Armies of Death

Heralds of the night, the shadows rise up first from the underground having had the breath of hell blown into them. Sweeping over the earth like a swarm of locusts, they ravage life with hellfire. Absorbing death’s energy, they frantically copulate creating new life to replace the old. Obedient, expendable, and plentiful in number, these are the death soldiers of the army of hell.

Weary angles swoop down from the sky once again trying to resist the regime change, but they’ve been slaughtered time and again from the constant battles over the years and without the support of the masses, they’ve decreased in numbers and have grown tired and weak. Their cries have been forcibly diminished by the armies of death in their relentless effort to create a new world order of hollow-souls marching like drones to their death.

The soldiers of death have been cursed to exist on the cusp of life and death. Their faces are drawn and expressionless, while their eyes appear to stare out to a world of memories. Motivated by an insatiable hunger for life, they must kill and channel the energy of the living at their moment of demise to feel life pulsing through them. While for a moment they are revitalized by the life, what follows is the empathetic phase – they are forced to recount their victim’s entire life and feel the pain of their death. They are defined by these two phases of revitalization and empathy and compelled to repeat the cycle endlessly.

There are those who try to hide from him feeling it is their last strategy to avoid capture. The General has come for me. He reaches out his long arm, but keeps his distance. With eyes that pull you in like a vacuum, he fixes his stare on me like looking down the barrel of a shotgun. His long boney fingers are five sharp blades pointing at my chest. Staring intently at me, he makes a claw and thrusts it into my chest. I gasp and my eyes widen as he rotates his talons and sinks in deeper. Pulling back, he holds my heart in his hand. It still beats. Blood drips from my chest and down the length of his arm. My eyes roll back into my head to retreat.