Death has always been the consequence of mortality. She comes for all, indiscriminate in her slaughter and inexorable in her methodology.
Not all mortals face a violent end. Some escape her domain, and thus, her cruelty.
Some mortals pass gently, guided patiently to the river styx. They are among the lucky few who get to enter the underworld proud. Eased down to their judgment on their own two feet. Rather than dragged, bound to Death in chains.
Death, as the mortals have come to know, is not a kind god.
They do not sing her ballads.
There are no feasts held in her honor.
She has no sacred temples nor hallowed priests.
Yet, Death persists.
She waits.
On the edge of battle fields.
Above a turbulent ocean.
In the squalor of sick houses.
Where Death goes, Dread often follows.
Paralyzing, consuming Dread drapes himself over man kind.
He is unwelcome in their homes. Yet he arrives anyway.
Mortal hearts thunder.
Honor pushed to its absolute limit.
With shallow breaths and leeching uncertainty, mortals pray and beg for assurance from much kinder, much further Gods.
But what good is divinity in the face of something so primal.
With his guiding hand, men cower and shake. The unmistakable rattle of ill fitting armor is the only hymn Dread will come to know.
The clash of swords, battle cries, rage and pain. All different melodies in his cacophonous worship.
But Dread’s favorite sound is that of bells.
A distant tolling, heralding the end for once valiant and brave men, now little more than scared boys.
Mortals fear the inevitable. They rage against it with all their might, desperate to make their short existence mean something.
So they erect monuments in their likeness.
Name cities after their forefathers.
Carve their name into every rock, wall and temple.
But Death comes for them all the same.
Her bell tolls, and crumbling men fall into Dread’s suffocating grasp.
They’ll cry, beg and bargain. But it will fall on deaf ears.
Dread holds them still, a white knuckled fist around a sobbing child.
And Death will swing her night-laiden spear, severing the thread that binds the soul to the flesh.
Armies fall.
Cities burn.
Children cry.
And Death and Dread ravage humanity. Ceaseless in their hedonism, the pair needn’t for prayers or temples.
The heavy scent of iron and earth smells sweeter than any bull burned on a pyre.
The anguish of man sings anthemic psalms to their divine work.
Kinder Gods, those born of light and wrapped in gold, answer the devout. But they are not kind gods.
As Death and Dread come for all, inexorably drawn and eternally bound.
