Perhaps it would have been more accurate of Henry to characterize himself as alone beneath the blackened sky together with two and a half flesh-puppets which did not deserve to be called men. He didn’t care to consider them any further, but presently lacked the strength necessary to hasten their deaths without deigning to walk to their positions and strangle them with his own hands. It didn’t matter much as they would die soon enough anyway, and one was already in the process of burning to death.
Anyway, Henry began to appraise the situation as his features began to blur. The snow he had felt enter into his chest seemed to have a physical effect on him, not just being some metaphor for a change of personality. Raising hands to eyes, the skin had changed color from pale white to an almost translucent mix of shifting purple and red, cyan and violet, black and gray. The simple gray robe he never remembered putting on and had never acknowledged was likewise blurring away into something resembling nudity of the androgynous man. There was nothing but an outline of a man standing there in a multitude of color, and the new man had no memory of the appearance which had come before. It would have been irrelevant, and so he had decided to forget. Likewise the name of what had come before was meaningless. It assigned value to something which entirely lacked it. It assigned agency to someone whose every move was nothing but a forced hand of fate. These things would have been wrong to give, and thus they would have been wrong to retain as anything more than things forgotten and replaced. It would not be permanent, but the first step in forgetting a memory is suppressing that it ever was.
Now the new man stood to appraise the situation with cold and unfeeling eyes. He stood amidst a torrent of fire raining from a blackened sky. It had ceased to pour down anywhere except where the new man stood, as though whatever infant god stood wrongly above Him had acknowledged his own inferiority. The tide of fire had not yet reached… He did not care about the fire. It was meaningless to consider it further. This new form would dodge the attacks as though stepping aside drops of rain in a storm which contained no water at all.
What needed to be considered now was not how to address the meager resistance of a child, but of the new name of this new form. It was one divine aspect of many and yet deserved something better than the foul names of this world next to conquer. It took one moment for an idea to come and stick.
“David,” he mused.
“This child of man shall be an embodiment of perfection imported from another world, and when the last of these creatures are forgotten shall rise again from what remains of sin into the divinity established in Our name.”
David walked through the drops of burning rain and remained perfectly dry. First he would acquire a meager portion of the power rightful to him, then he would determine a next course of action depending on if this vessel shattered or not. If it did the outcome would be nothing but a trifle, merely requiring some time to repair and another cycle of connection to temper. First came the testing of strength, then what came next would naturally follow.
The fire intensified as David walked to carts which carried numerous bottles of red liquid stacked together tightly in wooden trays. He reached for one, opened it, and downed the viscous crimson mixture which tasted of dull iron and rust. David was annoyed by this outcome, disappointed in the pathetic tastes of a pathetic worm, unable to appreciate the flavor of power as it flowed down into his core.
They would adjust soon enough, he knew, but it wasn’t like he needed to down all of the bottles. The first vial was merely to restore enough power to absorb the rest by touch, and so he did. Bottle after bottle was absorbed through the glass in an ever-expanding radius until at last all were consumed.
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The body of a god shuttered as his features solidified into an average man. His every feature was perfectly normal, standing 5’9”, 200lbs, chubby but not fat and yet entirely out of shape, hair black, eyes brown, skin nominally white but noticeably darkened, features exactly proportional with no abnormalities A not dissimilar body was remade into the embodiment of ordinary perfection, and with this David had fully materialized into the world. Atop this perfect form and in place of the gray cloak he had worn previously stood… another gray cloak. It seemed this was average to the world.
It would suffice. David flexed with power, fingers opening and closing their grip, weak muscles tightening and relaxing all throughout his tan and chubby frame. This was the embodiment of perfection, however many others might try to deny it. Despite the new man’s perceived sublimity he was acutely aware of the limitations of his new form.
It was entirely lacking in power. Even as he absorbed the remaining bodies of the Scourgeborne— living and dead— it was nowhere near enough. There was power in the air, but it was toxic. It destabilized him as though the world itself was resisting him and wanted nothing more than to spit him out. With every passing second his power waned as it resisted the pressure of the world and remained in it. Worse yet, David needed to retain some of it after the battle in order to solidify his connection to the world.
Zorvilon was surprised by his own inaccuracy, but ultimately did not care. There was no meaningful possibility of resisting the god of fire. No matter how long this battle drew out, no matter how many dodges were performed, no matter how strongly this mortal resisted or reforged himself into something new, it would end the same way. His body would be reduced to the same pile of ash whether he was ten feet tall or two. Zorvilon merely drew his form inward to concentrate its power and continued to unleash hell upon the world.
David’s feet instantly lost their weight as his short black hair began to flutter in the wind. His body rose diagonally and zipped between rays of fire intending to scatter him downwards as a floating pile of ash, but it was meaningless. He would close the distance and absorb the power of this trifling god of fire whether it took the entire time he had left or with plenty of room to spare.
Zorvilon recognized the threat inherent to allowing this figure to close the distance. After watching the man absorb the supplies he was here to stop the transport of, Zorvilon was acutely aware that the man’s power had something to do with absorption and as a result his top priority needed to be keeping distance between them.
The sky returned to a normal shade of blue with the afternoon-day sun shining brightly overhead. Zorvilon began to rise higher into the air, and David followed. Unfortunately for the new man, his lack of power and the world’s resistance to him suppressed his speed. Zorvilon was able to flee faster than him, and as he did began to amass a large ball of fire between his outstretched hands to the front of his torso.
David stopped moving and shrugged, releasing his grip over the new man’s body. It did not change form, and as Henry returned to life stared down the inferno of death amassing before him. This was not the primary threat to life, however, as he began to plummet from thousands of feet in the air.
Interestingly enough, he felt no fear as his body plummeted to the earth. No memories of a pathetic life flashed before his eyes, nor did he want them to. The fear of death had been suppressed and even as the earth continued to close the gap between it and him, Henry felt nothing. He remembered every part of the battle to this moment and had relished the growing feeling of power inside his chest. Some of it yet remained, but without the guidance of his other self would be challenging to tap into.
Before he could fall all the way to the earth, a ball of fire the size of a miniature star hit him and reduced his body to nothing. There was no pain as he disintegrated, but as feet and body turned not even to ash the ears were able to hear a last few words,
“Damn it all to hell! I wanted to play with that one…”