To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub.
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil… — Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
Argyle struggled over a stretch of broken granite, overgrown with brambles, slick with spring-fed rills trickling down sheer canyon walls. He squinted in the mist and fog, blown down from unseen heights on either side of the narrow defile.
The blue pony paused, leaned wearily against a fractured boulder, and caught his breath as he flipped through the pages of his notebook: “Map, map—where’s the damn map?”
The wind tugged at a page, and a crumbling scrap of parchment blew free. Argyle’s head snapped to his right, his dripping, mixed-blue-and-purple mane whipping in his face as his hoof slammed down on the fragment: “Shit! Not when I’m this close!”
He peeled the parchment from the lichen-speckled rock, adjusted his streaked glasses and squinted: “Alright…so looks like another, what? Four-hundred yards along this draw?”
He sighed wearily, tucked the notebook and parchment back into the bag slung across his shoulder, and pulled himself through a gap in the thorns, snagging his hide, nearly blinding himself as he lurched forward face-first into a cluster of ebony brambles. He ground his teeth, heaved his back up to open a small space, and squirmed through three more yards, smearing the stones with his blood and sweat. He slumped forward in the wet mould and panted as the pain subsided.
After a minute Argyle rose unsteadily to his hooves and winced as he looked back over his shoulder at his right flank, blood oozing down over his shooting-star-and-rainbow cutie mark: “Hope that doesn’t scar…”
He adjusted his bag and peered through the dark, narrow tunnel formed by the briar, ancient dead-fall trees, and heavy moss. The weak, cloud-obscured sun broke fitfully through the canopy, throwing pale shafts and pools in the oppressive, stale gloom.
The stallion squinted through the dim haze and trudged forward, slipping and stumbling as the canyon floor, strewn with roots and loose stones, rose slowly. His breath came heavy, and became labored as he reached the end of the briar, and forced his way between one last, ancient razor-barbed vine, and what appeared to be a cracked, crudely-carved limestone door post.
He peered closely at the stained, splintered stone, comparing it to a rough sketch on the back of the map. He chewed his lip as his violet eyes darted back and forth between the nearly-indecipherable glyphs on the stone and their counterparts on the parchment: “This has to be it! None of the other openings match this column or obelisk or whatever it is. It’s not a caryatid, but I don’t know…”
Argyle shuffled through his notes again, then reached into his bag, pulling out a short, ornately-chased, jet-black claw, inscribed with several crimson characters. He clenched it in his teeth and scratched it along the limestone’s edges, probing and prodding every crevice, blinking away the persistent drizzle hanging in the air from the numerous small drips and springs sweating from the box canyon’s walls.
He set the claw down on a small outcrop to the left of the doorpost, and glared at the faint scratches, barely visible on the wet limestone: “There’s not enough rock left! And the damn light’s fading, to boot!”
He reached into his bag to pull out a water bottle, when a crow swooped down from the fog-shrouded heights, and landed on the outcrop, reaching for the claw with its beak as it scrabbled for purchase. Argyle dropped the water bottle and stabbed a hoof at the bird as it clutched the claw in a foot.
“Drop it, you damn bird! Do you know how long I looked for that thing? How long I’ve looked for this door?”
He lunged forward, fighting through the bird’s frantic flapping, gnashing his teeth in an effort to seize back the claw. The crow screeched and tried to fly off, but Argyle swung his head around and smacked the bird into the doorpost; the claw dug deeply into his cheek, cutting a gash down and backwards toward his lower jaw.
The bird shrieked one final time and rose unsteadily into the gloom, feathers scattering, claw falling to the wet ground. Argyle cried out in pain, stumbled forward, and leaned down to grab his prize in his teeth, smearing blood down the limestone as he fought to regain his balance.
He stood up, and squinted at the now-blood-red glyphs standing in stark relief on the doorpost. Argyle’s brow furrowed as he glanced between the claw and the stone: “What…?”
He chewed his lip for a moment, then ran a hoof across his cheek, picking up a fresh smear of blood, which he wiped across more of the limestone. More and more glyphs appeared, matching those on the claw, until at last, eight glistening symbols adorned the doorpost, and a sharp “crack” split the air.
Argyle shifted nervously as an overgrown, recessed space just to the right of the doorpost began to sag and tumble outwards with a heavy, clattering sound, as rocks broke apart, and a gush of water surged past the tumbled mass of splintered granite and olivine. The limestone post fractured into a dozen chunks and collapsed suddenly into the swirling waters, blinding the startled stallion with spray and fragments.
Argyle clambered backward, a yard away from the fresh rockfall, slipping and nearly falling before catching his balance and his breath. He disentangled himself from his shoulder bag, opened it, and retrieved his light, affixing it to a headband and slipping it over his forehead.
He leaned forward and gingerly picked his way across the loose, wet surface, now running a foot deep with cold, dark water. He ducked down, turned on his light, and pressed forward into the deep, echoing gloom: “So the map was right—now what about the rest of the legend?”
He shouldered through a tangle of roots and moss dangling from the new opening, and picked his way along a narrow, stony slot, fighting the water surging around his knees. After thirty yards, the panting stallion scrambled up and over a fallen, ancient column of deep-green-veined marble. He dropped down the other side and skirted a dark pool, finally finding a bit of dry sand and gravel, shot through with glittering fragments of broken glass and shattered gems.
Argyle wiped the grime and water from his face and adjusted his light to a wider beam, and turned to his left: “Oh, my…”
His light fell across a pair of partially-buried, large bones that ended in some kind of wrist and a fragmented paw/hand. A cracked, ebony claw lay in the sand beneath, along with a few scattered coins and a shattered emerald. He leaned forward and tentatively worked his way around the rock slide that covered the ancient limb, scattering pebbles and small bones down the shifting slope and into the murky water.
He stepped up onto a deep-red flagstone and gingerly shuffled forward as the narrow slab teetered and shifted beneath his weight. As he reached the far end, he could just make out the outlines of a great bulk ahead, around an outcrop. He stepped off the far end of the flagstone, and immediately lost his footing as a sinkhole swallowed his front right hoof; he pitched forward with a pained yell.
He collapsed onto his chest and belly, and yanked his foreleg free, biting his lip as tears of pain sprang to his eyes: “Shit! My ankle!”
He clawed his way forward a yard and rolled to his left, unwittingly pushing his muzzle into a partially-crushed pony skull. Argyle’s eyes went wide, and he gave a startled yelp, shoving the skull and its associated skeletal remains away, disturbing a pile of spall adorned with a collection of wing bones. A shower of mud and loose stones suddenly sprayed down on him from above, including a few larger apple-sized specimens that spattered the ground around him. One struck him hard in the ribs with a hollow ‘thud.’
His breath rushed out with a painful gasp as he lurched to his hooves and staggered away from the hail of wet stones. He wobbled on another fifty yards until he was able to slump against the outcrop he had seen a few minutes earlier. He sank slowly to his haunches, and prodded lightly at his bruised side, sending a shock of pain lancing down his side, matched by a fresh spike from his broken ankle.
He reached slowly into his bag, hoof shaking, and pulled out his water bottle, pulling the lid off with his teeth and taking a long drink. He pushed the cap back on, dropped the bottle onto the ground and squinted at the crumbling walls, streaked and stained with minerals and algae. As his light swept across the large mass now in front of him, he could at last make out a disheveled and fragmented skeleton, vast and moss-covered, slumped against a skull the size of a large carriage.
Argyle tipped his head sideways and furrowed his brow as he rose unsteadily: “A-a dragon? They were real?”
He reached down and scooped up his water bottle, returned it to his bag, and took out his notebook, flipping through pages, glancing at the skeleton, then back at his notes: “So, that means the scepter should be here! Everything else has been confirmed!”
He adjusted his light and limped forward, approaching the bone pile, working his way slowly along its side, slipping and stumbling over loose, slick stones and shifting sand, stopping every few feet to examine a coin or gem. He came at last to the end of the dragon’s tail, kinked around a two-yard-tall obelisk. He leaned in close, eyes flicking from the small, charcoal-gray artifact to his notes, to the cracked and dripping ceiling, high above. He chewed his lip, stood next to the obelisk, and turned back toward the now-obscured mouth of the cavern, some two-hundred yards distant.
He stepped carefully between two ribs and sighted along the sagging spine, turning a slow half-circle, stopping to align himself with the obelisk. He shook his matted blue mane out of his eyes and tipped his head back, peering towards the distant roof above: “Where is it, where is it…?”
He sat down and held his notebook aloft, shifting it back and forth, looking for any matches to the faded, overgrown geometric pattern above his head. After five nerve-wracking minutes he froze as his light reflected off a pale-yellow gem inset in the center of a five-pointed star, nearly masked by algae.
He slipped the notebook back into his bag and stood slowly, grimacing in pain, never taking his eyes off the faint yellow spark. He noted the angle of his neck and orientation versus the obelisk, carefully lowered his head, and painstakingly turned to his left until he had rotated roughly forty-five degrees back towards the obelisk. He swept his light up and down several times, breath held, eyes straining, until he descried a faint blue glimmer in the distance.
He glanced up to the ceiling to ensure he still was oriented correctly to the first gem, then hobbled slowly and deliberately towards the second, counting paces as he went, avoiding cracks in the cave floor as well as obstructing rockfall: “Twenty…twenty-five…thirty…thirty-six. Done.”
Argyle chewed his lip as he turned his head back and forth, slowly, then rotated bit by bit, working the light like a paintbrush, up and down, left to right until he froze when a glint of blood red caught his eye off to his right. He kept the splinter of crimson directly in front of him as he painfully picked his way over more fallen, shattered slabs, and more loose, wet rockfall, until he found himself again, almost chest deep in the cold, swirling water. He stared ahead, trembling with cold and exhaustion, at a cracked, slate-gray wall, shot through with veins of violet, pale gold and frosty blue. Every few yards a large, rough-cut ruby glittered from the surface as though it had been pressed hastily into the surface as it hardened. Rivulets of water trickled down the ten-yard-high wall and mingled with flakes of slate-like material, and fractured gems on the ground below.
Argyle moaned as he hobbled from the water to the thin strand before the wall; he pulled his notebook out again, rifled through the pages and counted gems from the top of the formation: “One, two…hmm…six, eight…twelve. That’s it—twelve down.”
He pulled his glasses off and dropped them back in his bag along with the notebook, then took a halting step forward, turned around and faced away from the wall. He looked back over his shoulder and shuffled back a half-step, gauging the distance. He tipped forward and began to awkwardly bring up his rear haunches, shifting from hoof to hoof.
He leaned down for a last thrust and looked back over his right shoulder one last time before kicking. However, as he turned his head and raised his shoulder, his necklace slipped down and snagged his injured foreleg, causing him to pitch face-forward onto the ground with a pained grunt.
“Ahh! Shit! Get this damn thing off me!”
He rolled awkwardly to his side and removed the necklace, stuffing it down into the shoulder bag: “I just…almost there…just…”
The weary stallion took in a shuddering breath and wobbled to his hooves; he squinted up at the wall: “Twelve…twelve…twelve…there!”
Argyle again turned his back to the wall and readied himself: “I hope this works…”
He gritted his teeth and let his right rear leg fly; it struck the wall with a sharp report, like two bricks being slammed together. He glanced over his shoulder, took aim just below the grapefruit-sized gem and kicked again, then again.
His head hung low as he panted and moaned, his left lung protesting with sharp stabs, his flanks aching, his broken wrist throbbing in time with his pounding pulse. He shook his head, straightened his back and lashed out at the wall, his hoof making a ‘crack’ like a rifle shot with each blow: “Just. Break. Free. You. Damned. Gem!”
He dropped forward onto the wet sand, and flopped to his left side, gasping for breath: “I-I just…don’t understand. I’m in-in the right place, and-and it’s twelve gems down, and…”
He tipped his head back and forth and squinted at the seemingly-implacable gray surface. He peered at the scattered fragments of the same gray material at the base of the wall: “Wait—what if…?”
Argyle dragged himself back up to his knees and shuffled forward, then slowly rose to his hooves as he leaned in close, noticing a web of fine cracks radiating from two of the gems. He dipped into his bag and brought out the claw, clenched in his teeth: “What if the diagram was drawn upside-down? What if I’ve been hammering on number thirteen this whole damn time?”
He brought his muzzle against the wall and began scratching away at the edges of lower of the two gems, flaking away small slivers of slate-like material. He worked his way around the gem, then followed the natural flow of a multi-hued vein, picking and scraping for twenty nerve-wracking minutes, until the faint outline of what appeared to be a two-meter-long staff stood out in bas-relief.
He wiped his eyes, clearing the wet from the incessant drip above and his own sweat, and forced himself from the ground, wobbling as he turned back around slowly, centering his right hip for one final kick. He took a deep, aching breath, glanced over his shoulder, and threw back his leg.
The lower third of the wall crumbled in an instant, crashing outwards, bowling Argyle over, and shoving him halfway into the water in a spray of stone and sand and water. He barely had a moment to try to roll aside and straighten out before the middle third of the wall, some three yards high by four across, came tumbling down like a portcullis dropped before a besieged city’s gates. It smashed directly across the struggling stallion’s back, crushing his spine, and driving him into the sand and debris. He let out an agonized scream, and passed out as a bloody foam began to fleck his lips and nostrils.
A steady stream of water began to flow over his ruined body, and the surrounding pool began to rise, lapping against the side of his head.
Some minutes later, the ghostly figure of a tan unicorn stallion, draped in a black-trimmed, white cloak, bearing a curved sword on his right hip slowly emerged from the gloom, and silently approached the broken blue pony…
Argyle’s eyes fluttered open halfway as he tried to focus on anything beyond the dimly-lit stone fragments, mud, and bloody sand directly before his muzzle. A low throbbing sound filled his head, punctuated by the occasional clatter of rocks, and drip of water coming from the collapsed wall behind him. His breath came in short, agonizing bursts, and the taste of blood filled his mouth. His jaw trembled as he strained his neck up off the ground, and tried to push against the wet ground with his pinned leg. His shoulder barely budged, and he sagged back down into the cold, wet muck.
“H-help…me…”
His nostrils flared as he tried again in vain to force himself up; his leg and shoulder buckled, and he dropped back to the ground with a ‘splat.’ Tears welled in his eyes and he coughed weakly: “Can…can anypony…”
He coughed weakly and turned his head to one side; he lay still for a minute and watched the nearby swirling waters slowly creep toward him. He squinted at the wet glitter of his partially buried headlamp, and noticed a shape, just beyond his visual range, off to his right.
“Is-is somepony th-there? I-I need…”
“So, you can see me. I wasn’t entirely sure.”
“Pl-please h-help me…”
“Sorry, Argyle—it doesn’t work that way.”
“Wha-wha…?”
“You don’t have much time left, but I’ve learned over the years not to rush things unduly.”
Argyle gagged on a sudden surge of blood froth in his throat: “I d-don’t understand! Why-why won’t you…”
“Help?”
“Yes.”
He heard a heavy sigh: “Alright, look—I can’t save you, but I can at least let you play out your last few minutes oblivious to your discomfort.”
Argyle squinted again as the shape rose and moved a bit closer; its horn glowed a pale red. Argyle’s eyes crossed and slowly closed.
He blinked and suddenly stepped back, startled to see his crushed body trapped under a mound of shattered rock, a two-yard-long staff lying behind him, waters rising toward his head: “Am-am I…?”
“Dead? No, but you will be soon.”
The shocked stallion pivoted to his right and saw the shape resolve as a tan, cloaked stallion, with gray-streaked brown mane and tail, and a 死on his right flank: “Wh-who are you? Can you help me? I have to get out of here!”
The cloaked stallion shook his head sadly: “To your first question—I have gone by many names over many millennia, but the one I’ve liked best is ‘Reaper.’ As for the second question—I cannot help. My job is to guide you on beyond the boundary of this world to whatever fate awaits you.”
“But-but my daughter! Sunny, she-she…”
“She will make her way as ponies have throughout the centuries, for better or worse.”
“Do you know how? Will she be okay?”
“I only know for a certainty, is that one day she will meet me, too. As for the time leading up to that day—that’s up to her.”
Argyle sat down sadly: “I just wanted to bring back more pieces of the past, more of the old images and stories, maybe something to help restore the magic.”
He glanced over at the staff: “I was looking for that…”
Reaper nodded: “To your credit, you’re the only pony of three who made it this far to actually find the Dragon Lord’s scepter. High Cirrus, you already met a bit further back—”
“The pegasus skeleton?”
“That was her. Made it that far eighty-four years ago. A unicorn by the name of Dark Crescent actually made it deeper into the cavern one-hundred-and-forty-two years back, and fell into a chasm. He even managed to locate Luna’s tiara just before he fell.”
“’Luna’—so she was real, too? How about her sister, Celestine?”
Reaper smiled: “’Celestia’—yes, she was real, too.”
“Did they really control the sun and moon?”
“Yes—for a time. They handed off much of their power and responsibility to Celestia’s protégé, Twilight Sparkle. She wielded the bulk of this world’s high magic for millennia.”
“Then what?”
“You mean how did it all end? Why is the magic gone?”
Argyle glanced down at the staff and nodded.
Reaper took a deep breath: “This was once a world awash in magic, containing, at one time or another, twenty-eight fully self-aware, ennobled species—ponies, dragons, griffins, hippogriffs, yaks, and so on. Some persisted from the beginning to the end—ponies, for instance—while others were only fully-aware for a few centuries before falling back into a feral state.”
“Feral? Like dragons?”
“No, though dragons were one of the last creatures to become ennobled. In the end, they were also the last to retain that spark.”
He glanced back over his shoulder across the cavern: “Crimson Bone, back there, was the last creature to finally succumb to the march of time and the loss of this world’s magic, save for the Sisters and Twilight, who all passed on a short while later.”
“So where did all the magic go? Is it also the reason we lost magic not long ago, too?”
“Eventually, like a blazing bonfire that finally exhausts its fuel, this world’s magic simply burned-out, and all the higher beings that depended on it, in one way or another, fell back into the darkness. Many of them never recovered, even in a feral state. Dragons, hippogriffs and Kirin especially need magic to even exist. You will never see their like again.”
Argyle’s eyes widened, and he shuddered: “But we’ve lost the magic again, so does that mean…?”
Reaper smiled: “No, I mean someday I’m sure there will be another cycle, but for now, like a field that lies fallow, the period after the Sisters and Twilight allowed the world to recharge some. The recent loss of magic is simply due to ponies having lost their connection to each other, and by extension the native magic intrinsic in all ponies.”
“So, you really think we can find the magic again?”
“Oh, I’m sure of it. This is just a blip of a few decades against a many-millennia-deep tapestry. It’ll work itself out.”
“But the great ponies, like Twilight?”
“As with the high-magic creatures, you’ll never see their like again. They’ll live on and inspire in legends and myths as demi-gods and heroes, but nothing more. And in the absence of Luna’s grand Dreamscape, even your dreams will be paler. But there is magic and beauty to be found in this world as well.”
Argyle glanced down sadly at the water rising around his muzzle: “I-I just wish I could be here to see it, but nopony’s even going to know what happened to me, are they?”
“Did you leave any notes or itinerary behind?”
Argyle half-shrug/half-nodded: “As best I could. Sunny knows roughly where I was going, but the real details are in my notebook.”
He pointed at the blood-spattered shoulder bag: “Without that, I don’t know if anypony else will find this lair for another eighty years.”
Reaper shrugged: “No way to know, but this lair was well-hidden long ago, and has only gotten harder to find over the centuries as the walls of this canyon have eroded. I suspect that once it floods completely, it will lie hidden for the foreseeable future.”
Argyle sighed deeply and looked at the pinkish bubbles and froth sputtering from his nostrils and lips: “I guess I really won’t have to worry about it anymore in a few minutes.”
Reaper smiled sadly then drew his sword: “I think I can spare you that last couple of minutes…”
He stepped over the stallion’s battered, half-buried blue body and plunged the blade between its ribs. The body shuddered and released one final, ragged breath. Reaper tipped his head down and touched his faintly-glowing horn to the thin, shimmering mist that now hung over Argyle’s corpse. The mist vanished, and Reaper stood, straightened his cloak, sheathed his sword, and turned back toward Argyle’s fading specter. The faint image of the earth pony flickered, then disappeared.
Reaper began to phase, then stopped and resolidified. He looked at the crumbling, leaking wall sagging above Argyle’s body and chewed his lip for a moment. His horn glowed a bright crimson as a pulse of power lanced into the fractured, charcoal-black wall, shattering it, releasing a torrent of water that crashed down into the cavern, sweeping away Argyle’s lifeless, twisted form like a pale-blue ragdoll.
The water surged and foamed, carrying the body and entangled shoulder bag along, ultimately bursting through the collapsing cave entrance, sweeping aside the brambles and loose rockfall, washing Argyle’s battered corpse up on a pile of large rocks, like a beached shipwreck. The water receded as the canyon wall above the entrance sloughed down, blocking off the cave and stemming the flow. The mist was swept aside briefly, allowing a shaft of sunlight to fall across Argyle’s lifeless eyes.
Argyle blinked and rolled to his side, squinting in the flat, colorless light that filled an unbounded space which reached away endlessly in all directions. His eyes finally focused, and he noticed a simple, low couch to his left, covered in a tasteful, green, felted-wool upholstery. He stood unsteadily, shuffled over to the couch, sat down heavily, and slumped forward, staring at his rear hooves. His mane bristled, and he felt a presence.
Reaper appeared out of the nothing and stood before Argyle: “Welcome to my ‘waiting room.’ This is your last stop in our world before crossing the Last Horizon.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. You go on to whatever fate the Cosmos has for you.”
Argyle tilted his head, and he furrowed his brow: “But, how can you not know—aren’t you Death?”
Reaper smiled: “No—I am Death’s steward, its gatekeeper. Death’s final disposition lies beyond the Last Horizon.”
“And nopony knows what comes after?”
“No.”
“But so many over all the years, so many religions, so many—”
“Guesses. So many guesses. I have been guiding on spirits to whatever lies beyond for millennia—billions of spirits over thousands of years, and even now I only have the vaguest sense of some broad outlines. I guarantee you, no pony—or other being—who has ever lived had the foggiest idea.”
“So that might just be the end, then, yes? No nothing, no last goodbyes, no seeing your loved ones in the afterlife?”
Reaper nodded: “That’s true, though I’m fairly sure if that were the case, this waiting room wouldn’t exist, and neither would I—you would simply die and go to the dust like your feral ancestors.”
“So, you haven’t been here forever?”
“No, shortly after I died on a distant world, I was summoned here to be Death’s caretaker as the first fully-ennobled pony suffered a fatal fall.”
“Still, a long time.”
“Yes. And I will remain until the last spark of higher, self-aware life leaves this world.”
Argyle stood: “I see—well, thank you for letting me have a few minutes to wrap my head around things. I really wish I could have seen Sunny one last time, though.”
Reaper began walking off to the right: “A common refrain.”
Argyle smiled sadly: “Maybe I’ll get to see her again, someday…”
“Also a common refrain.”
The two stallions walked in silence for a minute until the ancient wreck of Grey Thorn’s device appeared before them. Argyle stopped and raised an eyebrow: “What the…?”
Reaper nodded: “It’s a long story from the age of demigods and heroes.”
“Well, I think I have the time to hear it now, yes?”
Reaper grinned: “Nice try, but it’s your time to go.”
Argyle sighed and glanced at the hulking sphere to his left; he turned away.
Reaper chewed his lip for a moment, then stepped beside Argyle, tipped his horn toward the startled pony, and touched his temple: “A parting gift—a story for you to peruse wherever Fate takes you next.”
Argyle’s eyes widened as he shook his head and stepped forward toward eternity: “A-amazing! Thank you!”
He vanished without a trace.
Reaper watched the blue figure wink out, and took a deep breath: “Tell the three of them ‘hello’ for me…”
He stood still for a moment, then adjusted his cloak and sword, and faded, leaving behind the silent, endless gray plain, and its eternal, broken monument.
