This story just came to me in the middle of reading a Skulduggery Pleasant book. I absolutely love Death in the Discworld books and thought that a meeting of the two skeletons was quite necessary. By the way, I am not in any way, shape, or form going to try to sound like Terry Pratchett when I am writing this. That would just end in miserable failure... anyway... Enjoy!
Everything was going according to plan, and even though they were in mad dash to the finish, it looked as if things were going to work out for the better. They had moved the Grotesquery out of the circle and Skulduggery gave the Faceless One a shove with the air, causing it to topple over into the portal. They flipped the Grotesquery into the portal after it, and it began to close rapidly.
Skulduggery knew that it was not a good idea to feel triumphant until the fight had been won, but he couldn't help but feel a little twinge of hope as the Faceless One screeched in fury.
Things took a turn for the worst when one of the tentacles that the Faceless One had been using to try to keep from falling into the portal latched onto Skulduggery's ankle. It yanked him straight to the ground and Skulduggery was quickly pulled towards the rapidly closing portal. The last thing that he remembered was Valkyrie screaming his name and holding out her hand, but she was just out of reach. There was a bright flash of yellow and everything went dark.
Skulduggery was very skilled in the powers of deduction. He knew how to come to a conclusion, and was rarely completely wrong. He was quite positive that he would finally meet his true end in the realm of the Faceless Ones. Just looking at one was enough to drive a man insane, let alone being in the middle of a dimensional wasteland with thousands of them, all with a hunger for human destruction.
What Skulduggery didn't take into account was the fact that he had a completely different atomic composition than the Faceless Ones; that is if they even were made up of matter. While the Faceless Ones were transported back to where they came from, Skulduggery was taken somewhere completely different; somewhere that looked very similar to Earth, but was not Earth at all.
When Skulduggery came to he found that he was in a place that actually had gravity. That was the first surprise. The second was the fact that there seemed to be human things. Looking around him he saw that he was in an alley made of stone and asphalt and had dirt and grime everywhere. This was not something he expected in the dreadful land of the old gods.
He stood up and brushed the grime off of his pants and coat; he was only slightly worried that they were unsalvageable. His hat had remained relatively unharmed throughout the whole ordeal, which was a surprise considering all that had just happened to him. Why did his enemies enjoy throwing him around so much? Just because he was a skeleton did not mean that he didn't have emotions or feel pain.
Skulduggery stepped out of the alley and took note of his surroundings. He seemed to be in the middle of a large city. There were crowds of people about everywhere, and it really did seem like the portal had transported him to a different place on Earth. Skulduggery didn't get his hopes up.
The more he looked around, the more he realized that there were odd differences here. First off, there were creatures that mingled with the people that were only half the height of them and all had beards, and there were also creatures that were twice the size of any person and had deep, rumbling voices that carried through the crowds. The buildings matched those that could be found somewhere in a very old British city, but Skulduggery didn't see one automobile where there should have been many more. And the people were dressed oddly, in a style that almost mirrored a British person, but was off in many different ways.
Skulduggery quickly noted that this could very well be an image that the Faceless Ones had planted in his mind to drive him to insanity, but it seemed so real. He was a seasoned sorcerer and was skilled at being able to tell what was really happening and what wasn't.
The first thing that he wanted to verify was whether or not he was on Earth in some odd city, or if he was somewhere else entirely. He looked up at the sky and noticed for the first time that the sun was different. It seemed to supply the same amount of light and heat, but it seemed almost watery, like it was too lazy to look like the proper sun. It also seemed to be closer, taking up much more of the sky than the sun did on Earth.
Skulduggery walked to the nearest newspaper stand he saw, making sure to pull his hat low over his eye sockets and pull his collar around the lower half of his head. "Do you sell world maps here?" he asked the man standing behind the counter.
The man looked confused for a few seconds. "Oh, do you mean a map of the Disc?" he responded. The man was speaking English, which was a good sign, but he spoke it in an accent that Skulduggery had never heard before.
"Um, yes, I suppose so," said Skulduggery, not knowing what in the world the Disc was.
The man bent down behind his counter and began rifling through something.
"Here ya go," he grunted, handing a folded piece of paper to Skulduggery.
Skulduggery looked at the map, unfolding it. Written on top in big, italicized letters was the name Discworld, and under that was the oddest type of map that Skulduggery had ever seen. It seemed to be old style and was very vague about what each part was. There seemed to be bodies of water and continents, but they were placed oddly and had indistinct names. At the very bottom of the paper was writing.
'The entire Discworld travels through time and space on the back of four elephants, which in turn ride on the sacred turtle, the Great A'Tuin.'
Skulduggery just stared at the map, the dread rising within him. This sounded like a stupid religion that was proved wrong years ago. Maybe he had traveled back in time.
"Buddy, are you even listening? I told ya that the map'll be twenty bucks," the man behind the counter said in exasperation.
Skulduggery sighed. "Is this map what everyone on the…Disc….uses?" asked Skulduggery.
"Only the people who actually need a map," he responded.
"Well, I'm new here and I'd very much like you to show a little hospitality," stated Skulduggery, pocketing the map.
"Hey, buddy, that map costs money, ya know!" protested the man.
Skulduggery flipped his hat up slightly, giving the vendor a glimpse of his face. "I think that I can be an exception," he whispered dangerously, and even though he didn't have lips you could tell that he was smiling.
The man looked fairly surprised, considering there were trolls and dwarves on the street across from them. "Ya know what?" he said. "You can be an exception."
"Good man." Skulduggery nodded in farewell and made his way back down the street, pulling his hat back down over his eyes. He didn't like having to expose himself to an average person, but sometimes desperate times called for desperate measures.
He was walking down the street taking in his surroundings when he noticed a huge tower in the distance. It towered over every other building in the city and twisted in unimaginable ways, seeming to defy gravity. As he got closer to it, he realized that it was part of a castle that stretched around the center of the city. There were huge iron gates in front of it, along with a sign stating that the castle was called Unseen University, and was a school for wizards.
Skulduggery thought about this for a moment. Maybe they could help him figure out what had happened and possibly assist him in getting back to where he belonged. Skulduggery was not someone who was quick to trust new people, but at this point he needed anybody who would try to help him out.
He made his way to the gate and gave it a small push to see if it would budge. It swung inward easily despite its large size. He followed the wide gravel path that led up to the huge front doors. He climbed the few steps and raised his hand up to the large brass door knocker that was hung on the door.
Well, here goes nothing, he thought.
A cloaked figure slowly made its way down the center of the long room, stopping here and there to select an item from the shelves that were everywhere in the room. The room was filled with a hissing noise that was so loud that it would drown out any attempts at regular conversation, but the figure did not seem to be bothered by the sound and continued with his silent selection. Along with the hissing sound there were also pops as some of these items appeared and disappeared.
The items that filled the room were all some version of an hourglass. They all had sand running through them, some more than others, and some had sand that ran from the bottom bulb up into the top one. Every single one of them had a name on it telling who it belonged to; these hourglasses were called lifetimers and showed exactly how much time a person had been living and how long they had left, no matter how they would die. Every time somebody was born a lifetimer appeared with their name on it, and when they died the lifetimer would disappear.
The figure that was walking through this huge room was Death, the Grim Reaper of Discworld. He was choosing the hourglasses that were close to being empty so that he could make visits to the lucky people when the time came.
As he walked something caught his attention. There was a lifetimer that had all of the sand in the bottom bulb, but there seemed to be something like the ghost of sand still running through it. This person had died, but continued living for some reason. Death sincerely hoped that it didn't have anything to do with his job being at stake, because the last time people had stopped dying and came back to their bodies was when he had been fired and replaced.
The sand was not the only thing that was odd about this hourglass. This one seemed to have two names on it. One was a completely normal name that a normal family would name their normal son. The second one was written in small writing under the first and looked as if it had been added in at a later date. This name was not normal by any stretch of the imagination. It seemed to be an alias or something like that, but why would it have been put on his lifetimer?
Death picked the lifetimer up from the shelf and tucked it away in the folds of his robes with the other lifetimers that were close to being out of sand. He decided that he would visit this dead man to see exactly what was going on.
ALBERT, I AM LEAVING. PLEASE GET BINKY READY FOR ME, Death called to his servant and strode out into the black nighttime.
Technically there were no days and nights in the realm of Death. Everything was just always a shade of black. Skeletal fish swam through the black waters of a stream. There were crispy, black flowers growing beside a large, black tree. Nothing that Death had tried to make in his realm had turned out looking like it should have.
Death walked briskly toward the stables on the far edge of his estate. There a little old man was saddling up a brilliantly white steed.
"Here you go," Albert said, handing the reins to the Grim Reaper. Death, having done this so many times, adjusted his scythe expertly and climbed up on the horse with much grace and ease.
Death flicked the reins and Binky started trotting right into the middle of the air. Albert watched the Grim Reaper on his white steed fly away in the everlasting night. Albert wondered not for the first time what poor saps were meeting their end.