This is a set of poems, each from the perspective of a different one of my characters, from one of my currently less utilized universes.

The Council of Immortals

I.

The world is changing,

and all throughout, restoring.

Healing the damage that we, through our

hubris, inflicted

upon our native soils.

The war was long, and ravaged our Earth,

our Urth, as the savages that remain know it.

And what are we, the poor bastards who remember?

Delusional, I would say, without mirth or mock.

Daring to look upon ourselves as gods,

we nine survivors,

refugees of a holocaust only scarcely recalled.

Nine brothers and sisters,

a large family by any standard,

but larger still when none likes another.

Immortality, we were offered…

and in seeing only its blessing, accepted.

Now two of our number are insane,

and the world, shattered beyond our ability to

repair.

In my pride, I dream to help those who reside within

the barbaric ruins, even as they mutate into something

different, something

better, perhaps, than humans ever were.

Artorius is now my name,

and even as the world heals through the Metagrowth,

so too shall I heal the beleaguered peoples of Urth.

II.

I stare down at the ants beneath me,

scurrying hither and yon with pompous

impotence, puffed up with

a false sense of self-worth.

They do not know it yet, but they shall all

serve me, Necromancer,

the one who will cure death itself.

I shudder at the memories as I watch them;

reminder of the plebian small-minds pompously taunting

“Have you no morals?”

“No professional ethics, no conscience?”

“What kind of doctor are you?”

Morality is dead.

Ethics are meaningless at the end of the world.

And I never had a conscience.

I cannot even remember my name.

Do I wish to? Human names are weak and of the flesh.

Before my lichdom,

the serum, my crowning achievement in life,

perhaps I cared then.

Immortality was a worthwhile price to pay,

accepting a task that will occupy my madness eternally –

or until we are reunited, my dearest Katharine.

Her husk smiles; it does not react to other than

my touch, my voice. There is nothing there,

no soul, no trace of the wondrous woman who

completed me.

I turn to look at the cattle below,

and rasp out my declaration from vocal cords

long since scarred by nuclear waste.

“I will bring you back,” I mumble to the husk, broken,

half-lost in the dim memories of the forgotten.

“And I do not care how many must suffer

to make it so.”

III.

Things are better now,

without the remains of what came before

haunting the world.

Man was corrupt, twisted,

not what our race could have been.

I’ll admit it —

the war was salvation, in my mind.

A chance to wipe clean the slate,

to rid the world of our tainted existence.

Nuclear panacea, the birth of new life

free from the burdens of technology,

and those who would put it to ill use.

What was our history, but that of war?

Whoever had the biggest guns, the most

devastating toys, boys with toys

until women became boys, too.

The record of humanity is counted

not in the number of our achievements,

but in the toll of corpses.

Some new nations seek to restore

that which came before,

and so they must perish.

I, Atropos, will not allow a revival of

nightmare, a renewal of technological

mastery, the condom which made rape acceptable.

Our ancestors may bow and scrape,

and make whatever lives they can.

But anyone who dares try to raise pulley

or lever or gun against his brother,

will surely feel my wrath:

The fury of an Immortal.

IV.

They say I’m insane.

Maybe they’re right.

You don’t think I’m insane, do you,

Marissa? I’ll be home soon, honey.

Just a routine check-up…had to make sure

Steven? Daphne? Daddy’ll be right back.

that the missile firing sequence worked.

I just need to check on the firing sequence,

it’s perfectly routine.

I fucked it up good, didn’t I?

But I’m immortal now, so it’s alright.

Her blocks…Daphne’s castle, it fell down…

I can fix it…just give me enough time! Please

I guess I’ll just have to build it up again

let me fix it! Please God, if you’re there,

Dammit, I stepped on her castle again

just give me a chance!

and now she’s crying, but I’ll fix it, and it’ll be okay

It was my mistake, I admit that.

But that’s why I drank the serum

won’t it dear, it’ll be okay.

so I can live long enough to fix it

My hand’s shaking, but I can put her castle back together.

just in time to knock it down again.

Just in time to knock it down again.

Apocalypse is coming…

I’m coming for you.

V.

Squirm, little weakling.

Squirm beneath your master’s heel.

Oh, sweet visions of the future,

of a time when dream is possible,

and your pain is my whim.

The smallest corner of the world is all I want,

to remake in my image:

the image of suffering.

Some peasants to amuse myself with,

their hopes and desires waiting

like dessert ready for devouring.

The old world was not kind,

although it did give someone with my talents

a use, for the benefit of all, they said.

I think that they were full of shit.

But then, why should I complain?

My desires were sated…temporarily.

A mere hired gun no more,

now Leviathan waits in the shadows,

and my plans will come to fruition.

The countless screams of my tortured

victims will rise like the most glorious sonata,

rise like my spirit on the way to godhood.

VI.

Hope springs eternal,

the old cliche went.

I’m not sure if I can say that I am very springy,

although the serum has ensured that despite surviving

a nuclear and chemical Armageddon, I am still alive.

I used to be Amanda Patterson,

but that name is now as

meaningless as

an initial carven into the sand before a tide.

All of us…all nine immortals,

liches, as Sutherland coined us,

I fear that our sanity has become somewhat…

cracked, since that August 3rd,

so long ago.

Who am I to dare call myself Hope?

Can I really offer these poor people

who do not even know of their origins

a better, brighter future? Especially with madmen

like Apocalypse and Leviathan running around?

So many doubts…so many lies.

But still I must go on, chin held high,

for all the survivors must be supported fairly,

and should be offered a chance at a happy existence.

Even if I drown in my own insecurities,

even if I end up becoming as twisted as my old nation,

I must stand tall as an emblem to the new races of this Urth,

as a sign that Hope exists.

VII.

Chaos is everywhere,

and I don’t like it.

In my previous life, I organized the families,

set into order things that could not be ordered.

The holocaust undid all my hard work.

I shouldn’t even be here, but then,

you can’t trust a loyal dog…they will find a way

to “help” you even when you don’t want it.

If I have to be here — Cursed Serum, robbing me of

honest death — then I will set right this mess.

Some among these nascent races are seeing it already,

recognizing the way to improve themselves:

to set up governments, lines of communication,

logistics.

My favored Tager’i, children that I never had;

they are the light of my unnaturally continued life.

The others will come around, eventually.

I do not wish for war, but the tribes that

are still forming, uneasily, must be hammered

into a union.

Apocalypse threatens all, and if we are

to stop an eternally repeating cycle

spurred on by one man’s madness,

all must be united.

If I must threaten, to accomplish this;

if I must become Cataclysm itself,

he will be stopped.

VIII.

Hunger, as I hunger.

Yearn, as I yearn.

Need, as I need.

A void of a man, I have become.

Shattered, I cannot remember anything

through the emptiness eternal.

Perhaps it is merciful. The others despise me,

there must be a reason.

I long for their approval, even as I dream for my own,

and pray for a time when I might not be

quite so full of cravings…

Craving…that’s my name…

The others chatter on endlessly about their petty

whims and goals and dreams;

they do not know what it is like to really,

truly, honestly,

NEED.

They think me harmless, quietly moaning to

myself in the corner.

But they’ll learn soon enough, yes,

yes  they will. Before long, this new world,

this Urth,

will tremble before my gaping maw.

After all, it isn’t my world,

not anymore.

IX.

The echo of the eons is endless,

and I find that all I fear is boredom.

Good and evil are shams, illusions cooked up

by those in power: and I should know.

The only thing that matters is finding out

what truly matters.

All my millions, all my learning,

and I am no closer now to the answer

than ever before. Like unto a Roman emperor,

these new peoples on our planet

dance before my whims, battling it out

for my amusement.

Serpentus, I am known as now:

the one with infinite patience and cunning,

sometimes vicious and sometimes torpid,

depending only on my mood.

I do not find it much of a change from my old life.

We all wear such masks throughout our lives,

and though there is no hiding the cracked

skin that mars my fleshy facade, I like to think

that no one person is ever entirely truthful…

and that’s the fun of it.

So I sit here, alone,

in my mansion peopled only by memories,

and I learn. I watch, I wait, and I manipulate.

Yet still, I dread my own laziness…the boredom

of immortality. These are long, uneasy hours,

these moments between birth and death,

creation and supernova.