You timorously peer into the eyes of your demise, black as empty space, colder than fear, and unflinching as steadfast determination. It comes with the fury of a hail of arrows, yet true as a sharp-shooter’s bullet. It wields naught, but is more dangerous than strategically placed bombs. In its wake ride the four horsemen, galloping madly to keep up with its imperforate devastation while Hades watches from below, chuckling under his breath. You watch with utmost awe as Conquest levels societies, as War butchers anything and anyone in his way, as Famine abates the vigor of men, as Death annexes fleeting life left and right, all the while it strides on calmly, ignorantly. Some rise against it and the riders, but never numerously or strongly enough to halt or even temper the abhorrent march as it tramples over them all.
Hades snickers below.
As the abominations approach, you turn and flee, never glancing over your shoulder, eyes clenched shut and directed to the ground, with a stream tears flying from them. You run and stumble till time loses meaning and you smack into a wall and collapse. You lay there for the longest time until you compose yourself, and slowly get up and open your eyes. You immediately wish that you didn't, for It stands before you. You are disgusted by it, that thing in front of you, glaring back at you from the polished mirror. It grins an avaricious smile that never reaches its eyes and snarls at you.
Hades giggles below.
Suddenly a voice resonates in your head saying, “I am thou... Thou art I... From the sea of thy soul, I cometh...”
“No, no...” you sputter and deny, “You're not me...” The anathema chuckles then speaks in a familiar yet sharp voice.
“Oh really...” Cocking its head, it out-stretches its hand towards your face, ethereally touching it once it reaches your figure. “Now why do say so?”
“Because you aren't!” you scream as you angrily jostle its hand and arm back into the mirror where it belongs. Stumbling back a few steps, it forgets its deviously bemused expression and replaces it with a choleric one instead.
“You deny yourself,” it snarls.
“No,” you whimper.
“You do!” it yells.
You shrink back a far as you can from this unfathomable creation, and one more time, you objectively state, “No.”
With a hurt expression, it staggers back in shock. Yet it quickly conforms itself but of tears, and stares into your eyes, into your soul.
“You're right,” it says in a hard voice while clenching and unclenching its fists, “I'm my own person now.” And in the opportune moment that immediately follows, it lashes out, vicious as a snake, and you barely manage to doge before another blow sends you straight to the ground, back first. “I'm my own person now,” it states as you scuttle backward, unable to avert your eyes from the menace, “and you are not who you really are, thus thou art a lie, and shalt be punished.” A voice rings in your head, but different than from the one before.
“Judgment cometh.”
The demon you have just created strikes again, but you roll out of the way in the nick of time, and turn and clumsily flee.
As far as you get away from the monster, its voice never diminishes, and it states, “You can never escape.” You take a glance over your shoulder as you run, and see it transform into something terrible, something nearly inescapable, something as dark as the light shining on you is light, and it attaches itself to you and begins to mirror your every movement. “Because in the end, no matter how much you think or I want us to be, you are still me, and I am still you.”
You run.
And never escape.
Only hide.
Hades laughs below.