I land on my feet, a gentle slam against the Earth. My eyes are open and unblinking, painfully aware of the infinite details around me and abyss that encases me.

Where

It is dark, yet light bleeds from the clouds above. I see red and black, brown and grey, a violent indigo beyond the clouds. The clouds themselves curling in agony of the unnatural environment. I... I think I'm in a city, but it doesn't look... modernized. Wooden shacks, leeways and crooked, dot the horizon. Pillars prod the sky like children grasping for their mothers, or more appropriately, their Father. Our Father. Our divine savior.

I am flustered with emotions. Rage, regret, sincere agony only comparable to having my heart ripped out before me. My hands are tied, and a chain anchors my feet together, my reality to this marble.

What

What is going on.

I can almost see a face in the clouds, a kind face, a gentle face, that cries for me. I do not recognize her, but my heart bleeds to hold her. She must be an angel, this woman I cannot touch. I reach out to her, a silent scream pleading to my Divine Father for retribution, a voice that is not mine. My hands lunge forward towards her face in the clouds, the thick rope cutting my wrists as gravity yanks me forward in its icy doom to the noose in front of me.

She is worth more than this world, that I know. But who is she?

she... she is... She is a dream come true. She is a blessing to this accursed world, this violent land of chaos and disorder.

The noose is around my neck, yet still I reach.

I live for her. I shall always, always live for her.

Her face cries, the red from the clouds corrupting her dazzling, infinite beauty. She is the infinite around me, she is my everything.

But who is she?

As my feet fall beneath me and the noose takes its hold around my life, my hands stretch up higher and higher.

I will die a martyr. I will be reborn... and I will reclaim my precious Je'anne.

Now I am crippled, my legs useless beneath me, my arms limp at my side. My hands, stained with blood possibly and undeniably both mine and not my own. My hands fall as my crippled body succumbs to the cold of a slow-crawling death. For some reason I feel the urgent need to get up and tend to someone precious to me, but I can't. I am surrounded by my comrades - they weep in desperation of my condition.

What has happened to me. Why do I feel no pain, but know I am dying?

A beautiful lady crouches beside me, her tears falling gently on my face. I can't stand to see her crying: not her, not her of all people. Her hair falls to her side, a loose braid, something her daughter did earlier that day. Against the green forestry surrounding me, her hair is a guiding light, an amber lantern guiding me home.

I am... waiting for someone. I am waiting for someone to come and aid me. Thats it, its someone I know, someone I trust.

But he does not come.

My feelings fall apart, my sensations fail me. I cannot move my eyes nor my lips - I cannot stop watching my Grainne cry. Please, please stop crying. Stop crying for me, my precious mayfly. Stop crying, be brave for our children. Be brave.

And she cannot, not as the forest thickens around her. It strangles her in my eyes just as it once did me.

I die a discarded hero. I have shamed my precious family. I shall... I shall bring the honor to my family, to my people.

My eyes open.

I can see my hands, clear of blood. But they curl, and lightning shoots through my veins.

I... I will become what I never could.

I will breathe enlightenment into the minds of man.

Jet-black hairs slowly peel from my skin, a heartbeat lasting a million lifetimes. I watch each hair as it rises, my blood boiling at the violent condition I have indebted myself with.

Then my skin explodes in the darkness. My epidermis flies in every direction as I fall to my knees. I cry. I scream. I plead for forgiveness.

But no one comes for me - nay, nothing shall ever come to aid me. I am alone in this darkened world, this world void of the grace of knowledge.

I shall bring forth this knowledge.

I sheer civilians like wood. I tear off limbs like pages of a book. I bay at the moon, an uncontrollable force rallying a beast from within me.

Igne natura renovatur integra. Homo homini lupus, in rerum natura.

The infinite sea of darkness swells around me, rising like an unforgiving tide against everything I could have ever become.

I could have been it all.

But the darkness is soothing; it is natural, it is calm. It breathes a sigh of relief as I sit in it, my mind reaching my own conclusions.

I function, I live, I breathe to kill. I take down the unknowing, day by day, falling forward, unable to define myself. And I do not do this for myself. Who do I do it all for? It is someone I have never touched, it is someone I may never see with my own two eyes. Who is this almighty spirit? Who am I?

I can see the eyes of those who cannot comprehend the hell they have just tangoed with. Women. Children. Men. Infants. Eyes begging for answers as I dig at their necks, their throats filling with their own blood, their death by their own silent screams.

Why am I not pleased with my progress? What in the Lord's name am I doing? How could I ever unsee this, this madness?

Because I could have had it all.

I shall remain in this Earth's soil. I shall remain an echo of this time. I shall arise like the eroding crust, a death only parallel to the planet's own. I will kill again, and I will claim the title that is rightfully mine.

I can't move. This isn't my own skin, this darkness is unfamiliar.

I don't want to be here. What the hell is going on?

The darkness falls away, drops of gold falling from the sky to plip-plop softly against the earth, the heavens, and everything in between. My line of vision falls from two-dimensions into three, then four. I can see into the infinite tide of what is and what is not.

I am standing in a desert of glass. Diamonds glisten violently, screaming with solar energy from my father above. I look down, my bare feet red, monsters clawing up at me through the other side of the glass. Tentacles, claws, fangs, beaks of malevolent intent. Black eyes, red eyes, unfilled eyes, unseeing eyes – they all stare deep into me, and I cannot bear to avert their despair.

It is a despair brought to them by my father, a pain, a desperation for war, brought upon them… for me. So I will stand above all other kinds before me and all those who dare stand after me.

This is all mine. This domain is my own. These beasts, these creatures condemned to misery, are my own to command. The greatest one sits fifty feet below me, wandering eyes, flicking tail. Through the many creatures of darkness I can see this giant cat, this giant man, this creature of Death.

And it sees me. Our eyes lock, and the glass beneath me evaporates.

I fall a million miles and land in my bed beneath the woman I love. Our sheets drape her bare back, her playful eyes forcing my heart to skip a beat. She leans down and smolders me, her love unparalleled, her beauty beyond words. I reach to make love to her, to encase her fair body in the glory of my own, but Ra bleeds above her.

But as she draws back for air, blood drips from her eyes. Ruby blood, from the poison in my own system.

I shall avenge my empire.

And I'm blown back a trillion miles away to a time uncharted, thrust against my chest and spiraling up into the undomesticated sky. I could see my body, stand still in shock of my death, my fingers dragging in the wind as I am taken further and further away. Away, and rested on my knees on a battlefield, a garden of desperation.

For the first time, I can really hear the world around me. I can hear everything that ebbs from the Earth, and while thousands surround me, I am alone in the silence. The clouds give way to soft, gentle, fat droplets as the heavens shudder tear after tear.

Alone, but for one.

It is... it is not a good day for rain.

My own raindrops curl around my cheek. I can feel the sting of salt, the knife of utter desperation as my heart bleeds. My hands curl tighter around the hilt of my loyal sword. My foe's own raindrops glisten stronger than mine, but that is the only thing stronger in my foe.

No. Today is not a good day for rain.

The thousands that lay at my feet, their hearts have all bled out. I fight. I conquer. I will avenge my fallen mother, I will take down this vile monstrosity. I will tear my… father? I will tear my father, limb from limb.

But I am already on my knees. The spear is already driven through my body.

I fall beside them, my fallen brothers in arms. Slowly, gently. My enemy averts my weakening gaze – this beast knows its sin. I reach out to the monster, my body trembling with every effort thrown forward, fingertips soaked in blood.

I will be reborn. I will tear this monster apart.

I blink, this dream nearly at its conclusion. I feel so far removed from home, so vandalized in my own skin, so ready to fall and die like each life I just walked through. Each hero fought valiantly for their own cause… just to die. They died, alone and forgotten by the breathing world.

The blackness fades away, and I'm at the base of a dimly lit parallel universe. I take a dreary step forward, my body weighed down by a burden known only as reality.

I'm crying, but I don't know why. The salt cradles my cheeks not because my body is numb with devastation, but with the strain of the world I will never understand.

There are things out there that children should never hear. There are things that children should never see.

At the top of a gently sloping hill stands a crimson warrior in black. He does not face me as I ascend to my fall.

This. This is one of those things children should not see.

My mind flashes to a fire years ago, one that devastated a nation yet went without justification. Who knows how many died that day? I thought no one walked away from that fire, yet here I am, plagued by a memory of a boy wandering the flames. I amble wordlessly as that boy once did, tears dropping, fat raindrops into a pool of realization. My body screams as the fire laps at my flesh, but my mind is numb from the over-existence of emotion, yet the void of thought.

No one will rescue me. I am alone.

But the man that stands before me bears little resemblance to that child; his eyes are corrupt with desolation, his skin scared by the vastness of the maddening world. Scars brought down on him by his fellow man. Scars that, as this man falls to his knees, tears his heart to gently-falling shreds. The burn of fire gives way to a forgery of swords that dig into his back. The devastation he walked away from has shaped anew. Steel binds to his spine.

He has stood for oh so long – oh, so much longer than any mortal man should ever have to stand. This is the greatest crime, seeing this man forced to walk forward. This strained land, his home, will be his undug grave as he falls to his knees.

There is no hope for humanity. There never has been, there never will be.

I will turn back time.

The man ascends only to fall farther than any creature before him. No god nor divine savior will catch him as he rises into his place in the heavens: only his own hands can bear him. I lunge for the de-winged angel as he falls, but tumble headfirst into my own misery as I try to understand.

No, but there is something he has to hold on to. A promise from an un-aging girl, a girl so delicate time itself can hardly wait to see her grow up.

But until the day comes when the world no longer turns, that promise is but the only thing he has to hold on to.

.

.

All light fades, and I see nothing but a black-rimmed sun.

There are things we cannot unsee.

There are things we cannot undo.

I wake up, confusing morningdew with teardrops.