It has been touched upon before that time does not flow equally in all realms. Due to the magical nature of the Disc and some of its otherworldly inhabitants, it could also be said that time does not flow equally within the realm, let alone beyond it. Bill Door had spent just over a week in Ponyville, while Pinkie Pie had been on the Disc for several months. Death, however, felt as though it had been years. Perhaps it had been, for her, for time in Death’s Realm is not a law so much as a suggestion.
In that insignificant city, in the small room of the small house, Death had rebelled. She had done that which she was not permitted to do: she had extended life. The hourglass was much more than just a symbol, its sands truly measured the span of a mortal’s life on the Disc. If a mortal were to find their own hourglass in Death’s vast collection, they could attempt to turn it over themselves, but it would be a wasted effort. The sand will continue to flow in the same direction, measuring the seconds from birth to death.
Only Death can reverse that flow. Only Death can turn the timer and send the sand back into its bulb. Death had that power for a single reason: to teach him humility, that he was not Master of Life and Death. He was no ruler, no king or god. He was the Reaper, and he merely harvested what was sown. A servant of life, walking the fields and gleaning the fallen grains.
Many times, Death had considered turning the timers. He had only done so a handful of occasions, in all the vast span of his existence. The first was to extend the life of his ‘apprentice’, Mort. That act was the first act of ‘defiance’ he had brought against the Auditors, the beings that saw to it that the machine of reality continued to tick over, and they had not forgotten it, nor had they forgiven it.
Another Death now stood in that small room, and in her hoof she held the upturned timer. Sand began to flow from the top bulb to the bottom, and with the first fallen grain, the dead child in its mothers’ arms gasped for breath.
The Plague looked at the child, watching as a soul was stolen from its grasp, and it screamed, inaudible to all but Death herself.
Go, she said, turning to the pale creature. It hissed and spat at her as it faded away, retreating to another bedside in another part of the city.
This Death had something her predecessor had never had. She had mortality. And mortals cannot accept The Duty. They cannot see its necessity, or understand its curious equality. No matter how damaged their morality, any mortal would flinch from taking the soul of a dying infant while others grew fat and lived long on the back of its misery.
Now the die had been cast. She had rebelled, and there would be consequences. She felt them, deep in her core, the reverberations that echoed across the Nodes as they cried out that the tally had not been met. History had been altered, fate had been cheated.
Once, Mort had risked the fate of the Disc to save the life of a princess, but history re-asserted itself. The people of the kingdom refused to acknowledge the princess’ continued existence. History told them she was dead, and they could understand no other version of events. Only the direct intervention of powers higher than even Death had led to her life being properly returned to her, and the altered fate that came with it.
There would be no such exception for the child that Death had just spared. They ought to be dead. The rest of the world would consider them dead. Even now, Death looked at the mother and father, and saw the conflicted emotions behind their eyes. They were mourning, but what for they couldn’t remember. They were rejoicing, but once again, the reason why had slipped their grasp.
Even the child seemed out-of-place. Wracked with coughing, it seemed just as ill as before. The realisation fell as Death observed the scene, that saving a life was not a relief. She had not cured the child of its plague, nor restored a life that had been taken.
She had extended. That was all she could do. Death cannot give life.
The parents’ sorrow and gratitude turned to confusion. The child had been left, neglected, as it continued to struggle for breath in a body that could not support the life within it.
Death stared at the hourglass in her hoof. Everything within her, every fibre of her endless existence, called out to rectify the ‘mistake’. To take the child’s life, as it was fated.
If she had had fingers, she would have clenched them.
No, she spoke, and placed the hourglass back into her robe.
One said nothing. One merely watched and, if it were possible, would have smiled.
Death ignored the entreated cries of Albert, pleading with her to stop, and stormed into the Stacks. She took book after book from the shelves, reading the back page of each, and flinging them aside. Hoofsteps echoing in the walkways, she turned a corner where two stacks met, and stopped. She traced the line of biographies, scratching gently with the sound of lives being lived, and selected one in particular.
It was a rich volume, leather bound, with gold-gilt leaves. On the cover was embossed a proud name, one denoting status, a lengthy history, and great wealth. Opening it to a few pages back from the last, she traced the lines with her hoof as she read:
“As he supped that evening, his thoughts turned, involuntarily, to the lesser peoples in the poorer districts of the city. He mused on the plague that now ran rampant through the streets, and on the death toll it would likely bring. He deemed this unfortunate, as it would greatly impact his profits in the coming harvest. Workers would have to be drafted in from bordering states to replace the dead. It seemed wasteful, but there it was. He called for more wine.”
She closed it, and placed it into the dark, empty recesses of her robe Retracing her last few steps, she stopped again, in front of a smaller shelf filled with thinner, cheaper volumes. Plucking one from the rest, she opened it to the end.
“She coughed, and felt fear. She could feel two presences in the room, two that were not her parents. She saw the one as pallid and horrific, watching her with barely contained glee as she gasped for breath. The other, cold, unfeeling, wrapped in the black of the night sky. She fought for another breath, feeling her body succumbing to the illness. It did not come.”
The book had fallen silent. Of course it had, the thought came to Death, the child had died. Her life now was not a life she should have, history rejected it and the books would not record it.
Death replaced the slim book on its shelf and walked with heavy hoofsteps back into her study.
There, resting in the high-backed leather chair that sat before her vast desk, she consulted the great books that marked the Nodes. The Nodes were maps, or patterns. They illustrated where the strings of Fate’s woven tapestry crossed, tangled and knotted. Of course, all threads have to end somewhere; one loose thread is enough to unravel the entire, grand fabric of history.
Her actions had caused a thread to extend beyond its final knot. It needed to be fixed, to be cut, before the disorder began to spread through the rest of the strings that passed it, crossed it, or were tied to it. Death scanned the pages, looking at the threads that it was tied to, places where it could be anchored back into the tapestry without changing the Plan.
It was futile. She knew that, deep down. It was one of the things that all Deaths knew, buried far under anger and rage at their impotence to change anything. Rebellion had flowered in Death’s mind, and now it took root. It was a futile thing to try, perhaps, but then... Perhaps, this time it would work.
She traced a thread she had marked before. It was a rich thread, woven with gold, fat, triple-stranded, and dyed in rich colours. It only met the loose thread once. It crossed it, there, a few days length before the knot that marked her death. A meeting in a street, perhaps. Something as small as eye contact would do it. The child may have been begging, and was spotted by the rich man. It was enough.
She reached into her robe and plucked from the void the book she had taken earlier from the shelves. She traced the name with the tip of her hoof once again, and turned to the racks that held the timers. The sound of their rushing sands was all that could be heard, muffling her hoofsteps as she stepped down from her seat and walked alongside them.
Halting, she took a rich, mahogany wood and gold gilt hourglass, the sand within made from crushed pearls and mixed with fine gold dust. The name carved so masterfully into the base matched that of the book, and indeed, the two items perfectly complemented one another.
The hourglass she placed into her cloak. The book she left in its place on the rack.
She turned, and was gone.
One said, And so it begins.
A rich lord stood on his balcony overlooking the small city below. Moonlight shone through pale wisps of cloud on the cobbled streets, dancing with the shadows cast by burning torches, candles and lanterns.
A plague stalked those streets. The lord had locked himself away in his mansion on the hills above the city’s poorer districts. He blocked out the wails of the afflicted with thick curtains drawn closed during the long, dark evenings. Tonight, however, the city was quiet.
He stood there, watching for any signs of movement, but saw none. Not a soul stirred in the city that night. It was almost peaceful.
How do you sleep?
The voice that was not a voice made the lord turn. Behind him, looming tall, stood a spectre he had hoped never to see.
When the cries of the victims rise over your balcony and invade your halls at night, how do you sleep?
Its mouth never moved. The words were heard, but never spoken. The lord gulped and stammered as he tried to think of a response.
You possess this city. Their lives depend on the contents of your coffers. You could save them. Clean the city. Be rid of the plague.
He stepped back, coming up against the railings, and clutched at them.
Instead you hide. Pretend that it doesn't exist. They die for your cowardice. How do you sleep?
Finally, the lord found his voice. “H-how did you get in? Guards! Guards! I am under attack!”
His cries faded into silence as they passed the spectre of Death. No one came. She reached into her robe and withdrew an ornate hourglass, holding it up to her eye and watching as the grains fell through the pinched neck. Slightly less than half of the top bulb was still full. The lord was fated to live a long life.
There's no justice.
She threw the hourglass at the ground. The lord’s eyes followed it as it bounced once, twice...
Crack.
Pearl sand and gold dust brushed against his feet. He clutched at his heart. The balcony gave way. His body plummeted to the streets below and was dead before it hit the cobbles.
There's just me.
Albert watched in horror as the threads writhed to accommodate the changes Death was making to the tapestry. Pages smouldered as the arcane diagrams that made up the Nodes shifted and crawled.
It had begun as a single loose thread, but had grown to encompass dozens. Tangles of threads cut free from the tapestry were left dangling, hopelessly trying to fill holes left by strands shorn away too soon. For each life Death chose to spare, she took another to make up the difference, but in the eyes of Fate, one life is not equal to another.
“She’s gone mad,” Albert muttered to himself, trying to take scope of the damage her actions were doing. The Death of Rats sat poised on his shoulder and Squeaked occasionally, pointing at one emerging tear or another. There didn’t seem to be anything they could do to stop her.
The city was now in chaos. Plague victims ran rampant through the streets, infected, dying, but never given release. They stormed the walls and gates of the houses of the rich, but found only corpses, each accompanied by shards of glass and wood, and a little pile of sand.
With no leadership, the city was being overrun by confused and angry citizens desperate for help that they couldn’t find.
Above it all, Death loomed. She watched rioting crowds burning merchants’ houses and raiding storerooms. She saw groups of infected, huddled together, striking out at any unfortunate individual who came near. Others she saw being chased through the streets by ‘mercy mobs’ of crazed citizens waving flaming brands, knives and clubs. Those they caught they tried to ‘cure’, the only way they knew how, but they would not die.
Death contemplated one hourglass in particular. It was that which belonged to one such individual she could see being chased down an alleyway below her. A crossbow bolt flew through the air, fired by one of the mob, and struck the infected victim in the shoulder. The glass of the timer cracked in sympathy, but the sand remained flowing.
She looked at another part of the city, where a rich and profiteering merchant was barricading his doors against a crowd of thieves attempting to break them down, using anything they could lay their hands on: axes, upturned tables, bricks and stones.
She looked dispassionately at his timer, and then let it fall to the streets below her. The door burst into a cloud of splinters as his body hit the floor.
A life taken for each spared. That was ‘fair’. That was ‘just’.
A cry caught her ear, and she turned to see a small room in a small house in a poor district of the city.
A child, the child, sat and wept in the corner of the room, wracked by pain and unable to sleep. The parents could offer no comfort, as they had none to give. They ignored the child, ignored the cries, and merely stared as the crowds gathered outside their home. A woman in the crowd pointed at the mark painted on the door. Men and women stepped forward and began beating it down. An axe whistled as it sliced through the air and struck the wood, scattering splinters. The parents of the child braced themselves against the door, trying to hold the mob back, but it was of little consequence. They broke through, they took the child, and they cut her throat.
Death stared. A thin line spread across the surface of the timer she now held. The sand held. The mob watched. The child lived.
A man raised his axe, but before he could bring it down, it fell to the ground, clattering against the cold, stone floor of the small house, followed shortly by his lifeless body. Death stood before the mob, her hooves wreathed in blue fire. Her eyes burned with it. Her scythe was edged with it. She swung the tool in a great arc, back and forth, running through the streets of the city. Her mind retreated to a kinder image, of golden fields and golden grain, and she followed the rows, taking in the harvest. She wept for each stalk.
When the sun rose over that small city the next morning, not a soul had been left alive to see it. In the smoking ruins of what had once been a meeting place, Death sat and wept tears of icy blue flame. Her scythe lay discarded beside her, surrounded by broken glass, slashed books, and pearly sand. The morning breeze played with it as it mixed with the smoke, tossing it against torn pages, still recording the lives of men and women now dead.
Everything went wrong. It... it was a mercy, she said, to three empty, cloaked shapes that stood beside her.
One said, Mercy and justice are mortal concepts.
One said, Mortal concepts are inherently flawed.
One said, Now you witness where they inevitably lead.
I wanted to... To help them. They were dying.
One said, You are Death.
One said, You cannot help the living.
One said, They cannot be helped.
She turned to face them, her skull stained with ash as the tears fell from her eye sockets, burning briefly on the stone before being snuffed out.
I am not Death. I am a Shadow of Death. A Shadow cast by a Light of Joy and Laughter, a Spirit of Happiness that I used to be. I remember two minds, but I cannot be either. They cannot be reconciled.
One said, We can help you.
One said, We can guide you.
One said, We can reconcile you.
How?
One said, You exist in three, but must be one.
One said, Put out that light that you once were.
One said, Take the scythe.
Three said, Take Death’s life.