Everything’s God
You don't get it, do you hero? Even as marble knuckles send you tumbling to the earth, nearly chipping silver inlay and glass filigree. You just don't understand how all this works. You don't understand me, and you can't possibly understand yourself since you thought yourself worthy to stand before me.
Its almost funny, you looking up at me with eyes that beg, telling me another of a thousand stories of scraping and sweating for just a fraction of a chance. Your eyes tell me of the struggle of those who loved you before you even had a name. I watch the tears form in them, so horrified at the sight of me, after you'd fought so hard to make all their pain worth it. I can almost smell the long nights of cheap food, endless exertion, and over time pay beneath the scent of my perfumes and incense. The scraggly stubble on your face, the greasy locks of unwashed hair, your tattered, oft-patched clothes, all sacrifices you made for the chance to brush the hem of the fine suit I wear, more craft and patience put into sewing the end of my sleeve than anything you've ever owned. The emerald of my cufflink flashes in mockery of what I see squirming beneath me. I see heart, will, and determination. I see how cheated you feel by this, how shocked you are. Did you think your desire was enough? Did you expect me to greet you with open arms, prize to make all your toil worth it?
Its a struggle for you to rise, limbs simply unwilling to hold your little weight. Exhausted, emaciated and filthy, it must feel like your own body is rotting out from under itself. Still you will your body to try and rise. I like watching it try, comically crumpling into the dirt with each failure, the wet, grinding pop of bone on barely-skin-wrapped bone softly audible. A sad thing like you can't hope to know me, you belong in the dirt. Can you not see that there is ivory beneath my fine clothes. I am not of withering flesh and crumbling bone like you. I am all shining silver and enameled bronze. My grin is made to leer down at you, flashing, arrogant diamonds embedded in the naked pearl of my skull. I could spit on you, the finest wine splashing on your cheek, and you would feel honored.
Oh, what a sad little "role model" you are, such an inspiration to the children.
Even as I step on you in the dust, grinding your head back into the nothing you came from under the weight of jewels and decadence; you still don't understand anything about me. I built every monument, wrote every chronicling, created every wall that you "overcame." You thought yourself so strong, saw me as some great throne, believing that you could earn what I have, what I am. I am not earned.
I am gathered.
I am won.
I am taken.
I am master and mastered by those who dare to conquer.
My steel veins pump oil into the engine in my chest as proof. Those heroes who seek me as you do deserve only to choke on the smog as I breath fire and toxic ash over the world. I pulled everything you know from millions of branded "savages," my every finger a bullet in the hearts of a thousand would-be empires. I was on every ship, built every colony, fought every war over land already dyed in a thousand years of blood. I moved the gears and powered the cities of everyone who fought for anything, because everyone who ever fought and died did it for me.
In the end, little heroes who work so hard, who give everything to pull themselves out of the heaps of broken bodies my children left in their wake, who believe themselves worthy of having my favor bestowed upon them are nothing to me. You should have known that from the moment you looked into my eyes. Did you not see the empty sockets? Did you not see the feint flicker of light in them, softly glowing in the dark? Its the persistent shimmer of an impossible flash. Its the light left after the blast craters, the bodies-turned-ashes, and the mushroom cloud. You should have known once you saw that light in my empty sockets, you cannot have power and keep your soul.