Upon the mountain.    Act II

 

Legions below.
A writhing mass squirming beneath soot and ash.
The view from atop the precipice is one of glorious horror.
The eons that man has slithered through the sands of time,
Every child birthed, every grave dug or war waged,
every possible point in the filthy, avarice riddled human timeline has converged and coalesced into the present.
This day, this moment.
(These last moments.)
The bloated star above has cast the surrounding landscape
in hues of scarlet and vermillion that bleed into deep,
abysmal crimson upon entering the shade.
Although this star has been radiating a heat to rival that of Hell,
due to the swiftly decomposing ozone the earth has been undergoing radical shifts in temperature as lunar rubble passes though the path of the sun,
eclipsing these lands and chilling us within the umbra.  
I am witness to an odd and disconcerting event.
Within the heavy heat and eldritch brimstone light,
ash is cascading from the sky and blanketing
everything in a shade of grey befitting purgatory
yet the sight deceives the mind into believing it is snowfall.
I begin my descent.
Sudden searing blunt force pain seeps into my left scapula as a rogue arrow straying from the fray hammers into my plate armor mid-descent,
glancing off at an angle that allows it to lacerate my ear.
My grip falters in the midst and I find myself in free fall.
The absolute weightlessness in addition to the circumstance
brings a memory of  
mother singing to me her lullaby of preference,
"And down will come baby, cradle and all."
It seems morbid now.
I barely felt the impact upon one of the myriad,
small ledges jutting from the crag,
like diabolical thorns upon a rose pillar of stone,
before the void swallowed me.
I find my self, once again,
confronted by the absolute nihilistic peace of
unconsciousness but I bring myself to resurface quickly.
As I open my aching and blood blurred eyes I see that I have,
fortunately, only fallen a mere fifteen feet or so.
Time is of the essence.
Once upon true ground I set my sights on  four Legion not far off.
Although no allegiances have officially been formed and this war is waged between Host and Legion,
There is an unspoken agreement that those of us who bare
the Mark with pride are in alliance with the princes of Hell.
Over the past seven years I have earned their respect and,
at times, even their admiration for my unwavering devotion to the destruction of Eden and the angelic genocide.
Nestled in the crook between thumb and forefinger upon my right hand,
wreathed within a blackened halo of seared flesh, is my Mark.
A perpetually smoldering cinder that is as much a part of my hand as my mind is a part of me.
The pain emanating from it is perpetual as well.
No two Marks are identical
and some are simply a flaw or imperfection upon the right hand or brow,
leading to endless confrontation amongst men.  
Many an innocent have been condemned to death by those mortals who support the Host,
much like the witch trials of old.
That is fine by me,
For if they do not bare the Mark then they are foe.
Yet,
it also creates much distress amongst the Legion and those of us who are sympathetic to their cause.
A simple act of self mutilation is all that is required to infiltrate our ranks.
Mine is unmistakable,
and I bare mine with the utmost pride.
The battle is at its most dense off to the right,
roughly a kilometer away and
there is little action to be seen between those four and myself.
I move swiftly nonetheless,
taking caution as to not stumble over a corpse
and impale myself upon one of the plethora of blades and pikes that shimmer amongst the dead.
I cannot afford to allow my adrenaline to falter now.
Closing the distant I can see that they are dismantling a heavensent,
paying great attention to detail.
This isn't an interrogation.
It's far to late for any useful information to be gained.
This is for sheer enjoyment.
I am still a distance away
but my suspicion is confirmed by their faint chortling carried upon the wind.
I began to smile myself until the landscape and all things within my field of vision simply became white, blinding sharp.
Silence followed by a dull, pulsing,
hum emanating from deep within my skull.
Baffled, I couldn't quite come to terms with what had just occurred until I felt the warm trickle of blood from within my ear canals and then I knew,
Its tinnitus.  
Tinnitus from a heavensent suicide,
permitted from above for the savage brutality of the Legion and out of a feckless attempt to save His Host from "unreasonable suffering".
The self termination of life at the hand of a member of the host creates an instantaneous fracture in the fickle fabric of matter,
leaving, if only for a fraction of a millisecond, a gap,
an absolute vacuumed void,
a microscopic black hole, if you will,
resulting in an extremely rapid expanse in atmospheric pressure upon sealing itself
and creating an atomic microcosm that eradicates every object within a thirty yard radius.
I just so happened to be upon the border of that radius and I am surly suffering from internal hemorrhaging.
Needless to say my allies are slain and I am left nearly deaf.
I haven't the time to recover and I bring myself to my feet once more.
As I take in the surrounding carnage and feel a finger of exhilaration race down my vertebrae,
I witness day turn to night as a large piece of debris
from earths lunar satellite blots out the sun.
I see my breath condensed into steam before my eyes
and the sweat beading upon my brow turns to frost as the chill takes hold on me.
The plunge into darkness is no where near as shock inducing
as the immediate shift into subzero temperature.
The flux between the two climatic extremes is raping my body
and wracking me with alternating bouts of heat stroke and hypothermia.  
Although I am afflicted with many a grievous wound,
external as well as in,
I am not dead yet and I still have purpose to deliver.
My goal is simple.
Destroy until destroyed.
I am not finished yet.
To the east is my destination.
To the gates of Eden
and beyond.
This is not a war.
This is conquest and I intend to conquer.
Squirming in the dust to my left,
Writhing upon the earth like the parasitic pupae that they are,
I find a Blissless,
One who bares the Mark with shame
and seek contrition for their worldly sins,
hoping to get back His good grace with the bribery of treason.
They are the embodiment of cowardice.
It would appear that this one was not so fortunate as to escape the blast.
As I approach him,
I am absolutely powerless against preventing a rolling fit of laughter
from escaping my throat.
I take great pride in my work.
He is blind and deaf,
with both eyes and eardrums burst.
I put my boot firmly on his throat to hold him in place
as I bend down to remove the knife hanging from his hip.
His relief was palpable once I lifted my boot
and he realized I was not going to crush his trachea beneath it.
Its at about this time that he began to babble some "Hail Satan" nonsense.
Absolute cowardice.
I know that time is valuable so I make a promise to myself that I will make this worth it and thoroughly enjoy myself over the next few precious minutes.
As I straddle his legs and settle myself upon his knees I began to hum that lullaby of my mothers.
I could tell that the way he was clawing wildly at me was going to become somewhat of an annoyance.
I sank the blade of his knife into the earth by my side and unsheathed my cleaver.
Holding his arms firmly in place,
I precede to lop off his hands above the wrist bone.
They spurt so I take the laces from his shoes
and use them as a tourniquet to slow the bleeding.
There is an old cliche about "it's just business, nothing personal".
This has nothing to do with business.
I consciously leave the clumps of dirt upon the blade before,
ever so slowly,
pushing the tip into his naval.
My intentions of a slow motion evisceration are made clear as I slip the blade beneath the flesh of his abdomen and,
over the coarse of the next three minutes,
unzip him from groin to sternum like a duffle-bag and unpack his innards.
I set his organs aside in a viscous mound that steams as the warmth bleeds out of them in the cold of the abyss.
Once he is hollowed I take his severed hand and gag myself with his finger until I retch inside of his empty chest cavity.
Before I take my leave I weave my fingers into his hair and pull his head close so I can spit in his eye socket.
This may seem like gratuitous violence,
I hope it does.
I cannot abide a coward.
Turning east
and the meteor is passing as the sun peaks out from behind the penumbra.
I'm overwhelmed with a coughing fit that leaves a taste redolent of iron upon my tongue
and blood bespeckling my chin.
There there is still much to be done.