The Fear of Death

by WriterBright

Rating: everyone
Tags: Princess Celestia, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sad, Original Character, Mystery, Tragedy
Length: 2115

Death is an inevitable part of life, an ending that all stories of life have in common. This short story is about one spellcasters dream to prevent the inevitable.

Death is an inevitable part of life, an ending that all stories of life have in common. This short story is about one spellcasters dream to prevent the inevitable.

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Written as my first attempt at something a little darker, this story has been sitting in my google files for six months. I finally got around to completing it.

I present to you, an armature's attempt at a tragedy.

Published 2021-11-27 22:40:01 UTC
Last updated 2021-11-27 22:40:01 UTC

Then she was alone

I don’t plan on dying.

To many alive, this sounds a little strange. No one plans to die, but everyone knows that eventually, they will.

I mean, death is inevitable right?

Everything has to die, the end will come.

Some fear the end, and fool themselves into this strange notion that there is something after it, that if they are good enough in life, they will live on in death.

Some simply accept that someday they will end. That their entire existence will be annihilated, leaving nothing but their whispers barely remembered by an aging world.

Most simply don’t care. They don’t think about their inevitable doom, and are content to live in a false ignorance of their worthlessness.

They are all fools.

There are only a few, a very, very small few, who have figured it out.

The aspect of Chaos is one of them.

He has managed to achieve immortality by intertwining himself with a fundamental force. If he were to die, it would have catastrophic consequences for the rest of us. He made himself virtually untouchable, but his hubris was his downfall.

He made enemies of the other two immortals.

Princess Celestia, and Princess Luna.

Diarchs of Equestria, a land of self reported harmony.

They have a whole country under their control, and they molded two others to follow them into ascension. Now there is an Empress Mi Amore Cadenza, and Princess Twilight Sparkle.

They think themselves so high and mighty that they get to decide who obtains immortality and who dies like animals. Hoarding the path to ascension like they have any right to judge others.

If they were to keep their methods secret, then I would go about creating my own methods.

Oh, and create I did.

At first I considered stealing life from others, but I quickly dismissed it. Being a parasite for eternity is not worthy of being called immortality.

I spent a significant amount of time digging everything I could up about becoming an alicorn, but nothing made any empirical sense. The whole process was based on some ‘worthiness’ that is somehow judged by harmony itself. I dismissed the entire thing as a false trail due to its absurdity. Even if it was true, the force of harmony probably would not deem me worthy of my current life, let alone immortality.

So the path of the Spirit of Chaos I went.

If I could tie myself to a fundamental force, then I would be set, and this is where I had my breakthroughs.

Every one of them was tied to a force. Celestia to the sun, Luna to the moon, Twilight to magic, Cadence to love, Discord to Chaos. All of them had one, so I needed to pick one for myself.

It was a moment of giddiness that I did not get to feel often as I considered my options.

Ironically, Death was my first consideration. It was the focus of my obsession, and the one thing I tried to avoid. By tying to myself, as long as death existed, so would I.

I had a spike of envy when I considered that magic was already taken, but the feeling quickly vanished.

Change? No, too close to chaos. Order? Too predictable.

Life? Now that was tempting… It had the same perks of Death but none of the drawbacks. It was certainly on the list for consideration.

I could choose something more fundamental such as gravity, or energy itself…

No…

Life was just too tempting… how could it not be?

To be bound to the life of all things, it would be incredible. It would be perfect... If only actually binding one’s self to a force was as easy as picking one out. The next part of this process would be significantly harder.

Research, research, and so much research.

Unsurprisingly, there was not much to be found. The pursuit of immortality usually led one down darker paths, and as such the materials related to it were deemed ‘Dark Magic’ by most. An unfortunate truth, but one I had to deal with. From this point I only had one thing I could do.

First was to get as much information from the current immortals, and to extrapolate the rest by myself.

A few carefully worded letters to the Princess of Magic got me a wonderfully in depth description of the feeling of ascending. A few more letters to Empress Cadenza got a description of what feeling love as a tangible thing was like.

I based my first forays into this research on their words. I was making theories based on theories trying to calculate and formulate a spell or ritual that would let this process happen. Tangentially, I made strides in the medical field.

Unsurprisingly, tapping into life as a concept also served as a great base for medical research, and when I got frustrated at my efforts I would see where I could apply any of the more solid parts of my theories to medical spells. This served the dual purpose of proving the validity of these theories and preventing burnout.

Over the past few years, this tangential research ended up yielding some respectable results, and good money along with it. I laughed for days after I got a grant from the crown to continue my research. The money given to me let me afford a tower in Canterlot itself, instead of the small cabin at the base of the mountain.

I kept all of my more risky spell testing at the base of the mountain, but I moved primarily into the city.

My research continued, and my work started to take shape. Life itself started to become puddy in my hooves, and I wanted to make a work of art worthy of myself.

In my final stages, I made a breakthrough with a particularly nasty magical syndrome. Utilizing another’s magic to jumpstart the process, one could reset their magic. This had the effect of curing a rare syndrome that would normally be utterly crippling to a pony.

For this effort I was invited to receive a medal from Princess Celestia herself. The date was set two days after what was on track to be the day.

The process of binding one’s self to a force was hard, and unique to every force. The runes alone took two hours a piece to inscribe, and there were a few thousand of them. The ritual itself would only take a measly three hours in comparison, but a mistake there would jeopardize everything.

Everything has to be perfect, nothing can go wrong.

I posted a note on my tower door that I was in the middle of sensitive research, and that there was to be no interruptions no matter the reason.

My cover story for this entire process is that I was looking into the usage of the very idea of life to treat severe injuries. Imagine drawing upon a concept similar to Discord and his chaos to treat an amputation or lethal dosage of poison. At least, that was the spheal I was going to give anyone who asked.

With the runes cast and the shutters pulled, I began the process.

At first it was quite tedious. Simply layering spell on top of spell to properly prepare and handle fundamental forces took up most of the first hour.

Next was properly activating the runes in sequence. Even a slight lapse in concentration would prove to be lethal at this stage.

With seven glowing rune arrays now fully harmonized, I began casting the final spell. Interlinking the twenty or so already cast with seven arrays was no small feat of magic, in fact it might have been the most complex thing I had ever attempted.

But driven by a burning desire, the final spell went off without a hitch.

Suddenly, I could feel it.

The force, life.

It. Was. Everywhere.

I was blinded and nearly lost everything with the sudden influx of sensory information, but I held on.

With a final breath, I merged myself with the force.

The explosion was felt throughout Canterlot.

Spell towers are specifically designed to keep dangerous spells contained, and the one at the epicenter of this explosion was pushed to its limits. Arcs of pure mana crackled over the surface like an angry thunderstorm, and smoke billowed out of its windows.

Even with the majority of the force contained within its cylindrical walls, the magical discharge made the entire city’s unicorn population wince. Even pegasi and earth ponies felt an electric tingle go over their wings and hooves respectively.

For a singular moment, the entire city had its attention focused on one point, a tower that had gained the nickname ‘The Tower of Life’.

In the three or so years before this incident, the hospitals in Canterlot had begun implementing revolutionary new techniques all thanks to this tower. A rising star in the reporting industry did a full length report on the mage towers of Canterlot. The big three were The Tower of Wonder, The Tower of Enchantment, and The Tower of Life.

Anyone who was anyone in Canterlot knew of these towers, and so the tower of Life going up in flames brought the city to a standstill.

But one mare in particular had her eye on the tower.

Before the weather brigade had even rounded up any clouds to deal with the fire, Princess Celestia was in the air followed by a few quick reacting pegasi guards. To all but the most observant Celestia looked like merely a streak of light arcing through the air.

Princess Celestia, Diarch of Equestria and the ruler of the sun was worried.

The amount of energy let off moments ago had the potential to wipe away half of the city. It was a miracle that the damage was as limited as it was. Even so, something about the situation set her on edge.

For the first time in a millennium, she acted on impulse and rushed towards the tower.

Entering inside was fairly easy. There was a simple mage lock on the door that had fallen apart due to the mana surge.

She rushed through the lower floors all in various states of dissarary until she came to the final floor blocked off by a solid silver trapdoor. It’s surface was once completely covered by protective runes of the utmost quality, but now all that remained was a piece of slag that barely held its own shape.

With a significant amount of effort, Celestia pushed the trap door leading to the tower’s main room open.

The interior of the room was unbearably warm to the point where any normal pony entering inside would have been burned by the heat, but Celestia was no normal pony.

Stepping inside, her hooves disturbed the fine layer of ash that had settled on the floor. The air was depressingly silent. The room at one point held various pieces of furniture, but all that remained of them were their seared outlines burned onto the walls.

In the center of the room, still glowing a blinding white, was the figure of a pony.

Celestia tentatively approached the prone form, her mind filled with a morbid curiosity at the events unfolding in front of her.

The blinding light slowly abated, and revealed the owner of the tower shakaly taking in breaths. She immediately rushed to their side, scanning for injuries. To her surprise, their eyes opened.

For a moment, she lost herself looking into them.

Their eyes showed eternity, of seeing much, much more than any mortal could reasonably handle. Tears began flowing.

Celestia gathered them up in her wings, and held them.

Nearly a whisper at first, she heard their words.

“I made a mistake.”

Soon despair took hold.

“I made a mistake. I made… I got distracted. It was so much, I didn’t think it would be so much.”

Their crying turned to wracking sobs, and to Celestia’s horror, she felt as the magic making up their being began to dissipate.

“I messed up. I don’t want to die. I really really don’t want to. It’s not fair.”

Their body turned grey, and started to fade. Celestia held them close, even as her grip on them felt less substantial.

“I-I was s-so scared. A-all I wanted was t-to not be scared.”

Celestia held them, frantically casting spells to save their life. She tried containment matrices, counterspells, healing spells, countercurses, anchoring spells, even trying to funnel some of her own magic into them, but nothing worked.

She slowly felt the weight lessen to nothing, and heard their last words.

“I’m sorry.”

Then she was alone.