Broken bodies split apart by beads of metal ripping through the flesh—proving that they are not merely instruments of destruction but human beings. Plumes of charcoal smoke tread across the dilapidated lands, masking the sights of red velvet waterfalls trickling out of hollow caves and fragments of limbs scattered across the expanse. The grounds beneath them are sunken and tainted red, radiating poison so fervent that no life can bloom from it.
Screams fill the air— salvoes of pops and booms drown out the soldiers' quiet prayers as they tremble with fear upon their march to their fates. Some look to the enemy with melancholic eyes while others meet their gazes with an aimed weapon and no regret etched onto their faces— life is priority for some, victory for others.
"How foolish," Death mutters as his body encapsulates the entirety of the battlefield, "how both sides of the war think they are the good guys."
He slips his cold hands around their flailing shapes as if they are fish plucked from the oceans, and continues on to win the war in the long run. Death clings to their final thoughts upon looking him straight in the eye, and he smiles as he cradles their souls in his dust bound arms.
"I'm very lucky today," Death sings as he collects thousands of more people, looking to God with a vile grin, "too tired to answer prayers today?"
God sits upon his marble throne, drumming his fingers anxiously as he glances at Death. "Who am I to answer to if both sides are calling for my help?"
Death chuckles. "Oh? So you choose to be neutral? Tell me, are you the Devil pretending to be God?"
Tsunamis of indignant flames, stench of rotting carcasses, gunpowder tattooing the skies, metallic blood drenched across the battlefields — the soldiers are being tormented as if they are pawns on a chessboard being sacrificed without thought. God shakes his head as the gore worsens from below, watching his creations abandon their humanity and convince themselves murder is the true path to their salvation.
"I am no pretender. The events unraveling before me cause me great pain. War is endless, its effects will be felt throughout the generations. Hate, revenge, and violence are the children born from war...I do not see a silver-lining in the matter at all. Yes, some wars are fought for freedom from oppression, others solely for self-defense from invaders, but it all gets caught in a never ending cycle of brutality— violence breeds more violence. And these poor soldiers here now are killing each other for a cause their leaders engraved in them. I cannot bear to choose which prayers to answer to, Death, because all of them are my children."
Death laughs bitterly as his fingers skim the surface of the bloodied waters, watching as its ripples echo across the expanse of time— a burden weighed upon the future's back and forever chained to history like a deep scar.
"Then you are nothing more than a bystander watching people tear each other apart."
YOU ARE READING
The Ebb & Flow of Virtue
شِعر~ There is good and bad constantly warring with each other inside you, a small voice resounds in my conscience just as my vision dips underneath the salty water, it is similar to how the land fights with the sea, the sky with gravity, the light...
