t too much trouble, I mean,” Fluttershy replied.

“No trouble at all, dear! Three can feast as easily as two! And you, Nurse?”

“Thank you, Rarity, but I should probably get back to the hospital. Drop by later if there’s any other problems, though!”

They waved Nurse Redheart off, and Rarity began preparing a meal. Death and Fluttershy stood in awkward silence in the shop front.

“Oh, I nearly forgot! Have you any requests, Mr. Door?” Rarity called across from the kitchen.

He thought for a moment.

“I could murder a curry.”

* Indeed, like a Cheshire cat. However, Cheshire cats are not particularly well known in Equestria, due to the general lack of Cheshire, so the phrase has here been substituted for a more suitable adjective.**

** Opal, on the other hoof, regularly demonstrates a grin that would make even the eponymous Cestrian jealous.

The Problems of Duty and Curry

“But Mas- Master! Listen to me! Thousands die every day, it’s fate! You can’t change that! Not even you can do that! Gods know you’ve tried!” Albert entreated, hurrying after the Pony of Death as she made her way out of the library. The tiles cracked under every beat of her hooves, the stacks shook as Death’s creation responded to the anger of its new Mistress.

No! I can change it! He doesn't have to die!

“You’ve got his memories! Think back to Mort! He tried it, too!”

I can change it! It's not fair! It's not just!

“ ‘There is no justice!’ ”

Pinkie stopped, and turned her burning eyes on Albert.

“ ‘There is no justice’. That’s what you said. What HE said. ‘There is no justice, it’s just me.’ ” Albert’s old, waxy features entreated her, nearly desperate.

It's just me.

Pinkie’s eyes dimmed, and her head drooped.

Just me.

Albert stepped forward, but she held up a hoof.

I... need to think.

“Yes’m. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

Minutes, hours, or perhaps days later, she was sitting, curled up, in the great leather chair that stood in Death’s Office, deep in thought.

She wasn’t feeling herself.

… She wasn’t feeling anything.

Resting between her hooves was a lifetimer, the wooden frame painted pink, and inscribed with the name ‘Aminata Odham’. She turned it over and over, the sand constantly flowing from one bulb into another, no matter which way up it was.

She remembered once, when she had been Him, that she had turned a life timer over and granted someone their life all over again. That wasn’t happening now, though. Perhaps the gods reserved such things for their own amusement.

She exhaled the sound of air escaping the hooded cloak more like a death rattle than a heartfelt sigh.

I could do with some amusement, she thought, out loud, the tone of her ‘voice’ vanishing into the all-encompassing hiss of sand falling through glass.

How long had she been here, in this world? Two days? Two weeks? Time stood still in Death’s Country, and Pinkie had been too busy with The Duty to keep track.

It was all becoming a blur, swallowed up in the vast recesses of her memory. His memory.

Their memory.

She remembered being in Ponyville, but she also remembered having never been there. She remembered Sugarcube Corner and her job, but she also remembered the slow aeons of watching the Disc turn, and The Duty.

She didn’t feel sad, or lonely. She just felt... Empty.

She’d noticed, when she stopped to look, that even the colours of the garden had faded away.

Everything was black. Her coat stood out in the darkness like a light from a candle. Her eyes burned brighter than any flame, but that was all the colour in the world.

She looked at the hourglass again, with the creeping realization that even what she had thought of as pink paint was really just a pink shade of black.

Suddenly, there always had been three grey, hooded robes floating in front of her desk.

The first time you showed up, I couldn't feel you doing that.

One said, Doing what?

Adjusting things. That's what you are, really, isn't it? Adjusters. You tweak and calibrate and clean up.

One said, That is one way of putting it.

Then we're not that different, are we?

One said, No.
One said, We are not.

Death, the Reaper. I clean up after everyone's gone. No time for the party. The staff don't get invited.

One said, This is what you chose.
One said, Do you regret it?

Pinkie glared at them.

I didn't choose this. You chose it. You adjusted.

She looked back down at her hooves.

It's not fair.

One said, The universe isn’t fair.
One said, But it continues.
One said, As do we all.

And then they had never been.

Death realised she hadn’t breathed back in.

Meanwhile, Bill Door was living through another strange new experience. It was not one he was entirely unfamiliar with, but he couldn’t truly say he’d ever lived through it before.

He scuffed his hoof on the carpet, aware of the overbearing silence weighing down on him, broken only by Rarity’s humming as she cooked. He glanced up, occasionally, to see the yellow pegasus standing there, hiding behind her hair and similarly scuffing her hoof.

Curiosity forced him to look up again, and their eyes met as she did the same.

There was a spark there, something he had never felt before.

He felt flushed, exposed, and far out of his depth.

In short, he felt acutely embarrassed. Despite himself, his rational mind was intrigued by this new sensation and immediately went to work studying it. The rest of him decided its time was far better spent by ignoring it entirely and focusing on something else.

The cat, for example. Opal had sidled up to him and was now rubbing herself against his legs, in that affectionate, I’m-hungry-and-you’re-not-doing-anything-important manner of felines. He reached down with the intent to pick her up, but realised half way there that his current, four-legged frame was not conducive to the picking up and cradling of small mammals.

He settled for rubbing Opal awkwardly, yet gently, with his hoof.

“O-oh, you like cats?” came a timid voice to his side, breaking the silence. He turned his head to see Fluttershy staring at him, wide-eyed with enthusiasm.

“Um. Yes. I like cats,” he replied, feeling more at ease with this level of conversation.

“Me too! They’re just so huggable and soft and friendly and...” Fluttershy trailed off when she realised the stallion was staring at her. “... uhm. Nice.”

“Do you have a cat?” he asked, trying to prevent another long, awkward silence.

“Oh, n-no. Well, kind of... I look after animals, you see, it’s my special talent. I have a few cats I take care of but they’re not mine, a-as such.” She watched as the stallion contined to stroke Opal, the normally violent little beast as tame as a manticore with a freshly de-thorned paw.

“I’m surprised, Opal’s usually so shy around strangers,” she said, at last (there followed a little hysterical giggle from the kitchen). “You must have a way with animals yourself, Mister... Uhm, I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Door. Bill Door.”

“I’m... Fluttershy.”

The two stood and stared at each other, while Bill Door idly continued to stroke Opal. He felt that flushing feeling from before, and slowly realised that he was feeling a burning sensation in his cheeks.

His brain’s initial panic of ‘why are my cheeks on fire’ soon melted into a sense of mild euphoria as he continued to stare, silently, at the yellow pegasus. Internally, his mind was racing, facing the unfamiliar assault of sensory information, a plethora of commands and demands from his own body, and, perhaps most unfamiliar of all, hormones.

Her delicate figure, her long mane, her lush coat, her eyes...

“Lunch is served!” Rarity called from the kitchen, interrupting Death’s train of thought. He realised he hadn’t been breathing, and took a sharp gulp of air. As Fluttershy trotted past him to the kitchen, he found his gaze wandering, taking in her, fine, shapely...

Death shook himself. This was not him. He was not ‘Bill Door’. He reasoned that he was just still... feeling a little ill. Nothing to do whatsoever with the apparent reversal of his natural anthropomorphogenic field and sudden loss of reality by means of his assistant taking over his job.

… Again.

The Pink Pony of Death swung the knife, cutting another cord and releasing another soul to their afterlife. The scythe still refused to obey her, so she was making do with one of the knives from Albert’s cutlery drawer.

The spectre said something to her, but she didn’t hear it. She watched the last glimmer of their soul fade as it flew away, and felt no emotion.

She hadn’t asked who they were.

She hadn’t listened to their questions.

She took another life timer from her robes, watching the last few minutes of sand ebb away. She realised she no longer cared where she would find this soul, or why they had to die. They were just grains of wheat, a part of the great harvest, and she was merely separating them from their chaff.

She turned, and the world melted beneath her hooves into a swirling, seething mass of nothing. This was The Duty. She had performed it for a thousand years, and a thousand again, since the Disc had been turning. She would dance the danse macabre until the last spark of life was snuffed from the universe, until Great A’Tuin itself came to journey’s end.

Swing. Cut. Bind.

Swing. Cut. Bind.

Swing. Cut. Bind.

Swing. Cut.

Swing.

The strong scent of tomato, coriander, cream and paprika rose from the dish. Bill Door just sat there a moment, savouring every sensation. The delicate hint of the spices, the stewed vegetables, the rice... It smelt real, vibrant.

He was quite a fan of curry, of course, and often stopped in the famed Curry Gardens of Ankh-Morpork after work. He realised now that perhaps the reason he’d taken to it was the rich explosion of flavour it contained, no matter which sauce or stock it used. Back then, even his poor imitation of sense was given a treat, but now that his senses were really working, (indeed, now that he had senses), they were nearly overwhelmed. He caught himself almost drooling at just the sight and scent of the meal alone.

Rarity, too, was happy to show off her skills in cooking. Sweetie Belle, like all foals her age, just wanted crispy carrot nuggets and chips, or other such simple staples of childhood. Her palate certainly couldn’t stand the rich and refined foodstuffs that Rarity preferred to eat, but she never enjoyed cooking such elaborate meals for just herself, and barely had the time to entertain guests.

She wouldn’t dare admit it, but the moment Bill Door had asked for curry, she’d made a hasty exit through the laundry room and galloped to the market for the right ingredients. The dish was nearly unknown in Ponyville, but was quickly becoming a fad among the upper crust of society, and like always Rarity kept her hoof on the nub of fashion.

Fluttershy had never seen the dish before, and was not entirely sure how to react to it. Or indeed, how to eat it. Given the large amount of sauce present, diving in muzzle first didn’t seem entirely sensible, but the pegasus was largely lacking in means of operating cutlery.*

Bill Door had encountered the same problem. His instinct had been to reach out his hoof and grab for the provided fork, but this had run into difficulties at the second step of the plan. He’d then thought of attempting to eat it out of his hoof. After all, that was the traditional way of eating a curry back in Klatch.

He hesitated, and looked around at the kitchen. Despite having just been used, it was as pristine as if it had been freshly installed. The table cloth was embroidered silk. Bill Door just knew that if he attempted to eat with his hoof, he’d drop something on the cloth. Similarly, he understood, at the very core of his being, that this would be the worst. Possible. Thing.

Instead he settled for occasionally glancing at Fluttershy, hoping she would begin eating and give him a cue as to what he was supposed to be doing.

Unfortunately, she was glancing at Bill Door with the same intentions. Both plates remained untouched.

After a few minutes of observing this in polite silence, Rarity gave in.

“... Is there something wrong, darlings? You’ve not even touched your curry!”

They looked at each other. They looked back at her, and opened their mouths to reply.

“I-”
“Uhm-”

They looked at each other again, and finally Fluttershy took the initiative.

“Uhm, I’m sure it’s lovely, but... I don’t want to make a mess,” she whispered, hiding sheepishly behind her fringe.

Rarity blinked.

“Oh! My poor darlings, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think! Let me get you some napkins... In fact, you’re right, I’m being far too formal, aren’t I? I’ll just take away that cloth...” before Fluttershy could protest, their plates were hoisted into the air as the cloth was whisked away, folded mid-air, and neatly placed into a waiting open draw. As that one slammed shut, another slid open, and a stream of white linen cloths danced out, arranging themselves in a pile on the table.

It was Bill Door’s turn to blink. Why didn’t the Wizards ever use their magic for tasks like that?

Rarity returned the plates to their proper places, and lifted her fork to begin. Half-way to the plate, she realised that this would be a little rude, given the circumstances, and slowly placed it back on the table. Smiling at Fluttershy and Bill Door, she gulped, summoned up her courage, and dove face-first into the plate, ignoring her brain screaming at her that she’d never get those oils stains out of her coat.

Satisfied, Fluttershy began taking tiny mouthfuls and chewing demurely. Bill Door remained looking perplexed, unaccustomed to the idea of eating a meal with one’s face without an intervening step involving the limbs in some way. Fortunately, he was spared further thought on the matter when Fluttershy leapt up from her chair and began flying around the kitchen, fanning her mouth and repeating ‘Ohmygoodnessohmygoodnessohmygoodness’.

Rarity sighed. This wasn’t going to plan.

* In fact, a Pegasus and Earth Pony line of cutlery had been developed in the past, but after several cases of petrification, accidental gelding, and an outbreak of Cutie Pox, they were recalled by Royal Edict and summarily destroyed.

It's Always The Quiet Ones

Swing. Cut. Bind.

The Pink Pony of Death reaped the harvest, never looking up from her work. All around her were the golden fields of wheat, each ear waiting to be cut and bound. Some ears were young, some old, some were trampled and some wilted, but each ear had to be brought in. The reaper’s job was to take in the harvest, no matter the state of the crop.

Then she saw herself at a party. The guests were all laughing, enjoying themselves as music filled the air and bright colours lifted the mood. She watched through a pane of glass as she worked in another room, preparing the food, pouring drinks, making the decorations.

The images clashed. How could she be the caretaker of the living and the gatherer of the dead? The Auditors demanded cold efficiency, but her mind and her heart said something different. What pieces of Pinkie Pie still remained made her feel sympathy and empathy for the Harvest, accentuated still by Death’s memories of aeons of loneliness.

Her mind raced. Wasn’t a party just a gathering of the living? Wasn’t ‘The Duty’ being the caretaker of the dead?

Could she be both?

A petulant little voice echoed in her head.

It said: Is there a difference?

The Pink Pony of Death stopped, and looked up at the emptiness that surrounded her. But it was not quite empty. There, on the edge of sight, hung three grey robes. Her head dropped, and she looked at the knife in the cup of her hoof.

No.

The knife fell from her grip, vanishing into the darkness.

No, she repeated. The world writhed beneath her hooves.

NO! she screamed, the full, blazing fury of her gaze banishing the nothingness as it was directed at those three grey robes.

The sky tore apart and was replaced by the starry dome of the Discworld. The void below took shape, quickly forming the great twin city of Ankh-Morpork. The lights of the city’s nightlife shone as bright and numerous as the stars above, and in the darkness, one could be forgiven for wondering which way was up.

Her cloak billowed in the night winds, as she stood with her hooves firmly planted in the air. The three grey figures descended and hovered before her.

One said, You renounce The Duty?

I renounce your version of it.

One said, Death is impersonal.
One said, You cannot play favourites.
One said, You cannot have personality.

She grinned.

How did he put it? ‘What hope does the Harvest have, if not for the care of the Reaper Man?’ Well, Reaper Mare. You would have me apathetic to their plights, their cares, their loves and their losses. What kind of ‘Duty’ is that?

One said, This is unacceptable.
One said, Your insubordination has been noted.

The Pink Pony of Death held out her hoof, silencing them. The air shimmered as the scythe appeared by her side, its blade glowing as it cut the starlight and moonlight that fell upon it.

If a part of the crop is sick, should we not tend to it? If a part is trampled, do we not attempt to revive it? If the crop fails, do we not mourn its loss?

The Auditors remained silent.

And if a guest is unruly, is it not ‘The Duty’ of the host to deal with them?

She didn’t move. The universe moved around her. A line of fire arced through the air, and the three robes fell, severed.

Oh, there's no justice. But there is me.

Mrs. Cake was beginning to grow suspicious.

Not worried, however. Pinkie may have been missing for a number of hours, and a mysterious stallion stranger had been in her room (standing in a puddle of jam, no less), but Mrs. Cake wasn’t worried. One didn’t worry about Pinkie Pie, at least not when the young mare had been your employee for goodness knows how long. Pinkie Pie had a knack of looking after herself that allayed all such fears for her continued welfare. It was, in fact, your own continued welfare that you worried about.

However, she was suspicious. It was not like the girl to remain this quiet for this long.

“Dear, you haven’t seen Pinkie Pie today, have you?” she asked her husband, a tall, thin colt with a yellow coat and mop of orange hair.

“Nhhro dhearh,” he replied around a mouthful of pipe-bag.

“She’s been awfully quiet.”

“Yhres dhearh.”

“I think I’ll go check on her.”

“Jhusht ash yhou shay dhearh.”

Mrs. Cake made her way slowly up the stairs of Sugarcube Corner, towards the loft apartment that her young employee ‘rented’. Strictly speaking she was more a live-in guest, as she paid through her work in the shop, but it made her father happy to know she was making something of herself and being independent.

Nudging open the door, she found the room to be absolutely spotless - Bill Door had done a fine job of cleaning. It looked far cleaner than Pinkie herself usually left it, for a start. No leftover bits of cake, or errant streamer, deflating balloons and the like.

Mrs. Cake shifted her hoof the moment before a little green alligator leapt for it, and instead found himself sucking on the floor. As will be noted, Mrs. Cake possesses a rare gift, temporal hyperopia*. It has (and will) come in handy a great deal in living with Miss Pie.

Pushing Gummy gently aside, Mrs. Cake made a quick sweep of the room, looking for any indicator of Pinkie’s current whereabouts. Nothing seemed out of order (other than being in order), and she could find no notes or letters. Frowning, she crossed the bedroom again, making a more thorough search. Something caught her eye as she passed by the bed.

She reached down and pulled it out with her teeth, revealing a glossy leather-backed grimoire, with golden lettering on the front that shifted when she tried to read it.

She felt a chill from the thing, but instinctively knew that his was nothing to do with Pinkie Pie. She barely read books at all, let alone large leather-bound tomes of questionable origins.

Clearly then, she deduced, this must have been something left behind by Mr. Door.

Picking it up and balancing it on her back she headed back downstairs, after giving Gummy an affectionate pat. Placing the book in her saddlebags, she slung them over her shoulders and called out to Mr. Cake in the kitchen.

“She’s not in her room, and her guest left something behind, so I’m going to go out looking for them. Mind the store, would you, dear?”

“Mshh honhey bhun.”

* That is to say, the ability to see things that aren’t there yet but very soon will be.

In the city of Ankh-Morpork below, as the lanterns and torches were lit and the ‘late afternoon’ trading began, an evening service was about to take place in the city’s newest and most popular place of worship.

“Welcome to the First Cathedral of the Pink Pony of Death, please take a complementary canopé and order of service.”

The Junior Hosts greeted newcomers off the streets, handing out drinks, entrées and party hats to the faithful. Many of the established followers of the Pink One were decked in their robes of rose and fuschia, conical hats held high as they made their way to the inner sanctum of the cathedral, a newly purchased building that was once a temple of Offler the Crocodile God. Ankh-Morpork was always quick to jump on a new idea, and this new faith had gripped the city in a party fever.

Her Generousness, The Grand Hostess Aminata I, looked down from the balconies at the gathered congregation below, and was pleased. From their humble beginning barely weeks before, her little flock had leapt from a mere death-cult to a mainstream belief, rubbing shoulders with such established favourites as Blind Io and The Great God Om.

Taking up her place at the stand, she opened Glod Glodsdottir’s Book of Essential Party Songs and waited for silence. A reverent and expectant air swept through the building, bringing with it the smell of fresh cake.

“Honoured guests!” she began, voice echoing off the cathedral stone even without the aid of amplification.

“Honoured guests! We all are gathered here today in blessed community to share in the warmth and spirit that resides in each of us! We thank the Pink Pony of Death for showing us that the afterlife is worth living, but that there is also no reason to wait! Now join with me, as we sing our opening chant; For She’s A Jolly Good Fellow.”

The congregation (at least, those who were still mostly sober) stood, and their voices swelled and croaked with the first strains of song. By the time they’d reached the third verse, it was nearly in tune.

“... For she’s a jolly good fellow, and so... say...”

The song died in their throats as, suddenly, a figure hung in the air before them. Four legs. Pink. Wearing a black cloak, and carrying a scythe.

It couldn’t possibly be anyone else.

She stared at Aminata, locking the dull, dead eyes of the Grand Hostess with her own, burning bright as the stars.

Surprise.

“Fluttershy, dear, you need to come up for air.”

The yellow head submerged in the water trough outside Rarity’s laundry room only bubbled in response. Sighing, Rarity gently tugged on the pegasus’ mane until she broke the surface.

“Better?” the unicorn asked.

“Haaaah... Haaah...” Fluttershy replied, taking deep gulps of air and still ‘fanning’ her mouth with her hoof.

“I could put some mango on it to cool it down a little, dear.”

Fluttershy nodded gratefully, although truthfully she was understandably nervous about trying the dish again, no matter what Rarity did to it.

She dried her face on a towel and followed Rarity back indoors to find Bill Door had already finished his serving, and the plate was remarkably spotless. The stallion was staring at the other two plates with longing.

Fluttershy saw her chance to squeeze her way out without upsetting either party, and seized it with both hooves.

“O-oh, if you’re s-still hungry...” she mumbled, nudging the plate towards Bill Door. He blinked at it, then at her, then smiled gratefully.

“That’s very kind of you, thank you. I hope your tongue isn’t burnt.”

“Oh, no, I’ll be fine. I’m just... I wasn’t expecting it to be so spicy.” She caught herself and glanced nervously at Rarity, who seemed oblivious of the conversation. “Not that I don’t like it or anything! I thought it was v-very nice, but I... Uhm...”

She was interrupted from digging herself deeper by a sudden knock on the door. Rarity swallowed her mounting frustration and forced herself to smile, walking back through the shopfront and swinging open the door.

“Oh! Mrs. Cake, do come in, what can I do for you?”

“Rarity, dearie! I wasn’t sure if you were in. I’ve been looking for Pinkie Pie’s guest, a Mister ‘Bill Door’, and Lotus and Aloe told me he might be with you...?” Mrs. Cake asked, stepping inside Carousel Boutique. Rarity blinked.

“... P-Pinkie Pie’s guest? I... See.”

“You’ve met him then, dearie?” Mrs. Cake replied, raising an eyebrow.

“I have, yes. If he knows Pinkie, that might go some way to... Explaining things.”

“Like what?”

“Well, earlier he kept walking int-”

Rarity was cut off by a yelp and a loud crash coming from the kitchen. Rolling her eyes, she ran back across the shopfront, followed by Mrs. Cake, and peeked her head through the kitchen door. Her jaw fell agape.

The table had been knocked over, the curry now decorating the kitchen floor, and the chairs were knocked aside. Fluttershy was entwined with Bill Door on the tiles, wings outstretched and mane draped over his chest, pinning him down. Bill Door was lying helpless on his back, his suit unbuttoned and thrown open..

They both looked up at Rarity and Mrs. Cake, faces rapidly going crimson.

“... I swear this isn’t what it looks like.”

“... I... Uhm... We... Eep!”

Deus Ex Rosa

All eyes looked up at the hovering figure of the Pink Pony of Death as she hung above the crowd in the cathedral. Aminata recovered from the shock first, hastily dropping her book and bowing to the Pink One. Her attendees quickly followed suit, dropping to the floor at near-terminal velocity.

The Pink Pony of Death moved forward, planting her hooves on the air as if it were flagstones, descending until she was level with the balcony. Nobody spoke, and it seemed as if even the busy city noise of Ankh-Morpork was muted in the presence of Death herself.

Aminata Odham, arise.

The voice thundered without sound. To those who heard it, it was as if the very cathedral around them had split asunder with the anger and fury behind the words, but thankfully it remained intact.

There was no question of it being a polite request. It was a command, and Aminata hastened to follow it as she scrambled back to her feet. She could feel Death’s gaze boring into her, as her subconscious less-than-helpfully reminded her that she’d already cheated him/her once. Statistically, it was not likely to happen again.

Death’s head reached inside her cloak for a moment, and withdrew a book from the impossibly dark folds of the fabric. She threw it at Aminata’s feet, the depressingly thin tome making a barely audible thud against the stone balcony. On the leather cover, in golden lettering, was spelt out the name ‘Terrak Keksy’.

Open it.

The priestess didn’t hesitate, opening the book to its last page. She read the final paragraphs with shaking hands.

Why?

The question was one of mixed emotion. There was anger there, there was remorse, and there was pity.

With a chill creeping up her undead spine, Aminata realised that there was no room left for forgiveness.

“I... I was...” she stammered, searching the blinding light of Death’s star-like eyes for any scrap of sympathy or mercy. “I was... rewarding him. He will get to the party at the end of all things early.”

Rewarding him.

The pity was gone, replaced with disgust.

A life cut short by your hand, for the sake of a ‘reward’. Was his existence so miserable that you felt it your duty to relieve him of it?

Aminata’s acolytes had had the good sense to scurry away. So had some of the congregation below. Those who hadn’t were rooted in horror and suspense at the spectacle above.

Aminata Odham, Death continued, not wanting to hear her answer, It was through my hooves that you were granted new life, so his blood is as much on my head as yours. In countless aeons I have never purposely taken a life before its time, and now you make me a murderer.

She paused. As the congregation below continued to watch her, a strange feeling welled up within her, taking its place beside the raw, burning anger and barely restrained fury. It was a sense of... indescribable being. She was suddenly quite convinced of her own existence, and assured that others were... believing in her.

With that conviction came power. With that power came memory, and with memory, confusion.

She faltered. There was something else there. Something speaking to her, calling out from deep within the recesses of her mind.

What’re you doing?

She seized control of her faculties, banishing the momentary distraction from her mind.

I never truly believed it, that justice could not exist. But to see you standing here unfettered before a crowd of your peers, ignorant of what you have done, while he remains beyond the veil with no hope of a second chance...

She reached her head into her cloak a second time and withdrew a life-timer, simple in design, bearing the chipped and scratched text: ‘Aminata Odham’ . She placed it in the air before her. All the sand in the top bulb had been depleted, replaced by a cloud of glitter and confetti.

There is no justice.

There is.

There it was again. That feeling of confusion. That voice.

There is just...

Why are you doing this? the voice said, in a familiar tone.

She killed him, Death answered.

So you're going to kill her?

She's already dead. She should be dead.

But she isn’t. Our fault.

I can fix this.

You're just making it worse.

She. Killed. Him.

I know. But... We’re better than that, aren’t we? We just need to teach her a lesson.

It won't bring him back.

No, but he’s happy. She isn’t. And that’s what we’re best at. It’s our ‘Duty’.

Death had no reply.

Now stand aside, I know what I’m doing.

There's... No justice.

“... there’s just us.”

Death shook herself. Beside her was... Her. The real her. Pink and poofy, and smiling despite the tears.

“Sure, she’s the worst kind of meanie, but no one’s past all hope. Why do you think the Princess let Nightmare Moon come back? Why did she keep Discord in her garden?”

I... I... But...

“Let it go.”

They searched each other’s eyes. Death’s burning brightly in rage, sadness, and confusion, while Pinkie’s softened in love, pity, and remorse.

Death’s footing slipped as she forgot herself, stumbling down onto the balcony where Aminata stood, her own, dead eyes weeping with no tears. The Scythe of Office dropped from the air, the blade tip embedding itself in the stone. The life-timer fell too, bouncing off the stone and rolling some way before stopping, still intact.

Pinkie descended with a hop, and drew alongside herself, putting a foreleg across her own shoulders in comfort.

The watchers below heard a sound unlike any since the dawn of the universe.

Death was sobbing.

One said, Why are there two of her?
One said, This was not supposed to happen.

One had a chart; Well, while Death was in her realm, he became mortal. While she was in his, she became Death.

One said, And why is she now both Death and Life?

One with the chart said, She was so full of Life that it could not abide within her as Death. The belief of her followers has given it shape.

One concluded, She is a goddess.

There was a pause, during which a star was born, led a rich and fulfilling life, and dwindled into a dwarf*.

One said, But we do not control the gods.
One said, The gods are not physical.
One said, The gods are not material.
One said, The gods... Are.

Another pause.

Three said, Oh. Bugger.

* The dwarf, one Stjärn Glödsson, went on to lead his own rich and fulfilling life and later published his memoirs - From Heights Above to Depths Below; A Dwarf’s Story.

Rarity had gone upstairs to have a lie down. There was only so much a mare of her delicate constitution could take in one sitting. Fluttershy had been bombarding her friend with apologies and hasty explanations all the way to the bedroom, when the door had finally been slammed in her face.

It should be noted that Rarity had made three previous, if insincere, ‘It’s fine.’’s before resorting to such tactics, however.

Now the timid and frightfully embarrassed yellow pegasus was sitting by herself in a corner of the shop front (an admirable feat considering the nature of Carousel Boutique), while Bill Door attempted to assuage Mrs. Cake.

“Why, in all my days I have never seen such a blatant disregard for a mare’s hospitality!” Mrs. Cake thundered, quaking with quite unassuaged rage.

“I assure you it was-” Bill Door tried to butt in, unsuccessfully.

“It was downright despicable is what it was! A fine, upstanding mare such as Miss Rarity takes you into her home, feeds and clothes you, and you... make off with her best friend in her kitchen!”

“But it-”

“But nothing! And you, Fluttershy, I am most disappointed that you would see fit to fall for this... this unspeakable cad’s wiles and charm!” she continued, turning the full brunt of her admonishment on Fluttershy.

“... B-b-but-” she managed to stammer from behind the curtain of her hair, eyes welling up with tears.

Mrs. Cake switched her sights back to Bill Door without a moment’s hesitation. “So, ‘Bill Door’, if that IS your real name, were Fluttershy and Rarity the first? Hrm?”

“I’m quite sure I no longer know what you’re accusing me of, ma’am.” he replied, sighing.

“Where’s Pinkie Pie?”

“I don’t know!”

“I don’t believe you!”

Fluttershy looked up, confused. “Pinkie’s missing...?”

“Since earlier this morning, yes. Didn’t you realise how quiet it was?” Mrs. Cake replied, exasperated.

“She was gone when I arrived!” Bill Door added, entreatingly.

Mrs. Cake swivelled back. “Then how did you get into her bedroom on the second floor?!”

Bill Door opened his mouth to calmly explain everything, and found it dry. His stream of thought derailed itself as he was left floundering in the deep waters of social anxiety. He glanced at Fluttershy for support, only to find her staring at him with a mix of betrayal and bewilderment.

For some reason he couldn’t quite put his hoof on, that made him feel awful.

Before he had time to really gather up his wits for a suitable reply, Mrs. Cake slammed the book she had been carrying down onto the ground before him. He came back into focus as he recognized it for what it was.

Perhaps another note of explanation would be useful here. When contemplating the multiverse, besides convergent evolution (shown by the marvellous example of Mrs. Cake herself), there is also the concept of the ‘universal constant’. This is relatively simple. It is an object or idea that seems to be present in any and all universes, no matter how different they are from one another.

For example, it is a well-documented fact that every intelligent race that has ever developed alcohol, has later developed a drink they named ‘Gin & Tonic’, or at least something sounding very much like it. Similarly, every universe has frogs. Don’t bother trying to think of one that doesn’t, they all do. Some scholars theorize there’s a deep, spiritual reason for this*.

The universal constant that currently commands our attention, however, is the tome before Bill Door’s hooves. Bound in leather black as night, and overflowing with forbidden knowledge, it is known on Discworld as the Necrotelicomnicon, or ‘Book of the Yellow Pages’. On the mythical Roundworld, it is infamously known as the Necronomicon, written by a mentally unhinged magician of Arabic descent. Here, in Equestria, it is variably the Necroponicon or Neighconomicon, and how it came to be in Ponyville’s library is quite another story altogether.

With this in mind, it should not be too surprising that Bill Door instantly recognized the book, as indeed, he had seen it one too many times before. It was from the Necrotelicomnicon that the Rite of Ashk’Ente was created, and as the spell had earned Bill Door’s eternal ire, so too had that infernal book, in all its forms.

Quite aside from all this, he’d also seen it just a few hours earlier in Pinkie’s bedroom.

“Well?” Mrs. Cake interjected into his thoughts, accusingly. “This was in her room, it’s yours, isn’t it?”

Bill Door sighed. “No. But I do know about it.”

He flicked the cover open with his hoof, revealing a small pouch holding a return slip.

“But by the looks of it, someone else may know more than me.”

Mrs. Cake swivelled the book back towards her, scrutinizing the little slip of paper. It read ‘Property of Treetop Library, if Lost please Return to Twilight Sparkle, Librarian’. Where normally would be a list of dates from ponies borrowing and returning the book, however, there was only a single date; that of a few days previously when Pinkie had taken it out.

“Fine. I’ll go talk to Twilight. And don’t think of running away, mister, you’re coming with me. You too, Fluttershy.” Mrs. Cake said, glaring at the pair in turn. Fluttershy sniffled a bit and fell into line wordlessly, while Bill Door slinked into place behind. He had absolutely no intention of attempting to flee, he somehow knew from the very depths of what could possibly be considered his soul that such an attempt would be futile.

“Miss Rarity? We’re going to visit Miss Sparkle and get to the bottom of this mess. This pair thanks you most kindly for your generous hospitality!” Mrs. Cake bellowed up the stairs to Rarity as they were about to leave, accompanied by Fluttershy and Bill Door’s mumbled thanks and apologies. There was no reply from the fashionista’s boudoir, so they quickly slipped out the shop’s front door, Mrs. Cake thoughtfully flipping the sign from ‘OPEN’ to ‘CLOSED’ before drawing it shut behind her.

The baker marched determinedly back across the town square, Bill Door and Fluttershy rather less enthusiastically trailing behind, trying to avoid each other’s gaze. The ponies shopping at the market spared them a cursory glance, but then this was Ponyville, ‘Town of One Thousand Surprises’, as its infamous tourist brochure boasted**.

They continued in this fashion until they reached the library.

Mrs. Cake would have raised her hoof to knock the door, but she already knew what was about to happen.

It swung open as they stood there, revealing a slightly dishevelled-looking Twilight Sparkle.

“Mrs. Cake! Fluttershy! Mysterious stranger! Quick! I think something’s happened to Pinkie Pie!”

* Others just say they’ve been hitting the Gin & Tonic a bit harder than usual.

** One particularly irate visitor noted dryly that the non-mention of ‘Rampaging Ursa Minors’ was a surprising oversight on the part of the publisher.

Mrs. Cake Investigates

Pinkie continued comforting her cloaked double, as the wracking sobs became simple crying, and slowly faded to mere sniffing. Eventually, Death wiped her nose on the back of her hoof and dried her eyes, looking up at Pinkie.

I needed that. she said, avoiding Pinkie’s eye.

Pinkie smiled sadly and got up, trotting slowly over to Aminata. She had an inner glow about her that contrasted sharply with the dull, black-cloaked pony slumped on the floor, though the two had, moments earlier, been one and the same. All onlookers could tell that this was a figure of deity, a manifestation of life and joy in the form of a little pink pony.

Belief is a powerful force on the Disc. It is said that a man with faith as a grain of mustard seed can move mountains. It is also said that a man with a fleet of intergalactic trucks can make a mountain invisible overnight, but that’s a slightly different allegory.

It is commonly thought that the gods shape belief, but this view is incorrect. In truth, it is belief that shapes the gods. Even the great Blind Io would be nothing more than a voice on the wind without his followers.

So then, when Grand Hostess Aminata Odham created a new religion and shaped a new belief in a new Death, that belief needed somewhere to go. At around the same time, Pinkie Pie was ‘inheriting’ more and more of Death’s own ‘personality’, and it quickly became apparent that there was an incompatibility. After all, Pinkie Pie represents the Element of Laughter, and by extension, all the joys of Life itself.

The conflict was playing on her mind, as the ever-present burden of the Duty struggled with her natural fun-loving tendencies. It all came to a head at this moment, when the vast and growing congregation of the Pink Pony of Death finally saw what they had been believing in for some time.

The equilibrium, precarious as it was, shattered. Like a violent chemical reaction, Life and Death split, having now the ability to manifest as separate entities:

Pinkie Pie, the Goddess of Joy, and Pinkie Pie, the Pink Pony of Death.

It has been said that seeing is believing. In the case of a new goddess, seeing was creating.

The unfamiliar feeling of raw ability coursed through Pinkie’s veins. She instinctively understood her new position as a goddess, but did not yet understand how to use it. However, she fully understood that she had made a mistake, and it was up to her to rectify it.

“Aminata?” she said, quietly. The woman merely nodded, unable to form a reply.

“You should go.” No room for argument.

The Grand Hostess stammered, but bowed her head in deference, removing her party mitre and turning to walk away. The gathered congregation let out a collective breath they didn’t realise they’d been holding.

It would have been nice to say that was the end of it, but life and death are never truly that simple.

A faint crunch.

A gasp.

A stumble.

The late-late Aminata Odham tumbled over the railing to the floor below.

Pinkie turned, horrified, back to Death. She was standing, quite calm, next to the broken remains of what had once been a life timer. Shards of wood and glass were scattered about as sand filled the cracks between the stones.

“W-what have you done?” Pinkie asked, although she was afraid she already knew the answer.

My Duty, came the reply. Death moved slowly towards Pinkie, each step resounding with the sound of breaking glass as the final shards were ground under hoof. After all, that's all I have left.

“What do you mean?” Pinkie replied, backing away, but Death kept coming.

Everything is clear now. The Auditors were right. To have a personality is to die. But I don't have one any more, do I? You're my personality.

Pinkie backed into a column, trapped.

And you know this as well as I. Death sneered, a grim shadow of her former self, merely a skeleton of bone under that cloak of night. Even the gods must die.

The scythe screamed as it cut through the very fabric of existence, but did not find its target. Pinkie was gone, and only a pair of burning hoof-prints showed she had ever been there.

Mrs. Cake, Bill Door and Fluttershy were pulled inside by Twilight’s magic, a disconcerting experience similar to having one’s body wrapped in a tight blanket and ejected from a catapult. The librarian slammed the door behind them, peeking nervously out at the main street to ensure they were ‘alone’.

“... So what exactly do you think has happened to Pinkie, dearie?” Mrs. Cake asked, at length, long-suffering evident in her tone of voice.

Twilight took one final final glance out of the window, before consenting that they weren’t being spied on, and drawing them near.

“I think...” she paused, for a final, final, final check. “I think Pinkie’s trying to learn forbidden magic!”

Mrs. Cake looked unimpressed. Bill Door remained completely impassive. Fluttershy let out a squeak and dashed under the front desk.

“... And you believe this why?” Mrs. Cake replied.

“Well, last week she came by the library and took out an unusual selection of books, including one I didn’t... even... know...” Twilight trailed off as she finally noticed the ominous tome balancing on Mrs. Cake’s back. She backed away like a skittish cat faced with a spray bottle.

“Th-that! That one! It’s evil!” she shrieked, covering her eyes and pointing at the Black Book.

Mrs. Cake looked at it, then Twilight, askance. Bill Door merely blinked. Fluttershy suddenly found herself sharing her hiding spot with the somewhat perturbed purple unicorn.

“‘Evil’?” the baker replied, with a hint of cynicism.

Twilight’s ears drooped as it became readily apparent that the book was not about to summon unspeakable horrors beyond even the greatest nightmares the Everfree Forest could spawn. She sagged a little as she looked back up at Mrs. Cake and tried to clamber out from under the table.

“Well... Alright, perhaps I was - oh, sorry Fluttershy, that was your wing - overreacting just a little, but - ow mind your hoof mind your hoof - I’m sure there’s still good reason to - I’m not standing on your hair! - be concerned. Ow.”

Twilight quickly realised she’d missed something. It wasn’t so much a conscious realisation as an instinctive one, but she quickly turned to address the matter.

The matter, in this case, being Bill Door.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve met, Mister...?” she proffered, putting the crisis to one side for a second for the sake of good manners.

“Door. Bill Door,” he replied, and was about to add more, before the scathing glare of Mrs. Cake made him think better of it.

“A pleasure, Mister Door,” Twilight replied, to which Mrs. Cake snorted derisively, before returning her attention, and the conversation, to the matter at hand.

“So, Pinkie Pie...?”

Twilight’s eyes lit up with a conspiratory gleam, but thankfully she dispensed with the greater theatrics.

“Well, I thought the books she’d taken out were a little... strange, to say the least, and when I cross-referenced them all I found they were all related to... Well, the mysterious and the macabre. She said she wanted to plan her party for Nightmare Night, but I had my suspicions...” Twilight explained by way of exposition as she trotted around the shelves of the library, imitating the actions of her favourite literary detective ponies.

“... So I sent a message to the Royal Archives in Canterlot to see if they had another copy of... that one.” She shot the Black Book a suspicious glance as it continued to sit, quite innocently, on the floor. “They told me that the only known copy of the book was burnt over three centuries ago by one of the previous librarians, and likely enough the one in the library here was the last in Equestria.”

“So, you’re saying it came from the library, here?” Mrs. Cake replied. Twilight nodded. “Ah. ... Then I suppose I may have misjudged you, Mister Door.”

Bill Door looked up in surprise at hearing his name mentioned at a decibel level below yelling. “Your... apology is accepted?” he hazarded.

Although Twilight could occasionally be somewhat socially oblivious, the undercurrent of the conversation was like an open book. She tilted her head a little, peering at the two in turn, and then at Fluttershy, who blushed as she caught her eye.

“Have I missed something?”

Fluttershy was the first to break the heavy silence that followed, and replied in a quiet, small voice;

“Well, uhm, you see... Rarity was... Uh. We were having, uhm, dinner, and... Uh... He was ill, but Nurse Redheart said it was just that he hadn’t eaten, so, uhm, we ate, but then I got burnt and... Uh, Rarity helped, but then we came back in and, uhm, I offered him mine because, uhm, he was still hungry, but... Then...” the narrative trailed off as she blushed furiously and hid back behind her long locks of hair.

Bill Door was about to continue for her, but Twilight cut him off.

“Fluttershy! I’m so happy for you! You could have just told me you had a coltfriend!”

One would be forgiven for thinking that Death’s Abode was quiet. It would be expected, really. After all, silence is reverent to the dead, and besides, isn’t noise a sign of life?

But such a supposition is incorrect. The careful listener could make out many tiny, almost imperceptible sounds in Death’s great house that betrayed a living spirit deep within the soulless husk. Aside from the obvious ticking, ticking of the clocks, or the noisome rush of the sands of time in their eternal free fall, there were the subtle sounds, the background detail that put the mind at ease.

Most of these sounds could be found in Death’s kitchen, a room set apart from the rest of the house as the domain of one eternally prolonged manservant.

The creak of the chair as he leant back on two legs. The gentle grunt of protest from the table as he rested his feet on it. The rustle of paper as he turned, for the thousandth time, to the sports page of the Ankh-Morpork Inquirer (dated 32nd Spune, Year of the Incontinent Toad). The comforting sizzle of the grease of ages flowing molten in a pan that had long since ceased to be steel and was now closer to a metal-lipid alloy.

It was probably about lunch. As far as Albert was concerned, it was usually about lunch. He made a good lunch. He made an even better breakfast, but was rarely able to fully appreciate the cacophony of flavour that was his fried porridge. Several centuries of constant abuse will do that to taste buds.

Part of him was worried. The Master... or well, Mistress, seemed very upset when she left. Perhaps ‘furious’ would be a better description. Most of his faculties reminded him, in a patient tone, that the Mas- Mistress was quite capable of taking care of him- herself. The rest calmly replied that he bally well can’t take care of herself no matter what hir gender. Or species.

This train of thought didn’t tend to get much further before being distracted by something else, and today was no disappointment. A little hooded figure scuttled through the door and across the carpet, jumping onto the waiting wicker chair with deft and practised movement. It eyed Albert critically.

Squeak.

“Well, what in all the hells am I supposed to do about it, hrm?” he snapped back, angrily turning the page of his newspaper (Ankh-Morpork Curry Gardens Celebrate Record Season: Only Five Fatalities*).

Squeak?

“I can’t run off saving him, her every time they take it into their skulls to do something crazy.”

Squeak.

“I don’t see you helping.”

Squeak!

“No, I don’t mind saying it!”

Squeak. Squeak squeak squeakity.

“What? Just walk up to her and tell her she’s been over-exerting herself and needs a break? Oh, yes, I’m sure that’ll work.”

Squeak.

“Well, when she-”

Albert was cut off by a slam that resounded throughout the entire structure of the house. All six dimensions of it. He wasn’t even aware the front door could slam. It was followed by a series of thundering hoof steps accompanied by the sound of cracking tiles, and then another, slightly quieter slam as the Pink Pony of Death swept angrily into her study.

“... I suppose she’ll be wanting her tea,” Albert said, once he was quite sure the structure wasn’t about to collapse about his ears in sympathy with its Mistress.

Squeak.**.

* "Over five hundred hospitalized. Curry Gardens secures sponsorship deal with Ankh-Morpork Guild of Barbers and Physicians. Talks continue over possible partnership with Guild of Quacks.”

** Oh bugger.

In Motion

Albert crossed the grand hallway with deliberate slowness. He took small, shuffling footsteps with each swing of the scythe-bladed pendulum, in time with each onerous tick of that giant, one-handed clock. His hands shook slightly, rattling the tea on the tray, its clinking providing a percussion to the noise of his feet on the deep pile carpet.

He approached the door of Death’s study, and gulped.

He extended an arm to push open the door, but before his hand touched the wood, it swung back with a creak that could not possibly have come from the hinges, partially because the hinges weren’t metal. Albert decided to distract himself from the inevitable by pondering this for a moment longer.

When Death constructed his home, he built it from the position of an eternal observer. His scope was limited to what he had seen in the houses of others. He copied objects and details without any clue to their true purpose. The dresser that stood against one of the walls of the hallway had no drawers, merely outlines that looked like them. The floorboards were not wood, but would convince a casual onlooker that they were. What gave them away, as it gave the door away, was the sound. The floorboards creaked, but only when you weren’t stepping on them.

It was the same problem with the doors. Death knew, on some level, that doors and floorboards should creak and groan. He had heard them do so whilst performing The Duty. The problem was that he didn’t know why they did it. So the hinges creaked not because they were rusty (for, indeed, they were incapable of rusting), or because they were ill-fitting (they were so well-fitting it would make an interior designer blush), but because they were meant to. It’s just that they did it at the wrong time.

That always seemed to be the root cause of the Master’s... or Mistress’ problems, Albert mused. He, or she, were always trying to pretend they were something else.

I know you're there.

The voice would boom, if it were at all audible. Albert steeled himself, tightened his grip on the tea tray, and strode forward as boldly as his age-stiffened limbs and ossified knees would allow.

This was something that always amused Death, if indeed he/she was capable of humour beyond a strong grasp of irony and a tenuous understanding of sarcasm. It was part of the reason zhe kept Albert around.

The long-suffering manservant approached the desk, noting that Death was facing away from the door, with the high back of the chair towards him. The moment he placed the tea-tray on the ‘wooden’ surface of the desk, the chair spun around, revealing a rather more skeletal visage than he was expecting.

Albert. The voice was more chilling than usual. There was an edge to it, one that Albert rarely heard. It was an edge to rival that of the Scythe of Office.

We have work to do. Fetch me the Charts, I must tend to the Nodes.

Albert nodded, and headed towards the door to the library. Death took up her cup of tea and sipped at it. She frowned.

And Albert, after that, bring me the sugar.

He froze, his hand on the knob of the door. “Sugar?”

Does this trouble you?

“N-no, it’s just that... You never have sugar in your tea.”

No, he never had sugar in his tea. I do.

Albert nodded, a little unsure of himself. He couldn’t handle change. He’d lived the same way for his entire life, and then some. Everything was to be as it always had been. If it wasn’t bad enough that Death had shrunk from a somewhere-between-seven-and-nine-foot-tall-depending-on-the-observer human skeleton to a four-foot-maybe-slightly-less pony skeleton on what appeared to be a permanent basis, now she wanted sugar in her tea.

It was the thin end of the wedge, that’s what it was. Sugar in your tea one day, and the next, who knows?

Pinkie Pie found herself in a dark, cramped space. She wasn’t sure where she was, she hadn’t been ‘aiming’ as she jumped out of the way of Death’s scythe. The only clue was the faint smell of vanilla and the fact that she appeared to be lying on a mop.

Trying to get up from off her back, she tumbled forward into the door, which burst open, allowing her to fall flat on her nose. Dragging herself up from the dusty stone floor, she looked around at her surroundings, blinking in the sudden light.

This place seemed... Familiar. She turned around and examined the cupboard she had fallen out of. Her scanning gaze took in the contents of the shelves, the decor, the sequins littering the floor-

Sequins?

“... Oh,” she uttered, deflated, as the realization dawned on her.

This was the Third Temple of the Pink Pony of Death.

And this was the cupboard where she had watched Terrak Keksy die.

She fought back tears. She hadn’t been able to intervene in time to save him. She hadn’t been able to save Aminata, either, although she had tried with all her heart. That... thing that she had fled from... It was her, but it wasn’t. It was everything she felt as she did THE DUTY, all the impotent rage and sorrow, the crushing loneliness and anger, given form as a new Death. But this Death had no heart, because she was that heart.

The building was quiet, empty. Cobwebs stretched between rafters. Since the Cathedral had opened, no one had used the much smaller building for anything. The emptiness seemed fitting for how Pinkie felt, because in some way, Death had taken a part of her.

But yet, she felt so alive. More than ever. She felt as if she could bring Terrak Keksy and Aminata Odham back from the dead this very instant...

… And somewhere in the back of her mind was a little voice that told her that she wouldn’t.

Often, when a mortal receives great power, they are overwhelmed by it, and if they do not go mad they attempt to find a use for their new powers that profits them most. It is not so with the gods, who are imbued with power from the moment of their creation, and instinctively know how to deal with it.

There are many things they can do. Perhaps many things they should do. But there’s a little voice, a little voice that they all share, that tells them whether or not they will do it. Some things are beyond the control of even the gods. There must be order. Life must end.

That voice is the universal truth. A little shard of Azrael that exists in the mind of all living things. It speaks to them endlessly.

“All things must come to an End.”

Pinkie sighed, forcing herself to accept it. Terrak and Aminata were beyond her reach now, but perhaps someone else wasn’t.

She dried her eyes on the back of her hoof and walked out to the front room of the temple. She stopped in front of the window and gazed out at the bustling streets of Ankh-Morpork, where life, in all its colours and flavours* was continuing, oblivious to the cosmic events that were transpiring around them.

The sight lifted her spirits, at least a little. Reaching for the doorknob with her mouth, she opened the door and stepped out onto the cobbles.

Citizens of Ankh-Morpork are well adjusted to the weird and the unusual. Tenants of houses near the Unseen University understand that they will not be compensated for loss of property or limb when their bedpan manifests sentience and a desire for flesh. In comparison, a four-foot tall-or-maybe-less pony of bright pink colouration with blue and yellow highlights was nothing to be alarmed about.

Pinkie’s gaze drifted along the street, taking in all the activity, until she saw something that caught her eye. It was a towering structure, and one that said very impolite things about physics behind its back.

Her divine power manifested itself as a lightbulb hovering above her forehead.

“The Wizards! If anyone can get me back to Ponyville, they can!” she said aloud, and rushed up the street, deftly weaving in and out of the crowd, her hooves sparking on the cobblestone.

A drunk looked at the empty bottle lying beside him. He couldn’t have just heard a horse talk. And he certainly didn’t see a floating glass orb above her head.

A merchant looked at the disappearing figure. He just heard a horse talk.

A priest blinked. He had just seen the Pink Pony of Death.

The citizens of Ankh-Morpork paused, and looked at one another.

As one, they ran after her.

* And, according to the brightest minds of the Unseen University**, several million scents***.

** Not that that's saying much.

*** The greatest and most pungent of these is that of Ankh-Morpork itself. Merchants have been known to bottle it and sell it to assassins.

It should have become clear by this point that the flow of time between universes is not equal. It can be, when it wants to, but the law of narrative causality often shoves its metaphorical oar in and ensures that one universe moves faster than the other, for the sake of drama and intrigue, (or occasionally the ability to rule a fantasy kingdom for fifty years after stumbling into a mothball-filled wardrobe, return the same day you left, and subsequently be labelled insane for the rest of your mortal days).

Bill Door was unaccustomed to sticking to just a single timeframe. Normally he leapt back and forth, allowing himself to be present at the deathbeds of two or more people dying simultaneously at either rim of the Disc.

As a result, the past week in Ponyville had passed excruciatingly slowly for him, not to mention somewhat awkwardly. He wasn’t sure whether it had become more or less awkward by the infrequent visits of the attractive yellow pegasus. At least, he had... gathered that she was considered attractive. Perhaps it was something about the tail...

By this point, the whole town was aware that Pinkie Pie was missing (it first became noted when the Mayor realised it had been three days since someone threw a party), but no one seemed to have any idea of where she’d gone. At the same time, the majority of the town was now aware that there was a new stallion in town who had appeared at the same time as Pinkie left, and had drawn their own conclusions.

It was fortunate for Bill Door that he enjoyed reading, because he wasn’t leaving the Golden Oak Library any time soon.

Twilight had been spending her time wisely, and to its fullest extent. There was little she enjoyed more than unravelling the secrets of a new discovery, and the notion that Bill Door was from another universe entirely was one that had piqued both her personal and scientific interest. Moreover, his story appeared to check out, as a chance discovery in the library’s stacks had shown.

Even though Twilight had been living in Ponyville for well over a year by this point, she still found it a difficult task to take a full inventory of the Golden Oak Library. Every time she completed a list of the books, some titles would go missing and others would appear in their place. Despite her best efforts, she had been unable to discover a reason for this, and strongly suspected that this was how the Neighcronomnicon had ended up in her care. However, for once, this strange phenomenon had worked in her favour.

She had come across a journal that she had not seen before. It was ancient, and by all rights ought to have disintegrated long ago, but something had kept it intact. Perhaps it was the effect of the library, or perhaps an effect of the author, for this journal had once belonged to the famed Starswirl the Bearded.

Starswirl was responsible for the majority of magical and esoterical theory that was still taught in Equestria’s schools to this day, but even his most dedicated followers agreed that he had some... strange ideas. Up until now, Twilight had been forced to agree. Starswirl’s advanced theorems on multiverse theory were patently ridiculous.

Or at least, so Twilight had thought. Now she was beginning to entertain the idea. The journal’s descriptions of a flat world that sailed through the inky void on the back of a turtle was remarkably similar to Bill Door’s own claims. And after all, Twilight thought, how many worlds can there be that lie on the back of a turtle?*

Bill Door flicked over the page with his hoof, something he was rapidly getting used to. He was half way through Volume XVII of the Authoritative Biography of Princess Celestia. He enjoyed biographies, although he always found the ends a bit predictable.

“Ah-ha!” Twilight exclaimed suddenly, causing Bill to drop his book. “I think I’ve found it! It’s only a rudimentary spell, but I think it might work, with a few experiments!”

“... What might work?” Bill asked. He’d become accustomed to Twilight’s company and resigned himself to the fact that he wasn’t going to get back to reading for a while.

“This spell in Starswirl’s notes! It looks untested, but judging by the rune patterns and the basic components, this is a modified form of teleporting. It may allow us to transport ourselves to your world and find Pinkie!”

“I think it may... be more difficult than that,” he replied.

* Astrozoophysicists have attempted to count them, but they kept moving.

One said, Death has become separate from the goddess.
One said, She is vulnerable.
One said, We cannot halt the goddess.

One said, But we can guide her.

Let There Be Balloons

Twilight looked down her spectacles at Bill Door, who had fallen silent.

“How difficult?” she said, her voice level. He shifted uncomfortably on his seat. Aside from Twilight’s piercing glare, he hadn’t quite got used to sitting down as a quadruped, even with a week’s practise.

“You already know why I cannot just... send myself back. Pinkie Pie summoned me here by the Rite of Ashkente, and I am bound here until she releases me. I can not exercise my own power against this rule, for she has taken my place as Death and, in my absence, inherited all my power. I am left mortal, and trapped.” Bill Door replied, occasionally waving a hoof for emphasis.

“... Given you knew I already knew all that, why did you bother repeating it?” Twilight asked, head askant.

“I have noticed you do it quite often to your friends and assumed this was a customary form of conversation amongst you ponies.”

“... Oh.”

“Now, I suspect that Pinkie Pie has figured out much of this herself by this point, yet she has not appeared. Therefore, I can conclude that something or someone is preventing her return, and there are only a small number of beings capable of doing such a thing. Of these, only one of them would have reason to.”

“And that one person is...?”

“Not a person. Never a person. They are the Auditors.”

Twilight waited for an explanation that did not appear to be forthcoming. She waited a little longer, so that she didn't seem impatient. The silence stretched awkwardly, and yawned, trying not to be noticed.

“... What are Auditors?” she asked at last, relenting.

Bill Door was pleased. He was getting the hang of this ‘exposition’ thing.

“The Auditors are personifications of impersonal forces. Gravity, friction, magnetism, they are the ones who control it all. While the gods command their own domains, the Auditors are the ones who keep the universe... ‘ticking over’. They neither love nor hate their vocation, it is simply what defines them, and they treat it with the same mechanic obedience as mortals do to breathing,” he paused, shifting his weight.

“They despise me, for I do not believe that my task as Death should be so impersonal, and without emotion. They say I am corrupted, and ought to be replaced or removed. They have tried to bring this about at least three times already, to my count, and very nearly succeeded.”

“You’re describing them as if they’re people, but you said they’re not ‘persons’. Why is that?” Twilight posed the question, intrigued.

“The Auditors are as immortal as the forces they represent, and understand mortality as having a definite end. They believe that only mortals can develop personality, and that the life of a mortal is so short when measured against the age of the universe that it is effectively nothing. Thus, the moment any one of them develops a personality, it ceases to exist.”

“Ah. Interesting. So you’re saying they’re what’s preventing Pinkie Pie coming back to Equestria?”

“It is a distinct possibility.”

“And how are we to go about fixing that?” Twilight said, grinning, as her horn pulsed with energy.

Bill Door looked up at the ceiling in thought, rubbing his chin*.

“We don’t.”

The glow faded and Twilight looked visibly disappointed.

“Perhaps more accurately, we can’t,” Bill Door added, correcting himself. “This is something that Pinkie has to do.”

“But... But I can’t accept that! We can’t just sit here and hope she makes her own way back!” Twilight replied, a note of distress entering her voice. “She’s one of my closest friends! … My first friend in Ponyville, if it comes to that. I have to try, at least.”

Bill Door seemed a little confused. “But it will not help.”

“You don’t know that!” Twilight snapped, turning back to Starswirl’s journal and her own notes.

Bill Door felt moved to reply, but something stopped him. He noticed the glint of determination in Twilight’s eye, the flash of sorrow at the fleeting prospect that she may never see her friend again, and the anger that she kindled against those who would hold her back.

He mused, as he turned back to his book, that all mortals - wherever they’re from - seemed to share similar traits of stubbornness and illogical effort.

*Or, rather, awkwardly scraping his hoof against his jaw.

Pinkie was in her element.

Well. Not her element. She was laughing, that was for certain, but she wasn’t (by any stretch of the imagination) caught in some vortex of laughter that existed solely for the continued existence of laughter itself.

… Perhaps it would be best to rephrase the statement.

Pinkie was having the time of her Life.

Ankh-Morpork, ‘Citie of One Thousand Surprises’, was certainly living up to its falsified reputation for the pink pony. Although she had been purposely heading towards the Unseen University, she just couldn’t help herself: distraction quickly set in. Everywhere she turned was something new, something exciting, and she struggled to take it all in.

The citizenry of Ankh-Morpork were similarly struggling to take her in, and there was a growing crowd following the diminutive equine, either out of curiosity or avaricious interest. And if anyone alive or undead on the Disc was born to make a fortune by capitalizing on newfound avaricious interest, it was Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler.

With practised, fluid grace, much akin to that of a snake approaching an unwary mouse, CMOT Dibbler sidled up to Pinkie Pie and carefully assessed her. Of course, he knew who she was. Who didn’t, in this city? CMOT Dibbler had been ordained in the Cult of the Pink Pony of Death during its first week. It was his firm belief that it never hurt to keep your options open, especially when you could market cheap knock-off religious charms to your naive and money-carrying brethren.

And when he hit on the idea of making them edible, and thus a consumable commodity, well. That was a stroke of genius, and he didn’t mind saying it. Yes indeed, if the Pink Pony of Death had decided to manifest herself as a joyful, carefree, bouncing and very, very pink pony in the middle of Ankh-Morpork, she would need an agent. A representative, if you will. Like a priest, but with less theological burden.

His thought process, normally an unstoppable force of capitalism, ground to a halt as he realised that the Pink Pony of Death had stopped, and was looking at him intently.

He opened his mouth to say something, but she interjected almost immediately.

“Balloons.”

“... Pardon?” he responded, a little taken aback.

“Balloons. This city needs more balloons.”

CMOT Dibbler cast his experienced eye about the streets surrounding him. Whilst it wasn’t something he would have personally noticed, the city was a little lacking in colourful floating paraphernalia.

“Balloons,” he repeated, his mouth familiarizing itself with the word while the cogs of his mind, greased by the oil of inspiration, began to spin once more. “That could be arranged. I know a guy. Very cheap, fast worker... Uh. How many were you looking to order, exactly?”

Pinkie wasn’t listening. She felt very deeply that Ankh-Morpork was not complete without balloons. Very deeply indeed. And when a deity feels deeply about something, it is best not to get yourself involved.

“This city needs more balloons.” And there were balloons.

Some gods like to make show of their powers, with great lightning and thunder, meteors, blinding light or booming voices. Some prefer the subtle influence of shape-shifting or encouraging mortals to solve their own problems.

Some merely did.

Every citizen in Ankh-Morpork suddenly found themselves with a balloon. Balloons were tied to doors, mantles, street stalls, gates, windows and fences.

And they were all very, very pink.

Pinkie beamed. “Much better!”

CMOT Dibbler could only stare, mouth hanging open, as Pinkie trotted away happily.

A silence fell over the great hall of the Unseen University. This is an unusual occurrence in the great hall, especially given that, at any time, roughly a third of all university personnel can be found there, either finishing the remains of the previous meal or making an early start on the next one.

They were silent because the great hall had, of an instant, transitioned from a state of balloon-lessness to a state that could be described as an abundance of the floating, pink-coloured decorations.

Scraping broke the silence as the great and terrifying bulk that represented Archchancellor Ridcully rose from his seat. He glowered at the assorted students and staff present, searching for any indication of who was responsible for the small dirigible now comically attached to the point of his hat. Ridcully’s glower could melt stone.

When no guilty party became apparent, the Archchancellor returned to his seat and instead cast his baleful glare over the faculty staff that shared his table. The Bursar remained entirely nonplussed, and was instead happily giggling whilst jabbing at the balloon with his wooden spoon.

The youngest member of the faculty’s ‘head table’, Ponder Stibbons, the Head of Inadvisably Applied Magic (and several other equally as superfluous titles), glanced at the small device sitting between the runcible spoon* and the lobster pick**.

“I’m not reading any thaumic disturbance, Archchancellor. Everything seems to be normal,” Ponder said, tapping the device. The needle wobbled slightly and there was a muffled grunt from inside. Ponder squinted at the needle for confirmation, and continued, “Nope. Whatever that was, it wasn’t magic.”

“And if it wasn’t magic...” The Dean added, trailing off mysteriously.

“... If it wasn’t magic what?” The Archchancellor replied, spoiling the moment somewhat.

“I don’t know!” The Dean snapped back, “I just wanted to sound mysterious and aloof, I haven’t got the faintest clue.”

“Friendship,” The Bursar blurted out, causing everyone to turn. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Has he been given his pills today?” The Archchancellor asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I think we’ve run out of dried frog, Archchancellor. Doctor Hix was using them all in his experiments yesterday,” Ponder replied.

The faculty looked towards the vacant seat of Doctor Hix, Head of Post-Mortem Communications. The Archchancellor sighed.

“Someone find that idiot necromancer and see if he’s got any left. And get rid of these blasted balloons!”

*An eating utensil which did not exist except under a constant magical field, and is thus impossible to describe, portray, or indeed, define what purpose it actually serves. It is thought (by the Reader of Spoons, a prestigious position amongst faculty kitchen staff) that the runcible is not intended to be used as an eating utensil, but rather exists to facilitate the identification of a wizardly banquet from an otherwise gargantuan and hedonistic mundane one.

**A dwarven eating utensil closely resembling a pickaxe, designed to aid in the consumption of a particularly calciferous, cave-dwelling lobster species.

One said, How then do we guide her?
One said, It may be best to let her guide herself.
One said, She is born of a mortal, and has mortal thoughts.
One said, But she tries to hide them.
One said, She will succumb to them. It is in her nature.

Three said, We will wait.

Across the Disc, in a small front room of a small house in a small city, Death stood invisible. A child was dying. A sickness, one that had been thought conquered, had re-emerged in the city, and many were falling prey to its grasp. She could see it, now, standing opposite her. Belief in a thing gives it shape, and the people of this unimportant city had reason enough to believe in the plague that now stalked their streets, pale and thin, long and sharp. It stood there, on the other side of the mother nursing her coughing child, looking down with a vile glee.

Death glanced at the hourglass in her hoof. She watched, dispassionately, as the last few grains funnelled through the pinch into the lower bulb, in time to the child’s weakening coughs. Silence fell with the last grain, and the plague smiled.

The mother held the dead child tight, grieving, while the father tried to hold back tears.

The plague stretched out its gaunt arms, beckoning the child’s soul as it sat up from its body, calmed with a serenity that only the innocent could comprehend.

It was The Duty. Death knew that. The Duty wasn’t fair, or just. It was no respector of persons. No regard for wealth or status, for a person’s achievements or crimes.

She knew that the plague should have its way. She knew she should cut the cord that bound the child to the mortal world.

The scythe was in her hoof, it was a simple task. The plague stood there, waiting with growing impatience.

Death looked back at the hourglass.

She turned it over.

A Party in Sator Square

Pinkie Pie made her way out of the Street of Small Gods, leaving behind the bewildered and be-ballooned crowds, and entered the Plaza of Broken Moons. This was the largest open space on the streets of Ankh-Morpork, and was filled with all the hustle and bustle of busy city life, not to mention a few entrepreneurial balloon salesmen. The pink pony drew about as much attention to herself here as she did in the Street of Small Gods, and before long a second crowd was already following her.

She still wasn’t entirely sure where she was going. Death’s preferred method of transportation tended to get the traveller from A to B without the intervening A.a, A.b, etc., which made retracing one’s hoofsteps without the aid of magical teleportation just a little difficult. She vaguely knew that the Unseen University was in the city somewhere, but exactly how to get there remained a bit of a mystery.

Instead, she contented herself with taking in all the sights, sounds, and most especially, smells* of the great twin city of Ankh-Morpork. It definitely looked better with balloons. … But maybe it needed just a touch of confetti.

Archchancellor Ridcully choked on a little paper horseshoe that had miraculously appeared in his wine goblet the moment before the contents began descending down his trachea. It did little to improve his mood.

Decoration having been now fully accomplished, and the populace of Ankh-Morpork distracted by the sudden rain of paper in the shape of various lucky charms, Pinkie continued merrily on her way. Various street-soothsayers and wayside-oracles found themselves being demanded by recent customers for their money back for failing to correctly predict the weather, and they all, as one, calmly pointed to the sign directing ‘no refund for acts of the gods’.

She exited the Plaza just as a flock (or gathering, or ruckus) of followers of the Pink Pony of Death entered it, having both heard rumours and seen evidence of miraculous acts being performed by their matron deity. They clutched at their balloons with religious fervor and stooped low to collect the fallen paper pieces that now littered the streets, all the while gathering up the otherwise religiously-indifferent populace of Ankh-Morpork into a whirling frenzy of party spirit, the likes of which the city had not seen since its last riot the previous Tuesday.

They were kept so busy with dispensing complimentary party hats and slices of cake that they failed to notice the object of their ardent devotions was now trotting through The Cham and into Sator Square, the public space that sat before the great octiron gates and formidable walls of the Unseen University campus.

Pinkie looked upon the square and beheld that it was large, mostly empty, and indeed, vaguely square-shaped. Most of the city’s day-to-day market trade took place in the Plaza, or around the Patrician’s Palace (at least, when he didn’t have a headache, which were becoming increasingly frequent), as setting up a stall in front of the Unseen University was metaphorically begging the universe to surprise you by making your stock of fresh fruit and vegetables burst into song.

The ground was covered with confetti, and balloons still hung in the air, yet Pinkie still felt something was missing. She felt it with her very being, a part of her that felt like it would not be satisfied until all was set to rights. She sat down, in the centre of Sator Square, and pondered. Directly opposite her stood the looming gates of the University, but getting there had become a secondary aim to figuring out what, exactly, needed to be done.

Then it hit her.

The prayers and unspoken hopes of a thousand pink-robed worshippers flooded into her mind.

It is a great shame that no bards were present in the coming moments, for what was about to be accomplished deserved to be recorded in song. As it was, even the second-hand accounts (with a little embellishment) went down in the annals of myth and legend. At this moment, Pinkie Pie, Goddess of the Afterparty, completed her great work in her manifestation upon the Disc.

Her eyes aglow, she waved a hoof. An object enwrapped in a shining light descended from the heavens accompanied by what could charitably be called an angelic chorus, if flugelhorns and vuvuzelas were the chosen instruments of the celestial choir. It came to rest in Sator Square as crowds turned their heads to catch a glimpse of the strange device.

Accounts varied as to its identity. Some said it was a great roaring beast that heralded the new era. Some said it was a machine, like a pipe, that belched fire, smoke, and cake mix.

She spoke, and with her spoke the chorus of a thousand voices.

“Never leave home without it.”

*As has been previously stated, they are many, and without compare or equal.

For the third time that day, the wizards of the Unseen University sat in silence, having just been half-deafened by the cataclysmic explosion that, judging from the trail of debris and de-headed hats, had emanated from Sator Square.

“...” yelled the Archchancellor in the vague direction of the Dean.

“WHAT?” he bellowed in response.

“...” the Archchancellor restated, at a slightly increased level of volume. His cheeks began to gain a purple tinge.

“HOLD ON, I THINK I HAVE SOMETHING LODGED IN MY EAR,” the Dean replied, digging in with his finger. He successfully managed to dislodge a piece of lobster shell, just in time to hear the full unfortunate tirade of rich and fascinating rural terms for various indescribable and unprintable acts, framed around a question that hung on everyone’s lips: What the hell was going on?

This question could, of course, be answered with remarkable ease by any wizard choosing to look over the walls of the university and into Sator Square, but such ‘outside the box’ thinking was frowned upon by the faculty. It was a wizard’s firm belief that anything and everything could be answered within the realms of magic, and, more importantly, no more than fifty metres away from a pantry.

“First balloons, then this bloody confetti everywhere, and then an explosion! And it’s not magic! Well if it bloody well isn’t magic then what is it?” the Archchancellor boomed, gesticulating wildly.

“We could see if Hex has-” Ponder Stibbons began.

“WE ARE NOT ASKING YOUR BLASTED ANT FARM,” The Archchancellor snapped back.

As the echoes died away, a student cautiously raised a quivering arm, and nearly leapt under the table when the Archchancellor looked his way. Composing himself, he stuttered his suggestion:

“We c-could... s-summon D-D-Death?”

The Archchancellor sighed. It was always the same answer from the students. The moment they were taught the Rite of AshkEnte, it was all they could think of. Why bother studying and researching your own answers when Death already knew everything and was only a couple of wooden sticks and four cc of mouse blood away? Slowly, he began to realise why Death always seemed so irate about the issue.

The sigh was enough to convince the student that his answer was poorly-timed, unneeded, and, perhaps, an indication to go hide in his dorm room for a few days until the Archchancellor forgot about it.

There was a polite cough from somewhere near the back of the hall, where another student had his hand up. The Archchancellor merely glanced at him, this served as invitation enough.

“Uh, sir, if it isn’t, well, magic, then it, uh, might possibly be, well, divine, you see, and if that’s, uh, the case, as it were, then perhaps we, uh, should talk to, what you might call, a priest?”

The Archchancellor blinked. The faculty looked at him, as one, with rapt attention.

“... Good idea, glad I thought of it. Go and get my brother.”

In Ponyville, the days seemed to draw out longer and longer to Bill Door. The pile of books around Twilight Sparkle slowly grew into mountains as she attempted to research the spell that might allow her to cross dimensions and bring back Pinkie Pie. The pile around Bill Door was also growing, but directly proportional to the shrinking biography section of the Golden Oak Library.

As he turned the final page of The Life and Times of a Pasta Farmer, a sensation that had been nagging him for some time over the past week returned in greater force. It was... He found it difficult to describe. A cloying sense of unease. A frustration with the way things were. A half-felt urge to change routine.

Was there a name for this feeling? He was sure there must be. Mortals named everything. It had become blindingly clear from his reading that occasionally they even decided to rename bits of themselves.

He ran through the list. It wasn’t love. Love was a confusing and somewhat terrifying mix of emotion, impulse and blind stupidity that he felt he would never fully understand. It wasn’t hunger. It felt similar to hunger, but he’d eaten only an hour ago, so it couldn’t be hunger. Anger? He knew anger quite well, but he certainly didn’t feel angry about anything. He continued in this vein for several minutes, mentally checking each known emotion, but without drawing a conclusion.

“... Miss Sparkle!” he called, at last, his own knowledge exhausted. Twilight looked up from her books, looking a little haggard from lack of sleep. This tended to be symptomatic of whenever Twilight decided that a problem needed her attention and had to be solved.

“Mm?” she grunted in reply.

“I feel frustrated with the tedium of my current existence. Is there a name for this feeling?” Bill Door asked, deadpan.

“You’re bored.”

“Oh! Boredom. How interesting. Thank you.”

Silence drifted in once more, broken only by the rustling of pages and the low hum of telekinetic magic.

“... Miss Sparkle?”

“Yes?”

“What, exactly, does one do when one is... Bored?”

Moments later, Bill Door found himself outside the library, with the door being slammed shut behind him. He wasn’t sure what had happened in the intervening seconds.

He glanced around him. The Golden Oak Library was near the centre of Ponyville, facing a main street that led to the town hall and its surrounding market area. He could see ponies trotting back and forth across the street, occasionally giving him inscrutable looks before changing direction slightly.

He decided to make his way down the grassy street, and see if there was something to dissuade this ‘boredom’ at the market. Ponies here and there seemed to be going out of their way to avoid him. He dimly recalled Twilight explaining (at great length) that certain of the Ponyville population had drawn connections between his appearance and Pinkie’s disappearance, and that rumour travels fast in a small town populated by a naturally skittish race. Apparently, some of the more outlandish rumours included that ‘Bill Door’ was really a creature from another dimension who collected the souls of the dead, and that Pinkie had made a dark and terrible pact to take his place. These were, understandably, laughed off as completely absurd.

Shortly, Bill Door approached the edge of the green that encircled the Ponyville town hall. He could see stalls set up around roughly half the circumference, selling all kinds of grown produce, manufactured goods, and imported products. The Ponyville Market was a place where the community of the town came together, to trade, exchange news and haggle over that day’s best deals. It was late morning, so most of the town was out, shopping for their lunch, or merely looking for a pleasant distraction.

Bill Door recognized the familiar shape of one pony in particular - a yellow-coated, pink-maned pegasus making her way around the stalls and deftly swerving in and out of the crowds, eyes down and avoiding contact as best as possible. He watched as she approached the stall of one obstinate-looking tomato salespony, and began to negotiate the price. The attempt did not appear to be going very well, as now the salespony was insisting on slightly above the original asking price.

Bill Door decided to wander over and examine the tomatoes for himself. The two were so engrossed in the increasingly heated debate that they initially failed to notice his presence. He took the time to scrutinize the red, plump-looking fruits on offer, carefully looking at all angles and perspectives, and even going as far as gently prodding one with a hoof. It was this act that broke the salespony from her increasingly one-sided argument with Fluttershy and drew her attention to the new customer.

“How much are you charging for these tomatoes?” he asked, before the salespony had time to open her mouth.

“Oh, uh, as I was just explaining to Fluttershy here, being Spring and all, they’re two bits each.” she replied.

“But they aren’t even ripe. They are probably only worth one bit each.”

The salespony frowned. “Two bits.”

“This one is green.” Bill Door continued.

“Two. Bits.”

“And this one is so hard as to be nearly inedible.”

“If you don’t like my tomatoes, you are free to shop elsewhere.” the salespony replied, effectively shutting down all further conversation.

But Bill Door continued regardless.

“But you are the only pony selling tomatoes in the market.”

“That’s right, I am, and they’re two bits, take it or leave it,” the salespony reiterated, jabbing a hoof at the sign.

“R-really, it’s fine, I can j-just pay the full-” Fluttershy began, before being cut off.

“The product you are selling is of inferior quality and clearly only worth half of what you are asking. I feel that this ought to be reported to a local authority as fraud,” Bill Door said, nodding solemnly.

“... Two for three bits,” the salespony interjected, reluctantly.

“One bit.”

“I’m already making a loss! I’ve gotta eat too, you know. Two for three bits!” she repeated.

“At one bit per tomato you are making an adequate profit during the off-season.”

“You’re asking me to sell my fine, home-grown product at a loss, and then have the gall to say I’m making a profit? You’ve got some nerve! … And it’s still three bits for two,” she continued, beginning to go as red in the face as her tomatoes.

“If you were truly offended by my offer you would not still be bartering. One bit,” Bill Door replied, voice level.

The salespony wracked her mind trying to think of a suitably counter-argument, but the stern, icy-blue eyes of her customer froze her train of thought and left her stuttering. Finally, she slammed her hoof on the stall and gave up.

“Fine! Customers these days...”

As the grumbling salespony picked up her bits and pulled down a banner saying ‘Gone to Lunch’, Fluttershy scooped the tomatoes into her saddlebags and turned to thank Bill Door. If she had been looking directly at him (which she wasn’t), she might’ve noticed that he didn’t seem to be looking directly at her, either.

“Uhm, thank you. For the help. I don’t think that mare likes me very much,” she opened, as they began to trot away.

“Oh. You are welcome."

They trotted together in silence for a few minutes. Both were trying to think of a suitable subject of conversation that neither seemed too intruding or too diffident.

“... So, what are you... doing? Today?” Bill Door asked, having finally struck on a winner.

“Oh, uhm, I’m going to see Applejack - you know, the apple farmer, my friend - her dog, Winona, is feeling poorly. I’m going to see if there’s anything I can... do.”

The conversation laid to rest, once again.

They soon reached the edge of Ponyville proper and entered the country roads, lined with cottages, that led to the farmlands outside of the town. Bill Door barely realised the time that had passed, despite normally being aware of every passing second. What he did realise was that the feelings of being ‘bored’ had given way to an altogether even more unfamiliar feeling. In some ways, it resembled fear, but also happiness. He had an inkling of what that meant, but decided to ignore it. In the same sense that one ignores things by locking them in something heavy and then burying it somewhere, or throwing it in a nearby body of water.

The two wandered through the country lanes in silence, glancing around at everything except each other. Bill Door noted the particular shade of blue that the sky bore this morning. The notes and songs of at least six different species of bird. The last remnants of dew clinging to the grass. The three overburdened little fillies overtaking them on the path, screaming something about ‘cutie marks’ and ‘wilderness explorers’.

Eventually, they reached the white fences and brightly-coloured trellises that marked the start of Sweet Apple Acres. Bill Door was snapped out of his reverie by Fluttershy’s quiet voice;

“Uhm, thank you for... Walking with me. It was... nice,” she said, blushing, and moved to turn away.

Then she stopped, took a deep breath, and turned back to face him.

“Maybe-if-you’re-not-busy-later-this-afternoon-you-would-like-to-get-tea-or-something-if-that’s-alright-with-you-I-mean-oh-Celestia-I’m-sorry-never-mind-I-should-go.” The words streamed from her mouth at top speed, and before Bill Door had had time to properly process them, she was already a retreating yellow and pink blur.

Nevertheless, he felt elated. And a little confused. More confused than elated, if he was honest. He wandered around the entrance to the farm for a few minutes, trying to gather his scattered thoughts.

It was at this point that an orange earth pony in a brown felt hat spotted him. She trotted over, wearing a friendly expression.

“Well, howdy! You must be the new stallion in town Rarity was talking about. Now, I know half the town’s saying you done something horrible to Pinkie and that’s why she’s gone missing around the time you turned up, and then the other half’s saying that you ain’t got nothing to do with that and it’s just pure coincidence, but I don't have any truck with rumour and gossip. I’m sure Pinkie’s fine, wherever she is, she’s just like that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m worried for her and all, she’s a good friend, but she’s the sorta pony that makes a bright day out of a gloomy morning, if you get my meaning."

Bill Door didn't.

"Well now, where’re my manners? I ain’t even asked your name! I’m Applejack, it's a pleasure. What brings you ‘round ta my farm, now?”

He blinked.

“... My name is Bill Door. I was walking over here with Fluttershy. Good morning,” he managed to respond, in a deliberately slower pace.

“Door? My cousin knows a Door over by Appleloosa way, don’t suppose you're related? Oh, I'm sorry, I'm prying again ain’t I."

Bill Door said nothing. The silence stretched for a few seconds. Somewhere**, a cricket chirped.

"So, you walked over with Fluttershy? She did seem a little flustered when I ran into her just now. Or rather, she ran into me!” Applejack continued, laughing. She noticed that Bill Door just watched her with an air of curiosity, rather than one of understanding.

“... Say now, you busy?” she asked, sizing him up.

“Uh... No.”

“Well, that’s just swell! How’d you like to help me and my brother - he’s the red one, over there - with planting some of the new apple saplings in our south orchard? You look like you’ve got a strong back about you, and, well, Fluttershy will be here for a couple of hours yet, with Winona.”

Bill Door pondered the offer. He was no stranger to farms or farm labour, in fact, he rather enjoyed it, but traditionally he was a Harvester, not a Planter. The notion of giving and nurturing new life rather than taking it away both excited and intrigued him.

He smiled at the friendly farmpony.

“That sounds delightful.”

**That's not to say, somewhere they were currently standing. In fact this particular cricket was chirping merrily to itself somewhere in an unnamed forest on the far western coast of Equestria. It just happened to coincide with the lull in the conversation, as these things always do.

The student wasted no time in fulfilling the request made for him, and, dodging the prize rose bushes and the compost heaps of the Unseen University’s campus gardens, he leapt over the broken section of wall that had, traditionally, been used as the main entrance to the university by both students and faculty staff alike since time immemorial***, and ran into Sator Square.

He had difficulty continuing, as he found his path blocked by what appeared to be several hundred upstanding**** citizens of Ankh-Morpork holding on to one another and emulating the rhythmic movements of a type of legless reptile.

Whilst singing.

Badly.

In the split-second that he paused, there was suddenly a pink pony-shaped thing standing next to him.

“Hey! You’ve already got a pointy hat! Come on, they’re just refilling the punch!”

***Opening the vast octiron gates required at least four wizards of the Third Level. Unfortunately, finding them between meals, or when sober, was more trouble than it was worth. Often the wizards reserved gate-opening for special occasions, so it made a greater impact.

****Well. Some of them were upstanding. Others were nearly horizontal.

Mercy

It has been touched upon before that time does not flow equally in all realms. Due to the magical nature of the Disc and some of its otherworldly inhabitants, it could also be said that time does not flow equally within the realm, let alone beyond it. Bill Door had spent just over a week in Ponyville, while Pinkie Pie had been on the Disc for several months. Death, however, felt as though it had been years. Perhaps it had been, for her, for time in Death’s Realm is not a law so much as a suggestion.

In that insignificant city, in the small room of the small house, Death had rebelled. She had done that which she was not permitted to do: she had extended life. The hourglass was much more than just a symbol, its sands truly measured the span of a mortal’s life on the Disc. If a mortal were to find their own hourglass in Death’s vast collection, they could attempt to turn it over themselves, but it would be a wasted effort. The sand will continue to flow in the same direction, measuring the seconds from birth to death.

Only Death can reverse that flow. Only Death can turn the timer and send the sand back into its bulb. Death had that power for a single reason: to teach him humility, that he was not Master of Life and Death. He was no ruler, no king or god. He was the Reaper, and he merely harvested what was sown. A servant of life, walking the fields and gleaning the fallen grains.

Many times, Death had considered turning the timers. He had only done so a handful of occasions, in all the vast span of his existence. The first was to extend the life of his ‘apprentice’, Mort. That act was the first act of ‘defiance’ he had brought against the Auditors, the beings that saw to it that the machine of reality continued to tick over, and they had not forgotten it, nor had they forgiven it.

Another Death now stood in that small room, and in her hoof she held the upturned timer. Sand began to flow from the top bulb to the bottom, and with the first fallen grain, the dead child in its mothers’ arms gasped for breath.

The Plague looked at the child, watching as a soul was stolen from its grasp, and it screamed, inaudible to all but Death herself.

Go, she said, turning to the pale creature. It hissed and spat at her as it faded away, retreating to another bedside in another part of the city.

This Death had something her predecessor had never had. She had mortality. And mortals cannot accept The Duty. They cannot see its necessity, or understand its curious equality. No matter how damaged their morality, any mortal would flinch from taking the soul of a dying infant while others grew fat and lived long on the back of its misery.

Now the die had been cast. She had rebelled, and there would be consequences. She felt them, deep in her core, the reverberations that echoed across the Nodes as they cried out that the tally had not been met. History had been altered, fate had been cheated.

Once, Mort had risked the fate of the Disc to save the life of a princess, but history re-asserted itself. The people of the kingdom refused to acknowledge the princess’ continued existence. History told them she was dead, and they could understand no other version of events. Only the direct intervention of powers higher than even Death had led to her life being properly returned to her, and the altered fate that came with it.

There would be no such exception for the child that Death had just spared. They ought to be dead. The rest of the world would consider them dead. Even now, Death looked at the mother and father, and saw the conflicted emotions behind their eyes. They were mourning, but what for they couldn’t remember. They were rejoicing, but once again, the reason why had slipped their grasp.

Even the child seemed out-of-place. Wracked with coughing, it seemed just as ill as before. The realisation fell as Death observed the scene, that saving a life was not a relief. She had not cured the child of its plague, nor restored a life that had been taken.

She had extended. That was all she could do. Death cannot give life.

The parents’ sorrow and gratitude turned to confusion. The child had been left, neglected, as it continued to struggle for breath in a body that could not support the life within it.

Death stared at the hourglass in her hoof. Everything within her, every fibre of her endless existence, called out to rectify the ‘mistake’. To take the child’s life, as it was fated.

If she had had fingers, she would have clenched them.

No, she spoke, and placed the hourglass back into her robe.

One said nothing. One merely watched and, if it were possible, would have smiled.

Death ignored the entreated cries of Albert, pleading with her to stop, and stormed into the Stacks. She took book after book from the shelves, reading the back page of each, and flinging them aside. Hoofsteps echoing in the walkways, she turned a corner where two stacks met, and stopped. She traced the line of biographies, scratching gently with the sound of lives being lived, and selected one in particular.

It was a rich volume, leather bound, with gold-gilt leaves. On the cover was embossed a proud name, one denoting status, a lengthy history, and great wealth. Opening it to a few pages back from the last, she traced the lines with her hoof as she read:

“As he supped that evening, his thoughts turned, involuntarily, to the lesser peoples in the poorer districts of the city. He mused on the plague that now ran rampant through the streets, and on the death toll it would likely bring. He deemed this unfortunate, as it would greatly impact his profits in the coming harvest. Workers would have to be drafted in from bordering states to replace the dead. It seemed wasteful, but there it was. He called for more wine.”

She closed it, and placed it into the dark, empty recesses of her robe Retracing her last few steps, she stopped again, in front of a smaller shelf filled with thinner, cheaper volumes. Plucking one from the rest, she opened it to the end.

“She coughed, and felt fear. She could feel two presences in the room, two that were not her parents. She saw the one as pallid and horrific, watching her with barely contained glee as she gasped for breath. The other, cold, unfeeling, wrapped in the black of the night sky. She fought for another breath, feeling her body succumbing to the illness. It did not come.”

The book had fallen silent. Of course it had, the thought came to Death, the child had died. Her life now was not a life she should have, history rejected it and the books would not record it.

Death replaced the slim book on its shelf and walked with heavy hoofsteps back into her study.

There, resting in the high-backed leather chair that sat before her vast desk, she consulted the great books that marked the Nodes. The Nodes were maps, or patterns. They illustrated where the strings of Fate’s woven tapestry crossed, tangled and knotted. Of course, all threads have to end somewhere; one loose thread is enough to unravel the entire, grand fabric of history.

Her actions had caused a thread to extend beyond its final knot. It needed to be fixed, to be cut, before the disorder began to spread through the rest of the strings that passed it, crossed it, or were tied to it. Death scanned the pages, looking at the threads that it was tied to, places where it could be anchored back into the tapestry without changing the Plan.

It was futile. She knew that, deep down. It was one of the things that all Deaths knew, buried far under anger and rage at their impotence to change anything. Rebellion had flowered in Death’s mind, and now it took root. It was a futile thing to try, perhaps, but then... Perhaps, this time it would work.

She traced a thread she had marked before. It was a rich thread, woven with gold, fat, triple-stranded, and dyed in rich colours. It only met the loose thread once. It crossed it, there, a few days length before the knot that marked her death. A meeting in a street, perhaps. Something as small as eye contact would do it. The child may have been begging, and was spotted by the rich man. It was enough.

She reached into her robe and plucked from the void the book she had taken earlier from the shelves. She traced the name with the tip of her hoof once again, and turned to the racks that held the timers. The sound of their rushing sands was all that could be heard, muffling her hoofsteps as she stepped down from her seat and walked alongside them.

Halting, she took a rich, mahogany wood and gold gilt hourglass, the sand within made from crushed pearls and mixed with fine gold dust. The name carved so masterfully into the base matched that of the book, and indeed, the two items perfectly complemented one another.

The hourglass she placed into her cloak. The book she left in its place on the rack.

She turned, and was gone.

One said, And so it begins.

A rich lord stood on his balcony overlooking the small city below. Moonlight shone through pale wisps of cloud on the cobbled streets, dancing with the shadows cast by burning torches, candles and lanterns.

A plague stalked those streets. The lord had locked himself away in his mansion on the hills above the city’s poorer districts. He blocked out the wails of the afflicted with thick curtains drawn closed during the long, dark evenings. Tonight, however, the city was quiet.

He stood there, watching for any signs of movement, but saw none. Not a soul stirred in the city that night. It was almost peaceful.

How do you sleep?

The voice that was not a voice made the lord turn. Behind him, looming tall, stood a spectre he had hoped never to see.

When the cries of the victims rise over your balcony and invade your halls at night, how do you sleep?

Its mouth never moved. The words were heard, but never spoken. The lord gulped and stammered as he tried to think of a response.

You possess this city. Their lives depend on the contents of your coffers. You could save them. Clean the city. Be rid of the plague.

He stepped back, coming up against the railings, and clutched at them.

Instead you hide. Pretend that it doesn't exist. They die for your cowardice. How do you sleep?

Finally, the lord found his voice. “H-how did you get in? Guards! Guards! I am under attack!”

His cries faded into silence as they passed the spectre of Death. No one came. She reached into her robe and withdrew an ornate hourglass, holding it up to her eye and watching as the grains fell through the pinched neck. Slightly less than half of the top bulb was still full. The lord was fated to live a long life.

There's no justice.

She threw the hourglass at the ground. The lord’s eyes followed it as it bounced once, twice...

Crack.

Pearl sand and gold dust brushed against his feet. He clutched at his heart. The balcony gave way. His body plummeted to the streets below and was dead before it hit the cobbles.

There's just me.

Albert watched in horror as the threads writhed to accommodate the changes Death was making to the tapestry. Pages smouldered as the arcane diagrams that made up the Nodes shifted and crawled.

It had begun as a single loose thread, but had grown to encompass dozens. Tangles of threads cut free from the tapestry were left dangling, hopelessly trying to fill holes left by strands shorn away too soon. For each life Death chose to spare, she took another to make up the difference, but in the eyes of Fate, one life is not equal to another.

“She’s gone mad,” Albert muttered to himself, trying to take scope of the damage her actions were doing. The Death of Rats sat poised on his shoulder and Squeaked occasionally, pointing at one emerging tear or another. There didn’t seem to be anything they could do to stop her.

The city was now in chaos. Plague victims ran rampant through the streets, infected, dying, but never given release. They stormed the walls and gates of the houses of the rich, but found only corpses, each accompanied by shards of glass and wood, and a little pile of sand.

With no leadership, the city was being overrun by confused and angry citizens desperate for help that they couldn’t find.

Above it all, Death loomed. She watched rioting crowds burning merchants’ houses and raiding storerooms. She saw groups of infected, huddled together, striking out at any unfortunate individual who came near. Others she saw being chased through the streets by ‘mercy mobs’ of crazed citizens waving flaming brands, knives and clubs. Those they caught they tried to ‘cure’, the only way they knew how, but they would not die.

Death contemplated one hourglass in particular. It was that which belonged to one such individual she could see being chased down an alleyway below her. A crossbow bolt flew through the air, fired by one of the mob, and struck the infected victim in the shoulder. The glass of the timer cracked in sympathy, but the sand remained flowing.

She looked at another part of the city, where a rich and profiteering merchant was barricading his doors against a crowd of thieves attempting to break them down, using anything they could lay their hands on: axes, upturned tables, bricks and stones.

She looked dispassionately at his timer, and then let it fall to the streets below her. The door burst into a cloud of splinters as his body hit the floor.

A life taken for each spared. That was ‘fair’. That was ‘just’.

A cry caught her ear, and she turned to see a small room in a small house in a poor district of the city.

A child, the child, sat and wept in the corner of the room, wracked by pain and unable to sleep. The parents could offer no comfort, as they had none to give. They ignored the child, ignored the cries, and merely stared as the crowds gathered outside their home. A woman in the crowd pointed at the mark painted on the door. Men and women stepped forward and began beating it down. An axe whistled as it sliced through the air and struck the wood, scattering splinters. The parents of the child braced themselves against the door, trying to hold the mob back, but it was of little consequence. They broke through, they took the child, and they cut her throat.

Death stared. A thin line spread across the surface of the timer she now held. The sand held. The mob watched. The child lived.

A man raised his axe, but before he could bring it down, it fell to the ground, clattering against the cold, stone floor of the small house, followed shortly by his lifeless body. Death stood before the mob, her hooves wreathed in blue fire. Her eyes burned with it. Her scythe was edged with it. She swung the tool in a great arc, back and forth, running through the streets of the city. Her mind retreated to a kinder image, of golden fields and golden grain, and she followed the rows, taking in the harvest. She wept for each stalk.

When the sun rose over that small city the next morning, not a soul had been left alive to see it. In the smoking ruins of what had once been a meeting place, Death sat and wept tears of icy blue flame. Her scythe lay discarded beside her, surrounded by broken glass, slashed books, and pearly sand. The morning breeze played with it as it mixed with the smoke, tossing it against torn pages, still recording the lives of men and women now dead.

Everything went wrong. It... it was a mercy, she said, to three empty, cloaked shapes that stood beside her.

One said, Mercy and justice are mortal concepts.
One said, Mortal concepts are inherently flawed.
One said, Now you witness where they inevitably lead.

I wanted to... To help them. They were dying.

One said, You are Death.
One said, You cannot help the living.
One said, They cannot be helped.

She turned to face them, her skull stained with ash as the tears fell from her eye sockets, burning briefly on the stone before being snuffed out.

I am not Death. I am a Shadow of Death. A Shadow cast by a Light of Joy and Laughter, a Spirit of Happiness that I used to be. I remember two minds, but I cannot be either. They cannot be reconciled.

One said, We can help you.
One said, We can guide you.
One said, We can reconcile you.

How?

One said, You exist in three, but must be one.
One said, Put out that light that you once were.
One said, Take the scythe.

Three said, Take Death’s life.

The Trials of a Junior Wizard

“Miss Applejack?” Bill Door gestured, eyeing the spade he had been provided with some suspicion.

“Yes, hun?”

“I am confused as to how, exactly, I am supposed to use this digging implement, given my lack of tangible digits or other means of gripping its handle, and using that grip, exerting force upon its blade.”

Applejack laughed.

She then slowly began to realise that he was completely serious.

“... Well, I’ve met some fancy fru-fru ponies in mah time, but never one that didn’t know how to use a spade! That’s a new one. Uh, well, you grip the handle in your teeth... Lhike thish!”

Bill Door watched as Applejack deftly bit the handle, struck the soft meadow soil with the spade, forced it down, and flicked the displaced earth away. He’d been watching Earth Ponies perform similar tasks with just their mouths, tails and hooves all week, but couldn’t even begin to imitate it.

“... Maybe I could just... Dig with my hooves?” he ventured, having stared blankly at his spade for a few seconds more.

“Whatever makes you feel comfortable, hun. Just remember it’s gotta be deep enough fer the roots.”

Bill Door nodded, and gently nudged the spade aside. Somehow, digging with his hooves felt more... right. With a speed that rivalled even Applejack’s skillful shovelling, he had soon excavated a neatly spaced row of holes, just waiting for saplings to fill them.

This time it was Applejack’s turn to watch, and she marvelled at the bizarre efficiency Bill Door seemed to be managing without the aid of any tools. She whistled for Big Mac, who came plodding over, pulling the cart containing the year-old apple saplings. They were carefully lifted from the cart and lowered into the holes, with the tender care a mother would show to her children. Applejack packed the dirt back around the root and trunk and patted it down, making sure that each tree was securely planted before moving on to the next.

With the unexpected turn of speed, the planting was done in less than half the time Applejack had allotted for it, so Bill Door found himself being invited back to the farmhouse to share in a drink and a chat.

In the cosy, suitably untidy Apple family kitchen, Bill Door half-sat, half-stood at the table with a frothy mug of cider before him. Applejack and Big Mac were busy cleaning the dishes left over from breakfast and lunch while Granny Smith snored contentedly in the corner. Apple Bloom had returned from ‘wilderness exploring’ by this point, covered in tree sap and pine needles as usual. She was scoffing down a sandwich stuffed with all manner of wildflowers and grasses, chatting excitedly at Bill Door as she recounted the epic adventures she had just experienced.

“... an’ then they made me their chief,”* she continued, with her mouth full. Bill Door smiled politely and nodded, taking another sip of the cider. He was uncertain of the veracity of the little filly’s claims that there lived in the forest nearby a tribe of sapient, tree-dwelling frogs who had duly elected her as their leader after she and her two fellow ‘crusaders’ had relieved their tree-village of a ravaging Timberpuppy**, but he didn’t mind listening to the tale. He’d always had a soft spot for children.

“Was there much ceremony?” he asked. Apple Bloom paused for a moment, staring at the ceiling in thought. She gulped down her mouthful and took another bite before continuing.

“Nah, nothin’ special. The biggest one made some tiaras out of grass an’ then they gave us bugs ta eat. Scoots an’ me wouldn’ eat ‘em, but Sweetie Belle said they were pretty good. For bugs, anyway.”

“I see! Well, I suppose you’ll have to take responsibility for your new people now.”

“Nah,” Apple Bloom replied, “we made ‘em a republic.”

“Apple Bloom, when you're done, don’t forget t’go feed the pigs,” Applejack said, glancing over her shoulder.

“But it’s your turn!”

“We have guests! I’ll do it tomorrow, alright?”

Apple Bloom finished chewing the last morsel of sandwich with a frown. “Fiiiiine. But I don’t have ta wash up this evenin’.”

“Don’t push your luck, missy!” Applejack called after the retreating filly. She smiled as she chucked the dish rag down by the sink and went to join Bill Door. Big Mac nodded at the two and left to carry on with the afternoon’s work.

“Sorry about yapping your ear off earlier,” Applejack opened, cradling her own mug of cider, “I’m actually fairly nervous ‘round new folk, so I ramble. You seem a good sort though. What’s your line of work, Mr. Door?”

Bill Door thought for a moment. ‘The End of All Things’ didn’t seem a suitable answer.

“Harvester,” he replied, with a small nod. Applejack raised an eyebrow.

“Can’t say I’ve ever met a farm worker who don’t know how to use a spade! But that’s your own business. You planning to stay in Ponyville long? I gather you’ve been at Twilight’s all week.”

“I did not really plan to stay at all. It just... Happened. It is a lovely town.”

“Yup, sure is. It's good of Twilight to put you up in the library. Might do her some good and all; she’s one of my best friends, but Celestia knows she’s a bit, uh, uptight. Having a guest is the surest way to relax your own routines a little.”

Bill Door nodded again, taking another gulp of cider. “This is delicious,” he added, motioning at the cup.

“Well thanks! It’s not our best, truth be told, wrong season for it. This is just from the windfalls and the late spring harvest. Why, our summer batch is so popular it usually sells out within the first day!”

“Is it just you and your brother on the farm?” Bill Door ventured.

“Yup, and Granny Smith and Apple Bloom, of course. We have hired hooves during the Applebucking Season, or get in the family from across Equestria. Sweet Apple Acres is the biggest of the Apple Family orchards, you see. My friends keep telling me I should get more help in, but it just don’t seem right, not after our parents...” she trailed off, looking at a portrait hanging by the door. Bill Door glanced at it and smiled in sympathy.

“I am familiar with such feelings. I am sure they would be proud of you all.”

“Mm... Still, we get volunteer help from time-to-time, or ponies passing through and looking for some bits. Like yourself. What you did today was very helpful, and saved us a few hours more work, besides!”

The sounds of excited barking drew nearer to the house, accompanied by gentle hoofsteps. Applejack looked up at the door.

“Ah guess that’s Fluttershy and Winona. Was nice to meet you, Mr. Door. I hope this business about Pinkie Pie’s disappearance blows over soon, I’m sure you had nothing to do with it. I know an honest pony when I see one,” she said, winking at him.

Fluttershy looked through the half-door that lead to the kitchen as Winona leapt over it, running around Applejack’s legs and licking her face.

“She had an upset stomach, nothing serious. I gave her some soup and talked with her for a little bit and she seems right as rain,” the yellow pony said, smiling at the pair. “I’ll be heading back now, is Mr. Door coming too?”

“Yup, he is. Thanks both for your time, drop by again, you hear? Oh, and Fluttershy, I’ll bring round a bushel of apples tomorrow morning.”

Fluttershy nodded gratefully and looked to Bill Door, who finished his cider, thanked Applejack for her hospitality, and left with the pegasus.

*A shockingly common occurrence when encountering tribes of primitives, statistically speaking.
**A timberwolf, but greener.

The Party in Sator Square had expanded to half the city* by the time that the juvenile wizard had convinced the chattering pink pony goddess to follow him, keep quiet (at least to the best of her ability to accomplish such a feat) and lie low.

The carefully crept out of Sator Square, into The Backs, and on to Peach Pie street. Pinkie Pie found the name endlessly amusing and insisted on stopping to find some of the eponymous produce, much to the irritation of the young wizard. The owner of a nearby bakery had soon added a hyperactive pink pony to his growing list of unusual - and barred - customers. He’d had half a mind to refuse the purchase entirely; he was specifically insured against acts of the University, as this clearly was. How else would a horse talk? And have such abnormally large eyes? And that hair? On the other hand, she had been accompanied by a wizard, junior student or no, and it just did not do to refuse wizards on their business.

Especially not when you happened to hold a tab open for a certain wizard who had a keen appetite for banana pie, banana bread, banana cake...

He changed his mind mere minutes later, when a pink-robed cultist, following the trail of confetti and streamers that seemed to be left in Pinkie Pie’s wake, came across the bakery and declared it a holy shrine. Within seconds, the baker had been swamped with enough orders to make him a very very rich man.

Pinkie Pie had polished off her peachy namesake by the time the wizard had led her to the broken section of wall that marked the main entrance to the University. The wizard was getting increasingly frustrated by the pony’s tendency to be distracted by literally everything. Upon spotting a rockery, she launched into what she clearly thought to be a dialogue, but was, in fact, closer to a monologue, on the subject of her upbringing on a rock farm, the techniques involved in proper gemcutting (which she clarified meant the cutting of gems to plant to produce new gems, not cutting them as a jeweller would), commenting on the fact that the rocks clearly looked overdue for rotation, and the secret to making a great rock cake (don’t actually use rocks).

Then she met the gardener.

... And felt justified in beginning the spiel all over again. At least Modo was showing an interest in what the pony had to say, the wizard mused. When the dwarf insisted on showing the pony the university’s floral clock**, the wizard took his chance to excuse himself and rush back to the great hall. He suddenly felt a new appreciation for silence.

Returning to the great hall, he found it in much the same state as he had left it, over an hour or so ago. The maids were still busy sweeping up confetti and streamers, the students had moved on to the second helping of the seventh course, and the Archchancellor was still fuming. Currently he appeared to be embroiled in an animated discussion with the Dean over whether or not this entire affair had been predicted that morning by the ache in the Bursar’s right knee***.

“... and I’m telling you,” retorted the Dean, “that a knee-ache is only predictive of cosmological disaster when accompanied by eye-twitching and a rash on the left ankle!”

“No, no!” cried the Archchancellor, “the catalogue of combinations clearly records that it’s knee-ache, hayfever and a cold sweat for this sort of business!”

The Bursar raised a finger in objection. “I’ve not had a fever this morning!”

The Dean nodded, smugly, while the Archchancellor turned his smouldering and baleful gaze to the junior wizard who now cowered before the high table.

“Oh, it’s you. Ramsbuttock, or some such. Where’s my brother? He’s not with you, clearly.”

“It’s, uh, Ramsfleece, Archchancellor, and I, uh, found the cause of the commotion, as it were.”

The Archchancellor tutted and turned to the Dean, gesturing at the junior wizard in irritation. “See? Students. Can’t even follow simple commands, always insist they know what’s best. Typical. One of your dorm, isn’t he?”

“Never seen him before in my life, Archchancellor,” the Dean replied.

“I, uh, take arcane history lectures with you-”

“Never. In my life.”

“Very well," the Archchancellor continued, turning back to Ramsfleece, "come on then, lad, where’s this cause of yours?”

“She’s, uh, outside, Archchancellor. Discussing the finer points of gardening with the, uh, gardener, you see.”

“So, you mean to say that not only have you not done as requested, you couldn’t even be bothered to bring it all the way in? And- Wait, did you say ‘she’?” the Archchancellor said as he stood, looming over the younger wizard in an incredibly imposing and vaguely threatening manner. Ramsfleece gulped.

“Y-yes, Archchancellor.”

“She’s not a witch, is she?”

“... Probably, uh, not, Archchancellor.”

The Archchancellor’s grip on the table loosened a little. The wood creaked a sigh of relief.

“Ah. Well. … What, exactly, is she?”

Young Ramsfleece opened his mouth to answer, but his brain thought better of it and blocked all lines of communication immediately. As a result, he merely stammered. The Archchancellor raised an eyebrow in a manner that spoke volumes. Ramsfleece stammered again. The Archchancellor began drumming his fingers on the table top in a slow, deliberate stroke reminiscent of a drum at an execution.

Ramsfleece slowly realised that everyone in the room was now watching him with bated breath.

“... She’s... a pony.”

*Specifically, half of Ankh-Morpork would correctly be Ankh, (or Morpork,) if divided vertically, and An-Mor (or Kh-Pork) if horizontally. Sadly, linguistics have not evolved to facilitate the description of an expanding circular area, but the formula would be something akin to π x Ankh-Morpork^2.
**An elaborate thing planted with a variety of flowers that were supposed to open at different times of day. Due to the magical nature of the Unseen University campus, it had stopped at half-past-Carnivorous Lily some thirty years ago when they ate all the others.
***The faculty had, by this point, begun to use the Bursar’s many and half-imagined medical conditions as a form of oracle. They called it psychosomancy, or, among the student body, 'The Bursar Sense'.

Doorways

Bill Door had always valued nature. It was Life in its most stubborn, persistent and chaotic form, and his vocation had given him an acute appreciation of those qualities in the world. Life always fought the inevitable. It struggled, bit, scratched, and then fled elsewhere to flourish anew.

However, despite the beauty and serenity of Ponyville and its environs, Bill felt that the nature here was not as stubborn, not as persistent, and nowhere near as chaotic as that found on the Disc. There was a sense of order, complacency, even pliability about the flora and fauna he observed around him here, in this quaint little equine existence.

As he walked and felt the gentle firmness of the earth beneath his hooves, he reflected on this, and what he’d seen earlier that day at the apple orchards. He had been told a little of this world by Twilight Sparkle and by Pinkie herself during their time together, and he knew that Earth Ponies had a particular affinity with the natural world, as Pegasi did with the skies and Unicorns with the magic powers that underpinned everything. The ponies certainly liked everything to be neatly organized and contained, and Ponyville was almost as different from Ankh-Morpork as Bill could imagine. He wondered, then, whether it was this quality in ponies that led to the ordered nature he could see around him, or if they were a product of it.

Pondering these deep, philosophical questions helped him ignore the increasingly captivating feelings being generated by his close proximity to one particular yellow pegasus who had, much to his surprise and mute delight, agreed to show him the forest.

At present they were walking through the area known as Whitetail Woods, where in the balmy heat of a late afternoon, some ponies still worked, tapping the surrounding maple trees for syrup. They greeted Fluttershy, often with kind words of thanks for some animal-related favour or other, and Fluttershy thanked them in return. Bill nodded at one or two of them, because he felt this was expected, but in truth he was feeling a little more out-of-place than usual. Few ever thanked him for doing his job, after all, much less spoke to him about it days, weeks or even months after the fact.

They walked a while, conversing only in brief snatches as Fluttershy pointed out a particular species of plant, or some animal tracks. Bill showed genuine, if detached interest, but felt he had little to say in comment or response. The only plant he knew a great deal about was wheat, and that was largely for thematic purposes.

Before long, they came to the edge of the woods, which opened to a large clearing through which the path continued towards something far, far older than Whitetail Woods.

“What is that?” Bill asked Fluttershy, pointing a hoof towards the black-topped trees and creeping shadows that formed a nearly impenetrable wall at the other end of the clearing.

“That’s the Everfree Forest,” she replied, “we don’t tend to go in there, unless we really need to, I mean.”

Bill Door stared at the trees and brambles at the edge of the forest. Here, he found an answer to his earlier questions. The Everfree Forest represented everything that Whitetail Woods wasn't. It was dark, ancient, and very, very much alive.

He was instantly fascinated.

“Can we go in?” he asked, having not really heard the second part of Fluttershy’s reply.

She looked at him, and was about to make some excuse about needing to get back, as it was getting late and the Everfree was no place to be after dark, but she could see a glint of excitement and determination in his icy-blue eyes.

It is difficult to resist Death. Even when he isn't, strictly speaking, currently filling that role. On some level, everyone knows that he’ll win in the end.

She sighed and nodded, leading the way across the clearing and glancing behind her at the sun, hovering only a little above the horizon now. She felt a pang of fear, but steeled herself: after all, she had tamed manticores, stared down cockatrices, and even forced an apology from a dragon. Besides, she did find herself taking a shine to Bill, despite her earlier protests to Rarity, and some small part of her didn't really want to show herself up in front of him.

Together, they crossed the boundary, and were soon enveloped by the shadows.

Death stood in the centre of a whirling festival of colour, staring fixedly at the great Octiron Gates of the Unseen University. The crowds ignored her, although many of the less inebriated felt a distinct sense of unease, and all seemed to subconsciously move around her, leaving a small gap in the middle of Sator Square that no one dared quite look at.

Behind her hovered three grey forms. They had not been there a moment before, but simultaneously had always been there, and would always be there, except for when they would not. If nothing else, the Auditors saw the laws of reality as both immutable and also subject to change as the situation required it.

One said, She is with the Wizards.
One said, Can you bring yourself to do this?
One said, Can you kill a goddess?

Death said nothing. The Scythe of Office hovered at her side, tiny pin-pricks of blue light emanating from its rim as the air itself was severed in its passing.

One said, With her death, one other will remain.
One said, That Death is beyond our reach, he is hidden.
One said, The task will remain incomplete if he cannot be brought to justice.

Death turned, and looked at the last Auditor to ‘speak’.

Isn’t Justice a mortal concept? she said. Inherently flawed?

One looked at her in return, and from the emptiness of its hooded form it said, That Death became mortal a long time ago.

Death did not argue. She had chosen to delude herself into thinking that this was her Duty, and she would carry it through. Perhaps then, she said, aloud, the Duty will no longer be my burden, but simply what I am.

She stepped forward, and the Scythe followed. The magical nature of the Octiron Gates were no match for her terrible reality, and yielded to her, folding upon themselves molecule by molecule as she passed through them, leaving them completely untouched, barring the scar left behind by the edge of the Scythe. Sparks of burning octiron swarf trailed in her unseen wake as the party on the other side of the gates spiralled on.

The Wizards marched mostly in step across the campus, accompanied by much grumbling, and an annoyingly chipper pink thing with an exasperating spring in her step and unquenchable desire for conversation. At present, the Bursar was currently occupying her attention, and coping surprisingly well. This is most likely because he believed the pink pony to be a hallucination, which he was very used to dealing with. Had he for a moment thought her to be real in any significant way, he probably would've suffered his third nervous breakdown of the week.

“So, Archchancellor, do you have any idea of how to proceed?” asked the Dean, struggling to keep up with Ridcully’s swift pace, fuelled predominantly by irritation and rapidly emerging heartburn. It ought to be noted that Archchancellor Ridcully made a habit of clean living and healthy lifestyles, to which he partially owed his lengthy career*, so the heartburn in this instance was more a case of stress than gastric distress, so to speak.

“We’ll get her to the Librarian and then, frankly, it’s his problem,” he replied, without slowing. After a couple more steps, he blinked and turned to face the Dean.

“What the hell are you wearing, man?”

The Dean looked sheepishly at the Archchancellor and slowly took the garish, sequin-covered paper cone off of his head, mumbling something like; ‘I just thought I’d get into the spirit of the thing’.

As far as Ridcully was concerned, it was a mercifully short time before they actually got to the Library doors. Ramsfleece went ahead, with the bananas, and pushed open the small inset door on the larger wood and octiron gates that served less to keep people out, but rather to keep the Library in.

From behind a lectern somewhere in the dim candlelight, a ginger-haired scalp peered over the top of a large tome, spectacles balanced precariously on a face the gods clearly did not design with the prospect of glasses in mind.

This was the famed (and feared) Librarian. He was once a man, before being accidentally transformed into an orang-utan by an unfortunate and unspecified incident, and having found the extra arm-length conducive to getting books down from tall shelves (among other things), had steadfastly refused every attempt to turn him back since.

A low and guttural ‘Ook’ resonated through the hall at the approaching group. Ridcully got on rather well with the Librarian, but relationships between the other wizards were perhaps rather more complicated. Ramsfleece bowed low and, swiftly coming up to the lectern, offered the bunch of bananas as a form of peace offering. The Librarian smiled, revealing many gleaming and remarkably sharp-looking teeth. Having, he felt, made his message quite clear with this gesture, he returned to reading.

It didn't last very long.

“Librarian!” bellowed Ridcully, from nearer the door. The Librarian frowned, put down his book, and swung down to the floor from the high chair behind the lectern. Ridcully continued, “we have a visitor who I think is in need of your services. She’s a…”

He faltered. The Dean leant around Ridcully’s side** and interjected: “A miniature equine.”

“Yes. Quite,” Ridcully continued, “she’s talking to the Bursar, currently, so we’ll just leave her with you and be on our w-”

“OH-MI-GOSH-IT’S-A-MONKEY.”

“Gentlemen, I believe that’s our cue.”

*And his continued life. Before Ridcully, climbing the career ladder at the Unseen University was generally achieved by means of using the corpses of former wizards as rungs.

**Although he didn't precisely ‘emerge’, given he was considerably wider than the Archchancellor to begin with. It is perhaps better said that he made his presence more directly known.

Death stalked the grounds of the Unseen University, and this had not gone unnoticed. While ordinary folk can’t see the supernatural, wizards of the Disc are among the few individuals gifted with the ability to see the things that cannot normally be seen. Wizards and cats. And a few miscellaneous others.

Some of the students, heading back and forth across the campus in the futile attempt to actually attend a lecture (as might have become obvious by this point, the Unseen University is perhaps the Disc’s least educational institute of education) had sighted her, and rather than stop and wonder why Death was manifesting as a three or four foot skeletal horse, as opposed to the regular seven foot tall skeleton, had begun all manner of panic.

Death, you see, was not traditionally sighted at the University unless one of the wizards was about to require his or her presence, and some of the senior faculty were already concerned that the old days of advancement via filling a dead man’s pointy shoes had returned. Barricades were being erected, crossbows and daggers sought. The Lecturer in Extra-Dimensional Biology was already brandishing his broadsword and challenging on-comers.

The hippomorphic personification of Death was not interested in this goings-on, and barely paid attention to the rabble struggling to get out of her way. Their time would come, but it was not now. Now, she had a particular target in mind. She paused, and drew from the vast recesses of her cloak of night a balloon, pink and radiant as the sun. On it, emblazoned in what looked suspiciously like Comic Sans were the letters ‘Pinkie Pie’. It glowed with an inner light, and showed no signs of deflating, even to Death’s trained eyes.

This was the life of a goddess. This was what Death had come to claim.

The Weight of Letters

Bill Door and Fluttershy strode through the Everfree Forest. Or at least, Bill Door strode, and Fluttershy hurried behind him, nervously glancing behind her at the retreating, leaf-bordered circle of light that represented the portal to safety. For the first time since his sojourn in Ponyville began, over a week ago, he felt like he belonged.

This was odd, he realised, as the Everfree Forest was almost a personification of all the forces and all the chaos of life, and he was just the opposite. He stood for silence, for ending, for order. He was the ash when the fire had gone out, the litter after the autumn’s winds. He mused, as his hooves trod the soft, mulchy earth beneath, that perhaps Life and Death were not as different as he had once believed. They needed each other. He only existed as long as it did. And Life could not exist without him to define it.

He turned to Fluttershy, grinning like a lunatic who’s just been told it’s not him that’s mad, it’s everyone else, and deep down he knew it all along. In his eyes, she stood out, a light in the shadows of the forest, yellow against the jade green of the foliage and bright pink against the filtered blue light of the canopy above, as it strained the fading beams of a setting sun.

He felt poetic. He didn’t care.

He pranced towards her, swept her up in his arms, and gazed deep into her cerulean eyes. They shimmered like the light dancing on the surface of a lake. He closed his eyes and leant in towards her, their lips locked as they embraced one another and-

“... M-Mister Door?”

He came to, tangled in a low-lying, moss-draped branch of a nearby tree. Fluttershy was looking at him with a mixture of concern and confusion.

“... I. Uh. … I slipped?”

Spike crossed the kitchen with deliberate slowness. He took small, shuffling footsteps with each swing of the copper-covered pendulum, in time with each onerous tick of the little wooden clock. His claws gripped more tightly onto the teatray, the cups clinking providing a percussion to the noise of his feet on the deep pile carpet.

He approached the door to the main library, and gulped.

Twilight hadn’t exactly been herself since Pinkie had vanished a week ago. It was perfectly normal for her to throw herself into her books for hours, even days at a time, but the methodical and obsessive way she read and re-read every tome, spellbook and grimoire for a way to bring her back was beginning to concern him. He’d kept largely out of the way while Bill Door was around; dragons are ancient and mysterious creatures, not greatly unlike cats, and there was something about the newcomer to Ponyville that disquieted him. And yes, it was probably the fact that, by his own admission, he was from a different universe where he embodied the End of All Things and and existed since time had not. It was probably that.

Still, Spike felt he was Twilight’s faithful assistant (most of the time), and she was clearly upset at losing Pinkie. However, he always felt a bit tentative whenever Twilight was in this sort of mood, and not only because it meant he had to clamber over piles and piles of strewn papers and notes to reach the front door whenever he needed to go out. Woe betide him if he tidied something away while she was still ‘using it’. It was one of her fundamental traits that when she saw a problem, she had to fix it, at almost any cost.

That always seemed to be the root cause of Twilight’s own problems, Spike mused.

“Come on in, Spike.”

The voice carried through the kitchen door. Spike steeled himself, procrastinating a little by adjusting the tilt of the cups on the tray, and strode forward as boldly as his reluctant body would allow.

The long-suffering dragon approached the desk that Twilight had set up in one corner of the room, noting that she was facing away from the kitchen, with the high back of her chair towards him. The moment he placed the tea-tray on the surface of the desk, the chair spun around, revealing a rather more haggard and sleep-deprived visage than he was expecting.

“Thank you, Spike,” she said, as she leant towards the cup. “While you’re here, could you fetch me down the Third Treatise on Planar Theory? It’s… up there. Somewhere.”

She gestured vaguely at a nearby shelf stack. Spike nodded, and went to grab a ladder.

“I’m running out of ideas here, Spike. Star Swirl’s journals mention that he once visited another realm very similar to the one Bill Door claims to be from, but he doesn’t say how he got there. I’ve tried everything I know about teleportation, phasing and portals but I just don’t see how you can make a door to another world! I mean, how do you even know what to start looking for?”

Spike shrugged, murmuring something like “I’unno” in response. Magic was not really his forté. He preferred ice cream, jewels and theatre. He was good at theatre. He’d just landed a starring role in the Ponyville Dramatic Society’s upcoming production of A Midsummer’s Nightmare. He was taking his preparation for the role of ‘Background Fairy #3’ very seriously.

“All I’ve got to go on is this odd, half-finished spell at the end of one of his journals. He talks about the ‘Gateway of Knowledge’ and the ‘Weight of Letters’. I don’t know what that means! Why are these spells always so… opaque!?”

Twilight sighed and slumped over on the desk, staring up at the steam escaping off her tea. She looked at her notes, passing them page by page in front of her face, and poked her tongue out at them.

Spike clambered back down the ladder with the Third Treatise in hand, lifting it onto the desk with a slight ‘thud’ and accompanying ‘rattle’ of the teacup on its saucer.

“Anything else?” he asked, picking up the tray.

“No, thanks, Spike. I just… need to work this out.”

“Well, call me if you need anything.”

The Faculty of the Unseen University never thought, never imagined they’d live to see the day when an irate orangutan, screaming b----- murder in the form of ‘ook’s, possibly meaning something along the lines of “I AM NOT A MONKEY” would be engaged in what might be a fight, might be a chase, with a bright pink pony through the stacks of the Library.

But yet, here we are.

“D’you think we ought to intervene?” the Dean asked, watching as Pinkie sped, laughing, into the Drama & Egg-Related Spells section, followed swiftly by the powerful orange form of the Librarian.

“What, are you mad?” Ridcully responded, “I’d rather keep my limbs intact, thankyouverymuch.”

They collectively winced as Pinkie successfully executed a sharp corner that the Librarian failed to copy, sending him barrelling into the shelving and sending potentially priceless books flying.

“... I bet five shillings on the pony,” piped up Dr. Hix.

“You’re on,” replied the Dean.

Death trod carefully, deliberately, ever closer to the great Library. Its inset door was open. She could hear the commotion from within. The Duty tore at her, pulled her away from this place. Souls screamed at her for guidance, for caring, for mothering. She hated it. She hated the constant needing, the mewling. She hated them, their petty and pointless lives, their entitlement, their emotion, shock, anguish, fear, pride, anger, loathing, longing, loving!

She hated herself. This existence. She was not meant to be and she knew it. She had to carve herself out of the stuff of reality. Erase the things she used to be. Become as empty and cold as the grave itself.

Liquid fire ran pooled in empty sockets and ran down worn streaks in bone while the constant whisper of grey-cloaked spectres hung in her ears.

One would say, Do it.
One would say, Kill her.
One would say, It’s your Duty.
Three would say, It’s what you are.

She could feel their hunger, such a… mortal feeling. She knew their hypocrisy. And when all this was done, she would come for them, too.

She hated them. But even that, even that would fade.

And she would become nothing.

Bill Door sheepishly brushed himself off. He was letting his emotions get away from him. The two continued their walk through the forest as the sun disappeared below the horizon and the stars began to be visible through the interlocked branches above them.

Fluttershy still felt nervous, as she always did in the Everfree Forest, but chose to hide it. Bill Door was a complete stranger here and he didn’t seem scared, so why should she, when she knew this forest better than almost anyone else in Ponyville?

She still jumped a little whenever she heard a twig snap under her own hooves, though.

As they walked, she told Bill a little of her adventures in the forest with her friends, as a way of calming herself down. She told him of the fashion-conscious sea serpent, the raging manticore with the thorn in its paw, and of the cockatrice and the hydra.

Bill Door was impressed. The creatures Fluttershy was describing sounded quite horrific, to his ears, and yet she treated them all with a kindness that he felt was not always entirely deserved. He couldn’t help but feel more and more enamoured with this delightful pony.

Suddenly, Fluttershy stopped short.

“What’s the matter?” Bill Door said, having walked a few paces further before stopping and turning to face her.

“We’re on the path that leads t-to the C-castle,,, It’s late, we really should be getting b-back…” she replied, edging backwards.

“A castle?” he replied, utterly oblivious, “What castle?”

“The Castle of the Two Pony S-sisters, it used to be where our Princesses l-lived. We all went there, once, to f-find the Elements of Harmony.”

“Ah,” Bill Door replied, looking up the path. “I see a lot of castles in my line of work. In most places I just get to see the bedroom, but I am quite familiar with castles.”

Fluttershy was going to respond when she noticed that Bill Door was only inches away from a hole in the ground she was fairly certain hid a cockatrice’s nest. He turned back to her, noticed she was staring past him, and followed her line of sight to the little crevice next to his hoof.

“Don’t move,” Fluttershy whispered, just audibly enough, her nerves banished and replaced with taut steel. Bill Door was sensible enough to follow the request, although the damage had already been done; a long low hiss came from the nest as two pin-prick red eyes flashed in the darkness.

Fluttershy stepped slowly closer to Bill Door and the nest. “Don’t look at its eyes,” she stated as she neared, matter-of-factly, all usual trace of uncertainty or stuttering gone. Bill Door’s heart beat quickened, although he couldn’t tell if it was from fright or infatuation. Possibly both.

The hissing grew louder as a white-feathered head emerged from the hole, forked tongue tasting the air, flicking in and out of a sharp, hooked beak. Fluttershy carefully positioned herself between it and Bill Door as it slithered fully from its nest. It was larger than she expected, and bore more than a few scars. This was an old cockatrice, and Fluttershy realised that she and Bill Door were trespassing on its hunting grounds.

Inside her, she felt a quiver of fear. The cockatrice she had dealt with before had been young, and a little foolhardy to just attack ponies in the forest. This situation was different, in its eyes, they were the attackers. It would not be so easily swayed.

It coiled menacingly and raised its tattered wings, hissing loudly as it stared directly at Fluttershy’s eyes. She avoided its gaze, turning aside a little to Bill Door.

“Stay behind me, and whatever happens to me, don’t look at its eyes,” she repeated, calmly and deliberately. They looked at one another, his own eyes flitting back and forth in her gaze, but he found he had nothing to say in response.

She smiled at him, took a deep breath, and turned to face the rearing cockatrice. Almost instantly her hooves greyed as they rooted themselves to the earth, and Bill Door watched in horror as the petrifying magic crept up her legs. She held on, staring back in a battle of titanic willpower, but the cockatrice was older and more cunning. It knew how to crawl behind the eyes of its prey, directly boring its burning resolve into the mind. Fluttershy’s hind-quarters began to solidify, and she trembled as she felt the cold travel along her spine.

She intensified her Stare, but the cockatrice had the upper hand. Her neck became stiff, her jaw locked in a grimace, her eyelids that she had willed open were now unable to shut. The cockatrice, regarding its prey all but helpless, slid around her and blocked Bill Door from escaping.

Bill Door was terrified. He had just watched Fluttershy turn to stone. He felt genuinely afraid for his… for his life, he realised. The novelty of the sensation was fleeting, though, as he fought and failed to keep his eyes away from the hellish red orbs before him. His hooves tensed, and he could feel them no more.

There was a crack. Bill Door tore his gaze from the cockatrice and looked down to see that Fluttershy had freed one of her legs from its stone prison. Shards of enchantment fell away as the magic faded in the presence of her sheer strength of will to protect Bill Door from harm. She shook off the spell with a flourish of her wings and, yelling defiance, commanded the cockatrice’s attention.

The cockatrice was old, and wise. It knew when to let prey go. With a final, spiteful hiss and a lunge at Fluttershy’s leg, it was struck aside by her wingtip and thrown back into its nest.

Fluttershy’s chest rose and fall in quick, ragged breaths. Bill Door freed his own hooves and turned to see if she was alright. She looked up at him, and, swifter than he could react, she had kissed him.

Pinkie was thoroughly enjoying herself. She had never thought she’d one day be chased through a library that defied all spatial reasoning by a giant, orange monkey who was really, really friendly and wanted to give her a big hug. At least, that’s what she assumed, because he kept trying to grab her with his big, long, very powerful looking arms.

Unfortunately, she recalled that she had a job to do. There would be time for fun later! There usually was, in her experience. Also during, and before. She turned another corner, deftly skirting a pile of musty books and cowering students. She heard another crash behind her, but this time the footsteps did not continue as they had done.

She screeched to a halt on the worn stone floor, and turned to see a pile of books covering the corridor. A long arm peeked out from beneath them. She ‘poinged’ over to the pile and began pushing books aside with her hoof until the Librarian’s face was visible. His expression was of mixed furious anger and depressed resignation. Secretly he just hoped that none of the faculty would see him-

“Hah! You owe me… … Stibbons! What were the last odds?” boomed the voice of Mustrum Ridcully from down the corridor. The Librarian sighed.

“Sorry I messed up your books, Mister Monkey!” Pinkie chirped, only adding to the Librarian’s world-weariness. “You’re really good at chase! We should play again sometime, when I’m less busy. Had I mentioned I’m busy? I’m a goddess now or something! And I need to get back to Ponyville! And Albert and the Death of Rats are probably wondering where I am! I have too many places to be at once. Maybe there should be more of me.”

The Librarian heaved himself free of the pile while the wizards behind him counted their coins and the losers sulked. He took the measure of the pink thing before him as she prattled on. She had mentioned she needed to get back somewhere. Logically, he thought, that means she would no longer be here. The prospect was a pleasing one. For one thing, she was unruly and had created a mess. Far more importantly she had called him a monkey. Twice.

But most importantly of all. She was loud. That would not do. Not in his Library.

He waved a hand in front of her, and started signing out a question. ‘Where is Ponyville?’

It may come as a surprise to some that Pinkie knew sign language. It surprised her, too, but the Librarian, while unable to speak, had a certain way of making himself understood, even to hyperactive pink ponies.

“Ponyville’s in Equestria,” she replied, “and Equestria’s a different world! Death brought me here from there. He used to know my grandpa! And then I was able to come and go as I liked but now something’s stopping me leaving! So I thought: ‘Who would know about this sort of thing?’, and I thought: ‘Twilight!’, but then I thought: ‘But wait, she’s in her library in Ponyville, and I’m not!’, and then I thought: ‘But Twilight’s good at magic!’, and then I thought: ‘Who else is good at magic?’, and well, that one was obvious, so I came straight here!”

The Librarian nodded, slowly. He tentatively asked, ‘You say there is a library in Ponyville? Is it a large one?’

Pinkie nodded enthusiastically. “Biggest in the town! I think it’s the only one in town, actually. I’m not much of a reader, I like to see things and do things more than read about other ponies seeing things and doing things! Dashie likes to read, though. Last summer she read and re-read all of the Daring Do books, and there’s a lot of them!”

The Librarian smiled. He knew how to get rid of this nuisance to his quiet, sedate, and ordered life.

It has been said by many wise men, that ‘Knowledge is Power’*. It has been said by certain other wise men, that ‘Power is Equal to Force over Distance, Divided by Time’. Equally, it is commonly known that knowledge resides, in a permanent, fixed form, in books.

If knowledge is power, and power is a force applied over a distance over a set unit of time, then knowledge bound in paper and ink must contain vast amounts of untapped potential energy. That’s just science.

And since science is just magic that we can understand, it’s magic, too.

And the Unseen University Library is full of magic.

You see, the Librarian knew a secret, known only to Librarians; that all that knowledge, yearning to be read, straining against its parchment prison, exerts an undeniable force on the fabric of space and time. It is, after all, merely trying to fulfil its purpose of applying force, over a distance, or a space, in a certain amount of time.

This resulted in something known to that select few as ‘L-Space’. A pocketed, quantum dimension both superceding and superceded by the ‘true’ universe, as the common layman knew it. L-Space was present wherever an L-Field was being transmitted, say by a vast and uncountable amount of books in the middle of a University, or even a modest library in the middle of a town populated by pastel-coloured equines.

Furthermore, as data (that is; knowledge) cannot be destroyed (for an idea cannot be killed once it has been created), it defies all laws of physics and entropy, and extends beyond the reach of both. Beyond the reach, even, of grey-cloaked beings who delight** in the slow, inexorable thudding of one electron into another, as the great wheel turns.

Oh yes, thought the Librarian, this will get rid of her for good.

*Such men usually had a lot of knowledge and very little actual power. Men in power tended to follow a different equation; ‘Power is Power’.

**At least, inasmuch as they can delight in anything without suddenly disappearing in a puff of logic.

“The Gateway of Knowledge…” Twilight murmured to herself, re-reading the passage in Star Swirl the Bearded’s journal. He seemed to be communicating something he didn’t fully understand himself. Twilight’s trained, critical eye could tell there were pieces of information missing from the overall puzzle. The ‘Gateway of Knowledge’ and the ‘Weight of Letters’ were ways of trying to explain concepts too advanced, perhaps, for the greatest magical theorist in Equestria at that time.

“If letters had weight then books would be pretty heavy…” Twilight muttered, imagining what that would be like. She supposed that the heavier they got, the more the paper would press down. The books would be denser.

“... Denser? But if you had dense books…” she looked up from the desk, at the shelf stacks all around her.

She leapt from the desk, pacing around the table as she continued to talk to the only intelligent pony in the room: herself.

“A dense enough object will cause other objects to fall towards it. You can see that with an apple on a tarpaulin. Other apples will roll down the stretched fabric towards the central apple. That makes it stretch down even more, and more will roll. The denser the cluster of apples the more apples it attracts and the more weight it exerts on the fabric. It’s positive feedback.”

Her horn shimmered as she paced. “And if books were apples… Well, Applejack would be in here more often,” she chuckled to herself, “but they’d weigh down the fabric. They’d change it. And if you had enough of them, the fabric will tear.”

“But what if it can’t tear? What if it just keeps stretching? Eventually everything would be crushed down to a point, you’d run out of fabric.”

She stopped and stared at the journal again. “Then how is it a ‘gateway’? Unless… You don’t run out of fabric? Maybe the point doesn’t end, maybe it carries on. What if there was something on the other side of the fabric? Like a curtain being pulled back?”

Her horn sparked. She stood still, and her eyes widened as inspiration struck her.

“Then knowledge is a gateway! Not just metaphorically, but literally!”

She had an idea of what to look for. She tried to clear her mind and focus on reading the arcane energies in the room. She spent so much time here that she was very used to the ‘feel’ of it, but now she had to deep down behind that feeling, into the individual strands of magic that made up the fabric of her library. And there! There, hidden deep, she felt it. That aberration, a wrinkle in reality. Letters, books, had weight!

The Librarian cleared his mind, and grabbed Pinkie mid-sentence, slinging her over his shoulder. Ponyville, she had said. He didn’t know the place, obviously, but he knew the signs, the subtle indications of what to look for.

All libraries were connected by L-Space, and those who understood the theory, really understood it, could walk in it. It had allowed the Librarian to personally save some priceless scrolls from the Great Library at Ephebe when it burned down. To them, it merely resembled a greater library still, the Library of Libraries. Each corridor containing many stacks, each worlds all their own.

Fortunately everything was cross-indexed. It made finding what you’re looking for all that simpler.

He strode the astral corridors of ‘E’. Then ‘EQ’. ‘EQU’. ‘EQUE’...

Twilight focused on that wrinkle. She pushed the weight of her mind against it. She could feel it yield, slowly and first, but then faster, and the Treetop Library around her grew with it. To the uninitiated it would look the same, but she knew that something was very, very different.

There! The Librarian saw a light…

… something shifted in the endless corridors as Twilight stared down them…

… down the stacks, the Librarian made out a new world, a colourful world, bright and saturated with a stranger magic than he had ever known…

… Twilight squinted at the figures. “... Pinkie?”

“Twilight!?”

“Pinkie!” Twilight exclaimed, as a large, hulking orangutan strode from behind a bookshelf into the centre of the Treetop Library, with Pinkie Pie slung over its shoulder.

Spike poked his head around the kitchen door.

“Hey Pinkie. How was your trip?”

Life or Death

Death stood at the door of the Great Library of the Unseen University. Behind her, the chaos caused by her presence had subdued to a panicked quiet as wizards of all ages, ranks and colours bravely cowered for their very lives. They were, of course, mistaken. She was not there for them. To her, they represented little more than annoying insects; gnats hovering a particularly annoying distance above the path such that they always happen to fly directly into your mouth when you least expect it.

She had not come to claim the lives of insects. Her prey was the divine, and she could sense its passing from the realm. Inside, her broiling emotions wanted to scream, to cry and wail, to strike out in fury at everything and anything around her, but she stayed calm. She tried only to feel nothing, the empty void at the heart of it all. Death was the nothing at the end of life. She would become nothing.

Before her the library stretched into the infinite dimensions, weighed down by infinite knowledge on infinite pages in infinite books. The weight of letters tore at the universe as if it was wet paper. Death was not strictly a librarian, but she kept a lot of books. Her own stacks contained all the lives, all the stories, that ever had been or will be, so she was more than familiar with L-Space.

She could sense where the goddess had gone. Into the stacks. Between the pages. Down the spine, and hopping the cover onto another chapter of another book entirely. Three figures hovered at her shoulder.

One said, She has passed beyond our power.
One said, You must follow.
One said, You must end this.

She heard the words, but paid them no heed. She focused her incredible and undeniable gaze on the tunnel that cut through the fabric beyond her, from one universe to the next. She began to walk toward it; first slowly, then gathering speed, and finally, scythe raised high, leaping through the compressed space of reality, tearing a portal into a pastel-coloured realm a deep part of her was all too familiar with.

Stibbons was forced to peek his head above the pile of books he and the other faculty staff were hiding behind by the Dean’s incessant poking.

“I… I think it’s gone.”

Slowly, Ridcully, the Dean and the Bursar’s hats rose above the barricade, followed by their eyes. Ridcully assessed the situation with a quick, calculated sweep, and stood up to his full height, brushing the dust from his robe.

“Right, well, I think that’s rather enough of all that. It was probably just a… a…” he began, his ordinarily rigid mental discipline failing at trying to find a suitable lie.

“Thingummywut?” suggested the Bursar.

“Yes. One of those. Nothing to be concerned about.”

There was a pause.*

“... Let’s go back to the dining hall,” he finished, to quiet murmurs of agreement.

*Somewhere on campus, a student coughed. He was just as surprised as anyone else, but certain literary conventions must remain in force.

Bill Door was shocked. Bill Door was happy. Bill Door was ecstatic. He and Fluttershy were staring one another in the eyes, and both of them wore an expression of mixed exhilaration and relief. Neither could quite find something to say, as they stood there beneath the stars caught in the leaves above.

Time felt like it was standing still for Bill Door, but he conceded that some time must have passed, because eventually Fluttershy was the first to break the silence.

“We… ought to get back,” she had stated, reluctantly moving away from him. He merely nodded, and stole the opportunity to kiss her again, before they began walking back along the forest path towards Ponyville.

They didn’t talk, and Bill Door felt that the need for words between them had diminished. Fluttershy’s contented silence spoke more to his heart than any words could hope to. The forest was soon behind them, and the pair once more joined the path that wound through the fields and hedgerows surrounding Ponyville. Above them, the stars shone bright, stretching out into the endless sky and lighting it like a hundred thousand lanterns. In their glow, Bill Door thought he could see a halo around Fluttershy, beams of light catching in the strands of her mane as it moved to her steps. She was beautiful. She was alive.

He could contain his feelings no longer.

“Fluttershy, I-”

There. In his stomach. He felt it. A tug. An all-too-familiar tug. His voice faltered, and the words died in his throat. Fluttershy turned her head to face him, and her expression shifted to one of puzzled confusion as she saw Bill Door stop short on the path.

Bill Door looked up at the stars. They were no longer soft and comforting. They had become cold and distant. The blackness of the sky seemed to swallow them up. The chill of the night crept beneath his skin and wrapped around his bones as his heart began to pound.

No... it didn’t pound. It can’t pound. A thought rose unbidden to his mind: ‘I don’t have a heart.’

Fluttershy was becoming concerned. “What is it?”

Bill Door didn’t hear her words. As she spoke them, time seemed to slow down. Not like it had earlier that evening, in that pleasant way that time seems to stand still in a moment of pure joy or happiness, but rather according to that most ancient of mechanisms shared by all living things; the stretching out of an awful, terrible realization, empowering the mind to make that potentially fatal decision to face the foe or flee. Danger was approaching.

Bill Door couldn’t speak. How could he? He didn’t have any vocal chords. But he could make himself heard.

Something’s wrong.

Twilight was emotionally torn. A part of her wanted to run circles around this fine, upstanding specimen of pongo abelii, more commonly known as an orangutan, and another part preferred to remain rooted to the spot while it worked out what in Harmony’s name was going on here.

She gave way to the second emotion first, and spent some moments in rapid-fire thought. An orangutan had just… appeared, in her library, carrying her missing friend on its shoulder. Also she might have just discovered the secret to interdimensional travel, but that was just mere detail. Firstly she had to figure out where this orangutan had come from. Why was it here? Was it friendly? Did it need a cup of tea? In these situations does etiquette dictate I offer said cup of tea, or do I scream and panic? These questions and a dozen more like them streamed through Twilight’s mind before she settled on her first course of action, one that had served her well over the years.

Ignore it, for the time being. Let the inexplicable remain, for now, inexplicable.

“Pinkie! Where have you been!?”

Pinkie Pie leapt down from the Librarian’s shoulders and, after greeting Spike who then returned to the kitchen, turned to face Twilight.

“Twilight! You wouldn’t believe where I’ve been! It’s a world that’s flying through space on the back of a giant turtle! And there’s elephants, and magic, and wizards, and big cities, and gods, and zombies and-”

Twilight pressed a hoof to her friend’s mouth, cutting off the stream of description. “I’m sorry, you lost me at turtle. But you’re safe, right?”

“Pretty sure! My new friend here was just showing me the way back home! He’s a librarian, like you, Twilight! You should see it, there’s more books there than I think there might be in all of Equestria! You’d love it. I should book us a vacation there. When I’m less busy. Which I suppose I am now because I’m back?”

Pinkie furrowed her brow and stroked her chin with her hoof, making ‘hmm’-like noises before a sudden awful and crushing realization hit her.

“I’m late for work at the bakery! I’m never late for work at the bakery! Mrs. Cake will be furious!”

Twilight smirked. “Actually, about that-”

“SorryTwilightnotimetotalkIhavealotofworktocatchupon!”

And just like that, she was gone, a small whirlwind of papers left in her wake. Twilight was left alone in the room with the Librarian. They stared at one another for a few seconds.

“Ook?” he proffered.

“ ‘Ook’ indeed,” Twilight agreed, “I hope she wasn’t too… disruptive?”

The Librarian frowned. Twilight winced.

“On behalf of Equestria, please accept my apologies. … Can I… get you a cup of tea?”

He considered this proposal for a moment, and nodded, gratefully. Crossing the boundaries of dimensions did take it out of you. Twilight smiled and left the Librarian alone in the main room, indicating as she passed into the kitchen that he had free and complete use of all the library had to offer.

Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie had arrived at Sugarcube Corner with such alarming speed* that she hadn’t even paused to notice it was night time. She burst through the door, knocking it clean off its hinges for the third time that year. It was only as she rushed to the kitchen to begin her daily routine of cleaning ovens, preparing doughs and icing pastries that she finally realized both Mr. and Mrs. Cake were probably still soundly asleep. At least, that was probably the case, given their absence both from the shop front and the kitchen. Also the lack of customers. And the ‘CLOSED’ sign Pinkie now had dangling from the end of her nose.

She sheepishly tip-toed back into the storefront and carefully replaced the door and sign (Mr. Cake had ensured, after the several such similar incidents, to put the door on a style of hinge that facilitated its replacement), and sneaked upstairs to her top-floor rooms.

She was intercepted on the landing by the fierce and mildly disapproving glare of a rudely awoken Mrs. Cake. Or at least, she would have been rudely awoken, but as it was, she had set an alarm that had woken her precisely ten seconds before Pinkie Pie struck the door. She was organized like that.

“Miss Pinkamena Diane Pie,” she stated, in a quiet voice so unbearably loud to Pinkie’s reddening** ears that it might have shaken the very foundations of the building, “you’ve got some explaining to do.”

*An observer watching from the Golden Oak Library might almost say she pink-shifted.

**Well, pink-ening.

Bill Death- that is, Death Door- I mean, Bill Door, was distraught. He ran towards Ponyville, Fluttershy flying low beside him. She was equally as concerned, not least because Bill Door’s hurried explanation of his sudden change in demeanour had left her with more questions than she had answers, but also because she had a nagging sense that this blossoming romance between them might be about to come to a premature and all-too-upsetting end.

She was not the sort of pony to open herself up to just anyone, and the thought competed for space in her mind with the warning Bill Door had given before they both began their sprint towards the town; Death is here.

Bill Door just kept running. He knew his time in Ponyville was drawing to a close. That he would worry about later, for now he merely worried that things seemed to be getting a touch too dramatic for his liking.

And in his mind, where there was drama, there were usually the Auditors.

At the Library, Twilight was deep in discussion with the Librarian, who despite his usual surly nature, found himself enamoured of this lilac-and-lavender example of equus ferus monocerus. He sensed in her a kindred spirit, a like-minded individual who shared his not only his love for the written word in its myriad forms, but also for order, organization and systematic filing. These were traits rarely encountered in horses, as far as he was aware. He was just about to give his opinion on Twilight’s explanation of the Colter Expansive Classification in the form of a succinct response full of meaning and subtlety* when the two of them were interrupted by an arc of blue-tipped flame cutting through the stacks of the library and setting many of the books within them ablaze.

From this inferno stepped a figure shrouded in a cloak as black as night; so black that to look on it was to see a manifestation of nothingness, as no feature or wrinkle was made known to your sight. Beneath its pale, skeletal hoof it clung to the shaft of a harvest scythe, and the bladed edge shone with the ferocity born from the death of photons as they were carved in two by its passing. Its face was that of a grinning skull, in whose empty eyes burned a flame as bright, as radiant, and as blue as a winter’s sky, and down its cheeks ran channels burned by tears of flame that fell and scorched the floor where it stood.

This, both the Librarian and Twilight felt instinctively, accessing a portion of their minds in which was stored the most basic of all understanding, was Death.

And yet, Twilight felt something else, something familiar.

The figure rounded on her, and held the edge of its scythe to her throat, spitting the words:

Where is she.

*”Ook.”

The 'she' in question was busy crafting a very plausible explanation for her past several months of absence to her employer. Or was it a week? She had conflicting memories of both, and it was beginning to give her a headache.

“So, to sum up,” Mrs. Cake began, when Pinkie had wound her lengthy and frequently distracted monologue to a close, “you took a part-time job as Mr. Door’s assistant, someone tried to call you across dimensions using a magic spell which accidentally swapped you and him and stranded you both in each other’s places, you then spent some time doing his job full time whilst also starting a cult, which ended up with you being chased by yourself, throwing a party in a big city, meeting some wizards and ending up back here because you got lost in a library.”

“That’s about it, yup,” Pinkie replied, her head drooping.

“Well, I needn’t say that I’m very disappointed, Pinkie,” Mrs. Cake continued. “It was completely irresponsible of you to disappear like that without a word of warning, and speaking as your employer, you really ought to have told me that you’d taken up another job which might impact on your work here.”

If Pinkie Pie could feel any more dejected, she was worried she might just dissolve into a puddle on the floor. But as she had been speaking, Mrs. Cake’s expression had softened, and she embraced Pinkie tightly, crying with relief.

“I’m so glad you’re safe. Your parents would have never forgiven me. I was worried half to death, you silly pony!” she said, between sobs. Pinkie hugged her back, tears beginning to well up in her own eyes. Mr. Cake, Pound and Pumpkin tilted their heads around the frame of the door at the noise. The twins rushed Pinkie and grabbed whatever part of her was available for further hugging, while Mr. Cake looked on from the door and smiled in a fatherly way.

Then Twilight appeared, sparks falling from her horn that glowed with the latent energy of a teleportation spell.

“Pinkie! Quick! You need to hide, there’s some… some thing after you! It’s, it’s like-”

Pinkie looked up at Twilight in shock. “A creepy-looking skeletal pony in a cloak blacker than a burnt pastry carrying a ridiculously-sharp farming implement?”

“Yes! It’s… It’s burning my library! I left your orang-utan friend to deal with it, but I don’t think he’ll be able to occupy it for long.”

Pinkie gently removed herself from the various Cakes, taking particular care to nuzzle the twins on the head.

“We need to find Death- Bill Door, he’ll know what to do.”

“Last I saw him he… Went to Applejack’s! Come on!”

And with a burst of magic, they were both gone.

Bill Door could smell the smoke. In only minutes the Golden Oak Library had been engulfed in flames. He kept running while Fluttershy had torn herself away to get Rainbow Dash’s help. Together she hoped they’d be able to put out the blaze before it spread to other buildings in Ponyville.

The goings-on in the centre of town weren’t being ignored, of course, and ponies were leaning out of their windows, filing out of doors onto the street, shouting, questioning and beginning to panic. Some amongst them tried to call for order, to arrange a bucket line, but the prevailing mood was one of fear. As Bill Door closed the final distance between himself and the library, he saw two figures, silhouetted in the fire, tumble from the building into the street.

He could see the wicked, vicious glint of a scythe. His scythe. He saw it arc through the air and cut into the ground like it was going through fine sand. The figure of the Librarian - for it was the Librarian, one did not easily forget such a man - struggled to regain the upper hand in his fight with Death.

And Death was angry. Angry at herself. Angry at the Auditors. Angry at Bill Door, and Pinkie Pie. Angry at wizards and zombies, at cultists and librarians and plague and The Duty. She swung again and again, but each time her stroke fell short by less than a hair’s breadth of prematurely claiming the Librarian’s life.

As he saw this, Bill Door recalled another time, another place, when he had been forced to fight a spectre of himself. On golden hills ripe for harvest, facing down a monstrous machine of knives and whirring sickles, piloted by an arrogant, self-obsessed shade of all that he could be, if only he stretched out his hand and took it all for himself.

An emotion that he had not felt since then boiled up inside him. Rage. And pity.

I never wore a crown! he called out to the spectre. She looked up, momentarily distracted, and the Librarian seized his chance. Unfolding all the power in those deceptively sinuous arms, he knocked her clean on the jaw. She reeled, snarling, but this lesser, mortal prey no longer held her interest.

I never wanted to rule! Bill Door cried while forcing himself between Death and the Librarian.

For what can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man? he pleaded. The other Death; smaller, somehow lesser, as if a shadow could cast its own shadow, stood defiantly opposite, tears burning down her cheeks, smoke rising from rings of grass where they fell.

I don’t want to rule. I don’t want a crown. she replied, in a voice not unlike Bill Door’s, but behind it a trembling of wavering emotion, I want to become nothing, and for that, I have come for you, and for her.

She raised the scythe and swept it across the ground at Bill Door’s feet, cutting the blades of grass so cleanly that they stood for a further second before falling and burning up.

Bill Door looked down at the grass, then back up at her.

Ugh. Drama.

“Applejack! Where’s Bill Do-”

Twilight was unable to finish her sentence due to having a glass of water reflexively thrown at her from the nearby bedside table by a particularly startled Applejack.

“Oh, land’s sakes, it’s you, Twi. What’re you thinkin’ jus’ teleportin’ in on me like that? An- Wait. Pinkie?”

“Hi, Applejack!”

“Where in the hay have you been all week?”

“Long story! It might take years to tell properly so I’ll just be short and say that I’ve been on holiday! Working! As the grim reaper!”

Applejack blinked. Twilight also blinked, as the glass finally slid off the end of her horn and rolled across the now wet wooden floor. Applejack turned to face her.

“I’m jus’ gonna pretend I didn’t hear most of that. But, right, Bill Door? He walked off with Fluttershy when she came by to check on Winona.” She yawned. “In fact, Big Mac said he saw ‘em walkin’ out near Whitetail Woods this afternoon. Seemed a bit sour about it. Why, is somethin’ up?”

“We need to find him, fast! The library’s on fire!"

Applejack blinked and leapt from her bed, sweeping her hat down from the hook nearby.

"... And there's a hippomorphic personification of Death trying to kill Pinkie Pie!"

Applejack paused.

“Well, I... Uh. I don't know how to deal with that one. But, uh, you two go on ahead, I’ll head into town and get folk organized for fire-fightin'. Let's tackle things one at a time!”

Twilight nodded, and she and Pinkie were gone. They reappeared outside Fluttershy’s cottage to find the lights out and the door locked.

“Oh, where could they be…” Twilight said, pacing nervously around the door while Pinkie looked over towards the smoke rising from Ponyville with some concern. She frowned as she felt a pinch in her knee. Something scary happening, indeed.

“Twilight, I think we need to get the others,” she said suddenly, in such a serious tone of voice that Twilight stopped pacing immediately. Pinkie turned to her, “this is an Elements of Harmony job.”

Twilight looked her in the eyes, and nodded. “We’ll just have to hope Fluttershy’s alright.”

Pinkie looked out over the town and squinted, hard. A grin broke out on her face. “I think she’s fine! Look, she and Dashie are gathering clouds to put out the library!”

“And if she’s there, then Bill Door ought to be, too!” Twilight smiled. “Come on!”

Bill Door dodged again and again, desperately trying to keep Death away from the other ponies. He had no weapon that could stand up against the scythe of office, and whilst this Death embodied The Duty, however badly, it refused to listen to his call. All he could hope for was to buy time. The Librarian was helping Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, and a blue pegasus with a rainbow mane that he hadn’t been introduced to yet as they tried to stop the fire spreading.

Just! Stand! Still! Death snarled at him, her voice somewhere between an angry shout and a despondent scream.

Just a little more time.

Just a little more.

“Death!”

He turned, and in that instant saw Pinkie Pie, followed closely by Twilight Sparkle. Death saw them too, and the rictus grin of her skull turned almost to a smile.

We’re all together again. she said, and with a cruel stroke, cut Bill Door across the throat. His eyes opened wide in shock. Pinkie stopped in her tracks. As the body of Bill Door collapsed, lifeless, to the ground, a small gold-rimmed timer fell from a pocket of his jacket, and rolled to a halt on the burning grass.

Pinkie stood facing her shadow. Facing Death. All the world seemed to fade away into nothing, and for that moment, all her world consisted of was her and it. Life and Death. She realised then, in that instant, the truth of all the things her grandfather had taught her, and all that she had learned of Death in her time on the Disc.

He… She. It, was alone. Sometimes they were content with that. At other times they screamed, they cried, they reached out to connect, to feel a fleeting moment of what Life was, what they could never truly have. Each time it had burned them, but in the process it had left a mark, and Death felt loneliness more acutely than ever before. And now she stood before it, an avatar of Life.

But it wasn’t just her. She had her friends. Maybe, just maybe, together they could teach this small fragment of Death something that no other would ever be able to comprehend.

Pinkie felt an all too familiar glow envelop her as Twilight, Rarity, Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy joined her. Not a word had passed between them, but no words needed to. They each closed their eyes as the magic of friendship lifted them into the air and encircled them in a band of vibrant colours.

Death was transfixed. She couldn’t move. As a cascade of coloured light descended on her, surrounded her, enveloped her, she felt something stir within her breast that she had never truly felt before. The memory of it rang out in her mind, a memory of when this Death was Pinkie Pie, when this Death was Alive. Now it was more than mere memory, and the warmth of it embraced her.

Pinkie embraced her, and for a second time, the watchers all around them heard a sound unlike any since the dawn of the universe, as the fiery blue tears of Death splashed down Pinkie’s back in great, heaving sobs.

When the light had faded, only one figure remained. Death was gone, and Pinkie was herself again. Her whole self. She wiped her eyes and nose on her leg as she sniffed the last of the tears away. There, on the ground before her, lay a balloon in gothic pink, bearing the words ‘Pinkie Pie’.

She gently cradled it in her hooves as she sat, while her friends gathered around the body of Bill Door, each trying to resuscitate him. Pinkie took the balloon in one hoof as she turned and moved toward them. She didn’t cry when she looked upon Bill Door’s lifeless form, but instead focused her attention on the small, golden timer that had been ignored by the other five.

Deep inside her, the part of her that was Death and the part of her that was Life both knew what could be done. As it has been stated, Death does not end Life, they are merely a servant of the universe, a fragment of Azrael, and they ensure that a life ends when it is supposed to, when the last grain of sand, pearl, eggshell or what have you has run from the top bulb to the bottom bulb. Death’s timer had no sand in it. It had never had sand in it. But now there was an emptiness about it that was something new.

Something Pinkie knew that she could fill, if only she dared. The part of her that was, that had been Death came to the forefront of her mind. The loneliness it had felt since time immemorial. The brief glimmers of a life aped, a life imitated, in the small things like listening to Albert’s predictable, shuffling steps, or in watching the wind toy with the ears of grain in a late summer’s field. The joys of eating curry in Ankh-Morpork. The irritations suffered from the whims of wizards and necromancers. Cats. Cupcakes.

She looked at the balloon, and with a smile, let a small portion of air depart from it. It didn’t travel anywhere, strictly speaking, but it was gone, and had arrived in another place.

Bill Door gasped for breath and opened his eyes. Fluttershy very nearly knocked the breath back out of him.

One said, looking through the fabric of the multiverse, Well. We tried.
One said, Back to the drawing board.
One said, Hold on, how does that even work? He’s Death, he can’t just be revived willy-nilly by some knock-off Death-stand in from a different universe. I mean, this is just shoddy. Things that die stay dead, no matter the ‘power of love’ or the ‘magic of friendship’, it’s just- What?

One said, You said… it.
One said, Yes, you did, I heard it.

One said, Well now you’ve said it too! Are you two trying to get me in troub-

Three said, Oh, bugger.

And disappeared.

One Last Job

One of the advantages of having a town library made mostly out of tree is that it’s relatively easy to reconstruct; at least when you have access to magic. A few days had passed since the most eventful night of Ponyville’s recent history*, and in that time even the Princesses themselves had come to visit (at Twilight’s behest), and had aided in regenerating the Golden Oak Library. Twilight would have to count, of course, but she was almost certain it was exactly the same, down to the last leaf and twig.

Many ponies had come and gone, helping to clean out debris and rescue what books they could from the ashes. Still others had donated their own to make up the loss. As for her lost personal effects, Twilight had already been given six toasters by the generous citizens of Ponyville. She hadn’t actually owned a toaster before the fire but she felt it would be rude to refuse.

It was as she was sifting through another pile of singed and burnt books, looking for any she could salvage, when she noticed a large, black tome with golden lettering and yellowing pages.

“Of course you survived,” she said half to herself, rolling her eyes as she picked up the Necroponicon and buried it behind a pile of books on advanced magical theory on a shelf she hoped no one would ever peruse. Behind her, she could hear increasingly raised voices.

“... and that one should go in second- Hey! Spike, are you listening to me? It’s important all these go in the right order, right? Well, I’m the expert on it and I say that Daring Do and the Jade Mask goes after Daring Do and the Cloak of Gems!”

“Look, Dash, you just said that Jade Mask went after Prisoner of Griffonstone, and that Cloak of Gems wasn’t canon!”

“What? I never said that! I said Jewel of the Sun wasn’t canon and that it went after Cloak of Gems! And besides, you’ve got those four back to front, too.”

Twilight turned to see Spike sigh wearily as he began rearranging the Daring Do series on the shelf while Rainbow Dash hovered just over his shoulder, her arms folded. They were currently the only thing on that shelf. Spike had a large pile of novels standing next to him that were also meant to go on there, but he’d spent the last fifteen minutes dealing with the ‘expert’s’ ‘help’**.

“Thanks again for donating your collection of Daring Do books, Rainbow. It’s a good thing they’re so popular; so many of them were on loan that we only lost three in the fire!” Twilight said, shuffling diplomatically over to give Spike the time he needed to re-order everything. Again.

“You’re welcome, Twilight. I found a guy in Canterlot who’s going to sell me all the first edition copies anyway, so I thought I might as well donate my old ones to a good cause!”

“Everything’s coming back together,” Twilight nodded. “I’ve even got a new section: ‘Otherworldly Literature’! That lovely orangutan gave me some of the best novels and reference guides from his world, I’m sure I’ll spend hours reading them all. And it’ll be good to re-open! I can host a book-signing, or a read-a-thon, or even advanced crosswords! It’ll be great!”

Rainbow Dash grimaced a little. “Yeah. Great. … Say, what time did Pinkie say she’d be leaving?”

“Later this afternoon, she’s said she’s got a lot of special treats to make before she goes back with Bill Door to clear things up over there.”

“Wait, it’s afternoon already?” Dash exclaimed, “I was meant to help move a stormfront before lunch! Okay, see you later Twilight, and make sure Spike gets it right this time!”

“Don’t worry, I will!” Twilight lied to the rapidly retreating blur that had previously been Rainbow Dash. Spike let out a sigh of relief.

*’Recent history’ encompasses at least the last month. Except for that incident three weeks previously with the belligerent geraniums.

**Dash was highly insistent that Spike followed her ‘Certified Most Awesome and Official Timeline (Ever)***’ when arranging the books.

***Spike agreed that it wasn’t without its merits, but Dash’s notes explaining her headcanon looked less like a structured, ordered timeline and more like a bowl of spaghetti with novel titles sticking out the ends of each individual noodle, so it was easy to get confused. Especially when she contradicted herself every other minute.

Outside Ponyville, Bill Door and Fluttershy were sitting on top of a small hill under the shade of an old oak tree while sharing a last lunch together. Fluttershy had prepared sandwiches and a pitcher of fruit squash, and had made particular effort in buying the best tomatoes she could find for a salad. She had hoped that Bill Door would appreciate it, and although he had said very little to her throughout the meal, she got the impression that he did.

However, a feeling of sadness had been hanging low over their time together. She knew he had to go back to his own world today. As he had explained to her, with neither himself nor Pinkie playing the role of ‘Death’, things would… start to get out of hand. He had made a vague reference to an earlier, similar incident that he preferred not to go into.

The question she wanted to ask danced on her lips, but she couldn’t find the confidence to say it. She suspected she wouldn’t want to hear the answer.

I am sorry, he said at last. I have enjoyed our time together, however brief, more than anything in these last eons of my existence.

She smiled, and the question rose in her throat again. She gritted her teeth, blinked welling tears from her eyes, and chose to ask it.

“Will I ever see you again?”

To her surprise, he seemed genuinely taken aback. His eyes, which she saw now were not eyes at all, but little specks of cold blue light that shone in the darkness of empty sockets, were searching hers with uncertainty.

You… want to?

Fluttershy looked at him, and the corners of her mouth began to turn up in a smile. She sniffed, wiped her eyes on her leg, and laughed.

“Of course I do! I was afraid you were going to say ‘no’. Sorry, I mean… ’No’.”

This time, he laughed. That is a good impression. I thought you would not want to see me again, now that you know what I am.

“You’re a kind and gentle man who cares about everyone they meet, no matter what.” She moved closer to him and nestled herself into his side, spreading a wing to embrace his shoulders. “And I’ll miss you.”

He looked down at her, and although his jaw didn’t move, Fluttershy understood that he was smiling.

And I you.

Later that afternoon, it seemed as if the whole town were gathered outside the Golden Oak Library, ready to wish ‘Bill Door’ farewell. Admittedly, most of them weren’t really sure what was going on, but they had been informed that there was free cake available, and who could turn that down?

Death and Pinkie stood together at the centre of the circle, as he waved goodbye and she au revoir. Once all were satisfied, Death turned to Pinkie. He had packed his pinstripe suit into a bag, and had returned to wearing his traditional cloak, freshly laundered and ironed courtesy of Rarity. The Scythe of Office was by his side once more.

Ready to go?

Pinkie nodded, and together they stepped between the worlds.

On the Disc, life was mostly returning to what passed as normal. The little people, the people that narrative tends not to notice, the ‘background characters’ who provide atmosphere and backdrop to the main plot, they were going about their daily business without a thought for the events that had been unfolding around them for the past few months.

At least, most of them. There was still quite a dedicated number of the citizens of Ankh-Morpork who were very much aware of what had been unfolding. They dressed in pink with conical hats of many colours and held services for the blessings of birthdays, graduations, the passing of seasons, or any social gathering. The Congregation of the Pink Pony of Death were Ankh-Morpork’s hottest new religion, although in the absence of their founder (who had been taken into the great after-party, her work completed), they were struggling to remain relevant.

So it was that Roderick Wheatby, a lowly baker’s son, received a vision. As he recounted it to his brethren, he had been kneading the dough for the next morning’s bread when out from the floury haze appeared a shining pink figure, and it had given him a new recipe, burned into a slice of toast, to spread to the faithful in reward for their dutiful service.

It called for chipped potatoes, lemon juice, sweetened beverages through which air had been alchemically embedded, and earthworms. The vision of the Pink Pony had called them ‘Baked Bads’.

The schism in the church that followed this revelation (and the resulting epidemic of minor food poisoning) became known as the First Croissade. It was to spell the death of the Congregation of the Pink Pony of Death as a major religion, and very soon all the altars of the Pink Pony had been taken down and replaced with the traditional favourites; Offler, Blind Io, and Om, amongst others.

Pinkie felt a little guilty about the whole affair, but Death had assured her that it was the kindest way. In his experience, most religions tended to only die off when their followers did. En masse.

That dealt with, Pinkie and Death returned to his Domain to make amends with Albert and the Death of Rats. Albert was so overjoyed to see his master return to his work that he quite forgot all the hassle, worry and clean dishes Pinkie had put him through, and the Death of Rats summed up his feelings with a simple and forgiving ‘Squeak.’

After the pair of them had returned to their own duties, Pinkie and Death were left alone in his office. Following a moment of quiet contemplation, Death turned to her.

Tell me, he said, as he fiddled with a timer, Why did you perform the Ritual of Ash’Kente that day, to summon me to Ponyville? I have been wondering.

She seemed slightly subdued as she answered, “I didn’t mean to do it, to pull you into Ponyville, I mean. I was actually trying to… talk to someone.”

Death thought a moment longer. Your grandfather?

“Yes!” she blurted out, looking back at him. “I just wanted to let him know I was working with you. I’m sure he’d have been happy. I guess I got the wrong spell, or maybe it’s because I’m an Earth Pony.”

There was a short pause. Death put down the timer and raised himself from his seat, walking around to the front of his desk. Once he came to where Pinkie sat, he knelt down from his full eight feet in height to bring his face level to hers.

I have just remembered. I have one last task for us to perform together.

“Don’t cry, my love. There are many worse ways to go than this. I’m grateful and thankful that you’re all here with me, many wouldn’t even have that. Believe me, I know.”

Binky struggled to push himself upright in his bed, and took the hoof of his beloved wife in his own, trying to bring her a measure of comfort. Around the bed stood his whole family; his sons and daughters and all of his grandchildren. He had been ill for some time, and the doctor had advised him to call them all here.

Of course, Binky knew he was dying. He had a bit of a knack for it. You picked up these things, over the centuries. His time in Equestria had been very short, relative to his unnaturally long life in Death’s service, but he had spent his time here to the fullest.

He began coughing again, and Granny Pie nodded for everyone to leave the room. She didn’t want them to see him pass away. They sat together for what felt like hours.

As the clock chimed midnight, Binky Pie grinned. “You have impeccable timing,” he said, to no one in particular. Granny Pie had long loved, and later tolerated his eccentricities, but this she knew wasn’t one. Although she couldn’t see what she imagined her husband could, she knew the time had come. She steeled herself and bit back the tears. There would be time for that later.

“My old friend,” Binky continued, “I would like you to meet my wife. She has stood by my side for all the long years I’ve spent here. I wish you could have seen our wedding! The cake! It was magnificent!”

He chuckled, which set off a fit of coughing. When it had abated, he slumped back into the pillows with a sigh. He turned to face his wife, and breathed his last words.

“He says he sends his sincerest condolences.”

Pinkie dried her tears as Death cut the cord and raised Binky to his feet. They looked at one another like old colleagues, and firmly shook hand and hoof.

I confess, I am not alone. She was quite insistent.

Binky looked confused for a moment, and looked around him as the room faded away into darkness. A figure persisted, one his old eyes, now free of mortal frailty, began slowly to recognize.

“Why, is that…?”

Pinkie smiled as she walked over and threw her arms around him.

“Hi, grandpa. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been up to…”

THE END

A Party in the Unseen University

Bill Door watched the door slowly click shut in front of him, the intonations of the last, soft ‘farewell’ that passed the lips of the yellow mare echoing in his ears. He realised he was completely unaware of the time that had passed. It must now be late afternoon, he reasoned, but the afternoon he had spent in such delightful company had seemed like months. It still didn’t seem like enough.

He let his mind wander, as he stood there on the doorstep of Fluttershy’s cottage, staring at the painted door that now separated them. He began to reminisce over the day’s events, sifting the memories from the blurred fog that shrouded them. He could not clearly recall, at that moment, anything that had occurred since he had left Applejack’s farm that morning.

There had been tea. And delightfully delicate cupcakes cut into the shape of butterflies. He remembered there was a specific name for that, but without Pinkie there to remind him of the infinitely and surprisingly complex minutiae of cakes, the detail slipped from his mental grasp like a leaf on the wind.

There had been tea. That, at least, was certain. Bill Door was familiar with tea and well-versed in its own rich world of complexity. … Had it been… green? Green tea. With dandelion and… primroses?

He shook his head. Why was it so hard to remember something that had only just happened? He could remember all things, from the time where there was nothing to the time that…

That…

… He could remember every facet of her being. The subtle change in shade of her flight feathers as they stretched away from her body. The flowing mane, with its bits of hay and petals caught like grains in a sieving pan. The burs caught in the hair of her back. The little imperfections that merely made the whole so much more beautiful.

Why could he remember all that, but not the afternoon that had just passed? Whenever he tried to focus on an image, or a memory, there was just her. Her eyes as they glimmered in the light that streamed through the small cottage window. Her smile as she laughed at his misunderstandings.

Bill Door looked back at the door, and felt a warmth beating in his chest.

“Oh, bugger.”

Fluttershy was in the middle of cleaning the kitchen table, and trying in vain to keep Angel away from the remaining carrot cupcakes, when there came a knock on her door.

“Just a moment,” she called, and placed the dishes beside the sink. A mouse seized its opportunity and began licking the cake crumbs while Fluttershy’s attention was distracted.

She drifted slowly towards the door, and on opening it was greeted to the same pony she had just closed it on.

“Oh! Hello again.”

“Hello,” Bill Door replied, content to just stare.

There was a pause, broken only by the soft wing beats as Fluttershy hovered a few inches above the floorboards. She frowned slightly in concern.

“... Are you… are you alright?”

Bill Door remembered himself and shook his head, attempting to clear it. When Fluttershy’s look of concern deepened still, he realised and began nodding furiously. Concern was replaced with confusion.

“I… Uh,” Bill Door began, stammering. Suddenly his usual eloquence had deserted him. The carefully prepared statements normally ready on the end of his tongue had fled from him like a dream at the waking dawn, leaving only half remembered fragments in their wake.

“... Weather’s good,” he finished, softly chastising himself.

Fluttershy glanced up and behind him, she smiled a little and nodded.

She looked back at him, their eyes crossing. Bill Door felt frozen in that gaze, all reason failing as his mind went completely blank before those beautiful, sky-blue eyes.

He mustered up his courage for one more question.

“Show me the forest?”

The Archchancellor of the Unseen University stood silently staring at young Ramsfleece, Junior Wizard, eighth son of an eighth son, born to a small-time merchanting family who had, in a twist of irony, made their money in selling philtres and tinctures designed to avoid the possibility of eighth sons of eighth sons from occurring.

At this precise moment he was half-wishing his own parents had, perhaps, used some of the aforementioned merchandise.

“A pony,” the Archchancellor finally said, cutting the silence like the piercing head of a crossbow bolt tearing through thick, whispering velvet and embedding itself in silence’s corpse.

The Dean and the Bursar exchanged worried and furtive glances. The Reader of Incomprehensibilities, sat at the end of the table, slowly raised a book to his face and pretended to have been absorbed by its contents this entire time. Students carefully took up positions of safety behind plates, upturned tables and benches, or other students.

A quiet statement uttered by the Archchancellor was, in their experience, nothing but the quiet before the oncoming and unstoppable tempest.

It didn’t come.

For this, Ramsfleece was intensely thankful, and spared but a second’s thought that, perhaps, the very notion of a pony being responsible for the sudden appearance of confetti, streamers, and all manner of festive accoutrements in the middle of the fifth course was, not to put too fine a point on it, so utterly absurd that the Archchancellor was having difficulty taking it all in. The Archchancellor was not a man fond of the absurd at the best of times, which made his choice of career path an odd one, in retrospect.

Ridcully merely sat down. The chair creaked beneath him under the sudden weight. With a limp hand, the Archchancellor waved in the 7a’th* course, and dismissed Ramsfleece to go rescue Modo from the presumably still on-going discussion about gardening and the virtues of rocks.

As he strolled hurriedly back through the university’s corridors, Bertram Ramsfleece seized the brief time of silence left to him to ponder his future career. Blood or no, he was beginning to think wizardry just wasn’t for him. Something more sedate, he thought, away from ill-tempered faculty members and neon pseudo-divinities.

Something like… Cabbage farming.

Yes, he could move to Sto Helit. There was a lot to be said about cabbages, at the end of the day. He might meet a nice girl, settle down, raise a family of less than eight children, all while surrounded by the mute leafiness of a decent brassica. Besides, he could always pursue magic as a hobby. Perhaps there were opportunities in magical agriculture; cabbages had many desirable properties, not least of which was their prolificness. One could divine what it is that makes a cabbage... cabbage-y, and transfer that property to a non-cabbage and then it might, theoretically, grow more readily! Then one day, when he, Bertram Ramsfleece, was the disc-renowned expert on botanoturgy (as he would call it), he could become a lecturer at the Unseen University and take his rightful place at the high table. Maybe then he could send some hapless student to go meddle in the affairs of the gods and thus suffer the interminably shrill and unrelentingly chipper consequences.

“Hey! You’re back!”

Speaking of which, there they are now.

“Modo was just telling me all about this place, and what you all do here, and what he does here, and then we talked about rocks, and then he showed me around the gardens, and we were just about to start making friendship bracelets, do you want to join in?” Pinkie Pie asked, fairly buzzing with vitality. She kept making standing jumps, each faint ‘poing’ punctuating her statements as Ramsfleece tried not to think about how a horse’s legs are entirely inappropriate for this sort of thing. That way madness lies.

“I’ll, uh, defer on the bracelets.”

“Necklaces? Bangles? Rings? Daisy chains?”

Ramsfleece sighed. Already he felt he had not appreciated enough his brief moment of quiet, cabbage-filled contemplation.

“I am quite, ah, content with my current, uh, accessories. I just came to inform you that the Archchancellor is, ah, ready to see you.”

“He sounds important!” Pinkie replied, not missing a beat, “Do you think he’ll want a friendship bracelet? I’ll make him one!”

Ramsfleece tried to protest, but it was utterly in vain. Pinkie was already gone, leaving only a cloud of octarine glitter in her wake.

*Wizards are a bit superstitious when it comes to the number eight. This does have some merit, given that mentioning the number in the right place at the right time does, apparently, have the power to summon certain unspeakable ‘Things’.

Beyond the University’s muffling walls, the city of Ankh-Morpork was embracing its largest street festival since the previous month’s revolution. They were usually rather half-hearted about the ‘revolution’ part, by all accounts, and were more of an excuse to have a drink and shout a lot.. Normally they didn’t even get the guillotine set up before Lord Vetinari made his customary appearance, pointed out the sensible and logical course of action was to let things be, and walked calmly away while the crowd muttered and dispersed into any number of the local taverns to plan next month’s get-together. There were societies dedicated to it, and even an unofficial guild**.

The party that gripped the city now, however, was of an entirely different ilk. People were celebrating merely for the sake of celebrating. There was dancing in the streets of the Shades, and only three people were seriously harmed. C.M.O.T. Dibbler had actually sold out of sausages-inna-bun, for the first time in living memory.

However, in a small corner of an unnamed square somewhere on the city’s outermost suburbs, there was one individual who did not seem to be joining in with the festivities.

In one hoof she held a balloon with the words ’Pinkie Pie’ written in gothic pink. In the other, a scythe with an edge that coruscated blue as the breeze blew past it.

Beside her was the body of a middle-aged man for whom this party had been his last. A broken hourglass lay scattered around it, the shards of glass iridescent against the cobbles.

As she stood there, contemplating him, a teardrop of blue fire fell from her eye and vanished into the stone beneath her feet. She looked away, and her gaze fell instead on the trail of confetti and streamers that lead onwards, winding through the streets like thread, to the heart of the city.

Death strode forward, unseen, unheard. She walked through the crowds, passing between them like a swift wind. Behind her she left little drops of azure flame, that smouldered amongst the littered, brightly coloured paper that lay all around.

It’s my Duty, she lied to herself, it must be done.

She stopped short as she saw a group of giggling acolytes in their bright pink robes and striped, pointed hats. They handed out freshly baked pastries to the party-goers, baked into the crude shape of a pony with rose-coloured icing.

A part of her was pained. A part of her felt nothing. A part of her seethed in anger.

No Death, she said to herself, as she continued her march to the University’s gates. Crowds flowed past her like rippling water, their laughter washing over her, their happiness a mockery of her.

No Goddess, she breathed, louder. People instinctively parted before her. Her presence was beginning to be felt. Alley cats leapt for the rooftops, noticed by some of the keener citizens.

Just Me.

**Whilst Lord Vetinari did not give open support to the notion, he had made a habit of passing his most ludicrous acts in the week running up to the revolt, just to give them something to be genuinely annoyed about.

The Archchancellor was confused, bored, and frustrated. He had been forced to listen to this diminutive pink thing natter on for almost ten minutes. She didn’t even seem to need to pause for breath. He knew that what she was saying was vaguely important, since Death had been mentioned more than once, but it was difficult to sieve out the relevant information amidst the nigh-endless tide of wittering, inane detail about cakes, the undead, parties and some nonsense about the gods.

He was not his brother, he did not feel a real need to be reverent towards figures of questionable deity. He was a wizard. He laughed in the face of deity while pulling golden crowns from its ears and asking it: ‘Is this your card?’

“Alright, alright! That’s quite enough, thank you…”

“But I haven’t even told you about the Auditors, or what happened to the Death of Rats, or-”

Archchancellor Ridcully scowled. His scowl could melt even the most steadfast of supplicants, and even Pinkie found herself yielding. It reminded her, somewhat, of The Stare.

“Ramsherd, you are sure this… Exuberant equine was the source of all the commotion?” the Archchancellor asked, looking towards the junior wizard.

“It’s, uh, Ramsfleece, sir, and, ah, yes, yes I’m quite sure.”

“More’s the pity. Right, Bursar, you generally pay greater attention to these things, what was all that she said about Death?”

“Well, what I said was...” Pinkie began, launching back into her account of the events of the past few ‘unspecified units of time’.

“Are you sure we should be riling a goddess, Archchancellor?” the Bursar replied quietly while Pinkie spoke, as he fiddled with his soup, glancing furtively between Ridcully and the pony before them.

The Archchancellor muttered something unintelligible and unrepeatable.

“I think the Bursar makes a fair point, Archchancellor, we don’t exactly know what she may do to us if we go about disrespecting her. Need I remind you of the incident a few months ago with the badly-timed blasphemy and the resulting loss of the sixth floor lecture theatre to a plague of ferrets?”

“You hardly need to remind me, Dean, I kept finding the blasted things in my cupboard for weeks.”

“Well, I’m just saying that perhaps we ought to pay greater attention to what she’s telling us,” the Dean suggested, hesitantly.

“I’ve been taking notes,” piped up the voice of Ponder Stibbons, one of the youngest members of the faculty staff and head of Inadvisably Applied Magic.

“Give them here, Stibbons. You couldn’t explain how to sit down on a chair without reference to at least three hypothetical planes of existence and a half-hour lecture on some new theory of magic.”

Ponder Stibbons sighed but surrendered his notes to the Archchancellor, who squinted at the nigh-illegible handwriting and promptly threw them over his shoulder in frustration.

“Well, gentlemen, what are we going to do about all this?” he continued while Pinkie spoke excitedly about the proper way to prepare rock cakes, for the third time that day. What relevance, if any, this had to the matter in hand was questionable, but Pinkie’s thought processes do not work as other mere mortals’.

“I, uh, don’t suppose we could, ah, ignore it?” suggested Ramfleece, quietly.

“Excellent suggestion, Sheepshorn, duly noted.”

“Ramsfleece.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Or we could make a public statement disavowing ourselves of the entire thing,” suggested Dr. Hix of Post-Mortem Communications.

“That just looks like an admission of guilt.”

“Well, there’s always-”

“Wait, wait, I think she’s wrapping up,” the Dean said, cutting off Stibbon’s next suggestion while pointing a finger towards Pinkie. The Wizards turned their rapt and possibly full attention back to her, smiling in that inane fashion reserved only for those who were not listening to a word you just said but are trying to pretend they were.

“... and so I think I need to get back to Ponyville so I can free Death from the Rite and send him back here to sort everything out. Do you know how I can do that?”

The collected wizards glanced one to another, and back at Pinkie.

“... To the library…?” the Bursar said, fishing out a page of Stibbon’s notes from his bowl.

All eyes turned to the Archchancellor. He sat, fuming, for a few seconds longer, before even his formidable sense of will was exhausted against Pinkie’s divinely enhanced powers of persuasion. He sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Goatsfoot, go fetch some bananas.”