Along the way to Tartarus, I felt a pull and was suddenly redirected back to Ponyville. Apparently I wasn’t going to meet my boss after all. I turned to look at whoever pulled me back and spotted a pony that was completely black with fully white eyes. Sclera, iris, pupil, you name it, the eyeballs were completely white. Taking a quick peek at its flank … yup, a pony connected with those others for the Horsemen. Seeing that it had no horn and no wings, I pegged it as an Earth Pony.

“What do you want? Can’t you see I’m busy?” I asked exasperatedly, holding out the scroll Hades had sent me.

“Death, I’ve been tasked with keeping an eye on you,” the pony told me. It’s voice marked it as female, and she moved with all the grace of drunk stallion. I stifled a laugh at her walk but shut up when she was suddenly in front of my face, both forehooves leaning against my ribcage. “Something funny?”

“Yeah, you’re walk,” I blurted out. I hope I didn’t make a fatal … er, fataler? Nah, don’t know what word applies but I made something bad of a decision here. One of her eyes went wide. I assume she’s raising a brow. She’s so black it’s hard to tell.

“Alright, we need to talk away from the mortals,” she muttered. She dropped back onto all fours and nudged my hand, causing us to vanish and reappear back in Trottingham in one of the rundown houses.

“Question, why are you here without a Horseman?” I immediately asked before she could open her mouth.

“Because I was having trouble looking for her,” the … what are these ponies called!? Carriers? Carers? I’ll go with carers. Seems less offensive than some other word I would have probably thought up of. The carer trotted to the nearby window and looked out.

“And you think she’s here?” I asked, opting to sit cross legged in the air, watching her.

“My name is Destruction, and I’ve been looking for you,” Destruction told me, turning to look directly at me. Is she- Is she saying what I think she’s saying? No. There’s no way. No bloody way! I can’t be a horseman! I even told her as much but she simply sat on her haunches, flicked her tail to cover her hooves, and continued staring without blinking. I think I can see where a few ponies were coming from with how I don’t blink now that I’m experiencing it first hand.

“Let me repeat. I’m a skeleton. I’m a female. I should be, no, I am dead. I have no experience being a horseman, I don’t plan to be a horseman, and, I am not being a Horseman!”

“There’s no other Death around. Do you see anyone like you?” Destruction simply asked. I did my best to glower but without a face, that was a challenge.

“No,” I said slowly, trying to put as much malice into my voice as possible.

“No need to get cranky,” Destruction muttered under her breath. She was right. I actually needed to calm down before it got any further out of hand. “It’s funny, I thought you were a guy before you opened your magical jaws.”

“I can see that,” I groaned. “Here’s another question. Why do I need a carer? War and Pestilence have them, but I never bothered asking because one, Rig doesn’t like sticking around me and two, Disease seemed way too happy with what she can do.”

“Carers help out their Horsemen and only show up when deemed necessary. The Horsemen, though, show up when a pony has broken the first four seals out of seven. You were the fourth seal to be broken, and ironically, your seal got broken first. There’s usually an order to this and it’s been repeated throughout history time and time again so it’s nothing new, and sometimes the order gets switched around. Unfortunately, instead of Pestilence being unsealed first, it was you,” Destruction explained.

My head was swimming with thoughts and confusion. Horsemen of the Apocalypse usually signal that, well, the Apocalypse was coming. The final apocalypse and since it’s more of a Christian thing, that meant the Rapture before the Apocalypse and these Horsemen bring it about. That’s as much as I remember from Sunday School anyway. Also something about a nine tailed fox being sealed in something or other but I doubt that applied here.

“Let me straighten a few things out before you continue spouting your religious crap. I’m a Horsemen,” I said, pointing to myself. Destruction nodded. “I’m Death, and have been for the past millennia, without knowing about this?” Destruction nodded once more. “Why?”

“Carers show-” I interrupted her with a nod.

“Up when they’re needed. I gathered that,” I said snarkily. “Explain the seven seals you mentioned before continuing on.”

“Of course. There are seven seals, and all of them in different locations around the globe. Four for the Horsemen, three for the rest of the Apocalypse. Seal one, a noise of thunder, and a man rises out of the ground, covered in festering boils, pus filled pimples and infections oozing congealed blood. Pestilence. Seal two, another clap of thunder before the earth feels like it's shifting. It’s War stampeding across the land, swinging his great sword to cleave ponies left and right, although. It’s taken a while for him to actually get around to it. Guess he’s waiting for Famine to show up. War.

“Seal three, is supposed to be Famine’s seal. It hasn’t been broken yet. What all carers have in common other than being at the Horseman’s right hand side, is an innate feeling for when a seal is broken. That’s happened three times. Yours, War’s, and Pestilence’s. Famine, whenever he appears, is meant to boom out ‘a measure of wheat for a bit, three measures of barley for a bit, leave the oil and wine’. Which basically means a kilo of wheat and three kilos of barley for two bits, one bit for the wheat, one for the barley. And the rich can have the oil and wine still. It’s Famine, he causes blights wherever he goes so I guess that’s another way of seeing if he’s arrived yet. Famine.”

I stood, still as a statue. By this time, Destruction began pacing around the room. Most likely, she was trying to keep her muscles from atrophying. I don’t have to worry about that but this information overload makes it feel like my brain is being fried by a million watts of electricity.

“Seal four, is your seal. You are unique. For one, you’re from a different world. That hasn’t happened before. What usually happens is that you appear with Hades at your beck and call. You, Death, are meant to ravage a quarter of the world, but since I hadn’t been notified of you yet, I couldn’t very well teach you and … you seem to have been stripped of practically every power available to you,” Destruction mused.

I stared out the window, trying to process everything she was saying. I didn’t want to interrupt, fearing I may get confused even more. Maybe it would be a nice day if the overcast weather wasn’t causing havoc with the solidified goo? Who knows. The ooze on the road was turning back into a liquid mess along with the mud and gravel of the roads.

“No reaction? Alright, seal five. Souls are taken out of Tartarus and cry, ‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’ It means that they want whoever is upstairs to save them. Whoever it is, does, and the souls ascend in whatever this world’s version of Heaven is,” Destruction informed me. Now the ooze was filling up the streets. Maybe it’ll rise? Does goo increase in mass when water gets added to it?

“Olympus?” I managed to ask of her after a considerable effort to get my brain to speak. It managed to move my jaw but that was about it.

“Oh, she speaks. No, Olympus is for gods and goddesses only. The fifth seal is the making of angels out of souls from Tartarus. Seal six, the sun goes black and the moon turns blood red. Stars fall. Earthquakes ravage the world. General start of religious apocalypses. Seal seven, the final seal, herald angels sing and the world goes to shit,” Destruction said bluntly with a thin smile. She’s creepy. No wonder her name’s ‘Destruction’. She actually seems to revel in this! This is an information overload and it was a miracle I hadn’t collapsed from sheer mindfuckery at this point.

Seven seals, I can sort of wrap my head around.

These seals seal the world from destruction, for lack of a better term, and they keep the world in check. Alright. Shouldn’t magic have interfered in these seals at one point or other? Or these monsters? I don’t even know- AUGH! It’s official. I’ve cracked and this is my hell. I’ve gone crazy. Whooppeee! Look at the crazy grim reaper! Hahahaha! I must have been laughing out loud because I found myself being punched through the window and into the ooze, my cloak having stayed back up in the room from what I could see.

Within a few seconds, I felt the bonds holding my body break and my bones ended up falling into the ooze itself, with my head banging against the ground and rolling away from the rest of my body until it came to a stop at a cracked doorstep. My mind’s a whirlwind and I need to just stop and think. Want me to sum up what I can understand from her wacky explanation? Since all the evidence so far, War beating me up,Pestilence beating me up, points to we’re. All. Fucked.

“It takes an Apocalypse to pair me with the crazy one,” I heard Destruction’s voice mutter to herself from a bit further away, and unable to turn my head, had no idea which way she talking from. Oh, these cracks in the concrete make spiderwebs … how nice. “Ah, there's your skull.” I felt myself get picked up and giggled crazily as I swooped through the air and landed back in the green muck.

“Whoopee! Let's do that again,” I said deliriously.

“No,” Destruction said as she nudged my bones back to form a skeleton lying face up in the muck. She looked at the building where I had been punched and I heard her walk away.

“I think I’m back,” I then cursed when I saw a black cloak drift down only to be weighed by the rain that was falling from the sky. It slapped down onto my body but I didn’t feel anything particularly magical. “This isn’t my cloak!”

“I know,” Destruction said simply, removing the black sheet with a hoof. “Now, will you listen to what I have to say?”

“I haven’t been doing anything else,” I muttered bitterly and couldn’t help but direct my gaze to the grey storm cloud above me. It was angry, it was thunderous, and I believe some lightning struck near my head. When I managed to face Destruction by hopping my head into an upright position, she didn’t seem phased by the lightning striking the ground near her.

“Now where was I?” Destruction asked confusedly, tapping a hoof to her chin as she stepped to the side to avoid a lightning strike directly where she was standing moments prior. “Ah, yes. We were talking about carers.”

“Save it. Just let me wrap my head around this seven seals stuff first,” I said immediately. That seemed to shut her up for a bit. Yay, peace. Not quiet. The thunder ruined it. “Can you get my body out of this muck?” Destruction appeared to sigh heavily before gathering my bones and placing them in a nearby house one by one with her teeth. Of course she’d do it as slow as possible. Not only did I get a carer, I got a bitchy one too. Just my luck.

“Alright, Death, let me tell you about carers,” Des began once more, noticing I hadn’t spoken for quite sometime and was for all the world a pile of old bones. “They take care of the Horsemen and act as their guide.”

“How do they take care of the Horsemen?” I piped up.

“They help keep them on their chaotic path and make sure what they’re meant to do is actually done,” Des explained. Yeah, I’m sticking with Des instead of Destruction. Sounds a lot easier to say.

“Obviously, you haven’t done a good job with me,” I snickered.

“No, I just haven’t been informed of you until now,” Des replied simply, sitting on her haunches with her tail wrapped around her legs.

“Is that it about carers?” I asked in astonishment, realising that she hadn’t spoken for quite some time.

“No, I just got informed by Rig that you’re needed in Tartarus,” Des answered and ran out into the storm. She came back with my cloak and after placing it over my body, forced me away from Trottingham without giving me a chance to respond. Well that’s a nice pony, that’s for sure.

Author's Notes:

I did the best I could with explaining the Seven Seals. Hopefully it was a good enough that it gets through to you guys in a clear way. I got help with the explanation from Schroedingers_Katze so give her some love!

If you want more info, go here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_seals#Opening_the_seven_seals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_of_God