And Time Marched On, Forever
Death was entropy, and entropy was chaos. Many fleeting fools waxed on and on about it in their treatises, but none of them understood it like he did. Intricately. Like greeting an old friend in a new set of clothes.
Though he was never quite a fan of sowing chaos in the form of death. It was so simple, so boring. For ages immemorial that was the only adjective he could describe it as. Boring. Ponies stumbled and died, sometimes believing they’d accomplished some big ordeal, sometimes after merely being hit with a brick on their head. For him it was all the same.
But then, he got to know her. Every day since he couldn’t wrap his head around it. He who battled the Sun and the Moon, who considered the laws of physics and magic bad jokes, fell for a pony?! It was absurd! Ridiculous! And so so delightfully chaotic. She had friends of course, of varying annoyance… the pink one was at least somewhat fun, but otherwise? An unremarkable bunch of loathsome Harmony. It was her alone who became the centre of his attention. A centre! For someone who hadn’t had one!
Under her spell even time itself seemed to slow down. He and Time weren’t exactly on good terms. They needed each other, sure, there’s no meaning of time without change and there is no change without time, but that didn’t mean they were friends. One day he decided to be two hundred years older in a second, just to spite Time, and it never quite forgave him for that little hijink. But that just made it all the more amusing.
But now? Days, no, minutes suddenly had meaning. And for the first time he could no longer ignore Time. Because she didn’t have as much as he did. Oh, he tried so hard to forget about that fact. Ponies stumble, but she wasn’t just a pony… right? She had the God of Chaos on her side, after all. Nothing could come to harm her.
So when he spotted the first white strand in her mane, he said nothing. Just a new style and she hadn’t told him, he reassured himself. It’d been only, what, fifteen, twenty years? A blink of an eye! Nothing to be worried of.
Then, a moment or maybe five years later, she smiled at him. It was a deep and rich smile, the sort that filled the screaming void of chaos in his core with pure, unrelenting love. But while the warmth burned him so sweetly inside, he noticed a tiny little wrinkle under her eye. Surely that was just a trick of the light. Some petty vengeance because of that one time he had to get somewhere faster than it. But no, he blinked and blinked again, and the wrinkle remained. Her smile slowly morphed into a concerned frown. She asked if something was wrong. He tried to smile back and hoped with all of his being that it was convincing before saying “no”. Nothing was wrong at all, ponies do change a little, don’t they? It was their only non-boring quality. So why wasn’t he happy about it?
He wasn’t sure when it happened. They walked down a little meadow and he went ahead to turn a few flowers to match her mane and coat. She always humoured him with a little giggle that reminded him of wind chimes. This time, however, there was only silence. He frowned, she was never one to not appreciate his art, but when he turned he had to stop himself from physically breaking into pieces. She’d stumbled and was lying on the ground, silent pain written on her face. He didn’t even think as he snapped, the world crumbling away to reveal the nearby hospital around them. He screamed like a lion for somepony, anypony to help.
Time took its revenge then. Every moment felt a century. Doctors dashed in and out, their stoic faces betraying the slightest hint of fear. That fear was nothing compared to his own. Day by day he stood at her bed, guarding it… There was nothing else he could do. He was the Lord of Chaos. He could not turn the wheel of time backwards.
A thousand years in stone could not measure up to a millionth of the anguish he felt in the moment when her lips weakly pulled themselves into one final smile and her hoof fell out of his grasp limply onto the sheets.
Mountains shook and trees collapsed from his roar. He screamed and pierced the void, tears floating into the nothingness beyond. He found that old snake, Time, and yanked its tail deep from its throat. “Give. Her. Back.” His words rumbled the astral plane. Time merely smiled… then relented.
He found himself back in the hospital. The birds chirped, the machines beeped. With mounting dread, he lowered his eyes onto the bed.
He found her in front of him. No white strands, no wrinkles. As pristine and holy as she ever was.
Slowly, she smiled at him. He smiled back.
Then she began to shake.
There were few times someone of his calibre learnt something. But that day the God of Chaos learned that though he may be spared by it, even he was not above Time, and it was never his friend. And he would pay for his folly. The thing, that facsimile that emerged from beyond… was not her, it couldn’t have been. She wouldn’t have begun to convulse. She wouldn’t have begged to be let go, to be killed again. Her lovely butter coat wouldn’t have started to fall out in patches, rotting into mulch the moment they hit the floor. Those shy little eyes wouldn’t weep crimson, and they wouldn’t beg “Why?” as they looked at him, while her legs buckled.
The Lord of Entropy wept with her. With agonising slowness, the Lord of Death snapped his talons and granted her wish. And Time marched on, forever.
