Holy blight (draft 2)

Abandoned: part 1

Abandoned

As we walk, the air grows colder. The ground becomes slick with frost and storm clouds rumble overhead. Lightning flashes across the sky and periodically illuminates this part of purgatory. What was once a light snowfall, is now pouring rain. I cannot sense his presence, but I can tell he is near. Thousands of ghosts Pray on their knees to a figure they assume to be God. Atop a rocky makeshift throne placed on a small hill sits Death cloaked by darkness and his ever-present shroud of swirling, black, sand.

His glowing blue eyes peer out of the shadows. He raises a bony hand and the clouds part to release a flash of lightning that strikes a dead tree, igniting it with a flame bright enough to partially illuminate his surrounding area. His skeletal feet and the bottom of his sandy black robe become visible in the fire's amber glow, but still, his upper body remains silhouetted.

In an extremely loud and echoey whisper, He speaks to me. "Pestilence...", He calls.

His voice moves through the assembly of ghost-like a wave, causing them to jump to their feet.

"He speaks," they cry. "The Lord has spoken." "Deliver us from this place, my lord." "Save our souls."

"Silence!", Death shouts. The ghosts quickly scramble back into their positions of prayer and beg the powerful being before them, for forgiveness.

"They think of you as some sort of god?!", I ask him as I approach.

"No. They do not think of me 'a god.' They think of me as the only god. Truth be told I might as well be, heaven knows, I give more of a damn about them than he ever did.", he bellows back.

"I'm shocked, brother, it would hurt his holiness to hear you speak that way.", I say sarcastically. "You were always his favorite.".

"He has no favorites!", Death shouts as he stands up and steps into the light of the flame, revealing his ghostly white skull and the blue spiritual essence that inhabits it. "He merely has playthings he coddles before moving on to the next. How long have I kept his 'precious creations' safe from extinction, safe from you, Famine, and War? How long have I appeased him by slaughtering droves of the creatures he claims to , just so he doesn't exterminate the lot of them, himself?!"

The person before me is not the same Death that I've known for so many years, he is different now, unhinged. This is rage beyond what I thought was possible for him. It had taken one-thousand years, but finally, he's come to realize how God has abandoned him, how he has betrayed him. Whatever shred of humanity has laid dormant within Death's skeletal body is consuming him as he festers in the trash can of the being he'd devoted eons of eternal life to.

Death slumps back down in his chair, sighs, and snickers as he regains his composure. It appears he is amused by the tragic irony of his situation.

"So many years of performing my duties, and when it is I, who needs his help, he does not show; Instead you walk into my prison, escorted by a band of mortals.", Death says " Why? To show me all that remains of those I'd protected all these years? You certainly—"

"Death", I interrupt. "I am not here to taunt you. I am here because I need your help".

Death scoffs and says, "Surely you don't need my help to exterminate mankind, you've nearly done it on your own a few times, and with War on board I highly doubt that—"

"No!", I interrupt again "I don't need your help to kill them. I need your help to save them".

Death begins cackling; the storm clouds start to pulsate, and the wind starts to howl as his booming laughs echo through purgatory.

"You, want to save them?! Pestilence, the man who referred to the bubonic plague as his 'greatest to the world,' wants to save humanity? Forgive my skepticism. You wanted freedom more than any of us, why would you stand in War's way?".