The four horsemen loomed over Steve and me while Harvey floated off to the side with a look of sadistic anticipation on his face. Death was riding a pale horse, composed entirely of animated bones. He was wearing a long black cloak with the hood up, obscuring his face. Famine was a thin man wearing rags on top of an emaciated black horse.

War was a very muscular man in intimidating red and black armor, riding a red horse and carrying a massive sword. On his back, he carried a wide array of different weapons from different cultures and time periods. One of them was even a gun, and another looked like a high-tech sci-fi blaster. His horse was massive and muscular like himself. Smoke came out of its nostrils when it breathed.

Conquest/Pestilence was actually two men riding the same white horse. Conquest wore leather armor, carried a bow and quiver and had a crown upon his head. Pestilence was covered in grey rags similar to Famine, but he wasn't thin and emaciated like Famine. Instead, his rags were wet with blood and other bodily fluids. Every bit of exposed skin had open sores on it. Flies surrounded him. The horse had a small crown on its head and was covered in sores.

"Hey what's your deal?" I said to Conquest and Pestilence.

"We're not actually sure. The bible says we're supposed to be Conquest, but modern interpretations called us Pestilence. So we split into two beings," they said in eerie unison.

"Wait, you were swayed by public opinion?" I said.

"You say that like it's a bad thing, but yes, that is basically what happened," they said.

"I see," I said. "So, are we supposed to fight or something?"

"Either now or later," a loud whisper came from Death.

"Harvey said you're the most powerful beings on earth. The most likely to stop us," Famine said, weakly.

"So we figured we'd defeat you first," War said in a loud, boastful voice.

"Well, did you figure this?" I said, drawing Azrael's sword. The sword of Azrael, the Angel of Death.

The horsemen looked at it in awe and fear. They recognized it and its significance. Harvey looked annoyed. "Get them already!" he said.

The horsemen broke out of their stupor and attacked us. War started with a direct charge at me and a swipe of his massive red glowing sword. I rolled under it and came up, slicing into the back legs of War's muscular red horse. It didn't sever its legs. It merely tripped it, causing it to fall and launch War into the air. He smashed through a bar window and slammed into back wall, breaking every bottle on the shelves.

"Hey, this my bar! Get the fuck out of my bar!" Tony said, pulling out his shotgun. He blasted War with shell after shell, but it barely dented his armor.

War loomed at Tony through a thick metal helmet with red glowing eyes and said, "Do that again, and I'll break your face."

Tony put his hands up and dropped the gun, backing away slowly. War trudged out of the bar through the broken window, because he was too big to fit through the doors.

Death's horse trotted at me and Death leaned over with his skeletal hand and tried to slap me. I dodged out of the way. With him being Death and all, for all I knew, slapping me would instantly kill me. I had to be careful around these guys.

Steve looked at Death and concentrated beams of white light shot out of his eyes. They hit Death in the chest, knocking him from his horse, and making him tumble on the ground like a pile of bones. Which, in a sense, he was.

Famine rode at me right after Death and I couldn't dodge out of the way in time. He picked me up and pulled my face close to his. He opened his mouth and sucked. I could feel the life force being drained from my body. He was essentially eating me. I could see my arms growing skinny and emaciated like him.

Then something happened. My healing factor kicked in, and my life force kept feeding his body. He stopped looking emaciated and started gaining muscle. His back straightened up and his body healed and began to look normal. Then he started to gain weight until the horse couldn't hold him anymore.

The horse fell, and he tumbled off. He dropped me to the ground. I got up, and he tried to do the same, but he couldn't get up. Then he started to lose the weight just as fast as he had gained it. He got up and started to look like his old, emaciated self again in moments.

"They're strong, but they're protecting the civilians! That's their weakness! Attack civilians and we can win!" Conquest said. He loaded three arrows onto his bow at once and shot them at people on the street.

I tried to catch the arrows, but they dodged my grasp. They could change directions in mid-air. After dodging me, they hit three separate people and a white ethereal smoke extended from Conquest to the people. They began to run at me with white smokey eyes. He was controlling them. I defended myself, but I didn't want to hurt them. They were innocent people.

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Conquest shot three more arrows at other bystanders and three more and three more until a small army had formed. They dog piled me and Steve and kept us pinned down. They weren't going to kill us, but I realized that wasn't their plan.

"I have them pinned down! Let's take the city boys!" Conquest yelled.

The horsemen started to spread out in preparation to attack the city proper, but I couldn't allow that. The only real power I could use in this position was teleportation. I imagined myself in front of the bar again, and then I was. I looked at all the people controlled by Conquest and imagined them falling into a fountain somewhere in Reno. They disappeared.

Conquest must have felt himself lose control over the people, because he turned around. "Where did my minions go? What did you do?"

"That's not important right now," I said. I imagined Conquest at the top of Black Mountain and snapped my fingers. He disappeared. Black Mountain seemed like an appropriate place to have a showdown.

Then I teleported Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death, who had since gotten back up off the ground. Then I teleported their horses, too. Who knows what kind of destruction they might be able to do on their own? Then, as an afterthought, I teleported Harvey.

"Steve, we're going out to Black Mountain so we can fight at our full strength. Are you ready?" I said.

"I was born, uh, at full strength," he said.

"You're supposed to say 'ready'." I chuckled.

"Oh yeah. I was born ready," he remembered. "Where's Black Mountain?"

"It's somewhere in the desert. It's an old dormant volcano," I said.

"Sounds dangerous," he said.

"It's dormant. It'll be fine," I said.

Tony ran out of the front of the bar. "Go kick those wise guys' asses! And come back, we'll throw you a party for saving my bar."

"Sure thing, Tony," I laughed.

I imagined Steve and me on top of Black Mountain, and then we were there. The four horsemen—well, five horsemen—were getting back on their horses, and Harvey was still just flying off to the side.

"Would you guys get off your horses? It's really hard to fight like this. We're not getting anywhere. Besides, if you can't beat me and Steve without your horses, then do you really deserve to win? Also, I don't want to have to kill your animals too," I said, frustrated.

"I'm alright with that. I've been wanting to fight on the ground ever since I got thrown into that building," War said, getting down off his horse.

"I suppose it couldn't hurt. It is difficult to hit someone while on a horse," Death said, hopping down.

"If everyone else is doing it, I'll play along," Famine said, carefully getting off.

"Stop! Don't listen to him! He's just trying to weaken us!" Conquest said.

"I think you're on your own, brother," Pestilence said, getting off the horse they shared.

"Fine! If you fools are going to do it, I might as well jump off the bridge with you," Conquest said, jumping down. He landed nimbly in an archer's pose before getting up.

Conquest I noticed was the only normal looking one among them—aside from the ridiculously small crown that wouldn't fall off his head. Well, the healthiest and most normal looking among them. War looked healthy but not normal, with his massive muscular body and glowing red eyes that matched his glowing red sword.

Next was Famine, who just looked like a man who really needed a sandwich. Then Pestilence, who looked like a really sick guy. Death was the strangest among them. He was just a walking skeleton. I wondered how his bones even moved and held together without muscle or ligaments.

The answer was most likely magic. And if he was magic, then they probably all were. Which was bad news for me, since Lucifer said magic was one of the few things that could kill me.

This was going to be a tough battle, and I was not looking forward to it, but it was always better to go forward than move back. I had to face this challenge head on if I wanted to have any chance of winning.

Conquest started the battle by firing five arrows into the air that disappeared into the dark sky. He did this repeatedly. And he kept doing it without stopping. I didn't know what he was doing, but it definitely wasn't good.

Pestilence followed his lead and barfed up a massive cloud of biting and stinging insects. Some of them flew and some of them just plopped onto the ground and began crawling toward us. There were wasps, hornets, bees, scorpions, and other insects that were too small to see in the light of the moon.

"Steve, can you throw up a ball of light so we can see?" I said.

"Sure, but I don't know why you want me to do it like that," he said, vomiting a ball of bright light that floated over all of us, lighting up the battlefield.

"I didn't mean it like that, but ok," I said. "Thank you."

"You are welcome, Dave," Steve said, wiping the spit off his lips.

Pestilence kept vomiting insects continuously. I looked down and saw a living carpet of insects swarming toward me and Steve. There were fire ants and centipedes, and many other types of insects that I didn't know how to classify.

"Oh, shit!" I said, running away. I really wished I could fly in this moment. Then I realized I sort of could. It wouldn't be exactly flying. It would more be like continuously falling without hitting the ground, but it would keep those insects away from me.

War rushed at Steve, taking a swing at him with his massive sword. Steve summoned a sword of his own made of light. It reminded me of Raphael's, but larger and brighter. Their blades clashed and sparks flew. They attacked and blocked in turn, but neither seemed to have an edge on the other.

War was supposed to be a brilliant fighter who was an expert in all known weapons. I was surprised that Steve could keep up at first until I looked closer at his technique. Steve wasn't expertly moving his sword with no wasted movement like War. He was swinging his sword wildly. He was just swinging it many times faster than War, allowing him to keep up with War's efficiency of movement. Famine and Death just stood off to the side, not really knowing how to contribute without getting in the way.

And then I felt insects crawling up my legs. "Ah! Get off!" I yelled in panic. I imagined myself high above Black Mountain in the air. When I teleported into the sky, I swiped the insects off my legs, but I lost sight of the ground. I didn't know when I would hit, and I miscalculated how much time I had in the air.

I dropped like a rock and smashed hard into the ground. My body crushed all the bugs underneath me and tossed up a ton of sand around me, pushing the surrounding bugs back. Then I had an idea. I teleported myself into the air again, but higher and dive bombed into the ground, crushing more insects.

I did that repeatedly, but I realized more insects were still spawning from Pestilence's mouth. Well, if I could squash bugs like this, I thought, maybe I could squash him this way as well.