The Rose's Thorns

Pouring down from the sky like water, golden sunlight was cast upon the scarlet reality of a sanguinary world in which the strong prevailed and the weak perished. Bodies were strewn across a heartless plain, and the agonized screeches of the dying pierced my ears with a pain so foreign I didn't think it could truly exist. It was almost as if all of their misery in life was sure to follow them to their graves. Even if they were placed six feet beneath me, I feared their wretched sorrow would reach up and break the crimson soil to drag me down to their soulless level and beat me until my fate was sealed. Such a meaningless demise seemed inevitable when even the divine fell to the wills of evil and were crushed beneath its might. The miracle of my escape was something I lacked time to question. Of course…escape meant only staying alive.
“Your will is strong, Apollyon. Or is it fear that keeps you breathing?”
“I don’t fear death, Abaddon. All I fear is forgetting who I am and what little holiness is left in this world that you've tainted!” Though bathed in the crimson agony of my own blood, my words were not layered with the pain I felt all the way to my bones. My weakness was his pleasure, and someone so vile did not deserve the felicity of triumph.
“Tainted? Oh, no…this is a perfect world…a perfect time to be alive!” His grin hinted towards a pure insanity he tried so viciously to mask. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Kill or be killed…a basic law of nature upheld so wonderfully in my wretched world…but isn’t it kill and be killed as well? You just can’t win!”
“I’m not looking to win, I’m afraid. The impossibilities will not allow my kind to prevail, I know, but one day you will know that what you’ve done will not be forgiven! Already, your wrongs are on display, but blood has blinded your hateful eyes to what you subject those who only want to live and love to!” My breath was short and heavy as anger flooded what little blood still coursed in my throbbing veins. “But, Abaddon, you and I both know that even a blind man can see the pain that he causes. Seeing with your eyes…isn’t so important, but I pray that one day you will know how to see with your heart. Tragedy cannot be erased, but it can be overwritten.”
“There is no tragedy to overwrite! This is the world’s will! This is how it’s all supposed to be! The good and bad both die young, while the truly awful are those that will live forever!” Wild, scarlet eyes…ruffled hair so much like my own…deep inside, Abaddon and I weren’t so different…just flesh and bone and blood. But his blood ran differently than mine, even though we looked so alike. Abaddon’s blood ran cold…empty and vile. Though his heart’s beat must have been so lively and joyous, it couldn’t know the evil it was pumping. Such innocence allowed only to the ignorant…a painfully unaware existence. Truly, my heart held a great sympathy for Abaddon’s, even if it could very well have been pumping the same wretched kind of blood and never know it. Though not divine or great, I couldn’t help but pity the evil and their mindless compliers.
“Abaddon…don’t you understand? Death isn’t something you can escape…no matter what you do or who you kill. The world you’ve created will die beside you! If need be…humanity will start over and erase you from its past. This isn’t how we were meant to live!” My hands were bound above me, but the man before me reacted to my words as if he’d been struck. “One day you will die, Abaddon! That will be the day that love is revived in the agony-filled world you will soon depart from!”
“You’re wrong!”
“But it isn’t too late for you! Change this place into what it used to be! Change your hateful ways! You could be a hero!”
“Who needs to be a hero when I’m already a god?!” he spat, reaching up and closing his fist around my throat.
“You are no god worthy of humanity’s worship.” Though painful to speak, my words were what he needed to hear.
“I’m done listening to your lies, Apollyon! I’ll have your mouth bound shut and your throat torn out!”
“Wouldn’t you rather see the knowledge of mine you hate so much splattered across a wall?” A wry smile crossed my bloodied face, and he stepped back, his eyes unfocused and forehead shining with sweat. “Turn this room crimson with my blood.”
“I will silence you!” At his enraged cry, a few of his men moved from their places at the door. Angry words were exchanged, but I no longer cared to listen. The shackles that held me in this prison grew limp, and the weak body I inhabited fell. A chill came across my skin as my clothes were removed, but I felt no fear as Abaddon, a man who I knew could change himself, glanced over the wounds and scars displayed upon my flesh. “Seal his mouth!” His orders would be carried out without thought. I knew this much. A needle and thread pulled through my dry lips…but the pain was miniscule compared to that of those who would meet their fates before all of the pain of this world was scratched out of existence by none other than he who had caused it. Abaddon and I, we both knew that he would be the one to end this horror…I was simply more aware of the fact. He would cast the final blow on agony…but only long after my body would become one with the earth and all the blood within its heart.
“Evil…will not prevail…” As the final few stitches were sewn through my lips, I forced out the words that would follow Abaddon to his own grave. Anger contorted his face as he brought my head up by the hair that looked so much like his own, glaring at the face so similar to that which he bore. Only I could see the tears in his scarlet eyes with mine of the same color, for he hid that pain so terribly well.
“This world will prevail without your existence burdening it.” He looked away as a blow was brought to the back of my head, and the cruelty of his ways was splattered across his marble floor as my breathless body fell limp before his trembling form. “If you truly see me as evil…then I suppose…you’re right…”