And there was war in Heaven.
I have wandered, aimlessly, for time unknown. I've wandered the empty space between worlds, that vast and colorless nothingness. I have wandered Other Places, where things lurk that no Man can see. That no being could see without going mad. Maybe it is madness, then, that caused the ache to rise in me. I began to hurt, though whether the pain was physical or something else, I could never say. I hurt, that was that. I wandered anyway, heedless and blind, in all the ways that matter in those places. I crossed gray fields and black mountains, all beneath a sky that seemed transparent. A sky with nothing behind it. There was a shifting sense of self in those places, as if direction and geography and all the senses that tell us where we are, what dimensions make up our bodies, all of these things accounted for nothing.
I came upon a cave, once, at the end of it. The ache was worse, all-encompassing. My feet were bare, my shoes were long since worn away, if I'd ever worn shoes to begin with. They left trails of streaked blood in my wake, though the ground here is too insubstantial to be called rugged. My limbs felt like lead. No, not lead. Heavier. Like mountains. Every muscle in my body cried out, begged me to sit and rest. I suppose I was hungry. I was thirsty. My lips were chapped, cracked, bloodied. My throat was swollen nearly shut with thirst. My flesh, dehydrated and starved, was stretched over bones so brittle they seemed to rattle with every lurching step. My eyes, half-lidded, saw little. I felt less. I was only partially aware of my own suffering. Not lost in thought. Just lost, in truth. Wandering. Careless.
I found a cave and sat, for a time. I needed no fire. I doubt it would have done me any good to try building one. Nothing lived in this place. Nothing, truly, existed. Save for me. Maybe not even me. I was just passing through. Another empty place. I sat and, for the first time in countless years, centuries, eons, Ages, I thought.
I thought and began to feel. I felt angry. Betrayed. Alone. I felt...stupid.
The ache became something wholly different. This was pain. This was the apotheosis of pain. A shudder wracked my body, bent me at the waist, forced me to the floor, to my knees, from where I sat. I doubled, teeth gritted, blood flowing from a tongue I'd bitten through. My teeth clenched, strained, there was a crack in my jaw. My flesh, already pulled taut, began to split. My spine burst through, the skin there simply tearing open along the length of my back and falling away like layers off an onion. My bones snapped. Fingers, toes, arms, legs. One at a time, the pace steadily increasing. They snapped and splintered, tearing ragged holes in skin that was already peeling away from me, severing muscle and sinew, falling with loud, nauseating plops to the floor. The bones broke, my joints bent, unbidden, in directions they were never intended to bend.
I screamed. I screamed like a man being pulled apart, piece by piece. No scream, no sound emitted by anything living, sounds quite the same. I screamed until I saw blood in my own eyes, until my throat, already swollen, burst. Blood filled it, spilled into my mouth, poured over my lips as the peeled themselves off my face and fell away. My lungs, the air all expelled, shriveled and blackened. I tried to keep shrieking. I wondered how I was still alive.
Then I burst into flames.
My rage manifested physically in fire. My withering, broken form was engulfed, consumed. I clawed at my chest with broken fingers, tore off flame blackened ribs, smashed my useless hands against my breastbone until it shattered, and seized my heart in a skeletal fist. I roared, or tried to, and crushed it.
The fire died away, gave way to light. A blaze ever hotter, brighter. I closed my eyes against it. The light rose and filled the cave, burst through the intangible stone, blew outward in every direction as I unfurled, aching, from hibernation. My bones grew, changed, and melded together. My broken, worthless fist grew strong. My flesh leaped up from the floor, stretched, and clung to me again. My shoulders grew outward, upward, until I was winged with bone. Great, powerful wings that grew membranous and dark.
I roared again, a sound that shook the endless nothing, shook the very emptiness between one world and another. And shattered it. Shattered all of those lonely places.
I rose to my feet, towering over the blasted landscape. I looked out over the vast devastation and rolled my shoulders into their sockets. My muscles flexed of their own accord, testing themselves, rippling with power. I was power. Unparalleled power. Unimaginable power.
I turned my eyes skyward and saw my home. What had once been my home. And I knew rage like never before. I saw usurpers to my throne. I saw betrayal. I saw, and I seethed. I seethed and I roared. I leveled mountains, dried up seas, blackened all the skies in all the worlds. I covered all things in darkness. And those who would challenge me trembled, On High, everywhere. They cowered and hid, clenched hands that would not cease shaking.
Blood pounded in my head. Power coursed through my body. Rage boiled in my veins. Vengeance would slake my thirst. I was alive. I was reborn.
I have returned.
Death to all who stood against me. Death for all who will not bow. Pray I do not find you. Pray for my forgiveness now.
Come, Insects, come and be a feast for Worm. Come and see if you survive.
Murderously,
-God
No comments:
Post a Comment