It began with a selfless act of heroism, the specifics of which never really mattered. A child lost among madmen and murderers... Nothing new. My nature was never heroic, but I had become so habituated to protecting the innocent that I began to forget I was even human; I thought I had truly become an angel, invulnerable and inviolate, but I was only a man with wings; a flawed man, too proud to see the glorious chasm yawning ahead of me.
I saved the child. My wings were crippled in the act, but I survived. I wish I had not; the cold sky taunts me, always out of reach, beckoning me cruelly to throw myself fearlessly from a window as I had once done. My wings were torn from me, leaving only gigantic sores that ooze blood slowly down my back. I feel already dead and rotting. I feel as if I have lost my arms and legs. I cannot live without my wings, so my next decision is easy.
I fly the plane over the ocean and it explodes. Choking in the water, my life bubbling away, I hear a voice. Granite and fire, promising to make everything fine if I go with him. Promising I will fly.
Is there any question to ask? I have been stripped of who I am, so I will let him build me anew. I will fly again; and knowing this, I let myself slip into merciful blackness.
When I awake, there are needles and tubes protruding from my wrists and my chest and the soft skin under my jaw, pumping ice into my veins. They are swollen, filled with fluids that are not my own blood. My joints ache, my bones grate on each other excruciatingly if I move, my heart beat - so strong that it is painful - pounds on my ears. My muscles tense to their breaking point and my abdomen convulses so that I throw up, but there is no food in my stomach so I just retch until blood sprays my chest with a fine mist. I scream until my throat bleeds.
But it does not stop; the sweet antiseptic stench of him chokes me, my body is burning with agony, my vision is obscured with a dark mist as my body stops obeying my commands and is wracked by excruciating convulsions, coated in a film of freezing sweat. Am I dying?
No, he tells me, I am being reborn as I was meant to be. He is unleashing the noise and light and life so that I can fly, and pass judgment.
Fire on my back; he drops his own blood into the syringes and pumps me full of his delicious poison and new wings blossom from my shoulder blades. I give them my blood and tears that they may grow to carry me through the sky. I bear the pain because I am strong, and this trial will give me the means to do my master's will.
I am wonderful... This powerful, lithe form is ecstasy and I revel in my own strength. My wings clatter when I move and scream when I fly, refusing to be forgotten. I am not an angel, nor was I ever; I am Death. I am herald of the Apocalypse. I am the crucible with which the wheat will be separated from the chaff to usher in the glorious future that approaches.
My old friends, who gave up on me the instant they thought I was dead. My fellow horsemen, who are neither as strong in body nor in mind as I am, and only half as loyal to my Master's cause. We fight with and against each other and I kill Robert. My stomach clenches slightly and I feel a hollow ache in my chest, but the sensation passes. I slice my unworthy friends to pieces and then I kill War, Famine, and Pestilence too.
Now, there isn't much time left. My Master's many bio-weapons have been detonated. And even Apocalypse himself was not worthy to be counted among the strong. He was easy to slay, and could not stop me from implementing my own plans for the culling of the weak and the ushering in of the Age of Apocalypse.
And very soon, everyone on earth will be dead.
Because, after all, it is only the strong who survive.