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Nothing you do ends up mattering in the end.
The world still burns, the country still falls, the flag still flutters to the ground riddled with scars as thick as the scars along your old battle wounds.
Death is an old friend at this point. You step through her domain every few weeks, on your way to your next revival, and you wake up on the other side with a new mark of your life before.
Waking from a death always feels a bit like waking from a dream. Each time you find your footing again, the rug is pulled right back out from under you. Each time you think you’ve made something impossible to destroy, He finds a way.
You clench your fist and scream at the sky, and it replies with lightning.
Another visit to death, another awakening in a warzone.
The stench of magic is thick in the air. Sometimes you wonder if you ever breathed anything else.
He’s there, standing above on magic runes in the darkened sky. He is there destroying everything again. And again. And again.
And He asks why you fight.
He asks why you insist on continuing this war.
He asks why you can’t just let it all burn, like He can.
You reply with tears and anger, and those are things He doesn’t understand.
He can’t feel, you realize.
He’s numb and broken, just like you are, just in the opposite way.
He kills you again, and your body is burned after you fall.
You wake, gasping, with phantom flames roaring around you. The new scar takes up half your left side, and will never fade with age.
You try, desperately, to protect anything. Any piece of the world that’s crumbling around you. You grasp at paper lanterns in the sky, you gasp for your long lost pets, you scramble to keep even a single stone out of their grasp. Every death, you lose those pieces again.
Every death you lose everything.
Over and over you die, and the world shatters, and the scars build upon themselves, and your friends have left a long time ago.
When He’s finally had his fill, He says so. He stops just long enough for you to leave, just long enough for you to fall into your best friend’s shoulder and sob.
Your tears are hidden by the rain as they roll down the new scars on your cheeks.
Your sobs are almost hidden by the thunderous laughter as He celebrates with his allies.
Your pain is nearly invisible to anyone but your small group of survivors.
You’ve grown to know loss, to be used to everything being destructible.
He taught you well.
The traitors who turned on you, the friends you once kept, they all left before you did. They escape the chaos with far less wounds. You stayed too long, like always. You stayed and prayed and hoped and dared to dream that something would remain when He was done.
But He always–Always–destroys it all.
He always takes everything.
He throws it in a hole.
And it’s all gone.
Always.
(When you finally corner him in that fortress of his, deep deep underground, surrounded by your friends who finally know what happened, who finally understand what He did to you… You take it all from Him. You kill Him again and again and it feels so good until he promises something.)
(You know you can't trust Him. You know He’s never going to care about you.)
(But His promise is tempting.)
(You accept his offer.)
(As the alarms blare across the horizon, as you sprint for your weapon and armor, as the phantom of Him stalks you from the shadows everywhere you look… you wish you’d just killed Him again.)
(And again. And again. And again.)
(You should have ended it there.)
(But you didn’t.)
(And now, He’s back.)
(And nothing you do can stop Him.)