How do you describe the end of the world

Before we begin our tale, take a second and just try to conceptualise that sentence.

How do you describe the end of the world?

Do you really think your mind as unknowable and impossibly advanced as it as can genuinely conceptualise what a radically insane concept that even is. Just try and hold that concept in your limited mortal mind. Its an insane notion to even try and rationalise. The end of the world. Perhaps when you think of something that drastic you image the melodramatic death of a loved one, the loss of family or corporeal flesh bag mate however your kind describes your coupling partners. Maybe its simpler than that, the collapse of a tribe, a nation, a job. But that's not really the end of the world is it. No matter how bad today is, tomorrow will still arrive. 

Unless today is this darkest of days.

When I say how do you describe the end of the world, I mean how do you describe the literal, physical, annihilation of the celestial body your people call home.

Can your limited perceptions even grasp destruction on that vast a scale!

How does the mortal tongue even begin to try to describe the death of a world. Can you even grasp the concept of the death of an entire world! An entire world! Try and visualise that. Continents, oceans, uncountable animal and plant species, uncountable forms of sentient life, of fungus, bacteria and the endless vast microscopic world. Just try and imagine it. Do you think you can imagine the death rattle of a celestial body rupturing at the seams like an overripe fruit. What ingenuously mad scrivener could even craft an analogy to spell out destruction that is measurable on a cosmic scale.

It's impossible.

How can the mortal tongue even attempt to convey a concept so audacious as the death cry of an entire world.

(And yet it is happening right in front of us)

It is said in the ancient tales and folktales of men that creation is engaged in a constant symphony, from the lowest insect to the very motions of the stars, supposedly all of creation is bound together in this silent harmony. The tale goes that man in its arrogance has heard the song for so long that its mind has learnt to filter it out, spurring creation in an act of thoughtless self-preservation. Supposedly according to this half-forgotten myth, if you were able to stop and listen hard enough, for long enough, you would be able to hear creation's chorus once again.

It is supposed to be beautiful. Heart-wrenching, a sibilant symphony of unparalleled sophistication or some other over the top literary nonsense. Supposedly it would be so otherworldly that it would drive men to their deaths as they bore the weight of its sonorous sonata.

A tragedy really. A sick joke. For a mortal to strain so hard and to finally be able to hear creation tune only to realise just how hollow their existence had been until that point. A macabre god's twisted sense of humour. This tale like every ancient wife's tale is mostly nonsense, no matter how hard one might strain no mortal can ever truly perceive creation's symphony. It's mind is simply nto vast enough to grasp the entirety of such a thing. Not to say that it does not make a sound. No, no o dear reader mine, this like all old wife's tales contains the barest modicum of the truth. The tale fundamentally is right. Creation does make a sound. But like all such stories the touch of time has been cruel, the tale suffers from a minor mistranslation. A tiny error. Barely even worth mentioning.

You see creation is not singing. No, no, no, … no.

It is screaming.

And that the mortals can hear.

(Can you hear it?)

The sky is screaming.

Discordant wails ring from the heavens shaming widows as they rot before the naked eye. Patches of sick purple and darkness tear their way across once pristine eyes like pestilent tumours worming through a corpse too damaged to realise its own demise. Blood bursts from these cancerous patches in endless steams in an eternal mockery of natural processes literally drowning civilisations under its vermillion tide.

Dark morasses of screaming souls the colour of the void adorn this patchwork of desecrated heavens, each tortured mass illuminated by endless barrages of sickly purple lightning that scream their staccato song of fury through brutalised skies.

Banks of smoke thick enough to cover continents reach charred fingers upward from forest fires the size of countries. Jungles once thought indomitable screech their final death throes as immortal flames throttle the lungs of the world.

The earth trembles underfoot in an endless palpitation as it spasms in its final terrible death throes, crimson clad fissures the size of cities split the earth as the very mountains themselves buckle and collapse under their own weight. Not to be out done the oceans join in creation's last terrible chorus. Black morasses of water shriek as they eviscerate in flashes of crimson light, their very atomic structures breaking apart proton by proton their roiling surface barely overshadowing the burbling death cries of billions of aquatic lifeforms.

It is the end of the world.

This is what the end of the world looks like.

It is the quiet last breath of a widow holding the mangled corpse of its pathetically feeble offspring. It is the silent shifting of ashes as the winds caress the remains of razed libraries. The sonorous echoes of now abandoned cities. It is the roaring tumult of mountains as they come undone, the death bellow of continents as they crack at the seam. The silent turning of a page o apathetic reader mine.

This is what your limited tongue can reproduce of a catastrophe so apocalyptic that the human lexicon fails to craft words biblical enough to encapsulate the concepts I am so desperately trying to convey. Do you think you can picture what it must have looked like? I guarantee that no matter how grotesque or warped your imagination is you are very, VERY much understating what the term apocalypse actually means.

And that of course, is to neglect the greatest voice in creations immortal choir.

Mortals.

Oh, what sounds they craft. What screams they raise towards ruined heavens.

They lift such melodies of despair to gods that can no longer hear them, and can no longer help them even if they did.

I made quite sure of that after all.

But still they scream. In hollowed out cities, collapsing mountain strongholds, burning forest temple they all lift their voices in desperate rapture. Their voices mesh to craft melodies of such exquisite beauty. The wail of the newly orphaned, the shriek of the bereaved and their desperate final delicious moans they make as their souls slip clawing and thrashing into my embrace.

There's a saying in your world I believe, if you love something let it go.

What stupidity.

 I pity the inane species that produced such a reprobate who could even think such madness. What fool would ever let the subject of their adoration love slip from their fingers, it is madness to even consider. These frothing, screaming beasts, these lowly pathetic mortals screaming their final screams. How I love them, oh how I would do anything for them, once they are safely nuzzled in my embrace in the sea of souls I will never let them go again.

What magnificent choruses these souls make in my embrace. Come, come, closer and listen. Lend me your ear and they will whisper of an age of heroes and monsters where the laws of the world came undone. They speak of heroes baring the burden of entire civilisations and of villains so twisted that even the demon's shudder when they passed by. And the demons did come and as did their counterparts as immortal tore immortal to shreds.

It's all a little much, right?

Sadly, such souls tend to be a wee bit melodramatic at times, but you shouldn't hold it against them too much. They did go through an awful lot before they found the safety of my embrace o reader mine.

But before we conclude I have one more tale to spin. One final crescendo in this song of tragedy, you should stay and watch, for I guarantee you will never see such sights again.

For now though, context. And what better context is there than a flashback sequence that makes no sense for half the story.

I truly hope you stick you linger long enough to understand it o precious reader mine.

As so, with all great plays, our scene begins with staggered footsteps from the right.