The earth was on fire. The sky was crying to dampen the burns. The full moon watched, indifferent to the suffering it saw. Famine. Loneliness. Death.
Ann Patrick wondered about a great many things. One of them was whether something grand and immortal like the moon felt pity for the mortals it reflected its light upon. It didn't feel right to think of it as mindless, like a pebble in the dirt, existing for the sake of existing. But she couldn't picture, if it was alive, why it would do nothing as the people who relied on it died over and over… and over again.
But then god delivered her an answer: those who cannot die do not see death as suffering.
She couldn't comprehend a being like that. Yet one of them spoke to her. In her mind. In images that held no meaning yet felt as real as memories. It was an unexplainable thing that she could only call god.
But this god was not their god. It was the enemy, and it had caused the end of the world. So she determined that it should die.
"Ann." A voice called her name, shaking her from a trance. "Are you alright? The others said you'd been staring at a wall for twenty minutes straight."
Ann rubbed the vision back into her eyes to look at the man. He was dark, strong, and wearing tactical gear he'd stolen off a dead soldier a few days ago. She needed an extra moment to remember who he was and where they were.
"Ann… You with me?" The man jolted her by the shoulders, forcing her attention on him.
"Yes. Yes… I'm fine," she said. "I haven't been able to sleep, and just sitting in silence makes the visions… intense."
Saying it was silent felt strange. She was surrounded by people, filed in an above-ground military shelter. It was abandoned before they came, and now it was full of men and women, those who survived the calamity only to face a new one.
They were all nervous. Some were praying. Others drinking. Their silence remained.
That's because when they started this journey, there were over fifty volunteers to come to this place, far into the territory of beasts and gods. Now there were twenty. And they were realizing that by tomorrow, that number would be zero.
They stared at her as she walked wordlessly down the candlelit corridor. Some of them scooted away from her when she came near.
She heard their whispers.
"It's her fault we're here."
"The others died because of her."
"There won't be a god at the end of this journey. Only another devil."
"Don't worry about them," the dark skinned man said. "We all know why we're here."
Ann paused, clutching her hand to her chest. "No. Just because I get these visions doesn't mean I can read them clearly. What if… What if it's all just a trap and I've done nothing but lead you all to death?"
"Ann, you're no friend of the Looter God. I have to believe that we met you for a reason… I have to."
"Whatever happens tomorrow, Orion, I'm sorry," Ann said.
"Why? Has… he shown you what happens tomorrow?"
She struggled in her head for an answer, knowing whatever she said wouldn't satisfy him. But then she noticed him getting worked up. Because when Orion got emotional, his skin would emit that strange blue glow.
But she didn't have the words to calm him… "This was a mistake," she said it unconsciously and without realizing it, those words had attracted an audience.
Ann turned to face them, knowing there was something she should say but not being able to find the words. She clasped her hands in an attempt to ground herself and keep the tears from running through her eyes. All she wanted to say was, "I'm sorry." But they all stared at her with hateful eyes.
Then, at the sound of a slow, measured walk echoing through the corridor, everyone straightened. Their hopeless faces turned to stone as if a general told them to stand at attention.
Those steps belonged to T'balt Ferrier. He was a man with black, messy hair, a serious expression, and a choker around his neck. He wore no armor or tactical gear. Just like them all, his clothes were torn and ragged, yet his face was clean, as if he alone were unaffected by the dire situation they were in. He had the body language of a militia leader at the cusp of a revolution, despite being in his twenties.
He walked past everyone's silence, straight towards Ann, trapping her with his immovable eyes. "Before we came here, you told me about the future you saw. I think everyone needs a reminder. Tell us what you saw."
Her heart started pounding. Why was she so nervous? This was the one image that remained clear as day within the jumbled mess of the Looter God's messages. She closed her eyes and looked. "I see... worlds where children are still laughing. It's a world where the demons have never come. The cities are still running, and none of what we've suffered ever happened."
"And all we have to do is kill a god?" T'balt stared at her wavering eyes.
"You make it sound so simple…"
T'balt stood, his expression remaining stone. He tucked his hand into the pocket of his military coat and pulled out a brown notebook. Then he turned his attention to the gathered crowd of twenty. "There's a poem I keep on me just for times like this. Times when I feel like my only choice is to die. It's by a better poet than myself, and it goes like this…"
He read,
"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night."
Ann was surprised to see everyone listening so intently. For what she knew of him, T'balt was not their leader, but he was the reason many of them had come.
For years, Ann roamed the earth cast into darkness with a single message: I know how to stop the end of the world. But no one believed her, or they thought the task too impossible to try. T'balt was the only one who had truly listened, and now they were all here, with him, facing down the end.
"Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
He put the notebook away and repeated, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Rage Rage against the dying of the light…" He repeated until the others joined in with him. "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." And on they went as Ann watched, almost dumbfounded until the noise eroded into a simple chant, "RAGE RAGE RAGE RAGE RAGE RAGE RAGE!... ANN!"
Again, she was trapped in that inpenetrable trance. This time her eyes shone the color of the blood sky. It reflected the red future forced upon her by the god who lived to torment her.
They were on a battlefield, somewhere out beyond the reach of man. Hellfire rained, and meteors crashed onto the earth. Fire, ice, light, and rage burst into the sky. And the great angels with faces of bitter stone descended with their wings wrapped in eyeballs. There were hundreds. A thousand. Too many for this measly company of twenty to fight.
They attacked without mercy, with utter disdain for those who would dare challenge the feet of the holy.
Ann watched a man fall from the sky, landing in a cloud of smoke and debris. She ran to him. But before she could commit his face to memory, a spear made completely of light tore through her arm, ripping and burning her flesh. Blood sprayed across her chin as she tumbled to the ground, the attacking angel flying above her.
"AANNN!" Orion was behind her, his short temper activated. He leapt into the air, a small man in one second, and in the next, he was a giant, surrounded by a blue glow. He was the size of mountains—Atlas returned from his perch holding up the sky, only to be sucked back into the war that put him there.
With hands suddenly the size of the already giant angels, he snatched them from the air, splattering their blood between his fingers. Then he began picking them off with a quaking roar.
The transformation took his soul as it always did, and immediately, he had forgotten Ann to chase destruction. And that meant he was rushing towards the menacing shadow overtaking the highland in the distance.
It grew to be the same size as him. But had eclipsed him in malice. Orion, as big as he was, wrapped in smoke and light, suddenly collapsed to the ground. The weight of his body shook the earth where Ann stood, and she saw the giant's blood splatter.
She could hardly muster the strength to scream. She could only cry and watch the story that god gave her unfold before her eyes. Who was she to challenge him? To rebel against this foreign god that took over her world? They were given power by him, and he had shocked the earth to its very core by slaying its sky and its people.
Ann breathed, looking at all she had lost. Bodies everywhere. Blood. Demons. People. The carnage was immeasurable.
They were all going to die.
When the angels came to take her, too, she didn't lift a finger to resist. This was her fault after all. Why should she live when she had caused so many to die? What was the point of living if there was no end to the suffering?
As the angel's fist plummeted to crush her, it was deflected.
It was T'balt. His frame was an ant compared to these angels, and yet he punched them as if they were mere men before him. Before Ann could process what she was seeing, ten angels had been defeated by his physical strength alone.
Then many of them turned to light, forced to retreat or fall like their brothers. The man came to Ann.
"Go. Run!" he yelled, pushing her away.
"What are you doing? You should be the one running! We can't win this. This is too much."
T'balt turned from her. "Am I a fool for having trusted you?"
Ann dropped her head. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry, but you were."
"I still am," he corrected her. "If there's a way to save everyone, then I'm not going to quit until I find it. I don't care if it kills me."
When he said that, somehow, within all the carnage, she found a way to smile. She realized what must happen. A cry came from above, and Ann shoved T'balt away, allowing the spear of light to pierce her stomach instead of his. She let out a scream that was equal parts pain and a burgeoning defiance.
Above her appeared the holy bow of light, and with its power she loosed arrows towards the surrounding angels. They cowered at the touch of its light, their own light. Ann relentlessly flung the light until ten of the angels were dead.
Then she dropped to her knees, eyes fading due to the pain in her arm and stomach. T'balt helped her up, almost in a panic. "What are you doing? Don't throw your life away for me."
"I understand now," she struggled to push the words through the blood in her mouth. "T'balt, you have to live."
"No, you have to live. I don't know what comes next. If you die, this might be for nothing."
"It will never be for nothing. As long as you're still alive… Just please. Live!"
She pushed him away once again as the looming shadow of god stretched over her body. Without a moment longer of regret, Ann smiled. "And save us all…"
It was then that a great hammer of light fell and crushed her whole.
"Ann!" T'balt Ferrier woke up in the living room of his grandparents' house, sitting upright in his chair, screaming a woman's name that he didn't know. He was alone with a controller in his hand. Dripping red letters flashed on the screen in front of him. They read, "You died."