I’ve always made a point of not wasting my life.
Locked within a silver cage, illuminated by a hanging spotlight, deep inside an underground research lab very much in violation of the lease and of relevant building codes, two immortal mice sat quietly beneath the expectant gaze of Adagio Dazzle.
Originally the mice had wanted for nothing. Adagio had brought their ancestors home one night as a supposed gift for Sonata, and Sonata had taken to rodential motherhood with characteristic gusto. Food, a water bowl, bedding, and a growing number of toys, playsets, and other accessories had been stolen, setting up her pets for a life of luxury in what had then been nothing more than a basement. But as Adagio’s quest-cum-obsession into mastering the study of biology had continued–spanning eight years, five schools, and two continents–the mice and their situation had changed.
The two mice in the lab with her tonight were ordinary enough from the outside. On the inside, as Adagio had addressed every reasonable definition of what might qualify a creature as immortal, they had grown… different. Every chromosome within their furry bodies was backed up with quadruple redundancy, duplicate systems inside them ready at a moment’s notice to repair any corrupted or destroyed sequence. In extreme conditions they could pack themselves into tiny, dense balls resistant to heat, cold, radiation, and anything in-between, while all but the most necessary internal functions shut down till their surroundings regained safety. Aging cells could reset themselves back to a younger, near-embryonic state to recover their vitality. Food and water were now unnecessary, no more than conveniences that Adagio spirited out of their cage once Sonata had finished feeding the mice, their new biology a secret that she concealed jealously from even her fellow sirens.
Adagio knew that she herself was immortal, but not knowing how–even at her darkest moments since the Battle of the Bands, she had refused to try to starve herself or the others to death–she had cast her net as wide as science would allow. Faced with a shortage of fountains of eternal life to dip a chalice into, she had brewed half a dozen of her own and ladled them onto these pitiful mammals. And before her sat the two greatest of all their breed, the hardiest of the hardy, the closest her long research could possibly get to whatever standard for immortality the afterlife required.
Aria and Sonata were both away for the night.
It was time to begin.
The mice did not need to eat, but they could still be motivated by the taste of treats. Could still be trained. The first mouse she had presented one night with a tiny guillotine, and above the cage she dangled a treat until it happened to release the machine’s sharp blade. This she had repeated until she was sure the mouse could understand the connection between the action and the reward.
Next she had drawn its attention to the action’s more direct, necessary consequences. She placed objects within the guillotine’s lunette and watched the mouse see them split in two. She waited until the mouse was playing with a favorite toy, then placed that toy in the blade’s path and dangled another treat. The toy was destroyed, the mouse was fed.
This last test she had repeated several times. The mouse grew increasingly uncertain, requiring ever more treats before it finally pressed the tiny lever and condemned yet another toy to bisection. It was crucial, Adagio believed, that the mouse understood its choice, and more importantly, understood that its own independent action led directly to the blade’s descent.
And so finally, tonight, she forced the second of her immortal mice between the bars, snapped the lunette into place around its neck, held a full fifteen treats above the cage, and waited.
It took half an hour of nervous confusion and the promise of twenty additional treats, but at last the immortal mouse pressed the lever down and slew its brother.
There was a pause, long enough for her to wonder if she had failed after all, and then a rush of cold, uncanny, malignant air entered the room, passing through the earth itself to join them.
It had worked.
Adagio took her best guess for which direction to face, cleared her throat, and addressed the air before her. “I’m having a little trouble hearing you. Would you mind possessing the cadaver so we can discuss this?”
Ten silent seconds–or perhaps centuries?–passed, and then the second mouse’s corpse began to lift itself up from the surrounding bedding, limbs shifting unnaturally in ways that had haunted Adagio’s nightmares for the last near-decade. Disgusting creaking noises filled her ears as the body was taken over by a substanceless entity still unaccustomed to its spindly contours. The torso had no larynx, yet even so, a voice oozed up through its bloody top, a voice that despite her years of anticipation still chilled Adagio to the bone.
This all seems very unusual. Would you care to explain?
Should she? Or should she act right away? It was suddenly so hard to think; her thoughts had turned frenzied and panicked. She had planned for this moment for so long that the very planning was working against her, a million moments of past contemplation filling her head and driving out any possibility of current thought and immediate reaction. Still, at last, she managed to reply.
“Do you recognize me, Mr. Death?”
Death, in possessed rodent form, paused as if to think. A repeat customer? it asked. That would explain… ah, yes. The too-clever one from the roadside cliff. Eight years ago.
“I prefer to be called Adagio, but ‘too-clever’ isn’t bad.”
I owe you no more courtesies, Adagio. Your death debt has been paid, to my eternal regret. You cannot stop me from forcing this immortal’s passing. You are not even tonight’s murderer. What possible business could we have together?
Adagio felt her heartbeat settle down a little as their conversation settled into territory she had anticipated and scripted for herself. “I was too hasty to get rid of you last time. I have a few more questions about how your whole death thing works.” She inched closer to the cage, closing their distance by an infinitesimal degree. “We’ve got three hours to talk, right?”
Many have questions for Death. Its tone was impatient, its focus–inasmuch as she could tell from a body with no head–turning to the surviving mouse. You have already had more answers from me than any else on this planet.
Ah! Adagio almost smiled at that opening. “Yes, this planet! We should talk because I’m sure you have a question for me.”
Do I?
“Don’t you want to know why you’re here at all? There’s not just one immortal, there’s two. Was, anyway. Here, in this magic-poor excuse for a dimension. Doesn’t that interest you?” Another tiny step forwards. Another.
Death, as she had hoped, did not answer immediately. Its voice when it came was hideous, sardonic–and yet, layered with the faintest flicker of curiosity. A clever gambit, but you underestimate my abilities of perception. Now that you have my attention again, I can observe you long enough to discover what you have done, without going through these motions of conversation. The dead mouse’s tail, which had been rising as Death considered her suggestion, now curled back disdainfully.
Adagio shook her head, letting the motion hide her taking one step closer still. “I’m not offering you information. I’m offering you the chance to persuade me.”
Persuade?
“You know, that thing you love doing so much? A deal where I give you everything you want in exchange for a few tidbits of information about the afterlife? Just like old times?”
And what is it, in your opinion, that Death wants?
She could almost reach. Could possibly, probably reach. But she had spent long enough crafting this offer, lying awake at night while dreading upcoming quizzes or practicals at her many schools, that she pridefully insisted on seeing it through. “Victims.”
Ahhhhhhhhhhh. Continue.
“I’ve cracked the secret to immortality, haven’t I? But these mice are boring. There’s no way you could get a proper game out of that one over there, eating all its treats. You want what you had with me and Aria and Sonata. Games, deals, puzzles, lies, the works.”
You forget yourself, Adagio. I cannot lie.
“Oh, of course.” She leaned her elbows onto the sides of the cage: carelessly, playfully. “Sorry about that. But if I open my research to humanity, suddenly you’ll have smart immortals killing other smart immortals. You’ll get to have fun again. Isn’t that worth spending a few hours with me tonight?”
The dead mouse trotted slightly closer to Adagio, unintentionally mirroring her own cautious approach. Very well. Let us suppose you have my attention. I do have plenty of time and nothing to lose by indulging you slightly further. What exactly is it that you wish so badly to know?
Adagio did her best to smile gaily, though eight years of intense focus had made this difficult. “Mostly I’m interested in one thing! We’ve talked a lot about lying and promises”–she dared to move her hand inside the cage, pointing toward the carcass that bore Death awkwardly within it–”and about stabbing”–she redirected her finger toward the guillotine–”but what happens when I do… this?”
She grabbed the severed mouse head and shoved it back onto the neck of its former body.
What?!
She leaned forward, all careless charm now gone from her voice in favor of cold resolution. “I genuinely don’t know. It’s not fair. You had infinite experience and complete control. I had to dedicate eight years just to try to get my revenge on you, and all I had to work with was a complete guess.” She paused, and smiled. “But it’s a good one.”
Below her, two advanced degrees’ worth of work came to fruition as the cells on either side of the split, head and neck, reached out to each other and bound the mouse’s full body back together. Essential functions that had sealed themselves into dormancy woke back up and resumed circulating.
“What happens,” she asked, whispering now, “if Death is stuck inside a body when it comes back to life?”
Six years ago Aria’s boyfriend of the week had dragged them all to a Death Café. They had all been on especially good terms around then–though just weeks before an Aria/Sonata rift that took Adagio three months of groggy late-night phone calls to peacebroker–and the Death Café had advertised itself as a welcoming, unstructured evening, one that featured discussion instead of grieving, and one held over tea and cake. Adagio had been interested in the discussion, Sonata had been interested in the cake, and Aria–whose love was ever as intense as it was brief–had been besotted.
The other attendees had already gone home, leaving just the four of them and their quiet host, by the time Adagio summoned the resolve to ask her question. At that point it had consumed her life for only two years, not eight, and she had still been potentially open to persuasion: “Should we get rid of Death?”
Sonata was lying long and loose across a cushy blue sofa in one corner of the café, legs angled up in the air, hair messy and eyes closed, but this woke her up. “How would you even do that?” she asked, groggily. “Oh wait wait wait… so when you say death, do you mean, like, death, or you know, Death?”
Aria’s boyfriend of the week looked at her blankly. “Isn’t that the same word twice?”
Aria and Aria’s boyfriend of the week were packed tightly into a fuzzy orange armchair, and Aria only raised a skeptical eyebrow at Adagio. They had all spent the entire evening treating death as an abstract concept, just as the other participants had. They had commented trivially on the humans’ thoughts and experiences. None of them had expressed any plans to talk about that night on the cliffside. But Adagio found herself in a talking mood, and if they confused the café host or anything, she didn’t actually care.
That said, Aria’s boyfriend of the week was above average for his kind, and Adagio did like seeing Aria happy, so she didn’t mind letting him into the conversation. “Sonata’s asking if I mean death, the permanent condition, or Death, the discrete event of passing on.” Maybe they could have this conversation without acknowledging that Death, discrete event capital-D Death, was a horrible creature with a probable vendetta against the three sirens.
Sonata waved her hand. “Yep, that sounds like what I’m asking.”
Aria made a face, conveying something like ‘I’m sorry my friends are so embarrassing.’
“The second one,” said Adagio. “If everyone who had ever died suddenly stopped being dead, it would be a nightmare. We’d have no room for all those bodies! But what if now, like right now for example, was the last time anyone ever died? What if people stopped dying?”
They thought about this for a little while. Aria’s boyfriend of the week raised his hand from where it had lain on Aria’s shoulder. “What would happen to us instead?” he asked. “Like, say I get cancer and my body is horribly weak and everything stops working. Am I just… still alive? Forever?”
Aria nodded, excited to back up her boyfriend’s point in the most needlessly macabre way possible. “If I cut off your head, are you still alive? Which part of you is alive, or is you, anyway? If I crush you flat and push you through a shredder…”
Sonata, mercifully, cut her off. “Instead of dying of old age, would humans turn into cicadas?” This sounded vaguely familiar to Adagio, probably from one of the mythology books that Sonata had been reading recently.
“Maybe we just wouldn’t age,” said Aria’s boyfriend of the week. “If you suffer an accident, sorry, you’re out of the game, but otherwise your body keeps on running.”
Sonata frowned. “That’s not really getting rid of Death, though. You can be immortal and Death can still kill you, or anyone with a knife can, I mean.”
Adagio rolled her eyes skyward. “You’re all missing the point!” she growled, and the café’s quiet host flinched a little. “Assume I–assume we can get rid of Death. Whatever that looks like. Is it a good idea?”
“This is dumb,” said Aria. “Is it a good idea to do… something? Somehow? When we can’t agree what the thing we’re doing is?”
“What even makes something a good idea?” asked Sonata.
Aria’s boyfriend of the week leaned forwards around Aria, clearly getting interested. “Right,” he said, pointing to Sonata. “You’re talking about affecting the entire human race, so you’ve gotta think about what’s good for everybody. So maybe the question is, um, are humans good on average? Is it overall good to have more people?” He stopped midthought and frowned down into the fuzzy armchair. “But what makes humans good might change over time. Someone might have been great fifty years ago, but we’d hate them today. So maybe death is useful because it keeps recycling old ideas…”
Aria nodded. “You’re so right, dude, old people do suck.”
The café host, whose hair was getting a little gray around the temples, coughed at this. “Are we getting closer to answering your question, Adagio?” they asked, speaking up for the first time in several minutes. “It sounded like we were frustrating you before.”
Adagio, who was more than accustomed to feeling frustrated, shrugged at this. “Kind of,” she said, after taking a moment to consider. “But maybe I don’t really care what’s good for all of humanity. Maybe I only care what’s good for me. Oh, and for Aria and Sonata too,” she added, catching herself just before anyone else could.
“You’d live longer,” said Sonata, though she frowned a moment later and finally sat up from her sofa. “Well, wait, no, you wouldn’t, would you? If you’re immortal anyway, I mean…”
“This hypothetical question is getting really specific,” said Aria’s boyfriend of the week. “If you’re immortal and you get rid of Death, it doesn’t affect you, only everyone else. But you just said you don’t care about us. So… things happen, we’re not sure what, because you didn’t want us to have that conversation, and you just sit there while they happen, and you want to know if that’s good?”
Aria shrugged. “It sounds interesting, at least. People getting burnt to pieces but still alive somehow? And you get to watch it happen forever? I guess it beats what we’re doing now, kind of.” To her side, Aria’s boyfriend of the week looked confused and slightly appalled, the first step toward their eventual breakup before he would be replaced with Aria’s next boyfriend of the week a couple days later.
But Adagio wasn’t paying attention. “Right,” she said with finality. “I have no idea what would happen. But it does sound interesting. And maybe even fun…”
For a few seconds, much like removing the mouse’s head, replacing the mouse’s head did nothing. And then Adagio died again.
Last time, she had been dead for only a very brief period before Sonata, fulfilling and spending the last of their chain of death debts, had revived her. She remembered a feeling of cold–despite having no body to feel cold with–and darkness, save for the glowing bodies of her fellow sirens as Sonata shrieked at Aria and Aria tried to explain the plan. Death had been there somewhere, she had known in some indefinable way, but she had not been able to perceive it as occupying any particular form. Nothing had felt good or right, but the overwhelming sensation had been one of transience: an impression that the dead Adagio had stayed near her body only as a temporary measure, until Death was ready to carry her away forever.
This was not that. Her body, her mice, her illicit underground laboratory, all of them had disappeared completely. She existed in a space that was not so much featureless as formless; shifting colors surrounded her at all possible angles, so divorced from traditional shapes that she couldn’t tell whether they were immediately near or impossibly distant. Dark pastels and translucent neons played freely together in every direction, passing under and over each other in constant motion. It should have been disconcerting, even nauseating, and yet a curious part of Adagio felt like she belonged.
As part of observing her surroundings–or whatever they were–Adagio looked down, and froze. Her human body and human clothes were finally gone. In their place was her siren body, her true body, yellow and scaled and majestic as it reflected the colors that swirled everywhere around her. Her spectacular fins flared proudly from her back, cheeks, and hooves. Even the red jewel on her chest was restored, bright and powerful as ever after being lost these past eight years.
“Holy shit,” said Adagio faintly, and then, hearing herself speak, with increasing confidence, “holy shit, holy shit!” She swayed this way and that in midair–or mid-whatever–taking in the graceful, powerful curve of her back and tail, the way everything finally felt right It had taken the three sirens far too long to learn how to move and act, newly forced into the lanky human bodies by Star Swirl the Bearded, but that farce was somehow behind her now! Killing Death had… well, it had… well, she didn’t remotely understand how her action connected to what she was experiencing now. But clearly it had all been worth it for this moment.
“Holy shit,” Adagio said once more, and “what the fuck” just for good measure. She tried to move forwards, to float through the air like a living bolt of malice as she had used to, and found that that worked too. Leaving her point of origin behind she sped off in a random direction–the space seemed sufficiently three-dimensional that there were such things as directions–for several minutes, the colors around her changing just enough to signify movement while not enough to suggest she was actually reaching any new location. Still no objects of any kind presented themselves, only prismatic pulsing void.
And then, suddenly, objects did present themselves.
As she got closer, the objects began to resolve themselves into the shapes of people, and animals, and other shapes that were less familiar but still moved like they were alive, or whatever passed for alive in this space. In their center stood a tall, regal, beige human woman in flowing black robes and a silver crown, flanked on her left by a light pink pegasus mare with angelic blue curls, and on her right by–as far as Adagio could tell–a nondescript white mouse. Behind and around them were maybe a dozen other entities, standing or floating or otherwise occupying the colorful world, watching Adagio’s approach expectantly.
Thirty or so eyes stared at Adagio while she soared closer to them, but none of them looked angry or threatening. She glanced down once at her red jewel, confirming she was still at full power, and swallowed once before casting uncertainty behind her. “What a bizarre crowd!” she said. Being back in her old body did help at summoning the old Adagio bravado. “Are any of you going to explain what’s going on here?”
The regal woman answered first, striding forward to meet her–apparently the swirling colors below them could serve as a floor for those poor creatures who still relied on legs. Welcome, Adagio Dazzle, she said, her voice unearthly in its weight and power. Tell me, have you ever heard of psychopomps?
Dr. Adagio Dazzle, Ph.D., recent graduate of eight years of study of death and its particulars, snorted. “Of course. Guides, like boatmen or whatever, who help the dead find their afterlives.” She looked around again at the strange collection. “So is that you?”
And you as well, now. I am the Death of Royalty, and I bid you welcome to your new destiny. The regal woman–rather, the Death of Royalty–pointed down to the white mouse hunched beside her silver stiletto. This here is the Death of Mice. I’m afraid she’s rather cheesed off that you took one of her subjects from her.
The mouse shook its head furiously. Oh no no, don’t worry about me! it chirped, its voice still injecting a tiny bit of dread into Adagio’s heart despite its frantic squeakiness. There are actually six of us Deaths of Mice, we’re so busy all the time! It’s okay you can make a mouse or two immortal I don’t mind at all! I’m just on my rest break today you see, and when I heard we were having a welcoming committee I thought oh, I should go to that, it’s so rare we get a new Death after all, and I can tell the other Deaths of Mice all about you! I like your fins by the way, they remind me of whiskers!
The mouse had talked fast, but Adagio spent enough time talking with Sonata in the morning that she didn’t have any trouble understanding it, especially given her extensive background in the subject. Humans–and probably also ponies, not that she had cared at the time–had constructed numerous psychopomp myths. The premise was basically that during life, souls were carried around inside of bodies, but upon death, they became untethered. In many mythologies–and in her own lived experience–souls stayed more or less in place immediately after death but without the tethering constraint, so they could freely move away from their former bodies. This was where psychopomps came in: rather than allow (or at least encourage?) the souls to wander around freely forever, psychopomps greeted newly deceased souls and guided them to one or more afterlives. Souls might not always immediately realize they were dead, as well, so a major part of the psychopomp job was explaining their new reality and its manifold rules.
But humans tended to focus on the souls of humans. Often a single psychopomp could suffice for an entire mythological tradition, and Adagio had never seriously questioned her premise that the Death she and Aria and Sonata had encountered, was, well… Death. Singular. Omnipresent, if neither omniscient nor necessarily omnipotent. This was different. There was a Death of Mice–several, even–and a Death of Royalty, which suggested that humans weren’t even a monolith for the purposes of the afterlife.
So what had she accomplished in her lab, exactly?
Adagio let herself take a deep, calming breath before speaking next. She was not in any immediate danger. None of these creatures were threatening her. Getting more answers out of them could only put her in a better position.
“Okay,” she said, summarizing. “So you’re psychopomps, but specialized psychopomps. Different creatures get to see different ones of you when they die. Am I close?”
The Death of Royalty nodded gracefully. Very much so. Of course, we whom you see before you are but a fraction of the full cohort of psychopomps. We’re… less busy than some of our colleagues. We have the time to welcome you that they do not.
I’m very busy! the Death of Mice piped up again. I’m just on my rest break today!
You should meet the Death of People Suffering From Conditions Ultimately Resulting In Heart Attacks, said a weedy old man in a bowler hat. Now there’s a busy fellow! So much work and yet he absolutely refuses to delegate, you have to admire him!
Adagio raised a delicate siren eyebrow, though on the inside she was rapidly expanding her soul categorization system. “That’s not a very catchy name, is it?”
Like I said, he’s very busy! He’s had no time to workshop it.
“Hey hey!” The light pink pony standing next to the Death of Royalty stomped her front hooves and shook her mane so that it shone like sapphires in the countless shards of rainbow light. “Do we really need to put on the Death Voices like this? I mean, Adagio’s one of us now! We don’t need to impress her, she’s super impressive on her own already!”
“Am I?” asked Adagio before she could stop herself. Because certainly, yes, she was ‘super impressive,’ but she hadn’t actually expected these spirit guide things to know about her. At least not after Death–the Death who, until moments ago, she’d thought was the only Death–had seemed to have almost forgotten her, which had maybe led it to underestimate her…
The pink pony ignored her concerns and pranced up to nuzzle her. “Of course!” she said, her voice every bit as sweet and ingratiating as the rest of her, even without the so-called Death Voice to lend it any obvious supernatural qualities. “I mean, you’re one of the sirens! You made ponies all over Equestria totally hate each other! You’re basically my hero!”
Please, said the Death of Royalty, then caught herself. “I mean, err, please. Ignore the Death of Ponies. She’s, well… terrible.”
“That’s so mean!” cried the Death of Ponies, striking what Adagio suspected was a deliberately injured-looking pose. “I’m not terrible, I’m just part of the New School of Psychopompery! You know, intentionally leading stupid ponies to their doom! The Death of Royalty is a traditionalist and thinks we should just be passive, benevolent, comforting, only appearing to guide you when you’re dead yadda yadda yadda. What’s the point of supernatural powers if you don’t get to have any fun with them? You get me, right, Dagi? You’re probably already scheming how to get a whole bunch of new dead souls, riiiight?”
Adagio, who had been slowly backing away as the Death of Ponies’ speech continued, halted awkwardly. “I, well… so, if you’re so busy trying to kill ponies, how do you have time to be here?”
“Ugh!” The Death of Ponies glared at her with the angriest eyes Adagio had seen since the last time Sonata had drunk the last of Aria’s milk. “This job is such a ripoff! I worked my tail off to become the Death of Ponies, and then it turns out ponies never actually die. They just go to a nice farm upstate with plenty of room to play!”
Adagio closed her eyes in disgust. Just minutes ago she had been ecstatic: she’d put eight years of research into effect, she’d triumphed over death itself, she’d been reborn in her proper body! Now, after all that time and effort, she’d been saddled with a band of jokesters, fools, and cloying brownnosers. Sure, she was doing groundbreaking new research on supernatural phenomena, but these phenomena kind of sucked. The proper awe that ought to be afforded her for her accomplishments was sorely lacking here. It was time to regain control of the situation.
Resolutely, she brushed past the Death of Ponies and approached the Death of Royalty again, the only entity here who showed any hint of sense. “You said something about my new destiny,” she said. “I’m not a big fan of destiny. What did you mean?”
“The afterlife demands balance,” said the Death of Royalty. “You took the unprecedented step of sealing the Death of Immortals into a living body, and that seems to have killed him. His powers seem to have transferred to you as a result. You are the new Death of Immortals.”
“We can’t lose any psychopomps!” said the weedy old man. “Sometimes our cast does change a little, like when the Death of Ponies did… that horrible thing she did. But that’s all! We have to keep the books balanced.”
Adagio mostly ignored this, continuing to watch the Death of Royalty. “You said seems. When I was dealing with Death–sorry, with the Death of Immortals–eight years ago, he was very big on rules. He positively delighted in telling me every rule in detail. Why are you so unsure?”
The Death of Royalty sighed and gazed out into the distance. “The… former… Death of Immortals enjoyed his job very much. He treated dying as a sort of game, with rules and goals and special incentives to lure immortals into his traps. A great deal of that he simply fabricated for his own amusement. But we psychopomps serve a greater purpose and a greater being, the lord of all this plane: Death Itself. Consequently, there are rules we must follow that we do not necessarily know for ourselves, not unlike the laws of physics in the mortal plane.” She tapped one regal foot and sighed again. “You trapped the former Death of Immortals. You gained his power in his stead. We cannot tell you how.”
“But Death Itself could?”
“Possibly.”
“Can I meet with it?”
“Absolutely not.”
A burst of bright blue and pink forced itself into Adagio’s vision. “But there’s no need to worry about Death Itself right now!” cried the Death of Ponies, wrapping her curly tail around Adagio’s scaly midsection. “You should be learning how to use your new powers to cause pain and suffering for all the immortals you don’t like, just like you always do! The New School of Psychopompery is open for applicants right now, and–”
Adagio swung about, knocking the pink pony aside with her own, sturdier tail. “The new school sounds okay. You I can’t stand. Is there anyone here, besides the Death of Ponies, who can give me a proper tour of this world and my new powers?” A moment of silence passed, and she rolled her eyes. “Who’s the least busy psychopomp you’ve got?”
At once, all eyes turned to the weedy old man in the bowler hat. “Ah,” he said, and removed his hat to better scratch the back of his neck. “Well, yes. I guess that would be me, wouldn’t it?”
Four years ago, the night after receiving yet another in a long string of diplomas and degrees, Adagio walked slowly around the house picking up red plastic cups and paper plates and misplaced furniture. Her classmate Coral Cove. a math major who’d taken some biology for her GEs, had been the last guest to leave the party, her seaspray perfume still hanging in the air after her, and now Adagio was going to clean until she passed out.
In the bedroom at the end of the hall, Aria and Aria’s boyfriend of the week (no relation) were slumbering peacefully. Aria’s boyfriend of the week was a big believer in morning yoga to start each day off fresh, and as a result, Aria wasn’t much one for staying up late. But she hadn’t once stormed out of her room to demand Adagio’s guests shut up, so clearly things were going well for her and she was reasonably content.
And for a moment, leaning tiredly on the mop handle between odd spills in the corners of the living room, Adagio felt reasonably content too. Sure, she was nowhere near her ultimate goal of getting revenge on Death. Her research was nowhere near specialized enough yet. But maybe it was okay to take a moment–an evening–to celebrate the progress she had made. And if that celebration involved inviting a surprising number of her schoolmates to join her, well, maybe that was okay too once in a while. Revenge was still the priority, of course, but it was going to take a while.
The front door burst open and Sonata Dusk strode inside, her blue hair just escaping from its bun, wearing brown canvas shoes below a brown skirt and green peasant blouse. She looked eclectic yet responsible, though her voice as she greeted Adagio was still exuberant despite the hour. “Woohoo!” she cried. “I thought those kids’ parents were never getting home from their date! Aww, did I miss your whole party? I’m sorry, some nights babysitting runs super long and there’s nothing I can do that wouldn’t get me arrested!”
Adagio roused herself from her mop and waved sleepily. “Hey Sonata. Yeah, it was… a blast, actually. Maybe next time?”
“There’s going to be a next time?”
“Of course! I’ve still got more research to do. Biology is complicated, especially when you’re, you know, not even natively the same biology as everyone else.”
Sonata turned to lock the front door, then stuck her tongue out. “I mean more parties, silly. This is new! Adagio the party animal! I mean, girl, look at all these beers everywhere.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me. I don’t even like the stuff.” She glared at the kitchen table. “And I’ve been to parties before, okay? I’m not a total social isolate.”
“I have literally never called you a social i–uh, whatever you said. But you’re a siren, you know? You’re always saying we can’t meet your friends because they’d embarrass you, and now you’re inviting them to our house!”
Groggily, reluctantly, Adagio accepted that no more cleaning was going to get done tonight. She sank into a ratty armchair she’d bought to help project a student aesthetic–which, she supposed, kind of aligned with what Sonata was saying. But it wasn’t like the party had even been her idea. Coral Cove had suggested it after learning Adagio was on the verge of graduation, and for some reason Adagio had said yes, and then somehow a bunch of her classmates–okay, fine, maybe her friends–had ended up in her house, having probably a great time.
This had never been the plan. The plan was to learn about biology and related subjects to kill Death. Simple! But learning required you to be a student, and being a student brought with it classmates, and parties, and Coral’s blue lipstick rounding her words as she made surprisingly persuasive arguments, and Adagio had thought, sure, just one night, just to celebrate…
She started and blinked at Sonata. “Sorry. I’m kind of falling asleep. What were we saying?”
Sonata leaned up against the ratty armchair, dangerously close to falling in. “Just that this is good! You had a party! You’re making progress!”
Adagio narrowed her eyes. “You’re making fun of me.”
“I’m happy for you, honey Dagi, there’s a difference. Tell me about your friends!”
“They’re… they’re, I don’t know, Sonata, they’re smart. Scholars. Um, Coral Cove studies theoretical mathematics, no, don’t ask me to explain why regular mathematics aren’t theoretical. She’s from Las Pegasus but she’s nothing like the stereotypes, she has a cat and she’s got posters of seahorses on her wall. They look like us, you know. She likes my hair. She… what?” Somewhere through her description, Adagio had noticed Sonata staring at her.
Sonata took a moment to respond, standing up straighter from the side of the chair. “So, uh… she sounds pretty.”
“Yeah,” said Adagio softly, then caught herself. “Wait, what the fuck Sonata? This is not what we’re doing! I have enough trouble with Aria trying to set me up on dates as it is!”
“But I’d never even heard of this girl and I can already tell you like her!”
Adagio glared up at her. “It doesn’t matter whether I like her. I’m a siren. I’m immortal! You like your babysitting, but it’s not like you’re planning on having any kids of your own, is it? You’d watch them grow up and die while you stayed the same age forever!”
“First off, fuck you too. Second off, that’s not the same thing!” Sonata returned her glare unreservedly, no signs of her being a frantic people pleaser. “I didn’t tell you to marry this girl, just to have a good time for once! Even Aria gets this stuff, and she’s awful! Humans are forever doing stuff that doesn’t last. I mean, come on, Adagio, can I be real with you for a minute?”
Adagio groaned. “Sure. Yeah. Hit me.”
Sonata leaned in close. “That time with Death, you saved our lives. But you don’t seem very interested in living.”
Trailing behind the old man as he led her through the mysterious rainbow realm, Adagio gave herself over to pondering. Though her name meant “slow,” she had always found that derogatory and preferred “methodical.” Eight years ago, she had almost lost to the Death of Immortals because she’d had no time to think. Now there was no time limit, no wracking physical pain, nothing holding her back at all… nothing, save for the worry that not only had she run out of life purposes, the purpose she’d had wasn’t nearly as important as she’d thought it was.
Sure, she’d had no real idea what would happen when she killed Death. No number of death cafés or audited philosophy courses could have given her a definite answer to that. But something should have happened. The entire world should have changed forever, a feat worthy of the great siren Adagio Dazzle. Revenge was nice, but eventually you ran out of people to take revenge on, and then what should you do?
In retrospect, she had not been a perfect student of comparative mythologies. A respected professor, lecturing on the different cultural expectations for death, the afterlife, psychopomps, and so on, did not expect to be interrupted by a girl with curly orange hair insisting that certain myths were factually wrong. So maybe she’d gotten lazy and assumed the simplest possible model from the evidence available to her: that there was one Death alone, who had for whatever reason taken a particular interest in immortals and their death debts. She’d focused on the biological underpinnings of death and left herself to be surprised by the spiritual ones, underprepared for learning about this true “Death of Immortals” role. Still, now that she had learned about it, there was nothing stopping her from learning more, especially when it was apparently now her role. The first step in deciding what she should do next was discovering what she could.
“So,” she said, turning to her guide, who ought to be able to enlighten her on the subject, “who are you, anyway?”
The old man smiled at her. “Oh, I’m actually quite famous, dear lady! I’m the Death of a Salesman.”
“Oh… you know, I think I have heard of you, actually.” She paused, suddenly confused. “Wait, not salesmen plural? Just one single salesman?”
“That’s why I have so much free time,” he said. “Other psychopomps handle all the other salesmen, leaving me to focus on Willy Lohorse. And he’s fictional, so it’s not like he can ever die, so there’s nothing for me to do.” He paused. “Ever.”
“Fictional?”
“Yes! Willy Lohorse is the star of the play, ‘Death of a Salesman.’ That’s where I get my title! It’s a very famous play, and really quite the celebrated comment on the human condition. Haven’t you seen it?”
“I… must have missed that one,” said Adagio. The other sirens might have, but contemporary popular culture had been one facet of death she’d never taken the time to study.
But the Death of a Salesman plowed on, looking eager for the rare chance to explain himself. “It’s a truly moving play, a treatise really, all about death and the human condition! Its central question is whether a man can be ‘worth more dead than alive.’ You see, dear lady, Willy Lohorse is past his prime and ultimately kills himself for the sake of his family, because he thinks his life insurance will give more money to his family than he could still earn.“
“And does it?” she asked.
“That’s not important. He believes it will, that’s all that matters. The life insurance is paid, his children get newfound opportunities for their futures. A happy ending, right?”
“I mean, it sounds like he’s dead, so…”
The Death of a Salesman nodded. “Exactly! So the question behind the question is what it means for something to be ‘worth’ something. Willy Lohorse’s children have more money, but they lose their father. Which is worth more? And the play ends before we get to see them live the rest of their lives, so we can’t really know. We have to watch the play and wonder what we would think if we were Willy Lohorse’s children–as, perhaps, metaphorically, we all are!”
Adagio, who despite herself was getting a bit involved in the story, thought it over. “Humans get very upset when other humans die. So… initially, I’m sure they’d think losing their father wasn’t worth it.”
“Initially?” asked the Death of a Salesman.
“Right, but maybe in time they’d be able to focus on what the money can buy them. Plus you said Willy was getting old anyway, so he’d have died one way or another regardless.”
“So are you saying that Willy Lohorse was right? That a man is worth more dead than alive?”
Adagio flicked her tail at him. “Hell, I don’t know if he was right, I’m just giving my opinion. You said we all get to be his children, right? And anyway, aren’t you forgetting somebody?”
“Who?”
“Willy!” She sprang forward through the colorful air, leaving him to chase after her. “Willy has to make the decision before his children can. He’s deciding whether it’s worth more, to him, for his children to be financially stable, or for him to get to spend time with them.”
The Death of a Salesman puffed behind her, clutching his hat in one hand. “Yes, you have it, my dear! He can’t have both! He must choose between two virtues, his family’s happiness and his own! And so he chooses that greatest of all virtues, sacrifice, literal self-sacrifice! He guarantees security for the people he loves by removing the greatest threat facing them, though he must die to do so, and–”
“Oh,” said Adagio, coming to a midair halt and also a realization, “fuck this.”
“Pardon me?”
She twirled around and glared at him. “Is any of this even real? This afterlife or wherever we are? Psychopomps? The New School of Whatever? Or are you all some kind of stupid morality play being put on for my benefit, a ludicrous Hearth's Warming Tale where every character is a spirit?”
He stood in place for a suspiciously long time, hands in the pockets of his faded brown suit. “Well, that is… young lady, I’m afraid I’m not sure what you…”
“Don’t you young lady me, I’m an immortal siren.” Adagio waved her hooves through the air. “This is eight years ago all over again! The last guy, the uh, former Death of Immortals–he was trying to get sirens killed with some elaborate argument about how it was secretly good for us. You’re doing the same thing! You’re inventing this whole story about a supposedly famous hero who sacrifices himself and somehow this lets him protect the people he cares about most, and I’m supposed to think wow, if I stay here as the Death of Immortals, I can protect Aria and Sonata from the last guy finding some other way to kill them! Am I right?”
The Death of a Salesman stared woefully at the rainbows beneath them. “It really is a very famous play, I promise you,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, “forget the fucking play for a moment and tell me the truth. Is this real? Did I kill Death or not?”
He sighed. “Everything you’ve seen is real. We, well, I suppose we may have deliberately chosen me to talk to you, ah, as you say, to inspire you to maintain your heroic sacrifice. But nobody has lied to you!”
Adagio groaned. She had heard quite enough of that sentiment already. “Okay. So why do this? Why do you care so much about whether I’m dead, or the Death of Immortals, or whatever I am now?”
“Well… mostly, we just all hated Steve.”
“Who?”
“The former Death of Immortals. He’s lost his powers thanks to you, so we can just call him by his name before he became a psychopomp. Which was Steve. Steve was awful. He was in the New School of Psychopompery with the Death of Ponies, and, look, the rest of us just think this is a job, all right? We hang about, we talk about movies, sometimes somebody dies under our purview and we make them a personalized afterlife. We try to give everyone something nice, unless they really don’t deserve it. But Steve was terrible. Petty, vindictive, always ate the last donut at parties. And we thought, okay, let’s try to convince this new girl to stay, surely she’s better company than Steve.”
Adagio, unexpectedly plunged into office politics, sick of everyone and everything, pointed to her chest with one hoof. “I have a magic jewel that makes everyone around me start fighting each other.”
The Death of a Salesman went pale. “You do? Oh, of course you do. Oh dear. What can I do to convince you not to use it on us?”
An unknown number of years ago, Adagio had hated Equestria: its luscious green hills, its cascading waterfalls, its magical nooks and crannies, but most importantly its friendship. Aria had hated its ponies, viewing them as lesser beings; Sonata had followed Aria’s lead, hopelessly seeking approval from the same siren who tormented her; and Adagio had waged war on how much the ponies cared for each other. They had united to form the greatest threat to Equestrian harmony ever, until Star Swirl the Bearded had stepped in and banished them all.
And yet… times were different now. Aria had gone from consummate xenophobe to consummate romantic, falling hopelessly in love with an endless series of human boys. Sonata had allowed herself to form relationships outside her siren enclave and had grown confident and independent. And Adagio, finally back above the endless fields and forests of Equestria, fins flapping in the perfect warm breeze, was still angry at the numerous Deaths but found herself a little less angry now at life.
For a brief while, especially with her siren body and powers restored, her post-death adventure had been exciting, as she’d learned more about the hidden mystical makeup of the universe and about the effects of her long-sought revenge. But then the majesty of the situation had begun to fade and she’d been stuck listening to annoying idiots, and the only annoying idiots that Adagio wanted to spend her days with were still back in the human world. Cutting-edge research be damned, she’d done her part and was ready to go home.
At some point, Adagio realized, “home” had become the human world.
Below her, a tall silver pony with a brilliant white beard sat on a makeshift stone bench, conversing quietly with a smaller, greener pony who listened to him with rapt attention. Pointed hats and other mystical artifacts littered the grass around them, but they were devoting themselves to theory today, neither one noticing the yellow siren in the sky above. It would have been easy to sing her siren song–for the first time in eight years!–and disrupt even this tiny harmony, but…
Maybe she was just tired. Maybe the sun felt too good after all that time shut up in her basement lab. Maybe.
Whatever the reason, she waited until the green pony had left before she descended. “That’s not really Clover,” she said, and the silver pony spun around to see her, his face turning rapidly to terror.
“Adagio Dazzle?!”
“Hi Star Swirl. It’s been a long time.”
Star Swirl the Bearded drew himself up to his full height, horn already beginning to glow as several of his more dangerous-looking artifacts spiraled around him. “Are you here to battle me, Adagio? I may be out of practice, but I have studied much since our last encounter, and without your sister sirens…”
Despite herself, she cut him off. “No. I’m just here to talk. I know I’ve done some horrible things, and I don’t regret any of them, and I hate you, and you should fear me, and all of that, but today I really just want to talk with you.”
For a moment, yes, she’d been tempted. She agreed that he would probably have won, but this was the last chance she might ever get to fight someone as a siren, assuming her plan worked out. At least until the next (and last?) time that she died, but she wasn’t planning on letting that happen for a long time. It would have been wonderful to go all out against him, but she needed his cooperation to get her revenge on him, and fighting was probably a bad way to start.
According to the Death of a Salesman–and here she’d wished she’d her lab notebook with her–there was not so much an afterlife as an endless series of bespoke, curated afterlives. If you got lucky when you died, and your psychopomp of choice liked you, you were rewarded with a close match to your original spiritual beliefs. You spent the rest of eternity in a paradise in the clouds, or you battled fellow warriors in an endless cycle, or whatever. Nonbelievers were sometimes given ironic afterlives, or sometimes stripped of all sensation; it was hard to predict what you’d get when your psychopomps had personalities but little to no accountability.
“What about reincarnation, is that real? How does that work?” Adagio had asked, but he’d only said it was very complicated.
If your psychopomp didn’t like you–or in the cases of Steve and the Death of Ponies, didn’t like anyone–you were likelier to be consigned to some sort of torture, with the possibility of redemption depending on, again, the random whims of whichever psychopomp had happened to be responsible for you. Between the afterlives, figuratively speaking, was Limbo, the rainbow space where Adagio had spent all her time since killing Steve; Limbo was the natural home of the psychopomps but also the figurative space where they generally greeted the recently deceased.
The whole system was an arbitrary mess, and part of her itched to stay and organize it, but then she reminded herself of the company she’d have to keep. The Death of Royalty had seemed okay, but there was no way her reward for mastering life and death was going to be creating objective standards for dead mice. So instead she had convinced the Death of a Salesman to help her enter Star Swirl’s afterlife, promising that it was the key to solving Willy Lohorse’s dilemma, and he’d gladly agreed.
Star Swirl, after considering her words, relaxed his posture ever so slightly. “I’m listening,” he said.
Eight years ago, Adagio and Sonata had faced down the Death of Immortals, who led them through a series of cruel and calculated gambits to bend their will to its own. Adagio had not quite considered the possibility that by gaining the powers and title of the Death of Immortals, she would suddenly find herself in the opposite position, trying to bend Star Swirl’s will, and yet here she was. It had been years since their last encounter, and they had never really been on good speaking terms, so she wasn’t fully sure how to approach this, but fundamentally, Star Swirl was a good pony, so maybe she should try being honest with him.
“First,” she asked, “will you tell me why you banished the three of us?”
“You were evil.” His answer came with no hesitation.
“That’s true. But you could probably have killed us instead, or imprisoned us in stone or something.”
This time he hesitated, one hoof pawing uncomfortably at the grass. “That’s not Equestria’s way. That shouldn’t be Equestria’s way. I banished you far from us, so you couldn’t hurt Equestria anymore, but I also made sure to put you in the path of the greatest redemptive force I could foretell.”
This was new. Adagio drifted downwards, closer to Star Swirl, who only backed up a little. “What kind of force was that?”
“Not what, who. Twilight Sparkle.”
“Who? Or, no, wait wait wait. She does sound a little bit familiar. Umm, she was one of the Rainboom girls who beat us at Canterlot High, right? Sorry, I guess she didn’t really get a chance to do any redeeming, we all ran away after that.”
“I see.” He looked down. “I had hoped… but I know very little about what happens in the living world.”
“Oh,” she said, “so you know about that? That you’re dead, I mean?”
He nodded. “When I finally passed away, a spectral pony greeted me and brought me to this place of paradise. Clover the Clever and I spend our days studying magic, like we used to.” He smiled sadly. “Of course I already know he is not the real Clover. He’s just part of this place. But I find, after all my decades, that I am content with the illusion.”
“Huh.” Adagio thought this over for a while, then shrugged her finned hooves. “Okay, well, that makes this easier. I’m dead too now, more or less. You already decided once that I should be living in the human world, instead of dead or imprisoned. I just need your help to make that same decision again. Help me come back to life.”
Star Swirl’s magical weapons, or whatever they were, had all settled back to the grass. He looked at her thoughtfully, curiously, warily. “If Twilight Sparkle didn’t redeem you,” he said at last, “what can? Is there any point? Are you still the evil siren I knew in Equestria?”
And Adagio took a deep breath and said, “Okay, let me tell you what’s happened.
“For a while in the human world, nothing changed. We tried to use our song magic to make people fight each other. We probably wanted to take over the world or something. Then Twilight and her friends defeated us, and we almost died, and we had to start over from nothing. We told each other we were still going to be evil. We faced down the world you forced on us. And then… things got complicated.
“There are four reasons you should help me. The first is Aria. She’s been in eleven different bands in the last eight years, playing music in more genres than I could even name. She realized that there are other emotions that music can create besides hatred, and she realized that she liked some of those emotions herself. She fell in love with a human, over and over and over again. She’s had her heart broken more times than I can count, and she keeps going. She can barely hold down a job but she keeps going. It’s actually incredibly annoying to watch. But she isn’t evil, and she cares about me, and if you let me die she will never forgive me.
“The second is Sonata. She wanted to find new ways to make music without her jewel too, so she started reading. She got hooked on human stories, and the reasons humans tell them, and the humans that stories are told to. She read about a club of young girls who look after baby humans, and got obsessed with baby humans herself, and somehow ended up founding this massive babysitting internet community and business. Half the time she still hates Aria, but I think she’s taken to thinking of us as her children too. She’s out there playing in the big girl world now. She’s not evil, and it would devastate her if I died.
“The third… is a young woman named Coral Cove.” Adagio could feel her scales heating up, but she forced herself to go on. “You know your paradise, talking and learning with Clover forever? I think she could be my Clover. She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. And, umm… when we were in school together, she had this perfume that drove me wild. She’s so pretty. She cares about things I never thought were important until she told me about them. She’s had a few girlfriends over the years, but she’s not married, I've been following her online. I… honestly, I think I wasted some of my life, but if you give me one more chance, I want to find her again and tell her how I feel.”
For a long minute, Star Swirl said nothing. “I asked if you are still evil,” he said at last.
Adagio frowned. “I think evil and good are words for Equestria,” she answered. “They’re magic words for ponies who go on magic adventures. Somehow, sometime in the last eight years, Aria and Sonata and I, we just kinda… started being human instead. In the human world, we’re not evil, or good… we just are.” She shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s the redemption you were hoping for from that Twilight girl. Aria’s still a bitch sometimes, Sonata cheats on her taxes, I spent eight years of my life working to kill Death… we never really figured out whether that was good or not, but I did it anyway.” She looked Star Swirl in the eye. “I don’t think any of that means I deserve to die.”
“There may be a difference between choosing not to kill someone, and choosing to unkill them. I should discuss this with Clover…”
“If you do leave me dead,” said Adagio, already dreading the idea of consorting with the Death of Ponies while waiting for Star Swirl to make up his mind, “I will make you regret it.”
Star Swirl looked back at her, seemingly unaffected by her sudden threat. “How precisely would I help you, anyhow?”
“The thing is, I’m not just a regular dead creature like you. I’m a psychopomp now, the Death of Immortals. Whenever an immortal creature dies, I get to choose their afterlife. Somebody, apparently, needs to have this job, and I’m absolutely not giving it back to the last guy, so it has to be you or me. It’s a lousy job with stupid, tiresome coworkers who don’t deserve this ridiculous power. You’re going to trade an eternity of happiness for an eternity of office drama, and in return, you’re going to let me go home to the human world.”
This, however, clearly unsettled Star Swirl. He looked around the facsimile of Equestria they were speaking in, as if considering the possibility he might be seeing it for the last time. “Why would you do this to me?”
“Because we were happy in Equestria, and you banished us, so I hate you. I labored a long time to get revenge on Death–getting revenge on you too is a bonus.”
Star Swirl took a step back, disconcerted, and Adagio smiled. Against her wishes, she felt she understood the former Death of Immortals now. It was a lot of fun to trap your victim without telling a single lie, at least if you wanted your victim to suffer, and if there was one creature in all the worlds who was responsible for every bad thing that had happened to the sirens, it was Star Swirl the Bearded. It was about time for the tables to turn on him.
The silver pony stared at her, confused. “You seriously still expect me to help you?”
“Of course I do.” Her smile grew wider. “The fourth reason, besides Aria and Sonata and Coral, is me. In the human world I’m not evil anymore, because I started liking it there, but in Limbo there’s nothing stopping me. There’s something called the New School of Psychopompery that wants me to intentionally lead immortals to their doom, and once I’ve done that, I can give them eternal torment for their afterlives. Once my research gets discovered back in the human world, there are going to be a lot more immortals running around, and eventually they’re going to start dying. Plus who knows how many immortals there are in other worlds besides the two I know about? Every one of them that I consign to damnation will be a soul that you could have saved, if you’d just taken over the job and let me go back and ask Coral on a date. It’s completely your choice! If you’re not ready now, I’ll go wreak some havoc and then come back and ask you again! We have all the time in the world.”
Star Swirl’s legs were getting wobbly, his eyes horrified. Was this how she had looked that night on the cliffside? She should have felt sympathetic, but she’d spent far too long wishing terrible things would happen to this particular pony, and finally fate had handed her a chance to make her wish come true. Or maybe fate had handed her a bunch of boring nonsense, in the form of Limbo and its caretakers, and she’d crafted her chance from it herself.
“Clover…” he said, weakly, looking around for the green pony he’d claimed he knew wasn’t real.
“You’re going to give him up,” she said, softly. “I’ll give up my powers, and you’ll give up your student. I know you will. Because you’re a hero, and self-sacrifice is what heroes do. Think how many dead souls you’ll be able to guide to bright, shining afterlives… isn’t that more important than your own happiness?”
Slowly, heavily, he sank to the earth. He bowed his head in defeat. “You win. What do you need me to do?”
Relief flooded her. She’d won! Willy Lohorse be damned, she was going to get to live her life with Aria and Sonata and protect them from the whims of an evil death spirit. “I don’t actually know,” she said, “but I bet I know who does.” She’d asked the Death of a Salesman for one last instruction, and she used it now, summoning the still-unprocessed soul of the former Death of Immortals in front of her. It was surprisingly easy, perhaps because he’d been waiting so long already to die properly.
Steve, now that she could finally see him, was nothing more than a pathetic brown beetle, dreaming of grandeur and the power to destroy all who had slighted him. Finally! he cried, but for once his voice brought no terror to Adagio at all, only delighted anticipation for the final stage of her plan to come together. Enough of this humiliation! Give me my powers back immediately!
Adagio swooped down to the grass beside him, a few feet away from Star Swirl’s mournful form. “I will!” she said. “But I need you to tell me how. You want to be the Death of Immortals again, and I just want to go back to life… I promise to put us back to the way we were, if you’ll just explain the process.”
You can’t even tell? Steve shook his tiny beetle legs at her. You were supposed to be the clever siren!
She only smiled at this. “You know more than anyone about the rules for being the Death of Immortals. Surely it’s faster just to ask you for your wisdom.”
I see… very well. It’s actually quite simple… my natural state is being dead, and you brought me back to life, which gave you my powers; your natural state is being alive, so if I kill you here, I will get the powers back. There must always be a Death of Immortals. Since we are both corporeal in this realm, it will not require anything like your elaborate apparatus with the mice, merely a weapon of some kind that I can wield.
Adagio nodded. That did make sense. “And killing me in this afterlife will let me go back to life?”
This entire experience for you has been a special case. Did anything actually happen to your body? What do you think actually killed you in your basement? Nothing! Once you part with my powers again, you will be returned to your living body as if nothing had happened, and we can put this whole farce behind us.
“Thank you, that’s very clear!” Adagio curved her siren body into the air for the very last time, circling the stone bench and her two greatest enemies for a few glorious seconds before gliding back down. “Well, Star Swirl, you heard him. Just kill me somehow and all my problems will be over, and I can go back to living a normal life with the others. Now that I’m such a master biologist, maybe I’ll even end up making the world a better place for everyone! But first, now that I’ve won, I need to spend some time outside the lab, reconnecting with the people I care about.”
What?! Steve’s puny beetle voice quivered with rage. That pony? Where does he come into this? You said you were going to give my powers back to me! You promised!
“Ah!” The smile Adagio had been sporting for the past couple minutes turned into a full-fledged grin. “You’re right, I almost forgot that part! You see, I was thinking about everything everyone has told me since I got to Limbo, and I noticed there was a bit of a contradiction. How is it possible for Star Swirl to be here at all?”
He died, obviously!
“Obviously. But the Death of Ponies told me that ponies can’t die. So how could that be? I think the answer is in how much the other psychopomps hate her, and you too by the way. The Death of a Salesman said she did some ‘horrible thing’ to get this job, though he never said what it was.”
She was waging a war against a group of unicorns, and tied a powerful anti-magic device to her own life. When she died, the anti-magic explosion obliterated the previous Death of Ponies, and she took over the job.
“Oh,” said Adagio. “I guess I don’t really care about any of that, but thanks for clarifying. Anyway, everyone hates her, and they don’t seem to want her doing her intentionally-encouraging-ponies-to-die shtick, so I guess another psychopomp told her that ponies only go to a nice farm upstate.
“And that,” she said, leaning in to whisper to the former Death of Immortals, while Star Swirl prepared his killing spell behind her, “led me to realize that Death can lie after all.”