This Mortal Coil

by ShinigamiDad

Ghost Stories

Argyle’s eyes fluttered open halfway as he tried to focus on anything beyond the dimly-lit stone fragments, mud, and bloody sand directly before his muzzle. A low throbbing sound filled his head, punctuated by the occasional clatter of rocks, and drip of water coming from the collapsed wall behind him. His breath came in short, agonizing bursts, and the taste of blood filled his mouth. His jaw trembled as he strained his neck up off the ground, and tried to push against the wet ground with his pinned leg. His shoulder barely budged, and he sagged back down into the cold, wet muck.

“H-help…me…”

His nostrils flared as he tried again in vain to force himself up; his leg and shoulder buckled, and he dropped back to the ground with a ‘splat.’ Tears welled in his eyes and he coughed weakly: “Can…can anypony…”

He coughed weakly and turned his head to one side; he lay still for a minute and watched the nearby swirling waters slowly creep toward him. He squinted at the wet glitter of his partially buried headlamp, and noticed a shape, just beyond his visual range, off to his right.

“Is-is somepony th-there? I-I need…”

“So, you can see me. I wasn’t entirely sure.”

“Pl-please h-help me…”

“Sorry, Argyle—it doesn’t work that way.”

“Wha-wha…?”

“You don’t have much time left, but I’ve learned over the years not to rush things unduly.”

Argyle gagged on a sudden surge of blood froth in his throat: “I d-don’t understand! Why-why won’t you…”

“Help?”

“Yes.”

He heard a heavy sigh: “Alright, look—I can’t save you, but I can at least let you play out your last few minutes oblivious to your discomfort.”

Argyle squinted again as the shape rose and moved a bit closer; its horn glowed a pale red. Argyle’s eyes crossed and slowly closed.

---

He blinked and suddenly stepped back, startled to see his crushed body trapped under a mound of shattered rock, a two-yard-long staff lying behind him, waters rising toward his head: “Am-am I…?”

“Dead? No, but you will be soon.”

The shocked stallion pivoted to his right and saw the shape resolve as a tan, cloaked stallion, with gray-streaked brown mane and tail, and a 死 on his right flank: “Wh-who are you? Can you help me? I have to get out of here!”

The cloaked stallion shook his head sadly: “To your first question—I have gone by many names over many millennia, but the one I’ve liked best is ‘Reaper.’ As for the second question—I cannot help. My job is to guide you on beyond the boundary of this world to whatever fate awaits you.”

“But-but my daughter! Sunny, she-she…”

“She will make her way as ponies have throughout the centuries, for better or worse.”

“Do you know how? Will she be okay?”

“I only know for a certainty, is that one day she will meet me, too. As for the time leading up to that day—that’s up to her.”

Argyle sat down sadly: “I just wanted to bring back more pieces of the past, more of the old images and stories, maybe something to help restore the magic.”

He glanced over at the staff: “I was looking for that…”

Reaper nodded: “To your credit, you’re the only pony of three who made it this far to actually find the Dragon Lord’s scepter. High Cirrus, you already met a bit further back—”

“The pegasus skeleton?”

“That was her. Made it that far eighty-four years ago. A unicorn by the name of Dark Crescent actually made it deeper into the cavern one-hundred-and-forty-two years back, and fell into a chasm. He even managed to locate Luna’s tiara just before he fell.”

“’Luna’—so she was real, too? How about her sister, Celestine?”

Reaper smiled: “’Celestia’—yes, she was real, too.”

“Did they really control the sun and moon?”

“Yes—for a time. They handed off much of their power and responsibility to Celestia’s protégé, Twilight Sparkle. She wielded the bulk of this world’s high magic for millennia.”

“Then what?”

“You mean how did it all end? Why is the magic gone?”

Argyle glanced down at the staff and nodded.

Reaper took a deep breath: “This was once a world awash in magic, containing, at one time or another, twenty-eight fully self-aware, ennobled species—ponies, dragons, griffins, hippogriffs, yaks, and so on. Some persisted from the beginning to the end—ponies, for instance—while others were only fully-aware for a few centuries before falling back into a feral state.”

“Feral? Like dragons?”

“No, though dragons were one of the last creatures to become ennobled. In the end, they were also the last to retain that spark.”

He glanced back over his shoulder across the cavern: “Crimson Bone, back there, was the last creature to finally succumb to the march of time and the loss of this world’s magic, save for the Sisters and Twilight, who all passed on a short while later.”

“So where did all the magic go? Is it also the reason we lost magic not long ago, too?”

“Eventually, like a blazing bonfire that finally exhausts its fuel, this world’s magic simply burned-out, and all the higher beings that depended on it, in one way or another, fell back into the darkness. Many of them never recovered, even in a feral state. Dragons, hippogriffs and Kirin especially need magic to even exist. You will never see their like again.”

Argyle’s eyes widened, and he shuddered: “But we’ve lost the magic again, so does that mean…?”

Reaper smiled: “No, I mean someday I’m sure there will be another cycle, but for now, like a field that lies fallow, the period after the Sisters and Twilight allowed the world to recharge some. The recent loss of magic is simply due to ponies having lost their connection to each other, and by extension the native magic intrinsic in all ponies.”

“So, you really think we can find the magic again?”

“Oh, I’m sure of it. This is just a blip of a few decades against a many-millennia-deep tapestry. It’ll work itself out.”

“But the great ponies, like Twilight?”

“As with the high-magic creatures, you’ll never see their like again. They’ll live on and inspire in legends and myths as demi-gods and heroes, but nothing more. And in the absence of Luna’s grand Dreamscape, even your dreams will be paler. But there is magic and beauty to be found in this world as well.”

Argyle glanced down sadly at the water rising around his muzzle: “I-I just wish I could be here to see it, but nopony’s even going to know what happened to me, are they?”

“Did you leave any notes or itinerary behind?”

Argyle half-shrug/half-nodded: “As best I could. Sunny knows roughly where I was going, but the real details are in my notebook.”

He pointed at the blood-spattered shoulder bag: “Without that, I don’t know if anypony else will find this lair for another eighty years.”

Reaper shrugged: “No way to know, but this lair was well-hidden long ago, and has only gotten harder to find over the centuries as the walls of this canyon have eroded. I suspect that once it floods completely, it will lie hidden for the foreseeable future.”

Argyle sighed deeply and looked at the pinkish bubbles and froth sputtering from his nostrils and lips: “I guess I really won’t have to worry about it anymore in a few minutes.”

Reaper smiled sadly then drew his sword: “I think I can spare you that last couple of minutes…”

He stepped over the stallion’s battered, half-buried blue body and plunged the blade between its ribs. The body shuddered and released one final, ragged breath. Reaper tipped his head down and touched his faintly-glowing horn to the thin, shimmering mist that now hung over Argyle’s corpse. The mist vanished, and Reaper stood, straightened his cloak, sheathed his sword, and turned back toward Argyle’s fading specter. The faint image of the earth pony flickered, then disappeared.

Reaper began to phase, then stopped and resolidified. He looked at the crumbling, leaking wall sagging above Argyle’s body and chewed his lip for a moment. His horn glowed a bright crimson as a pulse of power lanced into the fractured, charcoal-black wall, shattering it, releasing a torrent of water that crashed down into the cavern, sweeping away Argyle’s lifeless, twisted form like a pale-blue ragdoll.

The water surged and foamed, carrying the body and entangled shoulder bag along, ultimately bursting through the collapsing cave entrance, sweeping aside the brambles and loose rockfall, washing Argyle’s battered corpse up on a pile of large rocks, like a beached shipwreck. The water receded as the canyon wall above the entrance sloughed down, blocking off the cave and stemming the flow. The mist was swept aside briefly, allowing a shaft of sunlight to fall across Argyle’s lifeless eyes.

---

Argyle blinked and rolled to his side, squinting in the flat, colorless light that filled an unbounded space which reached away endlessly in all directions. His eyes finally focused, and he noticed a simple, low couch to his left, covered in a tasteful, green, felted-wool upholstery. He stood unsteadily, shuffled over to the couch, sat down heavily, and slumped forward, staring at his rear hooves. His mane bristled, and he felt a presence.

Reaper appeared out of the nothing and stood before Argyle: “Welcome to my ‘waiting room.’ This is your last stop in our world before crossing the Last Horizon.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. You go on to whatever fate the Cosmos has for you.”

Argyle tilted his head, and he furrowed his brow: “But, how can you not know—aren’t you Death?”

Reaper smiled: “No—I am Death’s steward, its gatekeeper. Death’s final disposition lies beyond the Last Horizon.”

“And nopony knows what comes after?”

“No.”

“But so many over all the years, so many religions, so many—”

“Guesses. So many guesses. I have been guiding on spirits to whatever lies beyond for millennia—billions of spirits over thousands of years, and even now I only have the vaguest sense of some broad outlines. I guarantee you, no pony—or other being—who has ever lived had the foggiest idea.”

“So that might just be the end, then, yes? No nothing, no last goodbyes, no seeing your loved ones in the afterlife?”

Reaper nodded: “That’s true, though I’m fairly sure if that were the case, this waiting room wouldn’t exist, and neither would I—you would simply die and go to the dust like your feral ancestors.”

“So, you haven’t been here forever?”

“No, shortly after I died on a distant world, I was summoned here to be Death’s caretaker as the first fully-ennobled pony suffered a fatal fall.”

“Still, a long time.”

“Yes. And I will remain until the last spark of higher, self-aware life leaves this world.”

Argyle stood: “I see—well, thank you for letting me have a few minutes to wrap my head around things. I really wish I could have seen Sunny one last time, though.”

Reaper began walking off to the right: “A common refrain.”

Argyle smiled sadly: “Maybe I’ll get to see her again, someday…”

“Also a common refrain.”

The two stallions walked in silence for a minute until the ancient wreck of Grey Thorn’s device appeared before them. Argyle stopped and raised an eyebrow: “What the…?”

Reaper nodded: “It’s a long story from the age of demigods and heroes.”

“Well, I think I have the time to hear it now, yes?”

Reaper grinned: “Nice try, but it’s your time to go.”

Argyle sighed and glanced at the hulking sphere to his left; he turned away.

Reaper chewed his lip for a moment, then stepped beside Argyle, tipped his horn toward the startled pony, and touched his temple: “A parting gift—a story for you to peruse wherever Fate takes you next.”

Argyle’s eyes widened as he shook his head and stepped forward toward eternity: “A-amazing! Thank you!”

He vanished without a trace.

Reaper watched the blue figure wink out, and took a deep breath: “Tell the three of them ‘hello’ for me…”

He stood still for a moment, then adjusted his cloak and sword, and faded, leaving behind the silent, endless gray plain, and its eternal, broken monument.

Comments

[DMDash71]

I see what you did there. 😉

[Starlight Nova]

Why aren't there any character tags?

[ShinigamiDad]

No support for an Argyle tag, yet...

[PiMan]

11035861
That usually means an "Other" tag is appropriate.

[ShinigamiDad]

So, if you liked this story, you should check out the foundational 3-part epic "Elegy," starting with https://www.fimfiction.net/story/286749/do-not-go-gentle