Hello, My Name Is: Mortis

by AnonyMouse

Chapter 1

My Name is Death

The slab of wild boar sizzled over the fire. Alone in his forest cave, the man known as Rorschach sat by the cookfire in silent contemplation. His clothes were filthy, his shirt torn, the mask he wore stained with dust, sweat, and a fair amount of blood spatter.

Outside, the night was filled with the sounds of crickets and cicadas. Moonlight filtered through the branches of the trees to illuminate the forest floor, and above the small clearing in front of the cave the night sky lit up with stars. The night was beautiful.

Suddenly, Rorschach felt a chill in the air, though there was no wind. The crickets stopped chirping. Alert, the human stood up and grabbed one of his spears.

The sound of hooves striking ground reached his ears.

A pony coming here at this time of night? Something's wrong.

Moving to the front of the cave, Rorschach looked out into the forest. Quietly, he stepped out of the cave and moved to the right, making sure the light from the fire wasn't spotlighting him from behind. As he watched, a tall, pale figure stepped out of the shadows of the forest.

His first impression was that Celestia had come for a midnight visit. That thought alone made him freeze in consternation. Immediately he realized that was wrong. This pony was a pale-colored alicorn, but the details were wrong. Rather than bright, pure white, this pony was the yellowed patina of old bone. On closer inspection, he noticed that the visitor was also incredibly thin and gaunt, ribs and spine showing. When he looked at its face, pale red eyes locked onto his. It spoke in a deep, resonant voice - and with a Scottish accent.

"Hello, Rorschach. You may call me Mortis."

There was an awkward silence. Rorschach readjusted his grip on the spear.

"... Why are you here?"

The mysterious alicorn chuckled and shook his head. "You like to get right to the point, don't you? Silly mortal. You'd enjoy life more if you simply slowed it down a little."

Without further ado, the visitor stepped right into to the cave, lay down by the fire, and seemed to make himself at home. Taken aback by the equine's familiar behavior, Rorschach stayed by the cave entrance. Staring down the intruder incredulously, it was a few seconds before he could find his words.

"Thought there were only two alicorns in existence."

"I can see how you'd get that impression. But no, I've been around just as long as Celestia and Luna."

"The ponies never mentioned you."

"They don't like to talk about me much. I'm the incarnation of Death, you see."

That revelation set the human's thoughts buzzing, taking in several facts at once. For one, this pony had introduced himself as Mortis, which meant death in Latin. For another, the pony's gait had been smooth and graceful; if it was starving and dehydrated, like it looked, it would have been clumsy and uncoordinated. That meant it was somehow hale and hearty despite its appearance. And third...

"I'd always heard that Death rode a pale horse."

Mortis smiled, as if at a private joke. "Yes, well, in a world full of ponies, Death is a pale horse."

Rorschach stayed tense. If he was being visited by this world's incarnation of Death, that could only mean one thing. Growling, he took a step forward. "You never answered my question. Why are you here?!"

Suddenly, it was as if the world warped around him. His surroundings seemed to blur for the briefest of moments, and when everything came back into focus he was sitting across the fire from the pony of Death, the spear in his hands replaced with a cup of tea. The pale horse snorted at him.

"Really, Rorschach, I thought you might have learned to use your manners around immortals by now. First you were completely obliterated by that Manhattan fellow, then given a beat-down by Celestia of all ponies. The lesson really ought to have sunk in at this point."

His pride riled at the scathing. For a moment, he imagined his hands wrapping around that skinny throat and throttling the smart-ass. He almost moved to get up, but then it clicked - the alicorn was warning him. If he tried to strike, there would be consequences. And if he was truly, literally staring Death in the face here, it probably would be a bad idea to get on Mortis' bad side. He wasn't dead yet, at least.

Mortis levitated a cup of tea to his lips and sipped. "Ahh, perfectly brewed as always." He turned to face the murderous human and cleared his throat.

"Well then, on to business, shall we?" He took a deep breath. "To answer the question of why I'm here - well, that's obvious, isn't it? I'm here to talk to you, duh! You think I visit living things just for the Hell of it? Of course not! Death doesn't get to take pleasure visits, and for Luna's sake, did you think I'd come here to kill you? Ridiculous! I don't kill things, my job is to deal with the aftermath of the killing! Really, being so hostile over such a silly notion!"

And I thought Veidt was long-winded, thought Rorschach. "Get to the point."

"To be frank, then, I've come to give you a little insight on the workings of this world, and how your presence here could, to use your own vernacular, really fuck things up."

"How so?"

The alicorn sighed. "Well obviously, it has to do with the whole 'switching universes' thing, doesn't it? There are very few ways to pass the barriers between worlds. I myself have a sort of 'hall pass' to be able to traverse between Equestria and the Equestrian Underworld, and it's my job to make sure that every eligible soul makes it there after the body has expired. Otherwise the whole place would get crowded up with ghosts and everything would get covered in ectoplasm. Believe me, it's not a pretty situation.
Well, the complication that you present is that you somehow found your way here instead of to your own universe's Underworld! In my personal opinion that's probably due to the interference of that upstart Manhattan, as I've never known Thanatos to be so careless as to let souls pass into completely different multiverses before. Anywho, basically that means that upon your inevitable death in this world I must now take the extra trouble to personally escort you back to your own Underworld, which means a temporary leave of absence from this world so I can get you back where you belong, which in turn means that when I get back to Equestria I'm going to have a backlog to work through!"

By the end of that monologue the bone-yellow alicorn was practically growling and moaning. Rorschach let another awkward silence stretch out between them.

"So?" he growled at the pony.

The alicorn's face twisted into a grimace. "Well, even a god's allowed to complain about their job every now an' then, aren't they? I'm just saying, it's gonna be a Hell of a lot of hard work when you clock out, you cheeky bugger!"

"..."

"..."

"...You have my condolences. Not my problem."

Mortis stood up quickly, snorting with derision. "Ach, fine, you heartless git! Wouldn't have even bothered to visit but that I wanted to see what you looked like anyway!" He moved towards to cave exit, a look of discontent stamped on his features. Just before leaving, he whirled around and faced the human, who was still sitting crosslegged by the fire with a cup of tea cooling in his hands. "And by the way, I know of every life you've taken since you showed up on my turf, and I'm warning you right now that any more mindless slaughter will be weighed heavily on you when your time comes! Got me?!"

Kicking up dust as he turned away into the moonlight, the pony of Death vanished in a cloud of inky darkness.

Rorschach sat staring into the fire for a few moments, watching the piece of boar meat beginning to sear and burn. Still dumbfounded, he looked down numbly at the drink in his hands.

Where the Hell did this tea come from anyways?

Comments

[Ex-Nihilos]

Mortis is best pony... of DEATH

[Gypsy]

s'cool

[AnonyMouse]

Well folks, it's not exactly the first bit of fanfiction I've ever written but it is the first I've ever published online. The story behind it is, last night I spontaneously decided to chug a Java Monster energy drink and read through all the chapters of "Rorschach in Equestria" that I hadn't gotten around to reading yet - Something that is rather important to me, as I once had the privilege of editing said fic.
Anywho, I read the side-story that is chapter 13 of RiE and found myself inspired to do my own little spinoff. Three hours later I had typed up and self-edited this little doozy, and then found myself staying up until 4:00 A.M. waiting for it to be approved.

If you enjoyed it, don't forget to hit that "like" button and leave a review! If you didn't enjoy it, feel free to stay silent because I'm a shallow human being with fragile self-esteem! (JK, go ahead and let 'er rip, I can take it.)

[Ezn]

Audio review I did for the lulz.

And here's a writing guide I link with all my (usually more serious) reviews.

[RusselNotSCP]

i wan't that tea. immortals make good tea.

[AnonyMouse]

475593

Response I did for the lulz.

#1. The colon is there because the title imitates one of those store employee name tags.

#2. You've got a point with the chapter name there.

#3. 'Random' most certainly does not imply funny. Trust me.

#4. I'll indent how I want to indent, mofo.

#5. They're called "descriptive pronouns". The pronouns get really repetitive without it.

#6. This is very much just for people who have read "Rorschach in Equestria." I knew full well when I wrote it most people wouldn't know what it was about and may hit the "thumbs down" button just because of that. I wrote it mainly to show support for Ex Nihilos, the author of RiE.

#7. It has no plot because it's a side-story. Ex Nihilos has basically made Rorschach his own character, and I really didn't want to write an entire little "swashbuckling adventure" with him. Just wouldn't feel right. Plus I typed the whole damn thing up in two hours with absolutely no forethought whatsoever, so it would have been hard to come up with anything interesting in any case.

#8. My commas are always in the right place, bitch.

[Ezn]

490061
1. I thought that might be the case, but when you didn't follow up on it I dismissed the possibility. There's little point in having the title imitate a shop employee nametag if you don't do something with that in the story, like make Death act like a bored teenager working at a counter or something.

2. That I do.

3. No, but it usually implies "trying to be funny". Do people write random stories that aren't intended to be funny? I guess they might, but I haven't seen any.

4. Fair enough, but I still think it's hideous.

5. They have a name? Heh. I call them Musical Names and they don't so much solve repetition as ignore its underlying cause. If you find yourself repeating names too much, that either means that you're not using pronouns effectively or that your sentence structure is too repetitive. Slapping a "descriptive pronoun" on in place of a name is just a way of hiding the real issue, not solving it. I wrote more about this here.

Only use "descriptive pronouns" as a last resort, and make them relevant in context.

6. Fair enough.

7. I've read plenty of sidestories with great plots -- this community's full of them. And it's not a problem of wordcount either. Write what you want, but I really do think you could have made this more interesting somehow. That, and a more interesting story with some semblance of a plot or point to it would have been an infinitely better tribute.

8. The misplaced comma is a foe we all must face sooner or later.

[AnonyMouse]

491724 Yeah, it could have been more interesting. If I wanted to make the original story look good, I probably should have put more effort into making this one worth reading. As I said though, I wrote this at 3:00 AM on a caffiene buzz and wasn't necessarily firing on all cylinders anyway.

I do thank you for your thoughts, for with them in mind I shall be a better writer the next time I decide to pour my imagination out into the world. As for this fic, it's already faded away into fandom obscurity and I'll probably never bother fixing it. Bigger and better projects await.

Sincerely, AnonyMouse

[Ezn]

493332
Cool. In the long run, the state of individual stories isn't as important as you growing and improving as a writer, so I wish you luck with your future projects!