"No Life 'Til Leather"

"The Four Horsemen" Pt. 2

Once the great, fourth seal came apart, softly undone in the hands of inevitable, forth came the harbingers of sorrow - the four killing notions born to plague the land of gods and powers far beyond mortal comprehension. By the last breath the fourth winds blew, casting apart the busy skies' broadcasts - running the cold, bodiless fingers cross great meadows of bone-white flowers, where the red sun met the cool, calming dew. The first rider, she came clad in black, yet straddling a steed of pristine purity. Snowy leather brushed past her heels with each nudge to the beast's hide, as Conquest sped down the sun soaked valley of milky eulalia, a sleeve of steel-tipped knives drawn at the ready.

Soon followed the second harbinger, taming a raging war-horse of deep, blood-crimson, the very same color of the rider's mighty mane. A majestic sword was given to him, a tool to aid his rampage and rid Terra of any he perceived as wrong. The blade of War, the cold-blooded promise of hell brought upon the mortal plane, and the flames of destruction that cast their hungry tongues across any and all they could reach. Indifferent to the pain that crept behind him like a shadow, inflicted upon any onlookers unfortunate enough to find themselves bleeding between the steel and the warrior's unwavering fist. War scurried behind Conquest, forever lost in the scent of victory that wafted in waves down her flowery, raven-black hair and brought upon memories of birch forests and cold nights.

And then, behind them hurried a tiny, gray rider bouncing atop a fierce beast as bleak and dark as bubbling hot tar itself. The fallen Law-maker, clad in shimmering darkness. Emerging from a cloud of locusts that jumped and gnawed onto anything that dared move, unable to live on their own, the third horseman held a pair of scales in his shaky hands, for the dim light above his head prohibited him from spilling a single more salvo of lead. Awashed in the blood-hungry insects, the youth spilled curls of gray, the color of the sad, dry sky during the later months of Kazdel's bloom cycle. Worry coursed across his face, as both scales refused to tip in either side's favor, forever locked in a stalemate of unbreaking silence - neither left nor right had the right to scream out in joy of victory. "A quart of wheat for a shekel, and three quarts of barley for half; but do not damage the oil and wine." Read the passage he, Famine, graced the land with. A mercenary's work day's wage for just barely enough digestible matter to fill one's stomach for the night - more than enough wine to forget the blood spilled in hunger's favor. He rode onward, locusts biting in his wake, hooves beating against the ground, as if trying hard to escape the terror that loomed behind.

The one most fickle and free, unbridled, unbound by nothing, not even the torn chains of morality the other three sometimes caught themselves holding onto. Last, came the rider atop a beast molded from pure bone-dust, a beast as pale as the mightiest of Northern winters - as pure as the harbinger's silky, white hair. Wherever the leather hooves struck, Terra's crust came apart and split - dived deep into the core, dug out a gaping ravine out from which the most disgusting and disfigured of hellspawns dared drag their blackened claws onto the gray sun's gazing plane. Wherever she went, hell followed. Wherever her foot squashed the dirt beneath, each living organism turned over and soon succumbed to the all encompassing rot, knowing that its fate had long been sealed. Trees, brush, lush vegetation alike, it all withered and blew apart with the wind at the mere sound of the beast's andesite horseshoes clattering past the ruins of cities which once stood tall and proud. And Death smiled. Death smiled, and graced the world with all her sharp teeth and gnawers - a warning for some, an open coffin for others. Once the pearly whites glittered brighter in the dying sun than the radiance of life still somehow smoldering within the poor victim's soul, the wicked knew their time had come. She galloped on forward, to join her three brethren together, as one - the four harbingers of an apocalypse yet to come, a wave of destruction scheduled later that rainy week.

The sorrow bringers stood amidst a forest far taller than even the most monstrous of Feranmut bone-relics. Large and wide were the sequoias inhabiting this woodland scraping of land, covering the four with their needle umbrellas. Before them stood their trusty weaponry - each piece a testament of their willingness to hurt. A grand twig-bow and zweihander, belts of knives and a pointy sword made of a blackened material foreign to the rest's eyes, a rifle torn from the hands of a dead man, along his knife, and a towering pile of grenades. In the middle of it all - the most important piece of warfare-fuel lay, unbothered, with smoke pouring out from its sides.