Come morning, my bones literally felt weary as I sat down on top a hedge at Canterlot Castle. By the time I had gotten to the hedge the night before, I saw a couple of ponies and a tiny dragon run to the castle but I paid them no heed. Looking towards the castle, I considered actually meeting the princesses. Haven’t seen them in a long while. They’re probably doing fine but maybe a visit won’t hurt.

Having made up my mind, I stood up and after cracking a few bones to get some feeling back, walked across the hedge maze towards one of the windows, floating over the gaps when necessary. Cupping my hands around my sockets, I tried to get a peek inside but all I could see was my own reflection. Frowning, I looked from side to side before clenching my hand and punching through the glass, cringing at the sound of glass breaking. Hopefully no one had heard that.

Jumping down to the floor, I heard some more glass crunch under my feet as I walked over the shards, heading over to a few of the rooms to judge which floor I’m on. Tapping my scythe on the floor as I walked, I peeked into a few of the rooms and found them to be filled to the brim with books and nary a single pony in sight. ‘Did I stumble onto the library wing? It’s been a few years but my memory isn’t that bad.’

I heard hoofsteps clop along the corridor. My reaction? Float up and not get seen by whoever the hoofsteps belonged to. Willing my scythe out of existence, I kept my hands by my sides as I walked along the ceiling. Nodding my head from side to side at a tune I half-remember from back on Earth I looked down to see both Celestia and Luna walking down the corridor. They must have been the ones whom the hoofsteps belonged to. Judging by the looks on Celestia’s face, something terrible must have happened because she looked furious.

Turning around, I followed them, making sure to keep my centre of gravity while I walked.

“Sister, why would your student attempt time travel?” Luna asked Celestia, cocking her head to the side curiously.

Now this was interesting. Celestia had a new student? After Sunset Shimmer left through a mirror after trying to get too powerful for her own good, I didn't think she would get a new one.

“Twilight Sparkle has always been a bright mare. However, something must have happened for her to suddenly study time travel spells.” Celestia replied, her face bearing a worried look now.

I shouted in surprise at Twilight being the new student; falling to the ground in a pile of bones and cloth as my concentration faltered.

Both Celestia and Luna looked around at the commotion, only to find a pile of dark, raggy clothes where there previously wasn’t. Luna walked forward cautiously, nudging the clothes only to jump back into a defensive position when they shuffled a bit. “Sister, do we have rats in the castle?” the blue Alicorn inquired, turning to look at her sister.

“We shouldn’t. I don’t believe we’ve ever had a rat problem.” Celestia answered, furrowing her brow in concern at the pile. When the pile began to shift and move at a more frequent pace, both sisters stepped back, caution written plain on their faces. Eventually, when the clothes stopped shifting, it stood up and stared at them.

“That was quite a shock.” I mumbled, staring at both sisters as they stared back at me. After a while of awkward staring and fidgeting, Celestia spoke up.

“What was such a shock to you?” Celestia asked, sitting on her haunches.

“Thou art a skeleton.” Luna said, relaxing her defenses slightly and walked forward again, only this time, it was to see the mysterious figure up close.

“Yes, I’m a skeleton. I’m the Grim Reaper or if that’s too modern for you, Miss Luna, then you can call me Death.” I answered as I chortled a bit at Luna’s reaction, noting the prominent lines around her eyes with a tinge of sadness. I then turned my attention to Celestia. “As for your question, Twilight Sparkle being your student shocked me. I thought you wouldn’t have taken on another student after what Sunset did.” I replied to her question, crossing my legs and floating in the air. This surprised the both of them, as well as a couple of guards who thought the princesses needed aid. I waved to them and they awkwardly waved back.

“How doth thou know our names?” Luna asked, eyes widening at the answer, shaking her head in confusion at the feminine voice.

“It was a while before I considered taking on another student but, yes, Twilight Sparkle is my new protege.” Celestia said, inclining her head towards me.

“I know your names because I’ve been watching this particular world every few decades or so just to see how things have been shaping up. I do it with other worlds too but the ones connected to Tartarus are the ones I mostly watch over. It was really in the last thousand or so years of your world that I took a real shine to watching as that was when I officially took up the job as the Grim Reaper of Tartarus.” I said, crossing my arms and making my scythe wink out of existence to better look at them.

“Before you ask anymore questions, can we go somewhere a bit more private than the hallway?” I asked them, placing a hand against the side of my head, feeling rather bored for the moment.

“That would seem wise.” Celestia agreed and nodding her head to Luna, lead the both of them to a more secluded place.

Turns out that secluded place was a garden full of statues. The bone around my eye sockets moved about in an attempt to widen them but the best I could do was make them stretch a tiny bit. It didn’t really matter anyway as Celestia had began to speak.

“So, Death, why are you here?” Celestia asked, causing my jaw to fall softly against the grass. I picked it up and snapped my lower jaw back into place, making Luna cringe at the sound. Celestia was patient enough and had probably seen many things in the time I was away from here.

“Do you actually not remember me?” I asked incredulously.

“Should I?” Celestia asked, cocking her head to the side in confusion with Luna mirroring her.

“Both of you seriously don’t remember? Kind of hard to forget an actual conversation, well, a fair few conversations, with a live skeleton. I helped the both of you out with a few things before taking up this job.” I said, not really being able to think up of them at the moment.

“Things? I’m afraid I don’t follow.” Celestia shook her head confusedly, staring at me as if I had grown a second head.

“Can you tell us how you ended up here instead?” Luna asked, trying to follow the conversation.

“The first time or when I got here yesterday?” I asked for clarification.

“First time, if you please. It may provide some context to whatever interaction you claim we have shared.” Celestia answered skeptically.

“First time, right. Now let’s see if I remember this. It’s been a good while since I first came to this world." I said and crossed both my arms and legs at the same time, trying to remember if I can tell it right. “Both of you had better get comfortable. This may be a long story and I’m not sure if I can explain everything so please hold all questions until the end.”

After having typed up my latest creepypasta, I hit ‘Send’ and logged off for the night, the glow of the computer screen fading until it winked out completely. I stretched and yawned, looking around for my digital alarm clock

“Twelve in the morning, huh? I’d better get to bed.” I said to myself, not really caring about the time as I’m used to going to bed this late. I got up out of my swivel chair and went over to my bed, walking passed my nightstand that were a few creepy looking dolls sat, all facing in opposing directions from each other. As I sat on the bed, I turned to the door as it opened, letting some harsh light in. Mum mustn’t have gone to bed yet.

“Are you still up? I thought you would have been in bed by now.” Mum said, not really that surprised at me being up this late. She had poked her head around the door, revealing frizzy orange curls framing a round face.

“I’m heading to bed now. Can’t you see that?” I retorted, gesturing to the bed I was on. I was in the middle of putting my pyjamas on too. I wore an overly large plain white shirt with dark blue panties and was in the process of getting my pants when Mum had interrupted.

“Oh, right. I was just checking up on you, and seeing if you were ready for that thing you were doing with your friends tomorrow.” Mum said, looking a bit around my room wherever the light from the hallway illuminated it. She was probably checking to see if I had packed for the day. There were plenty of notes on supernatural fairy tales and the beings that those tales were centered around strewn upon my desk and around the walls. The parts of the wall that were lit up anyway.

“Yeah, I’m packed and ready to go.” I answered, nodding my head and stretching slightly.

“Great, I’ll see you in the morning. Night.” Mum said, closing the door a bit. I sighed and pulled up my pants, crawling into bed.

“Night, Mum.” I replied to the half-open door, turning over and closing my eyes.

In the morning, I blinked my eyes rapidly, shooting up out of bed as I stared at the clock on my nightstand. It read that it was six in the morning. That didn’t sound so bad, until I remembered I was meant to meet my friends in about half an hour. I jumped out of bed and rapidly put on some clothes. By the time I had finished up with the rest of my packing, the time read ten past six. I grabbed a few notes to read on the way if I got bored too.

Stuffing the papers into my backpack, I slung it over my shoulder and headed into the bathroom across the hall. Closing the door behind me, I placed my bag against it and tied my jet black hair up into a ponytail in front of the mirror.

“Skye? You in there?” My mum called out after knocking on the door a couple of times.

“Uh huh!” I called back, my voice muffled slightly from the hair tie between my teeth.

“Just checking! Breakfast is on the table for you!” she replied. I heard footsteps walk away and I sighed, cinching my ponytail up with the hair tie. I looked at the clothes I hastily threw on and shrugged at them. I wore a dark red shirt with black and gold lines crisscrossing in intricate patterns, black jeans and looking down at my feet, found I was wearing dark green runners. That’ll do. I’m not terribly fussed with my appearance anyway.

Satisfied with myself, I picked up my bag and headed to the table, which was just down the hall. “What’s the time, Mum?” I asked, sitting down on one of the chairs.

“About six-fifteen. When did you say you had to meet your friends again?” she asked back, sitting opposite and eating her own share of breakfast.

“Six-thirty. I was meant to meet at the bus stop. We’re all planning on going to a festival set to the theme of the Dark Ages that’s happening in town.” I replied between mouthfuls of food.

“Are you planning on doing anything special there?” Mym asked me.

“I was planning on looking at the different kinds of torture they did back then, if they even have that sort of display there.” I said, thinking that if the display wasn’t there, then a staged execution would be the next best thing. Did I mention I’m extremely weird?

“Sounds like fun.” Mum commented. “Don’t let clean-up get in the way. I’ll do that when you leave. Which you should have done five minutes ago if you’re meeting them at the bus stop,” she added, raising an eyebrow at the clock behind me. I turned and found that I should have left already.

“Holy hell! I’d better get going! I’ll see you tonight, Mum.” I said, getting up and kissing her on the cheek. I then bolted, hoisting my backpack over my shoulders as I double-timed it to the bus stop.

Why did the festival have to be so far away? I groaned, sitting behind a couple of friends while the third one sat next to me as we rode the bus into town.

“Something up?” he asked, looking at me, or maybe the view outside. Not that there was much to see except for houses and the occasional park.

“I didn’t realise it was so far away.” I answered, turning my head to Josh as I did. “It was a good idea that we all left early though.”

“Of course it was! I always have good ideas!” Josh proclaimed, grinning wildly. I stifled a laugh at that while one of my other friends spoke up.

“Since when do you ever get good ideas?” Max asked Josh, tilting his head backwards to look at him with a smile.

“Since you pushed Derrick into the bonfire.” Josh retorted, crossing his arms.

“In my defense, I was extremely drunk and had no idea what was happening. I think that cat lady was just an hallucination.” Max’s smile dropped as he turned his gaze forward.

“Who’s Derrick?” I asked, lifting my head up from reading the notes I grabbed. They were of a couple of my favourite supernatural creatures, the Grim Reaper and the Boogeyman. There are plenty of other creatures I’ve gathered notes on back home, such as Unicorns and Pegasus but these two I kept coming back to. I wasn’t a part of this group whenever this Derrick was around, having only joined them a couple of months ago.

“He was a friend of ours. Mad Max here pushed him into a bonfire at a party he attended while under the influence a few months ago.” Holly explained to me, flashing me a smile before turning back to look out the window.

“So why did you push him then, if you knew you were drunk?” I asked, getting into the conversation now that I know a bit about Derrick.

“I thought it would have been fun. Must have pushed him harder than I thought because the next thing I know, he’s in the bonfire when this cat-lady appears. Didn’t know what to make of it so I just chalked it all up to a hallucination but, in the morning when I woke up, Derrick wasn’t there so I think it was all real.” Max replied with a shrug.

“So you two were brothers?” I asked, not really understanding their relationship with one another.

“Nope. Roommates.” Max declared, resting his hands behind his head.

“So … wait. You and Derrick were roommates, you both attended this bonfire party, and you pushed him because you thought it would be fun.” I said, trying to wrap my head around his thinking.

“Don’t bother trying to figure out how he thinks, trust me, Josh and I have given up on that long ago.” Holly supplied, noticing what I was trying to do. I opened my mouth to reply but ended up stuffing my notes back in my bag as I realised we were nearly there.

“We’re almost there. We can have this conversation a little bit later. For now though, torture!” I said with a grin, much to the amusement of my friends based on the knowing looks they were giving me.

“What kind of teenage girl likes torture?” Josh asked, getting up as the bus stopped, the rest of us quickly following suit.

“This one, obviously.” I pointed to myself and laughed, jumping off the bus and racing the others to the showgrounds.

By the time we got there, we were laughing our asses off and began to mill about, losing contact with one another. After losing contact with my friends, I shrugged and headed straight for the torture section, clearly fascinated by what went on in the middle ages. I passed by the many stalls that were selling various foodstuffs as well as trinkets.

When I got to the part of the festival that was playing host to the torture display, my phone buzzed, signalling I got a text. A few of them by the feeling of the vibrations. Fishing my phone out of my back pocket, I looked at the texts and found they roughly said the same thing. ‘Quick! Meet up at the stage area. There’s a special showing of a fake live execution happening in ten minutes!’ Seems like the torture display would have to wait till after the show.

After getting a few directions, I hightailed it to the stage area and managed to sit down next to my friends just as the show started.

“I wonder if the blade’s real.” I wondered, gazing at the axe the executioner was holding intently.

“It’s a fake execution. Of course it won’t be.” Max replied, slouching forward to get a better view.

“You just have an answer for everything, don’t you?” I asked rhetorically.

“SSH! It’s starting!” Josh said, shushing us as the executioner bowed before beginning the show. As he was about to say something, one of the people on standby walked up to him and whispered something into his ear. I couldn’t really tell what his expression was but by the way his shoulders slumped slightly, it probably wasn’t anything good.

“Turns out the person I was meant to execute isn’t available today. We don’t usually do this, but we’re making an exception for this instance. I need a volunteer.” The executioner said. When he did, several hands shot up, including my own. As his gaze passed over the many hands, lingering on mine for what appeared to be a few seconds longer than the others, finally pointed to a willing participant.

As he called out for me to go down to the stage, I felt a chill go down my spine. Probably from the way his gaze lingered on me more than anything else. After hearing a few words of encouragement from my friends, I made my way down to the stage and stopped at the sight of the executioner’s block, suddenly feeling extremely nervous.

“Just kneel down behind the stand and place your head on the block. It’ll be fine. I’ll stop the execution when I reach just about here.” The executioner explained, pointing to a spot a few millimetres in front of my neck. I gulped, nodded and did as asked. I closed my eyes, hoping the blade wasn’t actually real now that I’m up on stage. I felt the whoosh of air parting before a sickening crunch sounded throughout the area.

I opened my eyes after what felt like forever, expecting to see the festival in front of me. Instead, all I saw was inky blackness with a few far-off lights.

“Where the fuck am I?” I asked to no-one in particular; shocked at being wherever I was. I didn’t expect to get an answer, but I didn’t expect intense pain to happen either. After feeling my skin and muscles rip away from me in tattered shreds, I was surprised to still be breathing, in a sense. My organs appeared to have been taken away as well. That’s great.

Barely concentrating from the amount of pain my body went through, I didn’t even notice a piece of material wrapping me up until it started to tighten itself. I swear it felt like I was being wrung through a strainer. By the time it was over and the material unwrapped itself, I was gazing at sunlight. Harsh, sunlight.

“Oh god that was painful. What was that place?” I muttered, slowly sitting up. I didn’t even realise I could move about before looking down at my arms. All I could see was bone and no skin. At all. “GAH!” I gasped, jumping and looking over myself. I was a skeleton. How is this possible? Actually, how can I even speak if I don’t have any vocal cords?

I looked down further and found myself standing on some sort of cloth. Gently picking it up, I placed it around my shoulders and feeling around the back of it, found it had a hood. Lifting it up over my head, the sunlight got blocked partially when it rested partway over my face - er - skull. Does it still count as a face when there’s nothing there to reveal emotions? Either way, I put a hand up to my forehead to block out a bit more sun and called out for my friends. There was no answer.

“Where are they? Where am I?” I asked, twirling around to see various sized trees reaching for the sky. Where I was standing happened to be a small clearing with flowers dotted about. Looking beyond the treeline, I found a soft darkness. Seems the canopies are very much overgrown.

Clasping my hands together and cracking my knuckles, (that felt weird), I took a step forward and felt something slam into my head. Crouching as I clutched my head in pain, I tried to blink and remembered that I didn’t have any eyelids to blink with. Looking at the offending thing, it turned out to be a tall stick with a crescent metal blade at the end. I was surprised my skull didn’t fracture from the force of the impact. I kept a hand on my head, trying to soothe the pain as I picked up what I can only assume was a scythe by the way the blade looked.

“Someone has a sick sense of humour.” I muttered. I walked into the treeline while still staring at my newly acquired weapon. I gave it a few experimental swings at a couple vines in my way and liked how it cut through like a knife through hot butter.

That executioner didn’t sound like he would actually behead me. Since he did, then by all rights, I should be dead and not aimlessly walking around an unknown forest. My eyesight adjusted quickly to the darkness so I guess that’s a good thing. After walking around for a bit with no end to the trees in sight, I sighed and sat on the grass, wondering what my next course of action should be.

I can either think about how I felt about this whole situation, or I could actually try and find some civilisation. I chose the former so now that I’m actually sitting and getting a better look at myself, I found that it wasn’t so bad. Sure, the transition between Earth and wherever here is, was weird and extremely painful, it didn’t detract from the fact that I think I’m the Grim Reaper now. I got the cloak, I’m a living skeleton and I also have the scythe. How can I not be him? Her. Whichever gender I was. Doesn’t help that there most likely isn’t any way back so I’ll probably get homesick in a few days.

I flapped my cloak a bit and wrapped it around myself as I stood back up. Too bad it didn’t come with something to tighten it up. Oh well, I suppose I’ll have to get used to this. As for the scythe, I held it in both hands, switching it from right to left to see which felt better. It definitely felt alot better in my left, so I kept it in that hand as I resumed my wanderings. I turned my head as I heard a rustle from some shrubbery at my right. If it was some form of intelligent life, it wouldn’t hurt to check it out.

“Hello?” I called out and slowly walked to the bushes, only for them to cease their rustling as soon as it heard my voice. “Hello? Is someone there?” I repeated, urging for something to answer. A dark purple horse-looking face poked out of the bushes, framed by what looked like a scratchy, dark brown hood.

We stared at each other for a few seconds before screaming at the same time. Me for seeing a face that is most definitely not human and the purple horse for most likely me being a skeleton. When the horse ran out of breath, I stopped screaming as well and sat, noticing it was a lot smaller than me.

“What art thou?” she asked in a trembling voice, the sound clearly marking the horse as female.

“I’m a human skeleton. What are you?” I answered, groaning inwardly as I realised this is probably some Middle Age Earth parallel. At least I roughly know when I am.

“I am a Unicorn pony. I was out collecting flowers for a potion when you started calling out.” she answered, now emerging full from the bushes to sit opposite me. I saw her holding a wicker basket filled with various types of flowers in a glowing blue field. Ah, pony. I was close with the horse assumption. Wait. Pony? This is a world where ponies are sentient!?

“Last I checked, ponies weren’t the main sentient species of this planet.” I said, shaking my head. Listen to me! I’m holding a rational conversation with a pony! I’ve officially hit a low point in my life.

“Thou art a hoo-min? These creatures are only spoken of in legends. What is thy name?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow at me. I suppose a tall walking skeleton would make anything curious.

“Human.” I corrected her and waved my right hand through her blue field. “My name is Skye but seeming I’m wearing this get-up, you could probably call me Death too. What’s your name?” I said wryly, unfortunately no longer having the muscles to form even a tiny smile.

“‘Human’. Clover the Clever is my name. I am the assistant of Starswirl the Bearded.” Clover answered, nodding primly and also feeling quite proud of her position.

Clover the Clever? Starswirl the Bearded? Just what kind of planet did I end up on? These names are not ordinary names! Ordinary by human standards at any rate. I leaned back and opened my jaw to speak, only to be interrupted by something falling into my lap. I picked it up, with Clover looking at my hands curiously.

“These are hands. Never seen them before?” I asked, waggling the bones of my right while I looked at the thing with my left. Soon as I turned it around to see a the barest hint of a face, it began to laugh madly.

Clover flattened her ears against her head and drew her hood tighter in an effort to drown the laughter.

I winced and quickly turned to see if there was anything else to it. To my surprise, a note was on the back of it. Peeling it off, I stuffed the laughing skull face first into the ground to muffle its noise while I read the note.

Sorry for executing you. Could have been anyone, really, but you stuck out the most. Here’s a token of forgiveness. This one is special. Just think of a message and throw it into the air. I’ll do the rest.

What kind of note was that? Was the Executioner behind this? I looked back and forth between the note and skull and then finally looked to Clover.

“I know I just met you but do you think I should do what this note says?” I asked her, not really having anybody else to turn to for advice.

“If that’s what thou wants. I can’t really say.” Clover said with an imperceptible shrug, still slightly freaked from the laughing skull. All she wanted to do was pick some flowers deep in the Everfree and then head back to the castle. All this skeleton stuff was the last thing she wanted to deal with.

Being cautious about this, I placed my hands on the back of the skull, keeping it in the ground so I won’t have to listen to that crazy laughter. Now what could the message be? I am Death, the Reaper of Souls. Fighting and soul-crushing are high up on the list I like to do, especially if it’s against the supernatural. Give me a call by placing the skull face-first into the ground. Trust me, it will definitely help. That should be a good enough message.

“Brace yourself.” I said and when she had covered her ears again, flung the skull up into the air, hearing it laugh all the while before it disappeared into an inky black portal. “Do you know where the closest settlement is?” I asked, turning my gaze from the disappearing skull to Clover.

“This way. I do not think the other citizens will take kindly to you though.” Clover said warily, deciding to trust this creature for now.

“That’s fine, just as long as I can get to somewhere where there’s chatter.” I replied, scratching the back of my skull as I flipped my hood up and followed Clover.