Through the walls there was the sight of collapsing buildings, strewn with rubble and with bodies. Smoke obscured vision to all present, most on the verge of death. Those few who remained near this side of the wall had been buried alive or torn apart; burned to a sculpture of ash barely resembling man or collapsing to a pile of dust themselves. These were the lucky few spared from their inevitable fate. There would be no mercy for those temporarily granted survival long enough to meet the next and less pleasant fate.

The first was a thirteen year old girl with a half-burned dog ear. Her face was covered in ash, then gripped by the palm of David’s hand. She did not have time to process the coming death for the pain in her chest at losing her home only found in the last year after fleeing the coming war at her village. Her name was Laura.

Likewise, the forty year old man with his bloated stomach and grayish hair was not granted the chance to process his death. Beneath the rubble his bloody fingers clawed at was perhaps the remains of his wife or child or cousin or… it didn’t matter. A single finger touched him from behind, and then only a few scraps of fingernails and the accompanying blood remained. His name was Michael.

The next several people had time to scream and start to run, but it was futile. With every body David’s legs grew stronger, and with it faster. A four year old stumbled over some loose bricks. His pregnant mother tried to pick him up and continue, but her hand slipped by. She looked at him, heartbroken, and continued to run. Perhaps the unborn child would be saved.

The toddler’s name was Paul. His mother’s Sarah. The child’s Michael Junior. It is unknown who Michael Sr. had tried to save.

Behind them were a pair of elderly lovers: Ralph and Judy. Their decrepit bodies offered little nourishment.

Then came Rick, Jane, Lisa, Samson, Viktor, Ahri, Jane, Paula, Victris, Yackovich II, Timothy Johnson, Decalus, Trent, Evelyn, Yujiro, James, Mary, David, Barbara, Susan, Jessica, Karen, Sarah, Christopher, Charles, Gabriel Jade, Ambre, Alba, Emma, Rose, Alice, Jules, Adam, Lucas, Liam, Sacha, Mia, Lena, Lina, Noah, Hugo, Aaron, Iris, Juliette, Paul, Sofia, Ivan, Roman, Denis, Alexy, Danyl, Boris, Natalia, Svetlana, Pompila, Precia, Domitia, Decia, Curia, Cornelia, Cloe, Acilia, Aelia, Lucretia, Lutatia, Malia, Marcia, Maria, Octavia, Joshua, Benjamin, Debra, Rachel, Janet, Frank, Raymond, Maria, Akira, Sato Eryu, Ito Fuji, Maeda Ai, Gregory Jack, Sam Smith, Heather Grace, Tyler, Aaron, Diane, Julie, Jose, Sofia, Martina, Lucia, Maria, Diego, Elias, Valentino, Juan—

And then at last the first mark of resistance showed up before any more names could flow like water into the mouths of the drowning out of history. A handful of baby archons with no strength to spare for themselves, much less any others, though David supposed by this point as he had entered the first of many courtyards the objective of these incompetents was to stall for time. They would take no more than twenty seconds to destroy.

Fireballs flew from outstretched hands. Blood swelled from the surroundings, purposely moving away from David to strip him of his perceived control over the ambient essence of the air. Earth began to shatter beneath his feet. Swords began to stream at his face.

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David’s eyebrows were singed.

At least these bodies contained enough energy to be of some help in quenching his present unslakable thirst. Unlike the civilians, the energy of soldiers seemed to be worth seeking out. All the bodies of all the tens of thousands here would serve as little more than an appetizer, but if he could supplement them with morsels worth savoring it would turn this snack into something slightly more substantive.

Each body fell faster and faster as his speed grew. The first dozen took sixty seconds, the next thirty, then twenty. These guards took fifteen.

But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t fast enough. The energy was leaking out of an open sieve. David was fucking air purifier for all the power he retained for himself as against what leaked out. He needed to pour enough liquid and festering corpses into this sieve that it would at last choke.

But he wouldn’t find that much mass out here. Most of the sane had long since fled to military points of interest. Those remaining in this area were likely unable or unwilling to move, making them disproportionately weak.

So David made his way to the first garrison. It was a small stone building with a wooden double-door he busted down with a swift kick. Its defenders did not have time to react. First came a few small children playing in the corner near the doors. Then the parents. Then the strangers. Then the guards. It took less than twenty seconds to take care of all two-hundred on the floor. A handful of mages and soldiers and students in need of learning the meaning of an unwinnable fight made their way down the stairs. Robes were allowed to fall silently rather than be taken alongside them, but they themselves scarcely had time to blink, much less react.

In the next building he started with the parents so as to feel something in looking at the terror and bewilderment of the children. This effort was unsuccessful. All was hunger, and it yet remained.

In the next he started with the guards and played with them a bit. First a hole to the stomach. Second, the teeth were shoved into the eyes. Eyes into the mouth. Fingers to the sides. Hands stapled to the teeth by way of fingers. One’s spine to pierce two others. Some woman in a nun’s habit fell and pissed herself. In this moment David questioned why he even bothered playing with the food?

Ah, yes. Boredom. It wasn’t like this would take enough time to matter, some extra second or two each. He did lose power in moving slowly, but what fun was it to have a juicy steak without a little blood?

But it did eventually grow tiresome, and then only the clothes began to fall.

Garrison by garrison they fell unceremoniously and near-silently. By the tenth he guessed the nun’s urine-stain would have evaporated, leaving nothing of her behind. It made no difference to David’s consumption of all things to take in a little clothing or urine, but when taking on power at a large scale it was more efficient to strip the coverings and take only the vitality. In this way the processing would be faster, and likewise concentrated blood was much more efficient to take in than pee splayed out on the floor.

Twenty garrisons in and the first signs of actual resistance began. Guards with pointy sticks— metal or wood would make no difference— could not offer resistance to a god. None of these pathetic mortals could. David was not man, David was not a god. He was the God. The only and all-powerful, the omniscient and all-capable. The being who would offer this world its final and belated end.

And yet some would put on a doomed struggle against the inevitable?

Pathetic.