Then the Lord said to Cain, "What angers so your heart? Why is your face cast so low? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted as brothers are? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door: it desires to have you, but you must master it before it masters you, and that soul I have given you.
- God Speaking to Cain, Genesis 4;4-7
When we try to remember the time before Damian... | When I try to remember my life before I died, all those years ago... |
Everything shifts and fades
We remember an empire, spanning stars and supernovas; Once we were legion... but the legion's faces are blurred. The minds of our brothers once called to us, yet we feel nothing when we call back. Once, we inhabited demons and angels; Dragons trembled when our midnight armies fell upon them, and supernovas greeted every dying star as it guttered into a darkness that almost matched our own. We fed upon those great novas; With every flare of light, the emotions of thousands called tantalizingly. Once we feasted with our brothers, but now we are | I remember a boy... I remember his eyes. Blood. The laugh of a strange, alien creature... I remember warriors and their rage as they fought to avenge the innocent. I remember pain, but excitement too as I walked beside them. In those days, there were heroes to be proud of. That was a world of good and evil; It was a world of blacks and whites... not this shifting morass of everpresent grey I have come to call home. When they found the Splugorth, I thought I could save even him, as I could not save his victim. He repaid my kindness with death... and I realized I was |
Alone
Then we found him. | Then he found me. |
I remember the feel of my skin. It was cold, and on feeling it I wondered... "Is this what death feels like?"
We found him floating there after the last supernova winked out of existence. The stars that had been our sustenance, those twinklings orbs we thought ourselves masters of... we now realized who was the master, and who the creature in need.
I raged. The world around me was dark, and so... so cold. I could not shiver; I could not breathe. Suffocating endlessly in that black space I floated for what seemed like forever, desperately seeking anything to remind me of the world I once knew.
Was this Hell? Had He saw fit to punish me for my transgressions? No. No! I had followed every word! I had preached every gospel... THIS WAS NOT HOW IT WOULD END.
THIS WILL NOT BE HOW OUR LIFE ENDS!
Then there was pain; That pain was bliss to my deadened senses. Writhing in agony, I found tears of joy reach my eyes. Any sensation was better than the nothingness I had seen.... and I felt hungry.
The hive had long died, starving in excruciating slowness. Desperate, our last physical form reached out with our mind for sustenance of any kind, but despair was our only companion... Then we found it. Delicious. Succulent.
Terror.
I screamed, but the voice was no longer one I recognized. My skin was midnight, like the demons in my bible.
My voice was brimstone, and my mind and soul was crushed when I realized: This WAS Hell, and I was its Lord.
Once we abducted entire universes to fill our hunger... We ate the energy from dying stars, and with those great reserves we found the energy to rip holes in space time. This food was new, though, and infinitely more powerful.
Slowly, I felt my soul slip away like water through a clenched fist... I screamed again.
We abandoned the hive, and their death was the fuel we needed. One last rift... one last journey.
We found him floating there after the last supernova winked out of existence. The stars that had been our sustenance, those twinklings orbs we thought ourselves masters of... we now realized who was the master, and who the creature in need.
I raged. The world around me was dark, and so... so cold. I could not shiver; I could not breathe. Suffocating endlessly in that black space I floated for what seemed like forever, desperately seeking anything to remind me of the world I once knew.
Was this Hell? Had He saw fit to punish me for my transgressions? No. No! I had followed every word! I had preached every gospel... THIS WAS NOT HOW IT WOULD END.
THIS WILL NOT BE HOW OUR LIFE ENDS!
Then there was pain; That pain was bliss to my deadened senses. Writhing in agony, I found tears of joy reach my eyes. Any sensation was better than the nothingness I had seen.... and I felt hungry.
The hive had long died, starving in excruciating slowness. Desperate, our last physical form reached out with our mind for sustenance of any kind, but despair was our only companion... Then we found it. Delicious. Succulent.
Terror.
I screamed, but the voice was no longer one I recognized. My skin was midnight, like the demons in my bible.
My voice was brimstone, and my mind and soul was crushed when I realized: This WAS Hell, and I was its Lord.
Once we abducted entire universes to fill our hunger... We ate the energy from dying stars, and with those great reserves we found the energy to rip holes in space time. This food was new, though, and infinitely more powerful.
Slowly, I felt my soul slip away like water through a clenched fist... I screamed again.
We abandoned the hive, and their death was the fuel we needed. One last rift... one last journey.
My life before this was Hell, and certainly Hell was the best name for that place.
The rift opened, and Sin and I were caught in the flux. Desperate to survive...
We became one, on this great journey of ours.
Where it ends, we do not know.
But I'm willing to find out.
The rift opened, and Sin and I were caught in the flux. Desperate to survive...
We became one, on this great journey of ours.
Where it ends, we do not know.
But I'm willing to find out.