Bill Door had always valued nature. It was Life in its most stubborn, persistent and chaotic form, and his vocation had given him an acute appreciation of those qualities in the world. Life always fought the inevitable. It struggled, bit, scratched, and then fled elsewhere to flourish anew.
However, despite the beauty and serenity of Ponyville and its environs, Bill felt that the nature here was not as stubborn, not as persistent, and nowhere near as chaotic as that found on the Disc. There was a sense of order, complacency, even pliability about the flora and fauna he observed around him here, in this quaint little equine existence.
As he walked and felt the gentle firmness of the earth beneath his hooves, he reflected on this, and what he’d seen earlier that day at the apple orchards. He had been told a little of this world by Twilight Sparkle and by Pinkie herself during their time together, and he knew that Earth Ponies had a particular affinity with the natural world, as Pegasi did with the skies and Unicorns with the magic powers that underpinned everything. The ponies certainly liked everything to be neatly organized and contained, and Ponyville was almost as different from Ankh-Morpork as Bill could imagine. He wondered, then, whether it was this quality in ponies that led to the ordered nature he could see around him, or if they were a product of it.
Pondering these deep, philosophical questions helped him ignore the increasingly captivating feelings being generated by his close proximity to one particular yellow pegasus who had, much to his surprise and mute delight, agreed to show him the forest.
At present they were walking through the area known as Whitetail Woods, where in the balmy heat of a late afternoon, some ponies still worked, tapping the surrounding maple trees for syrup. They greeted Fluttershy, often with kind words of thanks for some animal-related favour or other, and Fluttershy thanked them in return. Bill nodded at one or two of them, because he felt this was expected, but in truth he was feeling a little more out-of-place than usual. Few ever thanked him for doing his job, after all, much less spoke to him about it days, weeks or even months after the fact.
They walked a while, conversing only in brief snatches as Fluttershy pointed out a particular species of plant, or some animal tracks. Bill showed genuine, if detached interest, but felt he had little to say in comment or response. The only plant he knew a great deal about was wheat, and that was largely for thematic purposes.
Before long, they came to the edge of the woods, which opened to a large clearing through which the path continued towards something far, far older than Whitetail Woods.
“What is that?” Bill asked Fluttershy, pointing a hoof towards the black-topped trees and creeping shadows that formed a nearly impenetrable wall at the other end of the clearing.
“That’s the Everfree Forest,” she replied, “we don’t tend to go in there, unless we really need to, I mean.”
Bill Door stared at the trees and brambles at the edge of the forest. Here, he found an answer to his earlier questions. The Everfree Forest represented everything that Whitetail Woods wasn't. It was dark, ancient, and very, very much alive.
He was instantly fascinated.
“Can we go in?” he asked, having not really heard the second part of Fluttershy’s reply.
She looked at him, and was about to make some excuse about needing to get back, as it was getting late and the Everfree was no place to be after dark, but she could see a glint of excitement and determination in his icy-blue eyes.
It is difficult to resist Death. Even when he isn't, strictly speaking, currently filling that role. On some level, everyone knows that he’ll win in the end.
She sighed and nodded, leading the way across the clearing and glancing behind her at the sun, hovering only a little above the horizon now. She felt a pang of fear, but steeled herself: after all, she had tamed manticores, stared down cockatrices, and even forced an apology from a dragon. Besides, she did find herself taking a shine to Bill, despite her earlier protests to Rarity, and some small part of her didn't really want to show herself up in front of him.
Together, they crossed the boundary, and were soon enveloped by the shadows.
Death stood in the centre of a whirling festival of colour, staring fixedly at the great Octiron Gates of the Unseen University. The crowds ignored her, although many of the less inebriated felt a distinct sense of unease, and all seemed to subconsciously move around her, leaving a small gap in the middle of Sator Square that no one dared quite look at.
Behind her hovered three grey forms. They had not been there a moment before, but simultaneously had always been there, and would always be there, except for when they would not. If nothing else, the Auditors saw the laws of reality as both immutable and also subject to change as the situation required it.
One said, She is with the Wizards.
One said, Can you bring yourself to do this?
One said, Can you kill a goddess?
Death said nothing. The Scythe of Office hovered at her side, tiny pin-pricks of blue light emanating from its rim as the air itself was severed in its passing.
One said, With her death, one other will remain.
One said, That Death is beyond our reach, he is hidden.
One said, The task will remain incomplete if he cannot be brought to justice.
Death turned, and looked at the last Auditor to ‘speak’.
Isn’t Justice a mortal concept? she said. Inherently flawed?
One looked at her in return, and from the emptiness of its hooded form it said, That Death became mortal a long time ago.
Death did not argue. She had chosen to delude herself into thinking that this was her Duty, and she would carry it through. Perhaps then, she said, aloud, the Duty will no longer be my burden, but simply what I am.
She stepped forward, and the Scythe followed. The magical nature of the Octiron Gates were no match for her terrible reality, and yielded to her, folding upon themselves molecule by molecule as she passed through them, leaving them completely untouched, barring the scar left behind by the edge of the Scythe. Sparks of burning octiron swarf trailed in her unseen wake as the party on the other side of the gates spiralled on.
The Wizards marched mostly in step across the campus, accompanied by much grumbling, and an annoyingly chipper pink thing with an exasperating spring in her step and unquenchable desire for conversation. At present, the Bursar was currently occupying her attention, and coping surprisingly well. This is most likely because he believed the pink pony to be a hallucination, which he was very used to dealing with. Had he for a moment thought her to be real in any significant way, he probably would've suffered his third nervous breakdown of the week.
“So, Archchancellor, do you have any idea of how to proceed?” asked the Dean, struggling to keep up with Ridcully’s swift pace, fuelled predominantly by irritation and rapidly emerging heartburn. It ought to be noted that Archchancellor Ridcully made a habit of clean living and healthy lifestyles, to which he partially owed his lengthy career*, so the heartburn in this instance was more a case of stress than gastric distress, so to speak.
“We’ll get her to the Librarian and then, frankly, it’s his problem,” he replied, without slowing. After a couple more steps, he blinked and turned to face the Dean.
“What the hell are you wearing, man?”
The Dean looked sheepishly at the Archchancellor and slowly took the garish, sequin-covered paper cone off of his head, mumbling something like; ‘I just thought I’d get into the spirit of the thing’.
As far as Ridcully was concerned, it was a mercifully short time before they actually got to the Library doors. Ramsfleece went ahead, with the bananas, and pushed open the small inset door on the larger wood and octiron gates that served less to keep people out, but rather to keep the Library in.
From behind a lectern somewhere in the dim candlelight, a ginger-haired scalp peered over the top of a large tome, spectacles balanced precariously on a face the gods clearly did not design with the prospect of glasses in mind.
This was the famed (and feared) Librarian. He was once a man, before being accidentally transformed into an orang-utan by an unfortunate and unspecified incident, and having found the extra arm-length conducive to getting books down from tall shelves (among other things), had steadfastly refused every attempt to turn him back since.
A low and guttural ‘Ook’ resonated through the hall at the approaching group. Ridcully got on rather well with the Librarian, but relationships between the other wizards were perhaps rather more complicated. Ramsfleece bowed low and, swiftly coming up to the lectern, offered the bunch of bananas as a form of peace offering. The Librarian smiled, revealing many gleaming and remarkably sharp-looking teeth. Having, he felt, made his message quite clear with this gesture, he returned to reading.
It didn't last very long.
“Librarian!” bellowed Ridcully, from nearer the door. The Librarian frowned, put down his book, and swung down to the floor from the high chair behind the lectern. Ridcully continued, “we have a visitor who I think is in need of your services. She’s a…”
He faltered. The Dean leant around Ridcully’s side** and interjected: “A miniature equine.”
“Yes. Quite,” Ridcully continued, “she’s talking to the Bursar, currently, so we’ll just leave her with you and be on our w-”
“OH-MI-GOSH-IT’S-A-MONKEY.”
“Gentlemen, I believe that’s our cue.”
*And his continued life. Before Ridcully, climbing the career ladder at the Unseen University was generally achieved by means of using the corpses of former wizards as rungs.
**Although he didn't precisely ‘emerge’, given he was considerably wider than the Archchancellor to begin with. It is perhaps better said that he made his presence more directly known.
Death stalked the grounds of the Unseen University, and this had not gone unnoticed. While ordinary folk can’t see the supernatural, wizards of the Disc are among the few individuals gifted with the ability to see the things that cannot normally be seen. Wizards and cats. And a few miscellaneous others.
Some of the students, heading back and forth across the campus in the futile attempt to actually attend a lecture (as might have become obvious by this point, the Unseen University is perhaps the Disc’s least educational institute of education) had sighted her, and rather than stop and wonder why Death was manifesting as a three or four foot skeletal horse, as opposed to the regular seven foot tall skeleton, had begun all manner of panic.
Death, you see, was not traditionally sighted at the University unless one of the wizards was about to require his or her presence, and some of the senior faculty were already concerned that the old days of advancement via filling a dead man’s pointy shoes had returned. Barricades were being erected, crossbows and daggers sought. The Lecturer in Extra-Dimensional Biology was already brandishing his broadsword and challenging on-comers.
The hippomorphic personification of Death was not interested in this goings-on, and barely paid attention to the rabble struggling to get out of her way. Their time would come, but it was not now. Now, she had a particular target in mind. She paused, and drew from the vast recesses of her cloak of night a balloon, pink and radiant as the sun. On it, emblazoned in what looked suspiciously like Comic Sans were the letters ‘Pinkie Pie’. It glowed with an inner light, and showed no signs of deflating, even to Death’s trained eyes.
This was the life of a goddess. This was what Death had come to claim.