Purpose**
I can feel my skin burning, and even worse, I can smell it. Flames wrap my body like a sheet as fragmented pieces of wood impale me. The stench fills my nostrils as the pile of debris slowly crushes me. I try to turn into something that would allow me to escape the , a liquid, a gas... anything, but I am too weak. Every excruciating second feels like a failure. I scream out in anguish, and smoke rushes into my mouth and the heated begins to burn me from the inside.
My arms are pinned to my sides, and my legs are trapped under a fallen support beam. Eventually, I decide to take the form of a mouse. The chaotic mess of burning timber that had once formed my prison, becomes a fiery maze as I shrink down. Planks of wood, charred black and speckled with yellow and red embers, intersect and form narrow passageways. I start to climb upwards, jumping from one plank to the next as scarlet cinders rain down on me like a calm snowfall. As I go higher the sweltering heat increases, and It becomes even harder to breathe. Wood cracks beneath my feet and a few planks split completely as I try to climb over them, the fire making them so weak that they cannot even support the weight of a mouse.
Above me, a blanket of orange blocks out the sky and more debris come tumbling down in a burning landslide. I move to avoid it but slip and find myself clinging onto to a loose piece of old wiring. I dangle for a moment, attempting to catch my breath despite knowing there is no air to breathe. I continue my ascent, but just before reaching the end of the wire, it snaps, and I plummet back into the hellish inferno I'd tried so hard to escape. I fall through a patch of fire, and my fur ignites; before I reach the ground, I am fully engulfed in flame. My flesh begins to sear as I writhe around in the dirt, squeaking in agony.
Left with no other choice I try again, shooting up through the blazing labyrinth with speed I did think possible. The flames continue to eat away at me, burning my body almost as quickly as my curse can repair the damage. Finally, I escape, a burning speck bursting from the wreckage. My fur has been singed black, and part of my face has been burned down to the skull. Quickly it repairs itself an I scurry down the side of the collapsed barn. The first thing I notice as I revert to my normal form are the corpses. The worshippers that War had callously slaughtered on his way into the barn lay scattered across the ground outside. Their eyes are left open, and their mouths agape. As I get farther from the smell of smoke, I am assaulted by the odor of blood. My feet stick to the ground as I walk through congealed puddles of blood, and lifeless eyes stare up at me as I observe the carnage my brother had caused.
The bodies do not indicate a struggle, but their deaths were not quick. War did not simply kill these people, he mutilated them. lay strewn across the ground like streamers at a party. Various bladed weapons stick out of the corpses, giving them the appearance of pin cushions, and some of them appear to have been torn in half. As horrible as this is, I don't know how to feel. To condemn him would make me a hypocrite, I'd done far worse.
I continue to the area; War is nowhere to be found. To my left I see Hyde sitting on a pile of debris.
"He got away.", he says sorrowfully as he looks to me. his glance is brief and he quickly turns his attention to a herd of ghost stumbling away from their broken bodies.
"Did you see where he went?!", I ask him. He does not respond. "Hyde!", I shout at him. Still, he does not answer.
A few moments of silence pass and finally Hyde finally says "Do you see them, Pestilence? They're like clouds, no faces, nowhere to go... how long do you think it'll take before they fully realize what's happened? How long before they get bored and disappear". Ordinarily Hyde would try to help new souls cope with their death and ease into their new state of existence, but he does not seem to be interested this time. Perhaps all the killing has finally gotten to him. Perhaps he's just stopped caring. As unusual as I find his demeanor to be, I don't have time to address it, I press on to find Death.
When I finally find my brother I see that he is surrounded by a burning city. The few buildings left standing, smolder as pillars of smoke shoot out into the morning sky. The ground is split in some places and fully concaved in others. The air around him is so cold that the bodies near his feet are partially frozen. In his right hand, he holds his scythe and, in his left, a torn, black, piece of fabric from War's coat. He turns his head, peering at me from over his shoulder, his hair hanging down into his face. It does not take me long to realize that this chaos, this wanton destruction, was not committed by War's hand. This was Death's doing.
After the barn collapsed, War and Death dragged the fight into deeper... far more populated parts of the city. As Death grew more frustrated, his attacks grew more violent and less focused, his rage manifested as large-scale elemental assaults. Lightning strikes, Earthquakes, tornadoes Death's was ruthless, claiming the lives of thousands as War simply dodged and reveled in the carnage.
"Where are the others," I say to him, hoping that Lehana, Kayuta, and Itoro had somehow survived Death's fit of rage. He says nothing, but after a moment he lifts his scythe and points it toward a falling pillar of concrete that has pinned a woman's legs. Lehana and Kayuta struggle to make the pillar budge and summon Itoro who lifts it with ease. The woman tries to stand, but her leg is clearly broken. I make my way to them, walking backward and staring at Death whose eyes remain transfixed on the horizon.
"Are you all alright," I ask as I approach the mortals.
"It... it was horrible", Kayuta says, shakenly. "We called for him to stop... we begged him but... he just kept going... So much screaming...".
"Is this the work of the great protector?", Lehana asks as she bends down to help the injured woman stand. "You told us that he would help to quell the earth's wrath not make it worse!".
"It was—," I begin.
"—An accident?", Itoro interrupts. "Look around you! You agreed to help. Instead, you free a demon who 'accidentally' destroys cities!".
"We are not demons!", I respond sternly.
Lehana looks around at the wreckage that Death had wrought. She looks at the sky as the dark clouds churn and belch thunder, she looks at the roads that have been decimated by the perverse manipulation of nature, and she looks at the scattered corpses death had left in his wake. "No not demons...", she says. "Demons are more subtle... they have restraint".
I say nothing. I stand at the epicenter of a horseman's wrath... wrath that knows no guilty parties and recognizes no innocence. We are born of corrupted magic, designed to bring pain this world on behalf of a God we'd grown to hate. Death does not make earthquakes he Is one; he is the lightning, he is the hurricane, we are the destruction we create... we are living disasters. I suppose this should motivate me more. All this time we've begged for release; we'd always thought we'd be better off dead... we never thought about how much better the world would be without us.
YOU ARE READING
Holy blight (draft 2)
Fantasy"You must thank him for this air... as you don't deserve to breathe, and in shame you walk the earth, because you don't deserve to leave. A horseman doesn't sleep because they don't deserve the peace And a horseman never dies because they don't dese...
