Pestilence

A glacier breaks near Svalbard, in the middle of the day. The small island's populace worries about its shoreline. They know what this means for them, and yet the rest of the world sleeps soundly, unaware that a couple more inches of water will claim their land in the next few years. A small crawl towards disaster, seemingly invisible to human eyes—but Pestilence, and her sisters, can see it.

The worst part about it, however, was that Pestilence had nothing to do with this one.

Over the course of history, she had gone by a different title. She had been Famine, bringer of destruction, through malnutrition and, thus, disease. One can’t really have one without the other, she thought. Not during the end of days. They were a package deal.

That was her job. Destruction, mayhem and chaos—a continuation of her sisters' work. First came Conquest, with her avarice; then came War, with her wrath; and then came Pestilence. She was the final brick on the road towards the end, towards their older sister: Death

Still, humans didn’t really get Pestilence’s job. The illnesses she wrought, and even the famine she caused in the past, were never designed to harm; they were simply part of a cycle. The end of the world was only that for humans, because everything else would flourish without them. It was an act of reclamation from Mother Nature, the Horsewoman’s mother. A tad forceful, of course, but necessary all the same.

They misunderstood Famine to such a degree that even her title changed. Pestilence was brutal, more visually formidable—humans were dramatic that way, and always in a hurry. So much so that, this time, through their overabundance of ingenuity and destruction, they had even stumbled onto a better title for her: Pollution.

If they managed to survive this cycle, she thought. I will take that title instead. The new one had barely been given to her, but at the rate things were going, Pestilence would become obsolete soon enough. She sighed, knowing that the faster her title changed, the faster humans would bring themselves to ruin.

“Humans are so… incredible!” Her voice rebelled, resisting the sadness growing in her heart.

Individually, humans could accomplish formidable things. Now and again, they could combine their efforts and overcome great obstacles, conjure up fabulous ideas.

Pestilence was particularly curious about Microwave devices. Tiny little boxes that could heat things—except if you put the wrong thing into it. Then it would explode, causing a fire.

Being an inexorable force of the universe didn’t come with an encyclopedic knowledge of everything. Forces of the universe had to learn the old-fashioned way.

Pestilence would prefer it if there were an actual encyclopedia, as she always thought the act of reading to be quite fascinating. But, even if such an encyclopedia existed, humans would either be absent from it or have entire volumes dedicated to them. They were elusive things, as were Microwave devices.

Humans had, curiously, accomplished much more than these mysterious objects. They had left their planet, reached the stars and landed on the moon! A wondrous effort that, despite its magnitude and sheer force of collaboration, humanity seemed to have forgotten. Worse, they had forgone the possibility of improving upon such feats. Their indomitable human spirit, wasted.

Waste, thought Pestilence. Such is their way.

Even the mission to the moon had required copious amounts of excess and abundant waste. Strangely, even though their goals hadn’t grown loftier, their self-destruction continued. Conquest and War, her younger siblings, had said they had never had an easier time of things; not since the fall of that one Empire humans had going on a while back—the one with all the conquering, the swords, and the crowns.

Roman! Pestilence remembered. The Roman Empire—that is what they called it.

And now, Pestilence watched this Pale Blue Marble, drifting in the cosmos, and wondered if she had any place in it anymore. Her sisters didn’t seem to mind that their work was easier, which troubled Pestilence.

Do they not see what humans are doing? She thought. Can they not see the suffering we bring them? It shouldn’t be like this. The sisters, the Horsewomen… they were only ever meant to be warnings.

Something called to her.

An oil spill.

Pestilence’s gaze crossed the skies, her consciousness dividing. The Kerch Strait, she had heard humans called it, by the Black Sea, had suffered the collision of two ships, called tankers. Bellow and around them, a void-like pit of tar covered the gentle waves of this body of water. She could see the darkness spread, how the life amongst the waves suffocated—the toxic substance clinging to animals, clouding the distant sun in shadow.

It broke her heart to see such things. The end of the world was not meant for animals, devoid of guilt. Yet humanity’s destruction made their own end something for everybody to experience.

Something else calls to her. Her attention, divine and terrible, divides once again. A part of her drowns in pity for those drenched in the refined, man-made darkness that covers the waves, while another travels to a city covered in the darkness of night—a city called London.

Here she found a familiar stench, that of a disease of her own design.

A child coughs in a hospital bed. A young girl, her head bald and spotted, her eyes sunken and dark, hugging a teddy bear. It was made of fleece; adorable, fluffy, and woven with a blend of soft, polyester fibres. An abomination and mockery of nature.

That’s not even what bears look like!

She was alone, faintly trying not to weep. Where there had once been faith, hope and prayer, Pestilence instead found the beeping of machinery, cold and sterile. The room itself had no colour or furniture. It had been built that way so Pestilence’s agents couldn’t enter it—designed to be so impenetrable that even joy and hope would have to stare in from the outside.

As a creator of things herself, Pestilence knew a thing or two about good design—and rooms such as these were great examples of it!

They can keep things out well enough, Pestilence thought, traversing the wall as an innocuous, unseen cloud of gas. She walked through the angles of the room, ignoring spatial geometry, as was her esoteric right.

It was an odd thing, being Pestilence. As a creator of things, purposeful and meaningful things, she took pride in her work, in a job well done. Like any good craftsman, she could admire others’ handywork. She could lose herself in the details of their design, such as this sterile room, while at the same time taking pity that such things were needed, or the pain their design flaws could cause.

This room had been well designed, and the girl was as safe as she could be from anything outside her little bubble. Anything. It was such a good design, in fact, that dying alone in here was much, much easier than in any other hospital room.

Pestilence looked to the outside corridor, where parents and family could watch and give support to the little girl. If joy and hope had been standing there, they would have found no company.

Looking at the frail girl, ready to meet Pestilence’s older sister, she couldn’t help but think:

You don’t deserve this, little one. It was her parents’ fault.

They were the ones who bought all that plastic, perpetuating a cycle of overproduction, avarice, and overabundance. The same plastic they would easily discard, disregarding how its presence on the earth breaks its natural cycles.

Proper rude, that was!

That is why this girl had to die. Pestilence had moved a few things here and there, causing an infection here, using some cute little bacteria—transported on said plastic mom and dad enjoyed so much—to cause organ failure there.

That had been just a warning shot. The parents, unfortunately, didn’t get the message. So, Pestilence had to escalate.

I am sorry, she mourned.

That’s when something caught her eye. Something here, in this sterile room. The little girl’s eyes… They could see Pestilence, and they shone with hope.

“Y-You,” she said. “You are beautiful.”

Pestilence startled.

“Are you a fairy?” The girl asked. Pestilence simply shook her head. If she were to speak…Eldritch speech was not meant for human ears. That’s why she and her sisters worked in subtle ways.

“I know!” The girl tried to shout, enthusiasm still burning within, like a dwindling ember. “You must be Freya! I knew you were real!”

Pestilence blinked, in her amorphous form that, somehow, had begun to take form. Guided by the child’s consciousness, Pestilence gained red hair and fair features. She wore a fine dress of white and gold, covered in runes. Pestilence knew these—Elder Futhark, they were called. She also noticed a gleaming necklace around her neck, of gold with an amber sheen.

Oddly, despite the child’s early comment, there were no fairy wings on her back, and Pestilence found herself disappointed.

Much like their words, mortals couldn’t comprehend the Horsewomen’s appearances, so they naturally perceived something that made sense to them. These things happened on occasion, to her sisters. Not to Pestilence.

Upon seeing a small bracelet around the child’s arm, covered with simple Nordic runes, Pestilence understood the reason behind her form.

“Have you come to take me with you?” Pestilence said nothing, her heart twisting inside. Then the child’s eyes widened with excitement. “Am I— Am I going to be a Valkyrie?”

Pestilence’s heart shattered. She couldn’t take it anymore.

She understood the necessity of her role, what it meant, but she could not bear it any longer. Not now.

She divided herself again, leaving one of her shadows with the child, softly caressing her head as the beeping in the lonely room eventually became impossibly loud, macabre.

Pestilence took herself away, her shadows doing her work, observing the human destruction that accelerated her design.

“Why must you do this?” She asked, as the Nordic form the child had given her began to fade away into mists. “Why must you make me do this!”

All over the world, humanity found blame everywhere. When a fisherman returned home without a catch to speak of, he blamed it on the government’s international deals that had stripped the seas of fish. When a hospital’s infrastructure collapsed, they would blame the refugees their country had taken in—their own brothers and sisters—and how they were consuming their riches, thus making the hospital unable to function.

Everywhere, everyone found guilt and blame to give! Yet, no one took responsibility.

“None of them,” Pestilence cried. “None of them sees what they are doing. Each action— each hateful scream… It only pushes the pendulum.

“It swings, and swings, making things worse, and they can only blame the swinging pendulum—but never accept that they were the ones who pushed it!”

All of this was preventable.

Pestilence, her sisters; they were all just warnings, but humankind had never seen them as such. Every cycle of the apocalypse, humanity has the opportunity to change! Never once had they even tried it. Not until the eldest comes along.

“From the moment Conquest gallops upon your lands,” Pestilence wept. “The moment her avarice and greed begin to poison your minds, every single one of you could say no!”

And some did, she tried to remind herself. But not enough.

“Conquest need only waltz by,” Pestilence screamed, as something began to materialise in front of her. “War… she barely needs to approach your world. You all but worship her!”

Her mists coalesced into something. A familiar, once-discarded tool of her office. Brass scales.

“And Death… You fear our eldest sister for a reason! She is finality. She is the end. When she comes around, oh! Then, you change your tune! Like children, begging a scolding parent to withhold punishment!”

Pestilence grasped the scales, her grip tight with fury. They were heavier than she remembered, weighed down by the choices of humanity—the price to pay so much higher than what the scales could measure.

“Every cycle, you change… But only when she comes around!” Pestilence threw her scales, a reminder of her purpose—of the horrid things she had to do. It wasn’t fair!

“But why must you make me hurt you!”

She wept, and the world burned a little more with the fire of her passion. Europe was aflame, as men torched their own forests for some elusive profit. Animals suffered for it, and other humans lost everything their greedy hands had scavenged.

“Every time… I bring you suffering, and you learn nothing! It should enlighten you to change—it should make you see what you have done in the presence of my sisters! But you always keep grasping for more, and more, and more!

“Only when I am tired. Only when I am beaten. Only after I have paved the way for Death, do you decide to change your minds!” The mists of Pestilence swelled, her influence encompassing the Pale Blue Marble before her.

“Only when my pain has grown unfathomable. Only then do you decide you are capable of change. Of being better, in the face of Death. In the face of the inevitable end!”

And Death always relents, somehow.

Softie, Pestilence thought. An angry, petulant thought, but a quiet one. Death was much, much older than all of them combined. For that reason alone, she was strange–incomprehensible even to her sisters. If Pestilence wasn't careful, her elder sister might catch her errant thoughts on the winds of the cosmos.

The last thing she wanted right now was family drama.

Pestilence’s heart had sunken deep; sunken by the weight of human greed and ignorance, and the hurt they had caused her. But it was in that deep darkness within that it occurred to her.

Why should I give them the chance?

It seemed so obvious. If Death could always be subverted, why not help humanity to miss Death this time around? What if Death never came, and they all died anyway?

A mercy kill.

A kill for them, Pestilence thought. And mercy for me.

The thought died quickly in her ethereal mind.

Her ever-growing presence, her mists of disease and destruction retracted into her core, where a heart, broken and bruised, remained.

Ending them... it felt cruel. It felt wrong.

“They are ignorant”, she wept again. “They don’t know what they were doing!”

Pestilence and her sisters existed for a reason. Breaking the order they represented could have unintended consequences. But worse than that, Pestilence would be taking away her older sister’s purpose. If she did that, she would be doing it out of desperation, true, but out of greed as well. Just like them.

Her mists coalesced into a small, yet impossibly vast infinity. A condensed, singular mote of power and purpose. Now she was simply a speck of destruction, trying to stay her hand, as much as possible—if only for a moment.

If human eyes tried to perceive her now, they would conjure up the image of a scared girl, hugging herself, as she wept in silence.

“I only ever wanted to be a teacher,” her voice echoed in the void. The silence between her words echoed something much stronger and hurtful. It carried an implication that stabbed her, like humanity stabs their loved ones: with passionate betrayal.

I am a monster, the implication said.

The void of the cosmos carried no sound, and Pestilence was thankful for that. Despite her eldritch nature, she was still bound to some laws of reality—that was comforting, in a way. This way, mortals wouldn’t break under the incomprehensible sounds of her cries, nor would her heart be devoid of empathy for them. She could weep freely, and they would be safe.

She just hoped her older sister didn’t hear it.

“They are greedy,” Pestilence told herself, her sorrow beginning to dwindle. “But they are trying. Some of them are, at least.”

“A few more cycles. They will learn,” she hoped.

Looking around her, Pestilence could see the stars blinking. They sang the songs of the astral sea she called home. This had not been the first time she had wept for humanity—and she doubted it would be her last.

At least the stars make for good company.

The way they blinked, the way they sang to her. It made Pestilence believe that everything would be alright. There was a balance to the cosmos, a way of things. It was humanity’s way to stumble a few times before they learned their lesson.

She would have to accept that. Just like she would have to accept that her job, her duty and title did not make her a monster.

It made her a necessity; a part of something much greater than herself.

Pestilence composed herself, with a breathless breath, like she had done many cycles before. This was just another day at work—and she would see this one to the end.

Humans are incredible, she reminded herself. Together they can make wonderful things… Like Microwaves! They just don’t know what they are capable of!

They simply don’t know that they could be so much more than themselves!

Of course, that meant someone had to teach them, and that made Pestilence smile.

A cold breeze went by. A herald chill of finality, crawling beneath a shadow so immense, it threatened to consume light itself. Entropy incarnate, the cosmic winter that followed in Pestilence’s wake.

It was almost time for Death to come.

“Better get back to work,” Pestilence said.

Her heart forged back together, Pestilence set her eyes on the human world, encouraged to help humankind to learn. They would rebuff Death again, she knew they would—or her sister would let them. Same difference.

In the meantime, Pestilence would have to break the world a little. But if things went well, humans would be able to put it back together again.