(Don't) Fear the Reaper
In one instant, Twilight Sparkle’s day had transformed into one of her horror stories.
Her scream echoed inside the library. Everything had gone into overdrive: respiration, heart rate, adrenaline, and even her magic. Her horn was itching to lash out at something.
More specifically, it was wanting to lash out at the thing in front of her.
“Don’t scream!” Mort pleaded. It pleaded. “Don’t scream! Please, don’t scream! Just calm down! Everything’s okay!”
She stopped, but only because she had to catch her breath, and not because everything was okay. No, everything was not okay. There was an animated skeleton speaking to her now, where once before there was just another pony. A pony she had spent time with, had laughed with, had eaten ice cream with. When had everything gone so wrong?
“Everything’s fine,” the walking skeleton said, motioning its bony hooves at her. Its fleshless skull grinned at her, its jaws never once parting when it spoke. “Everything’s fine. Okay? You don’t need to panic.”
She stared into the red dots that occupied its eye sockets. They glowed faintly in a darkness that seemed to go on forever.
The library had always been a sort of sanctuary. A home away from home, even before she started living in one. It was a safe place, but not anymore. It had been breached, and what was once cozy now felt suffocating. She couldn’t be far enough away. She felt like she was in a tomb.
She bolted for the door.
“Wait!” The skeleton beat her to it, flying down from above and forcing Twilight to skid to a halt. For just a moment she saw skeletal wings being sucked into the cloak as if it were more liquid than fabric.
“Listen,” it said, a hint of desperation in its voice. “I-I know this kind of shocking—”
“Kind of shocking?” she repeated, incredulous. “Kind of shocking?”
It hesitated. “Okay, maybe not the best choice of words.” It took a step towards her, one hoof reaching out. “If you just let me explain—”
“D-don’t come any closer!” she said, hating how her voice broke. She thought of the shield spell her brother had taught her and cast it, encasing Mort in a magenta bubble. The perturbed way he looked at it gave her hope, but then it was dashed when he simply stepped through the bubble, as if it wasn’t even there. The shock of it made her lose focus, and the bubble vanished. She retreated a few steps, aware she was running out of room.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” it said, its tone gentle. Sounding gentle, she reminded herself. “I meant what I said before, okay? I’m not a bad pony!”
“Oh, sure! You’re not a bad pony,” she spat sarcastically. “You’re just not a pony PERIOD!”
She could barely remember the last time she had felt like this. She felt cold, short of breath, and her heart was threatening to tear itself free. It reminded her of her first trip into the Everfree forest, and how she ended up falling off a cliff. She had been caught by her friends, but those few seconds in free fall had been some of the most terrifying seconds of her life. She had felt absolutely certain that she was going to die. Right now, it felt like that horrifying moment, stretched out seemingly forever, and any second now she was going to hit rock bottom.
“What are you?” she demanded. “Are you a changeling? A golem? A familiar? Is ‘Mort’ even your real name?”
“Yes!” it said, frantically waving its hoof at her. “My name’s really Mort! I didn’t lie to you about that!”
She strongly felt there was misplaced pride in that statement. “Oh, but you lied about some other things, didn’t you?”
“Yes—uh, no! I mean...” Mort tapped its—his?—hooves together, looking away from her. “O-okay, I didn’t tell the whole truth, but—”
“And that’s supposed to better?!”
He flinched, as if struck. “You don’t have to be so mean about it.”
“Mean? You think I’m being mean about this?” The words had come out hot and sharp, a cocktail of her fear, anger and confusion. “I thought we were hanging out with just another pony, and not an animated skeleton who was using magic to fool us this entire time! Maybe you don’t remember, but the last time something like this happened, the one fooling us was Queen Chrysalis, who imprisoned my foalsitter, brainwashed my brother, cocooned the princess, attacked my friends, and was trying to take over the entire KINGDOM! So excuse me if I’m a little upset!”
Twilight hunched over, gasping for air. In spite of everything, that had actually felt good. Being able to shout down something you feared felt empowering, even if that power was ultimately imaginary. It felt better than cowering, at any rate.
Mort simply stared at her quietly, seemingly at a loss for words. If he had a face, she could at least infer what he was feeling, but all she had to go on were the eyes. A second later she didn’t even have that as he looked down at the floor, the hood obscuring everything. The silence dragged on longer and longer, and Twilight wasn’t sure what he’d do next. She imagined cackling, bellowing, hissing...
“You’re right.”
Of all the things she imagined happening, that wasn’t one of them. After a brief double take, she said, “What?”
“You’re right,” he said quietly. “We... I should’ve known how it’d look to you. I didn’t even think...” He looked up, and his red dots seemed to flatten out in the northern regions. To Twilight, they almost looked mournful. “I’m so sorry, Twilight…”
Twilight bit her lip, feeling the one thing she really didn’t want to right now: doubt. He looked sad, even sounded sad. It tugged at her heartstrings, but she reminded herself that Queen Chrysalis could do the same thing. Imitating emotions wasn’t as hard as it should be.
Except Chrysalis had been a good actor when she needed to be. When Twilight confronted her, the changeling queen had played the part of distressed damsel perfectly, creating fake tears and heartfelt cries. Whenever Mort was confronted about his appearance, he stammered and acted evasive, and never seemed to have a solid answer. If that was him trying to lie, then he was absolutely terrible at it.
But when he didn’t do that, and the words just flowed out of him without a second thought, he sounded like one of the most sensitive ponies she had ever met. His guilt over this morning was palpable, and the way he enjoyed their company seemed sincere. Not even Queen Chyrsalis could hide her true nature for longer than a single meeting.
Could this still just be a misunderstanding? Was it weird that she found herself hoping that it still was?
“What are you, Mort?” she asked. “Tell me the truth.”
“I’m…” He seemed to swallow, which confused her. He didn’t have a throat, did he? Was he just mimicking the motion? “W-well, Twilight, I’m…”
And that’s when she spotted Owlowiscious perched inside one of the book shelves behind him, glaring at the cloaked skeleton. For an instant, Twilight was ashamed that she had almost forgotten about him, but that quickly turned to fear when she saw his pose. She had seen it every time Owlowiscious had spotted prey when they went out. It came right before the dive.
“Don’t do it!”
Mort stopped. “Don’t do what?”
“Get out of here!”
“But I haven’t even told—” Too late did Mort realize she was looking behind him, and when he turned, there was an earsplitting shriek as Owlowiscious launched himself from the shelves and divebombed Mort.
“Owlowiscious, no!” Later, when looking back, Twilight would think she overreacted. She didn’t know much then, but she did know that Mort could lift and rearrange furniture like it was nothing, and had a scythe that could cut through wood as if it were paper. That power would have been more than enough to maim or kill a pony, to say nothing of a small owl. With every beat of Owlowiscious’ wings, Twilight feared the next moment would see them crushed into a feathery pulp, or sliced away completely.
She thought she had seen Mort’s horn glow. Maybe the sun had reflected off of it, or maybe she had just imagined it. It didn’t matter if it was a trick of the light or a trick of the mind. What did matter was what happened next.
With Owlowiscious’ survival being her new priority, Twilight’s mind went into overdrive. Golem, changeling, it didn’t matter. Some kind of magic had to be in play here. A skeleton couldn’t support itself on its own, meaning one way or another, Mort was enchanted. And enchanted creatures didn’t take well to their magic being disrupted.
She thought of a disruption spell, just like the one used to remove the glamour on Changelings, and fired a beam of magic at Mort. Her fear of it passing through proved unfounded when it struck his horn. Owlowiscious had probably distracted him too much. Now he should be stunned and his magic should—
Before she could finish her thought, there was a brilliant display of green and purple light, scaring away Owlowiscious and causing the skeleton to shout in shock. He caught himself before he fell, and stood unsteadily.
“Oh, this is weird,” he said, his eyes rolling around his skull. “This is very, very weird!”
Twilight didn’t know what was going on. The spell wasn’t meant to do this. Rings of green and purple magic began to orbit the skeleton, floating up and down the height of its body.
The glow from Mort’s horn began to glow brighter and brighter, magical energy crackling all around it. Suddenly, faster than Twilight could blink, a green pulse traveled down the beam Twilight had fired, the green and purple magic mixing and creating a color Twilight had never seen before.
When it reached her horn, she cried out as needles jammed themselves into her brain. Just like Mort, her horn began to crackle, and the straight beam began arch and twist like a fork of lightning. She tugged at it, and the tether of magic offered resistance, while at the same time pulling Mort.
The spell she used wasn’t supposed to do this, and when spells stop acting the way they should, it was a sign to stop. She closed her eyes, flipping an internal switch to stop the spell… and saw it was still going when she opened her eyes. She tried again, but nothing she did was making it disappear. It was as if the spell had a mind of its own.
“What did you do?” she demanded, glaring at Mort.
“Most magic doesn’t agree with me,” he answered, tugging at it himself. “It always results in stuff like this or rainbow afros!”
Twilight wasn’t even going to touch the last part. “Well stop it already!”
“Well, that’s just it...”
Twilight stumbled and almost fell from the pullback. “What?”
“I’m not doing this.”
The dread in his voice told Twilight that, for at least this moment, he was telling the truth. And if neither of them had any control of this, then—
Suddenly, pain lanced through her forehead. Twilight shut her eyes and whimpered, feeling the growing pain in her horn. It felt like she had just dipped it into molten metal, and it was now spreading from the tip of her horn to the base of her skull and beyond. A fire was now raging along the surface of her brain.
The wind began to pick up around them, carrying loose papers and quills, and then entire books started to fly off the shelves. Magic arced and crackled along the beam, causing her hair to rise and filling the air with the smell of ozone.
“Hoo!”
“Owlowiscious?” She opened her eyes and looked straight at him. He was clinging to the pony bust, looking to be barely holding on by the tips of his wings. “Are you...”
The question would be left unfinished. As she stared at her owl, time slowed to a crawl. Owlowiscious’ body became a flicker of images. One moment he was covered in feathers, then he was just muscle, than a skeleton and nervous system, then he was just a splotch of red and yellow colors.
He breathed in, and Twilight saw the gases get inhaled by his lungs, absorbed and transformed by his cells, then carried out through his body. Then he hooted, and it sounded loud and drawn out. She saw the air itself vibrating as sound was made, saw the tiny amount of heat that escaped his body, as well as the swarms of bacteria in his spittle. Her eyes drifted down, seeing his lungs inflate, and below that she saw what used to be a rat in his digestive tract—
She screamed and clenched her eyes shut again, trying desperately to keep down her lunch.
“What is it?” Mort asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I-I don’t know,” she said, once she was sure the bile was kept down. She could feel the vibrations from her voice reflecting inside the library, creating a fuzzy image in her mind. She could smell the wood, the books, and even Owlowiscious, almost giving the image color.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. The first thing she noticed was that time had returned to normal, but that was the only thing that had. Her library was now a collage of strange, alien colors that spread out from thin air in waves. She saw streaks of light zipping by her and reflecting off everything it touched. She saw heat and smell and sound and she could see the very cells that made up the tree that was her library. She risked a glimpse of her leg, and saw the arteries flow with blood and heard the nerves humming so, so softly. It was like some obscene cross section from her medical texts.
Twilight looked off in one direction, and gasped as the walls suddenly evaporated, revealing the outside. She saw a building across the street, and watched its walls vanish, revealing a pony inside who was washing her dishes. Then Twilight saw through her and…
She cried out, losing her balance. Mort caught her, and Twilight felt the enormous amount of magic brimming within him. Magic that was different from anything else she had encountered, all springing from some near-infinite well.
“Twilight, what’s wrong?” She lifted her head, and was then face-to-face with Mort. For a moment he looked like a skull in a hood, but then in the next moment she watched the bone vanish, to be replaced by something that was merely skull shaped. Green light zipped everywhere inside him, almost making him look like a piece of night sky. Mort was pure magic.
“What’s wrong?” he repeated, a solid structure within him vibrating the air to produce sound. So he wasn’t a changeling or a golem. He was something else entirely.
She gently pushed him away, and stood unsteadily on her hooves. “W-what’s happening to me?” she asked. “I’m seeing… I’m seeing everything.”
She saw the light within Mort fluctuate rapidly, and it made her think “anxiety” for some reason.
“Twilight, what kind of magic did you use?” he asked.
“Dispelling magic,” she answered. “Why?”
“I think—” He ducked, avoiding a copy of Dante’s Lunacy. “I think you’ve connected yourself to me! You’re seeing everything I’m seeing!”
“Seeing what...” She looked around, struggling to keep everything straight. “You see this all the time?”
“Well, more or less…”
She tried closing her eyes again, but it wasn’t helping anymore because she was looking through her eyelids. In fact, she was somehow looking all around her without moving her head at all. She couldn’t look at anything without some citation going off in her head. The Sun is Also Raised was spotted flying off the shelf, and that was followed by its weight, dimensions, the number of pages, the word count, the composition of the paper, the chemical makeup of the glue…
She screamed, and with dread realized that the world was becoming more and more fragmented, because now she was seeing the atoms and particles that made up everything, rotating and vibrating, and looking more and more like those “magic eye” pictures she had seen so many times as a foal.
“What in Equestria are you?” she demanded. “Why would you need to see all this?”
“I-I need to!” he said. “I’m sorry, but it’s the only way my job can work!”
“What job?!”
“It’s, uh… it’s complicated.”
She growled in frustration. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could take this. Everything was trying to force its way into her brain, filling it to the point that it might actually burst. Trying to listen to a thousand ponies, screaming at the top of their lungs, would have been easier than this.
And then Owlowiscious went flying, his body tumbling in the air, threatening to collide with the airborne books. They may have just been books, but birds weren’t known for strong skeletons. He was going to be turned into a feathery pulp at this rate, if the windows didn’t break him first.
“Owlowiscious, hang on!” She aimed her horn at him, trying to grab him, but the magic seemed stuck. Something seemed to be holding it back, and the harder she pushed, the more pain she felt.
Mort raised his hoof. “Wait, don’t do it!”
She ignored him. At that moment a gust caught Owlowiscious, changing his direction and sending him towards a wall. Time once again slowed, and she was assaulted by his speed, trajectory, the threshold of his bones, the force from his impact, and all together that added up to—
“No!” With a final burst of strength, her magic finally pushed through, and Owlowiscious became wrapped in a bubble moments before impact. He bounced around the room, barely missing Mort and Twilight. She watched him carefully, the calculations running through her head at lightening speed, and then turned to the door. She cast one last spell, forcing the door open just as Owlowiscious bounced towards it. The magenta bubble flew out of the library, away from harm.
Twilight relaxed, the door slamming shut from the winds. She turned to glare at Mort, who seemed suddenly apprehensive.
“Don’t you ever tell me what… not…?”
Maybe it was her imagination, but everything looked to be going white. She was confused at first, frightened even, but a second later she knew: the act of casting the spell had thrown the doors wide open to her mind, just like it did all those years ago when she hatched Spike. But unlike that time when her mind was being opened to what could be, now her mind was being opened to what was. Instead of just being shown the tools and materials, now she was being shown the blueprints of existence.
She knew this because that’s what the universe was telling her. She thought she was seeing everything a minute ago, but all of that was just scratching the surface. Footnotes at best. It was nothing compared to this.
“Twilight?”
She stared into the universe, and the universe stared back. Quantum mechanics became foal’s play and magical theory looked sorely incomplete as secret after secret was revealed and shown to be in plain sight all along.
“Twilight!”
It showed her how gravity really worked and how the fundamental forces could be unified and why observation changes an outcome and that you really could determine both the position and velocity of an electron by just—
“Twilight, say something! Twilight!”
It was scary and overwhelming but more than anything it was beautiful so beautiful how everything was connected and if everypony knew this then there would never be any sorrow or evil and even if it was so painful and made her head want to burst she never wanted it to en—
“Oh Thanasia, forgive me! I don’t have a choice!”
Something cold wrapped around her shoulders, and for a brief moment Twilight became aware of somepony holding her. Mort was looking deep into her eyes, his bony hooves on her shoulders. Some nagging thought told her she should be afraid, but she couldn’t see why. He was just another piece of the universe, and such an important piece, too.
His eyes closed in concentration, and she watched the magic inside him fluctuate as a part of it came out the side of his horn, eventually forming the scythe. The simple appearance belied the intricacy hidden within, and the power it held. So that’s how he did. It was so obvious, but then again everything was now.
She was engrossed with it up to when he raised it in the air. It was then that she became aware of her situation again, and realized he was aiming it at her.
“On three,” he said.
Suddenly that terrified voice in the back of her mind became thunderous. “M-Mort? What—”
“One, two—”
“Mort, no!”
“—-three!”
The scythe swung through the white light, and what followed was a crack of thunder. In that instant the world seemed to collapse underneath Twilight. She looked up to see the ceiling, and saw it fly away with her walls, Mort, the books, and… herself? She reached out desperately, but it was already out of reach. She opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. It all flew further and further away, looking like a dying star in the night sky.
Then it vanished, and there was only darkness.
With a sound akin to thunder, the link snapped. Books, scrolls and papers rained down, covering every square inch of the floor, and a cloud of dust rose up.
Twilight Sparkle’s eyes fluttered, then rolled into the back of her head before her entire body went limp in Mort’s forelegs.
“Twilight! Twilight!” He shook her, but got no response. “Oh, no. Oh Thanasia, please no!”
His horn glowed, scattering books away from him to make room on the floor. He laid Twilight down gently, and stared at her in terror. Was her chest moving, or was that his imagination?
He focused, and instantly layers of Twilight’s body peeled away, revealing her internal organs and arteries. He watched expectantly, trying to capture every detail. The heart was beating, the lungs were inflating, the blood was flowing, the nervous signals seemed to be zipping along just fine…
Calm down, that’s what he told himself. Calm down. There was no external or internal damage. The body was going through the motions like nothing happened. The heart’s beating fast, but it was stabilizing. Same with her breathing. She was alive.
But what about the place where all the trouble was? What about her brain?
He moved up, watching skin and bone vanished to reveal the most important organ of all. He often wished nature had implemented more redundancy in ponies, like it attempted with the lungs and kidneys. It was a marvel of nature, to be sure, but placing one organ in charge of all memories, hormone secretion and muscle control seemed short sighted. He’d seen too many ponies die just from hitting their head the wrong way. Nowhere else could such a small injury translate into such massive damage.
He took much longer examining her brain. Synapses seemed good, signals were moving from her brain to the spinal cord with no issues, and there was no internal bleeding or even bruising. Still, brain activity seemed minimal, and the regions that controlled her movements and speech were obviously trying, but their efforts bore no fruit. At this point he came close to panicking: there was zero brain damage of any kind, and there was just no real reason for her comatose state. So why…?
There. Her horn. It was still brimming with magical activity, and it seemed to correlate with her brain. Whenever her speech centers sparked, something flickered in her horn. He stared at it, focusing on the senses and data that should tell him the most. What was the magic doing? Why?
Wait. Earlier she had somehow reconnected the link between them with that magic of hers. Usually that link went to Thanasia and the collective unconsciousness, transmitting all the data he collected for the prophecies. When Twilight restored it, all of it ended up going straight to her. What was just a sensory overload became much worse when she used her magic and provided a direct line to her brain. She could have been rendered a vegetable, or the way her horn was glowing, she might have even burst into flames.
Or maybe she would have transcended existence and become something like Discord. Her magic and his insight might have lead to some horrific results. Granted, that had been a slim possibility, but near the end the light that emanated from her body looked remarkably like a pair of wings.
In any case, he’d had no choice but to sever their connection by force, but that should’ve been the end of it. With the link gone, she should have returned to normal, if a little dazed and trying to make sense of the new numbers and equations she had learned. Seeing as how that didn’t happen, though, what else did it mean?
Looking at her horn, he focused and…
“Oh Thanasia.” There it was: a link just like before, going to the right place this time. If only it were coming from the right creature.
Twilight now had her own link to the collective unconscious, which was why she wasn’t responding to anything. Her consciousness was currently dwelling elsewhere. It was just like when he or another shade visited, leaving the physical body while the mind travelled.
Cutting it could create a rubber band effect and send Twilight’s consciousness back, or it might strand her there for an eternity while her body continued to exist in a borderline brain-dead state. There was no precedent for this. Non-shades had never been to the collective unconsciousness. It was supposed to be impossible for non-shades to even get there in the first place! If Thanasia found out...
One step at a time. He’d worry about punishments later. His top priority should be to find Twilight and make sure she was safe. If she was in the collective unconsciousness, then chances were she was having a prolonged experience with none of her typical senses, in a place with none of the typical laws.
He concentrated, trying to enter the collective unconsciousness as always, but continued to find himself in the same place. Evidently whatever happened had only connected Twilight; Mort himself was still cut off. Typical.
He looked at Twilight, thinking of how he could go about this. His eyes focused on her horn, still faintly glowing. An idea began to form in his head. One that wasn’t without risks.
He quickly rushed towards the door and cracked it open, looking out. He was looking for… there. Owlowiscious rested upside down at the roots of a tree, the bubble that had protected him long popped. The owl gradually righted himself, and waddled on the ground unsteadily. Finally their eyes met, and Mort was unsurprised at the level of animosity there was. Still not as bad as Gummy, though.
Owlowiscious wasted little time in taking to the air, and Mort shut the door before hurrying back to Twilight. He might only have a few minutes before somepony showed up. He hoped it would be enough time; a minute out here should be much longer within the collective unconsciousness. That should be enough time to find Twilight, explain what happened, and bring her back.
He positioned her to be leaning next to him, and brought his horn close to hers. He should be able to piggyback on her connection and appear wherever she was. He could then lead her back to her body, and safely severe the connection without any risk to her. After that…
Well, he didn’t know what would happen. A lot of words, probably angry words, would be said. But having Twilight upset with him was the least of his problems. He touched his horn to hers, and watched the world fade away.
“I’m coming,” he said, as the void rushed to greet him.
Darkness. That’s all there was.
Twilight had seen it all. She had literally seen it all just now. All her life she had seen the face of the world, watching its hands click and turn, over and over. She could see it happening, but she hadn’t known why. For several, beautiful moments, the face had been pulled away, and she had seen the interlocked gears underneath. She saw how they fit and moved with each other, and though the machinations were incredibly complex, at the same time they seemed intuitive and obvious. For the first time in her life, everything had made sense.
Then something stole it all away, along with the entire world.
She tried to recall how the world looked, how the world worked, but the face had been slammed shut. She tried to envision the colors she saw, but found it impossible. The best she could do was use the colors she did know, and they were a pale imitation. She tried to recall the numbers and equations that had moved through her head, and only got fuzzy images. The beauty was gone. What remained was murky slush.
She slowly stood up. All around her there was only an inky void, empty of light and sound. She was a lavender drop in a sea of nothing.
There was no sign of Mort. She was all by herself here. She closed her eyes and focused on her horn, but she could feel no magic. Not even a spark.
“Hello?” she called out. “Is anypony there?”
Her voice was swallowed up by the void. There wasn’t even an echo.
“Mort?” She waited for a response, but heard nothing. “Mort, what happened? Where are you? Mort!”
Nothing. She waited, but there was no response. No skull. No red eyes.
“Mort, this isn’t funny anymore!” She spun around, listening for anything. “What did you do?”
There was no answer. The moment stretched longer and longer, and Twilight felt a growing anxiety gnawing away at her. What had happened? What brought her here?
She soon heard herself hyperventilating, and took several deep breaths in an attempt to calm herself. She couldn’t panic. Panic was the last thing she needed.
“Okay, Twilight, stay calm,” she told herself, in a voice that was not too convincing. “You just need to find a way out of here. No biggie. It’s not like you’re stranded in the Everfree Forest or anything, right?”
Right, except even in the Everfree Forest she could determine which way to go to get out. And while there weren’t any monsters or carnivorous plants, the abyss she found herself in was terrifying in its own way. She couldn’t stop wondering if she really was alone, or if there were things out there that she couldn’t see. For all she knew, the sense of distance was imaginary, and she was someplace no bigger than a closet. It was rare for a place to play on somepony’s claustrophobia and agoraphobia at the same time.
Still, it was at least possible to test how much space she had. With literally nothing supporting her, she took a cautious step forward, half-expecting to plummet into infinity. Her hoof came down, stopping at the same level as the rest of her hooves. It wasn’t pushing against anything, it just... stopped.
It took her a few more slow steps to be certain that she wasn’t going to be falling anytime soon, and she started to trot. Each step was like walking on thin air, but something had to be supporting her, or allowing her to move forward.
This went on for what felt like several minutes. The entire time Twilight felt no sense of movement, other than the fact her legs were doing the motion for it. She may have been running in place and never realized it. What kind of place was this, anyway? Did Mort have anything to do with this?
Mort… she felt her temper flare recalling him. He’d been lying to everypony from the start! All those stories he had told were probably made up. She wouldn’t even be surprised if the letter Spike received was a fake as well. It would have been difficult to hijack the connection between Spike and the princesses, but not impossible.
She should’ve trusted Spike. She was going give him the biggest, hardest gems she could find when she got back. Maybe throw some ice cream in there too.
That left her to wonder what Mort was, or where he came from. He never said either. What had he looked like in the library? She could’ve sworn she saw something, but when she thought back, all she could think was that Mort was pure magic. Which still didn’t make sense, because even the most magical creatures had some sort of biology to them. She’d never seen sapient magic.
She tried to recall anything else about him, but that was all she could remember. Things got hazy after Owlowiscious escaped. Things were going white, and all of a sudden she was here. She was sure something else had happened in between, but she couldn’t figure out what.
She let out a short, angry bellow. Darn him! Darn him to Tartaurus and back! What did he want? Why did he come here? Where was he, and what had he—
Her internal tirade was cut short when, looking ahead, she saw a green lights that seemed to flicker and wave, reminding her of fire. She was stunned still for a moment, then quickly galloped towards it, elated to see it was getting closer. At last, something that made sense! She got closer and closer…
Her elation turned into confusion when she finally reached them. The green flames were overhead, coming out of metal bowls that were attached to wooden posts, which hung from stone tiles floating overhead. It looked less like a chandelier and more like an upside down torch. She had trouble making sense of it; why would there be a ceiling but not a floor?
Unless… she had briefly wondered about the state of dimensions here. She had been pushing off on nothing, after all, and since it was nothing all around, that could mean the idea of XYZ motion was nebulous. So what if she got mixed up without realizing it, and the ceiling was actually the flo—
She fell up, and only had enough time to gasp before landing hard on the “ceiling”. Evidently wherever she was operated at least partially on what she thought, which would’ve been nice to know before the faceplant.
Picking herself up, Twilight made sure both hooves were firmly on the stone tiles before looking around. The tiled floor extended as far as she could see, lit by torches that were spaced out just enough to provide the bare minimum of light. While the sight of actual objects was a welcome change, it still made her feel unsettled. Something had to have made this, but now she had to worry if that “something” was friendly.
She began to walk again, reasoning that there had to be more to this place. Perhaps there was a staircase or central area, something that would at least imply a purpose. She looked at the tiles to make sure she was still walking on them, then noticed something she hadn’t before. The tiles, with no two exactly alike in size or shape, all had something carved into them. She saw vultures, tigers, sheep, toads, salmon, timberwolves, and many more that only Fluttershy could have identified.
So that had to mean something, right? There was an air of sacredness to it all, like some ancient temple out of Daring Do, but she couldn’t place the time or style of it.
If this was a temple, then what was ahead of her was certainly the altar; an enormous pillar was coming into view, easily large enough to fit her library inside, and taller than anything in Ponyville. The lighting was such that it cast no shadows over the floor, potentially giving anyone at the top unfettered sight to those below.
A sudden chill sprang up, starting from her hooves and going all the way to the tip of her horn. Looking down, she saw a stone tile that was just large enough to hold her. Carved into it was a picture of an earth pony, a pegasus, and a unicorn chasing each other in a circle, like it was a game. Sitting between them was an alicorn, her head held high and her wings outstretched, looking to be at peace. This was obviously a tile for ponies, but why…
She looked at the pillar again. There was something unusual about the surface, making it look like it was moving. She squinted her eyes, thinking it was some sort of visual illusion, but gasped when she saw that wasn’t the case. The surface really was changing, and constantly, from the looks of it.
She got closer to the pillar, trying to discern what was going on. It seemed to be covered in carvings like the tiles, but these were gradually rotating upward, while new carvings took their place from below. Foxes hunting rabbits, bears eating fish, spiders crawling towards flies, armed ponies confronting unarmed ponies...
What was all this? She brushed a hoof across the image of an eagle holding—
—across the sun, basking in the warm sunlight. It had just finished eating, and was going back home to rest and digest its meal. It had been the second day since it started looking for a mate, but so far had had little luck. It was not worried. There were many potential mates in the area, but fewer suitors. One way or another, it was guaranteed a mate. It was just a matter of time.
Or it would have. Too late it noticed the shadow growing larger beneath it, and by the time it did it was already flying away from the earth, hanging in the talons of a flyer. It twisted and tried to bite its abductor, but then the beak shot down and then there was—
—a snake.
Twilight gasped and pulled her hoof away from the pillar as if it were molten rock. She held a hoof up to her head to steady herself, making sure she was actually here.
“W-what in Equestria?” Was that just her imagination, or… no, she could’ve sworn she was actually there. She could remember the heat, the smells, the way the radiation reflected off…
Radiation?
She looked up at the pillar. The carving was slowly traversing upward, now out of reach. Twilight found herself reaching for it again, and before she could stop herself she touch a carving of a gazelle and—
—it looked right and left, watching the tall grass for any sign of movement. When it was satisfied that no predators were lying in wait, it bent its head down and began to drink from the watering hole.
It told itself it just needed a few sips, but it was so thirsty, and it had already seen there was no danger. Its eyes looked out across the water, and focused on a log that was drifting closer to it. Odd, it wondered why it had those orbs in the middle of—
—an alligator.
Twilight clenched her teeth. Again, she felt the sensation that she was actually there, if only as a bystander. And again, she knew and felt things she couldn’t have. Not as a pony, at any rate.
It was just like the library. After she used that spell, she was looking at the world in a way that should’ve been impossible. Anything that could have been measured was visible to her, even things ponies didn’t have a name for yet.
The carving moved up, and Twilight’s eyes danced across the pillar. She had a sinking feeling that she knew what this was. The visions, these images, they all had one thing in common. She spotted a carving that looked like a dog curled up in its bed. She reached for it, but at the last moment misjudged the distance and touched the—
—avalanche had started.
The earth pony nudged his mountain goat companion, trying to get him to move, but the fall had shattered bone and sent the fragments deep into its organs. The bleeding was grievous and lethal, and death would soon follow, even without the cascade of snow, ice and rock coming their way.
It stood by patiently, briefly wondering where she was, and then wondered no more as she flew down from above, landing next to the pony as he tried to drag his companion to nonexistent safety.
The alicorn, her mane almost as white as the snow that blew past, watched them detachedly with yellow eyes as their doom approached. The pony strained and slipped, his head passing through her gray coat like she wasn’t there. The pony gasped, but not from the fall.
The final seconds approached, and as the white wall bore down on the two creatures, the alicorn closed her eyes, a green scythe forming above her head. It decided to ready itself as well, and felt the magic enter its simple horns for the final nudge.
At last it hit, and with exact precision the two of them struck—
—the pony and goat.
Twilight slowly pulled her hoof back, her lips trembling. That had been a pony. She just watched an innocent pony die in front of her, and she couldn’t do anything. But that wasn’t even the worst of it. That alicorn had formed a scythe that looked exactly like the one Mort used. And she used it the moment that poor stallion…
From the depths of Twilight’s mind, something began to scrabble its way upward. It was a picture she had seen a long time ago, in a book filled with myths and legends. It had a pitiful, emaciated pony, cowering in front of a towering, skeletal alicorn whose cloak barely covered the front-half of its body. Its skeletal wings were stretched out and in its mouth it wielded a giant scythe, with ghastly faces drifting up from the blade like steam. A horn protruded from its skull, curved and sharp like the scythe it wielded.
Mort wasn’t as tall, but he had the wings, he had the horn, he lacked the flesh, and he knew things he shouldn’t know. All those stories, all those mentionings, always having to do with peril or death.
Memories came rushing back to her. Memories of Mort holding her, whispering apologies, before the scythe appeared and—
“No,” she whispered, backing away from pillar. “No, no, no no no no no...”
The rest of it got mangled by choking sobs, and Twilight fell as all her strength left her. She was crying, but couldn’t feel the tears that should’ve been coursing down her cheek. She heaved and choked, but didn’t feel any actual air. She felt the floor insofar that it resisted her, but it didn’t feel like stone or ceramic.
You needed a body for those sorts of sensations, but her body was still in the library. How long would it be before somepony discovered her? It made her sick thinking that it might be Spike. He was too young for something like that.
Spike… she wished so hard she had listened to him. She kept blowing his suspicions off as being complete nonsense, but he was right the entire time. What was going to become of him after this? What would her friends do?
Thinking about them caused Twilight to bury her face in hooves, as more sobs wracked her body, or soul, or whatever it was now. She was never going to see any of them again. She wasn’t going to see Rainbow Dash become a Wonderbolt, never see Rarity become famous, never see the Cutie Mark Crusaders get their cutie marks, never see Spike grow up…
“Why?” she asked. “What did I do to deserve this?”
She hadn’t expected an answer, and it was for that reason that the flash of light behind her made Twilight shoot to her hooves and spin around. Mort stood behind her, standing on the tile with the ponies on it. His back was towards her.
“Twilight?” he called. “Twilight, are you there? If you can hear me, say… oh.”
He turned around and saw her. Twilight flinched, and at the same moment his shoulders slumped. His eyes looked beyond her towards the pillar, then went back to her.
“Are you okay, Twilight?” he asked. “How long have you been waiting here?”
She shook her head. What was going to happen now? Was he going to take her someplace else? Or did something even more awful happen after death?
“Did you touch that pillar?” he asked, pointing at it. She nodded eventually. “What did you see?”
“I-I saw animals, and ponies…” She swallowed, briefly wondering why she would. “I-I saw them dying…”
Upon hearing that, Mort looked downcast. “I’m sorry you saw that,” he said. “I’m sorry about everything.”
She wiped at her eyes, trying to recompose herself. “Is it true? Are you Death or something?”
“No, I’m… I’m as much Death as Celestia is the sun, or Luna is the moon,” he said. “I’ve gotten a lot of titles over the years, like Pale Pony, and Skull Stallion… but at the end of the day my name’s still Mort. That’s who I am.”
Third time’s the charm. “So what are you, then?”
“I’m a shade. I—we are creatures that reap souls from the dead.” He gestured at the tiles around him, and it took Twlight a moment to grasp their purpose. These ‘shades’ were represented by the tiles that surrounded them. There appeared to be thousands of them. Mort, it appeared, was but a small part of an enormous enterprise.
Whether he was the literal Death or just an agent, her worst fears seemed confirmed. “S-so I’m dead, then? Is this the afterlife or something?”
“No,” he said quickly. “This place, where we’re at right now, is called the collective unconsciousness. It’s what every shade is connected to. As for you, right now your body is back in the library, resting. You’re breathing on your own, there’s no brain damage, or even bruises…” He breathed out, sounding relieved. “You’re alive, Twilight.”
“Don’t lie to me,” she said, not willing to get her hopes up just yet. “I saw your scythe. I saw you swinging it at me!”
“Not at you, Twilight. I swung it at the link between us.” His horn glowed, forming a tether of magic similar to the that had been between them, then it vanished. “You were seeing everything I was seeing. That’s too much for any one pony, even you. If I hadn’t, you could’ve been rendered a vegetable, or...” He sighed, sounding ashamed. “You could’ve even died.”
Twilight tried to wrap her mind around this. “You were trying to protect me?”
He nodded.
“But… you’re the Pale Pony. Wouldn’t you want me dead?”
At this his head shot up, and he sounded genuinely horrified. “Why would I want that?”
“Well, because… because of all those times I didn’t die, right?” Now that she said it out loud, it didn’t sound as reasonable as she thought. “Like what happened with the Hydra, or...”
He was already shaking his head. “There’s no cosmic quota I need to meet or anything, Twilight. If a pony avoids dying, they avoid dying. That’s it. We don’t go after them or anything. I was happy that the Hydra didn’t get you! When that bubble popped up and saved you, I was…” He shook his head, sighing wistfully. “I can’t tell you how relieved I was. I think I might have even danced a little bit.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “You were glad I didn’t die?”
“Of course I was! You’re one of the most amazing ponies I’ve ever seen, and...” He stopped, and sighed. “Just because I reap dead ponies doesn’t mean I want them to die all the time. I mean, think about it. Does your brother hope there’s a war just so he can protect Canterlot? Does… does Fluttershy want animals getting hurt just so she can treat them? Do you want Equestria in peril all the time so you can use the Elements of Harmony?”
“Well, of course not…”
“Exactly! My job isn’t to pick ponies at random and kill them. My job is to make sure the soul gets separated from the body once death does occur. That’s what the scythe is for. That’s all it’s for.” He crossed his forelegs, his voice resolute. “I will never, ever use it to harm another living creature. Especially you, Twilight.”
Twilight opened her mouth to argue, then shut it. She didn’t know what to believe. She wanted to believe him because she wanted to be alive, but she couldn’t shake the suspicions she had. It kept coming back to him hiding it all in the first place. At the same time, he was speaking with a confidence she had rarely heard from him today. If this was him lying, why didn’t he lie like this before?
“I don’t know,” she said, holding her head. “I-I just don’t know anymore…”
“I… I guess I can’t fault you for not believing me,” he said, his shoulders slumping. He scratched his head, thinking. Then his eyes widened and he looked at her. “How about this? Put your hoof on your chest.”
“Why?”
“Trust me,” he said, placing a hoof on his own chest.
The issue was she wasn’t sure if she could, but this seemed harmless enough to try. She placed a hoof on her chest and waited. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing.
“I don’t feel anything,” she said.
“Give it time.”
So she did. What felt like a full minute had passed, and when she was ready to pull her hoof away, she felt it and gasped.
“Did you feel it?”
“W-wait, wait…” She put her hooves there again, waiting. Like before, so much time was passing that it seemed like nothing would happen. She remained patient, holding onto that thin hope, and…
There. A beat within her chest. It came slowly and felt like an echo of itself, but it was certainly there.
“T-that was…” She looked at him, and he nodded.
“Your heart,” he said. “Your consciousness may be here, but it’s still connected to your body. Everything your body experiences, you experience here. It’s just not going to feel as strong.”
“S-so I’m not dead?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
Twilight collapsed on her rump, and felt a torrent of relief flow through her. She was still alive. She could still go back, be with her friends and family. She didn’t try to control herself. She let the tears flow freely and sat there, crying quietly to herself.
When she felt she was done, she looked back up at Mort. He kept his head down, looking at his hooves.
Finally, she found the courage to ask, “So I’m not going to die today?”
“No,” he said, shaking his his head.
“And everypony else?”
“Not them, either,” he said. “At least, not the ones in Ponyville. Not now, I mean. Tomorrow’s another day, but I’m pretty sure everypony’s safe right now.”
She bit her lip. “You don’t sound too sure.”
“Nopony has a set lifetime,” he said. “We never know when something will die, but we can pretty accurately predict if they will within a couple days. That’s what all the information you saw is for. It’s like when ponies forecast the weather patterns in the Everfree forest. They don’t know what the weather will do, but their knowledge of how it works and prior history can give them a pretty good idea of what will happen.”
“I think I get it,” she said, nodding. “So that’s why you knew about the hydra even if nothing happened?”
“Exactly.”
She tapped her forehooves, a question growing in her head. “I hate to ask, but… do you see my friends and I often?”
“W-well, um…” There it was, the stutter. And it always seemed to pop up when he was asked to say something he, or somepony else, might not like. “Let’s just say I see you all as often as I would other heroes.”
She found herself smiling. Rainbow Dash would probably be flattered to hear that, even if it was a more tactful way of saying that they had a lot of brushes with death.
“So, why are you really here? What did you want?”
“Nothing much,” he said. “Just… a little time off. Like Luna said.”
Twilight’s jaw dropped. “So that letter was...?”
“Absolutely genuine,” he said. “It’s a long story, but I do know the princesses. We thought it’d be easier if everypony thought I was just a regular pony. That, um, didn’t seem to pan out too well.”
It really could have gone better, and while the skeptic in her wanted to doubt Mort’s words, Twilight had been confident the letter was real. The style of writing, the archaic words and spellings… it was genuine Luna. If he wanted to fake a letter, Celestia would’ve been much easier to imitate.
She would need to ask them about Mort later. She was fairly certain she never dozed off in a lesson about the Pale Pony.
“I didn’t know the Pale Pony took vacations,” she said. There was a lot she didn’t know, evidently.
“Well, to be completely honest, I don’t,” he said. “This is my first one in forever.”
“And how long is ‘forever’, exactly?”
He told her.
She stared at him blankly. “I don’t think I heard you the first time. Could you repeat that?”
He did.
She blinked a couple times. “That’s, uh… that’s a very exact number.”
“Well, sometimes the days were really short or long because of feuding unicorns or the like,” he explained, “and for a while Celestia was experimenting to find the ‘optimal’ length of a day, but that’s all taken into consideration, so I think it’s pretty accurate.”
“Yes, it does sound like that.” It was also a very large number. “I didn’t take you to be so... old.”
“I’m not old, just… long lived,” he said self-consciously. “I’m still young! You know, relatively speaking.”
She giggled. Relative to the planet, perhaps. “So, that entire time, you’ve just been reaping ponies? That’s it?”
“Well, there’ve been lulls,” he said. “Though, this past century, they’ve been getting shorter and more scarce. Ponies are living longer and having more foals as a result, and less of those foals are dying at birth every year. Those same foals foals are growing up in a world where there isn’t much war or famine anymore, and some of the worst diseases are either gone or have been rendered virtually harmless thanks to medicine. Add it all up and the pony population is going to be booming for the foreseeable future. With that many ponies, it doesn’t matter if they’re healthier or living longer. There’s going to be so many that, one of these days, I’ll start moving and never stop.” He shrugged. “But what can you do, right?”
“Right…” There was a tone in his voice that suggested he wasn’t too happy about that, and while Twilight thought it was great that ponies were living longer, she wasn’t the one in charge of gathering their souls every hour of every day. “And you’re the only one doing it?”
He nodded. “Yep. One shade per species, that’s how we do it.”
“But isn’t that hard on you?”
“It can be,” he admitted. “I have to see lots of ponies every day, and… well, not a lot of them are really happy to see me. Some even blame me. And when I do meet a nice pony who understands, they don’t ever stick around for very long.”
Her ears dropped in sympathy. “That sounds awful.”
“Well, it’s… it’s not that bad,” he said. “I-I mean, it’s not like I hate it or anything. I get to do good things being the Pale Pony! I can pass along messages, take them places they couldn’t go before, or even… just listen to them. Sometimes that’s all they really want: someone to talk to.”
“Why do you, then?”
“Well, somepony has to. I mean, death can be really scary for a pony. Especially the… the younger ones,” he said, his voice dropping. “I-I don’t want them to face it alone, you know? I want them to have a shoulder to lean on if they need it. They deserve that much, at least. M-maybe that sounds sappy—”
“No, no! I… I think that’s actually kinda sweet.”
Mort looked at her in surprise, and she got the feeling he meant to be smiling. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry I lied to you before. It’s just... well, if you wanted to get close to ponies, and you wanted those ponies to like you, wouldn’t you hide things about yourself? Things they wouldn’t understand, or might really scare them?”
She found herself dwelling on the question. If there was something about Twilight she was afraid to share, something that could scare or alienate her friends, would she still tell them? It bothered her the answer wasn’t an unambiguous ‘yes’. She never had to worry about anything like that. The closest she came was the time she feared her friends would think of her as some kind of braggart, but that seemed so trivial compared to this.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but I do think would be kind of sad. Needing to be somepony else just to make friends? It’s like...” She shrugged, the thought slightly depressing her. “Could you really say they’re friends with you if it’s not really you they know?”
He seemed to think about this, then nodded slowly. “That’s a really good point,” he said. “Still, I… I wanted to see what it was like being ‘Mort’ for a while, you know? Not the Pale Pony, or the Skull Stallion, or anything like that. Just… Mort.”
She nodded in understanding. Celestia had occasionally told her how difficult it was to socialize when everypony was afraid of offending her. She couldn’t imagine what it’d be like if everypony feared her instead. Even Luna was forgiven relatively quickly, and that may have been because her crimes were so long ago that it didn’t affect anypony anymore. Mort, though… even if he wasn’t the one who did it, death was something that would always be there. They might not just fear him, they might hate him as well.
This was the Pale Pony, she thought. Aside from the physical description, they got everything else wrong. Was this why he was always shown as being monstrous or apathetic? Something like this would be easy if he were heartless and just doing his job, but this wasn’t just a job for him. He cared about the ponies, he cared about their well being, and in return the responsibility was crushing him.
She actually found herself getting angry. Not at Mort, but the situation he was in. This wasn’t fair.
For a time, no word was shared between them. The only movement was from the green flames that danced and flickered on the torches around them.
“I, uh, can take you back,” he said. “We can go anytime you want, it’s just… I-I guess I just wanted to explain myself.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I… I appreciate you for telling me the truth, Mort.”
“Well, better late than never, right?” He tapped his forehooves together, and bowed his head towards her. “Thank you for listening, Twilight. You don’t… I-I mean, I don’t have to stick around, if you don’t want me to.”
She looked at him, confused. “Huh?”
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “If you need time to think about it, or if you’re not comfortable with me, I can go somewhere else. Really, it’s fine! I don’t… I don’t want you to feel you have to.”
“Well, what would happen?” she asked. “Would you just go somewhere else?”
“Maybe, maybe,” he said. “Or I might just… go back to work, I guess. I mean, today’s just been a disaster, and I don’t want things getting worse…”
He was trying to play this whole thing off like it was no big deal, but it was so obvious that wasn’t the case at all. If it was no big deal, he wouldn’t have tried so hard to earn their approval or forgiveness. He didn’t want to go back to reaping. Not yet, at any rate.
It was only going to get worse, wasn’t it? She had seen the population projection graphs in her school work and research. They were approaching a point where there would be more ponies alive than there would have ever died, and it would only continue to grow exponentially after that. Twilight loved her reading and research, but she could never do it hour after hour with no rest or no way to change it up. Not even before she met her friends.
Her friends. She didn’t even want to try and imagine what her life would be like without them. They were more important and valuable to her than every book ever written combined. If Mort could experience even a little bit of that magic…
“You don’t have to leave,” she said.
He blinked at her. “Huh?”
“I-I mean…” She hesitated. Doubts arose in her mind; she couldn’t do this, they said. She shouldn’t do this. This was the Pale Pony. This was something as old as ponykind, that reaped the souls from the dead and who would do the same to her one day. Now she was going to be responsible for making sure he was happy? She couldn’t do this. It was just too big.
She crushed those thoughts with a giant, mental stomp. “Too big” was no excuse. Not anymore. She’d already faced and prevailed against creatures and situations that ponies could have gone their entire lives without ever even hearing about. Now, for once, she was doing something that didn’t involve an ancient evil or mortal danger. She just needed to show him a side of life he could never experience, and through no fault of his own.
Was he the Pale Pony? Yes. Did that make the situation “too big” to help? From what she had seen and heard so far, absolutely not. Mort wasn’t some unfathomable entity beyond comprehension. If he was, she wouldn’t have seen how much this was hurting him.
“You don’t have to leave,” she repeated. “You can… you can stick around, if you really want to.”
He glanced around. “But… I don’t want to scare you, or anything.”
“Scare me? Come on.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ll admit, you gave me a pretty big shock back there—” That was an understatement. “—and I’m still a little sore with you hiding this, but I think can understand why. If I were in your hooves, and I wanted ponies to accept me as badly as you did…” She shrugged. “Well, I’d be scared of letting them know, too.”
“So… it doesn’t bother you?”
“Hey, so long as you’re not bringing eternal night, brainwashing my brother, or making it rain chocolate milk, I think I can manage.” She thought over her words, and giggled. “Actually, I think the chocolate rain would be pretty fun.”
“W-well, I can’t do anything like that,” he said bashfully.
“Well darn. Then I’ll just have to settle with you being nice.” Mort stared at her, and Twilight was afraid the good-natured sarcasm flew over his head.
“Oh. Oh! Yeah, sure,” he said, nodding eagerly. “I can do nice! I’m very… nice, yes. Very nice.”
She grinned. This could work, she thought. They could go back, fix things up… in fact, things might even be better now. She could cover for him when somepony saw something weird, or encourage him to do things he couldn’t normally do.
All they had to do was leave, but Twilight found herself reluctant to do so. She wanted to go back, but it was dawning on her that she was someplace nopony had ever been before. When would she ever get another chance to explore this place?
“You know,” she said, walking up to him. “We don’t have to leave here right away, either.”
He looked at her in surprise. “We don’t?”
“I kind of want to look around here,” she said, gesturing at the tiled floor. “Could we do that before we go?”
“Are you sure? It’s not very exciting, or anything…”
“That’s okay,” she said, shrugging. “Maybe you can tell me more about yourself, or how this all works?”
“Hmm… I don’t know.” He sat down and scratched his chin, humming uncertainly. “You’re not supposed to be here, really.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, if that’s the case…”
She hadn’t meant to sound so disappointed. Twilight was always a stickler for rules, and she hated to have somepony get in trouble because of something she did. It wasn’t like Mort couldn’t explain anything back at the library.
But it was the disappointed tone that made him look up, and she could see the gears turning in his head.
“W-well, on the other hoof, there technically aren’t any rules explicitly forbidding you, either,” he said.
She smiled apologetically. “Mort, you really don’t have to—”
“No, no, it’s fine! I’ll show you around, tell you about the other shades, it’ll be fun!”
“Well…” She glanced around, feeling a little nervous. Usually something that wasn’t explictly allowed or forbidden was assumed to be the latter, but her curiosity was getting the better of her, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility of seeing an unknown animal on one of the tiles. Plus Mort sounded so eager now...
“Lead the way,” she said, smiling at him, and began to follow.
Spike stood patiently next to Rarity, holding in his hands a basket filled with the quintessential scissors, needles, and thread. They were both currently inside the Carousel Boutique as the fashionista opted to pass the time by working through her backlog, hoping to at least get preliminary work done before later.
Upstairs, Sweetie Belle and her two friends were currently working on their future schemes for cutie marks, after grumbling about how their skydiving plan was a no-go. He didn’t know what they were working on next, but he planned to stay out of it. Whenever he got involved when they were in that mood, the plans always seemed to circle around using him. Dragon tamers, dragon caretakers, dragon riders… somehow putting ‘dragon’ in front of anything opened up a plethora of possibilities.
While he would usually use this time to ogl—appreciate Rarity, his thoughts were elsewhere. Twilight and Mort were currently at the library, and it rankled his scales. He had promised to go easier on Mort, and he honestly thought he had, but he still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. His draconic instincts told him he needed to keep an eye on the cloaked pony, but here he was, and meanwhile Mort was alone with Twilight. The thought was disquieting.
“So, what do you think Twilight and Mort are doing?” Spike asked, trying to sound casual. He knew they were supposed to be doing magic practice, but he saw Twilight and Rarity speaking earlier. Maybe she knew something?
Rarity finished pinning another piece of cloth to the ponnequin, and flipped the front of her stylized mane. “Oh, I’m sure they have plenty to discuss,” she said, with a knowing look.
Spike put a hand on his waist, arching an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She pouted her lips and hummed thoughtfully. “Well, they may have things to discuss besides magic.”
What was that supposed to mean? They were the library, all alone. What else would they—
Oh ew ew ew. “Gross, Rarity! Don’t be weird!”
Rarity giggled, the melodious noise making his heart flutter in spite of the earlier mental image. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll understand when you’re older,” she said. “In the meantime, could you pass me those scissors?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure…”
“Thank you!” She floated the scissors towards her, cutting along the dotted line.
It wasn’t that Spike didn’t understand romance, but the last thing he wanted was to give Mort more reasons to be here. He knew he was on vacation, and wanted it to stay that way. He could tolerate small doses, but anything more than that, and his draconic instincts would start driving him nuts! He could only ignore them for so long at a time.
“Well, it looks like we’ve got quite a bit left over, don’t we?” Rarity floated a pile of snipped cloth in front of her, looking over it critically. “Oh dear, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to use all of this.”
“Is there too much?”
“No, it’s just… unworkable.” She pulled one from the pile to show Spike. Shapes had been cut out of it, and while there was still quite a bit left, it was in no condition to create so much as a sleeve. “I’d hate to throw it all away...”
“What about Sweetie Belle and the others?” he asked helpfully. “Maybe they can use it?”
Rarity’s eyes lit up. “Ah, a wonderful idea! Thank you so much, Spikey.”
She rubbed the side of his cheek, and his left foot started tapping rapidly. He felt lighter than air, a breeze away from floating off.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, heading upstairs. “If you see any customers, be a dear and let them in, won’t you?”
“O-oh yeah, sure thing!” He saluted smartly, and kept the pose until she had disappeared upstairs.
He clapped his hands, rubbing them together. “Okay, Spike the Number One Assistant is on the case! Now, how should I do this…?” He scratched his chin, thinking. “Uh… ‘Hello, and welcome to the Carousel Boutique, your one-stop shop for…’” He cleared his throat. “Good ‘morrow, sir-slash-madam, and welcome to the Carousel Boutique, where we shall attend all your—’”
He couldn’t go any further before going into a coughing fit, and rubbed his throat. “Geeze, how does anyone talk like that?”
Thump.
“Huh?”
Thump!
Spike spun towards the door, and hurried over to it. “O-okay, I got it! I got it!” He swung the door open and bowed immediately. “Hello, and welcome to—”
“Hoo!”
Spike’s shout was muffled as something feathery suddenly flew into his face, knocking him over. He pushed himself up, and blinked the stars from his eyes to see what it was. “Owlowiscious?”
Owlowiscious raised his head, his eyes rolling around. “Hoo?”
“What are you doing here?” he asked, picking the owl up.
Owlowiscious shook his head, looked around, and immediately took the air. “Hoo!”
“Huh?”
“Hoo!”
Spike scratched his head. “Uh, I’m sorry, I don’t speak owl. Maybe we could get Fluttershy—ow!”
Owlowiscious ducked back, avoiding a backhand from Spike. The baby dragon rubbed his chin, where Owlowiscious had tried to grab on with his talons.
“What’s with you?! Why aren’t you at…” As the question sunk in, so did the implications. “Oh no,” he gasped. “Owlowiscious, did something happen at the library?!”
“Hoo!” Owlowiscious hovered by the door, looking expectantly at Spike.
Oh, he knew it! He knew Mort was up to no good! Why didn’t he trust his instincts?! He got up and headed for the stairs—
Then stopped. What if this wasn’t a big deal? He’d been trying all day to stay nice to Mort, especially in front of Rarity. If this was just another misunderstanding, what would Twilight think? What would Rarity think?
Maybe… maybe he should check for smoke before screaming fire. If anything went wrong, he could always breath flames at him. That should be more than enough for a clumsy unicorn, right?
He ran back to the door, and pointed outside. “Lead the way, Owlowiscious!”
“Hoo!”
By the time Spike reached the library, he had broken into a sweat and was panting heavily. Dragons were just not meant for running. Not on two legs, at least.
“This…” He stopped momentarily, supporting himself on his knees. “T-this better be good, Owlowiscious,” he said, jabbing his finger at the owl.
Owlowiscious hooted and perched next to the ruined library sign, his eyes urging Spike onward. Groaning softly, he trudged towards the entrance, his ears listening for anything. Immediately he was struck by how quiet it was. It shouldn’t have been unusual—this was a library, after all—but he thought he’d at least hear Twilight talking from inside. She was supposed to be teaching things, right?
The other thing to cause him concern was the door. He pushed on it, and found that it resisted him. He gritted his teeth, shoved with all his might, and finally it swung inward, causing something to go crashing on the opposite side.
Spike’s jaw dropped at the sight: books and scrolls covered the entire floor, leaving no room for anyone to stand. Dust hovered in the sunlight, almost making him sneeze. The ground floor looked to be the epicenter of a localized tornado.
“T-Twilight?” Owlowiscious flew in above, and perched on one of the empty shelves, pointing with his wing. Spike followed it and saw Twilight lying down in the back, seemingly asleep and leaning against Mort. The books had been dug out so that the two would be on the floor. A faint glow floated in between them, and it took Spike a moment to see that it was from their horns touching.
“Twilight?” He made his way across the floor, careful not to step too hard on any of the books. Like he needed that earful. “What’s going on? W-what’s Mort doing?”
Twilight’s ears twitched, but aside from that she didn’t stir. Neither did Mort, whose face was obscured by his hood. Spike’s misgivings about Mort intensified upon seeing him. He always looked “off” in some way, and somehow that seemed truer now. The cloak looked less clothlike, his body seemed thinner, and… since when did unicorn horns curve that much? Or look that thin? Or sharp?
He stopped in front of them. Twilight was breathing slowly, but regularly. Mort was not. In fact, Mort wasn’t breathing at all.
“Uh, Mort?” He reached his hands up, grasping the sides of the hood to lift it back. “What’s going…”
Spike’s arms froze as he got a good look at Mort. He had always thought he looked relatively thin, and those red eyes kinda creeped him out, but it was less creepier than, say, a skull. Which was what stared at Spike right now, with cavernous sockets that seemed to go on forever.
He screamed and shot across the floor, hiding behind a stack of books. He leaned against the stack, his heart racing faster than what any marathon would have done. Peeking out, he rubbed his eyes to confirm he wasn’t crazy, and indeed he wasn’t: Mort was a skeleton.
Mort was dead.
Spike nibbled at his fingertips, terror setting in. What in Equestria had happened?! Did a magical experiment go wrong and do something to Mort? What was happening to Twilight? Why wasn’t she awake, and what was with that glow?
Wait.
He forced himself to look at Mort again, and focused on the horn. Mixed in with Twilight’s signature magic was a green magic he had only seen from the cloaked pony. And it seemed to still be coming from him. Spike was not an expert on magic, but he was confident that shouldn’t happen if the unicorn was dead.
What if… what if Mort wasn’t dead at all? Spike had always thought he looked unusual, and while he saw red eyes and a curved horn before, none of the others seemed to have noticed as much. And all those animals freaked out every time they saw Mort, too.
What if Mort had always been like this, and had just hidden it all along? That would mean...
“Oh my gosh.” He ran to a pile of papers, digging through them until he found a blank sheet and some ink. “Owlowiscious! Come down here!”
“Hoo?” He floated down, perching on a book next to him.
“Give me your wing!”
“Hoo ooh!”
“Sorry,” he said, as the owl glared at him and rubbed the spot where the feather had been plucked. Sticking it in the ink, Spike wrote a message on the paper:
PRINCESS
COME QUICK
LIBRARY
TWILIGHT WONT WAKE UP
MORT IS A ZOMBIE
HURRY!!
He used so much ink on the last line he was afraid it would bleed through. He rolled the scroll up, put on a haphazard binding, and ignited it. The green cloud twirled in the air, and then flew out the door.
“We have to find the others!” he said, running to the door. “Go find Rainbow Dash! Get her back here!”
“Hoo!”
Something bounced off of Spike’s head. Rubbing the spot, he looked at his feet and saw Mort’s medallion. He looked back up at Owlowiscious, who moved his beak from Spike to the medallion, as if trying to tell him something.
He looked at the leaning skeleton, then looked at the medallion. Was it not coincidental that he definitely look like a skeleton now at the moment he wasn’t wearing this? He wrapped the chain around his arm to secure the medallion, then opened the door.
As Owlowiscious flew out the door, Spike looked behind him one last time. He didn’t want to leave Twilight leaning against Mort, especially when it was clear that there seemed to be some kind of magic going on, but he feared what would happen if he interrupted it. Good or bad, it was often dangerous to interrupt a spell in progress. He didn’t want to do anything until the princesses were here.
“I’ll be back, Twilight,” he said, and took off towards the Boutique.
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It lives!
I'm so glad Mort is still on vacation right now!
My sequence of events so far:
See new chapter.
Freeze in shock.
Drop everything.
Start reading.
OHMYGOD IT UPDATED *crashing of furniture and other household appliances here*
It's BAACK!
Mort lives! Uh... you know what I mean.
Gotta say, your update frequency sucks. Story is hilarious tho.
A-a-a-an update? On my fave story?
...
media.tumblr.com/fdc4087c157df92177120d3d34f2c68e/tumblr_inline_mlk8stQ9fS1qz4rgp.gif
Jesus fuck you're alive
Oh my god. It's finally here!
And all of a sudden, sleep is no longer a priority.
Great chapter, definitely worth the wait. I was expecting an angry Thanasia to appear at the end.
Ermahgerd been wanting so long for this!
Was not disappointed
Keep up the good work!
IT LIVES! This chapter is great! Finally somebody is on Mort's side!
It's back!
And oh dear. Looks like maybe Mort ought to have kept better track of time. :)
I do kind of want to see what would have happened if Mort hadn't severed Twilight's connection when he did...
An update?
*drops every thing*
Oh, is it normal to be reading this at 3 am?
I love this story also do to the chapter title....
I'm not gay, but I would totally suck this authors dick for the amazing work he has done... Again, I'm not gay this is just that good of a story...
Author, thank you so much for this story..
At least it was not Thanasia
4221111
There are some things you just don't say. That is one of them.
Seriously, stop throwing shit at me.
—The Fan.
4221111 media.tumblr.com/f4f1a9ec5a1a8212b4e71ced4d132f24/tumblr_inline_molj95Xs5r1qz4rgp.gif
that was most mature thing I ever heard.
Couldn't help but think:
My eyes must be deceiving me! It cannot be!
Omg a update! Love this so much! Great job!
When I saw this story updated I screamed and cried.
I'M SO HAPPY!
Just one line for editing -
>Those same foals foals
It's nice to see another chapter, too.
"The Sun is also raised" made me chuckle.
Also:
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20100416
Yes, its been so long! And not just one up date but TWO!? This is freaking awesome!
Gotta find time today to read the other chapter, this story just oozes suspense.
Great chapter, my only complaint is Twilight's and Mort's decision to stay in the collective unconscious. Twilight feared Spike would be the one to find her body and Mort worried someone would be walking into the library any minute and stumble upon a bad scene, but both completely forget the worry a few minutes later and decide to dilly-dally. Talk about a lack of foresight and short attention spans.
Awesome
4221741 Seconded.
Hoe does she know her name?
ok I most ask you: did you get the idea of twilight possible death, by looking at the universe from the "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" movie or somewhere else because that's what I was thinking.
thumbs up or reply back to this comment if you thought of this as well. i'm interested to know.
Two updates, on Mort Takes a Holiday? Christmas came early.
YAAAY I'M FLIPPING EXCITED BUT I'M ALSO EXPECTING AN APOLOGY FOR ALL OF THIS!!!!
ME HATE WAITING!!!!
And that's why I'm always getting in trouble - I assume it to be the former! If you don't want me doing something, tell me not to do it!
It's alive!
So many wins. I thought this story was dead. Huzzah!
YYEEESSSSSSSSS
The moment I saw this update I was like "Ooohh my goooood!
4222601
Honestly it didn't bother me when I thought about it. Twilight was worried that she had died and that it'd be Spike who'd be the first to find her dead body. Once she learned that she wasn't indeed dead her natural curiosity took hold; if anything she'd think they'd just find her "asleep". Mort on the other hand I thought was physically, as "physical" as a shade can be, in the collective unconsciousness. So when he appeared there I thought it was just Twilight Sparkle all alone in the library appearing as if she was asleep. However as we know Mort's "body" is there as well. The only way I could rationalize it is that this is the first time he's ever had a friend over and just lost his trail of thought at the prospect of showing his friend around.
o-o
yes!
This chapter...
It requires more cowbell
As an alternative:
I honestly prefer the original though.
Great chapter. As always. Well worth the wait.
Think you missed one word, "that" or something like it, somewhere. Also, shouldn't it be "like the library had been the epicenter"? As you wrote it, it sounds like the hypothetical (and unbeknownst to Spike, actual) tornado is still going.
Lastly, I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure "what's" always means "what is" and that it can't be used as a stand-in for "what was". It looks like wrong tense to me at least and throws me off when I read it, so I suggest only using "what's" as a substitute for "what is."
Now, time to read next chapter!
I just want to say, this is a magnificent and brilliant speech
It's a dangerous business, indeed
Rarity has no idea how close she is. They are, in fact, discussing the "facts of life"
Welp. Looks like Twilight's curiosity has set them up for another mess of panic and misunderstandings!
Remarks and corrections:
> the calculations running through her head at lightening speed
I think you mean "lightning speed".
> she saw a green lights that seemed to flicker and wave
Should be either "a green light" or "green lights", but not a combination of the two.
> and it took Twlight a moment to grasp their purpose
You misspelled "Twilight".
I've had this story in my Read Later forever, and decided to check out a chapter on a lark (this one).
Welp, I'm hooked. Loved this chapter a lot, and I'm pretty much committed to reading the rest now. Great story, man!
Normally I am NOT a fan of 15k chapters, but when they are for this story, I am fine with them. Glad I see you finally get them out!
4229682 well, you picked a great time to start. It just updated after a year of inactivity.