How the Mighty Wished to Fall.

T’was a long time ago, several millennia at best. The day when fear and terror engulfed the world like a violent and burning flurry of crimson flames. The day Hell itself broke loose from Odysseus’s binds and released the horrible and bloodthirsty beast that then lived on for thousands of years. The day the world itself quaked and unraveled in fear, as if it too were sentient. Born from the bloody womb of Hell came the great curse that forever haunted and kept the world in a state of terror that was like one was walking on thin ice: one wrong move or thought, and they might face the wide, gaping jaws of the bringer of carnage and massacre. Iago, the physical embodiment of the horrors of Hell, roamed the world forevermore, cursing all who inhabited it.

In the first few decades of Iago’s birth, he seemingly kept the world constantly on the verge of meeting their inevitable demise, like he was the most powerful and terrifying being that roamed the mortal realm. Though, at the time, he most definitely was. Iago alone mercilessly slaughtered millions of people, humans, demons and angels alike. He alone was the shameless culprit behind hundreds of massacres, civil wars, and mass extinctions. His demonic nature and viciousness was always very apparent from a being such as he. His power was so immense and great that he was believed to be more menacing and dangerous than Death himself. With his insane strength and his scarlet red flames of disaster, Iago was an unstoppable and purely evil warlord of destruction, a wicked monster of nature. The Beast of Genocide continued to walk across the earth’s surface, culling seemingly without true motivation or a good reason to. His reign lasted forever it seemed, until…. One. Fateful. Day.

The Plague Had Arrived. It spread and accumulated all across the world, faster than a wildfire. It brought yet another mass extinction upon the world, wiping out probably more than half of the entire world’s mortal population. Iago believed that this plague was beneficial to him, since it would possibly help him kill people a lot easier, as if it wasn’t easy already. He was also excited by the fact that he could watch his victims rot on the ground as their bodies decay and are consumed by rabid and abundant insects. Except, for him, the plague wasn’t going to help him. It only brought him undying agony and suffering. The plague infected Iago, tearing his body and soul apart from inside and out. His body began to rot and decompose like a deceased corpse, his skin blistering and bursting open and creating deep wounds of infested flesh. His blood had become so impure and diseased that it was no longer red, and was now a deep and dark shade of purple. The same could be said about his flesh, it had also become discolored and seemingly drained of all health. Iago’s body continued to rot and become infested with disease and insects, which had created nests and colonies inside of him.

But he didn’t die.
No matter how much he rotted, no matter how many insects fed upon his body, and no matter how much dust and haze and plagued air entered his body, Iago just wouldn’t die. This suffering lasted for thousands of years as he continued to live on as a corrupting husk. He constantly felt like his heart was going to stop beating, and like his entire body was going to fall apart with every move and breath he took. He hadn’t eaten in years and was suffering from extremely agonizing starvation. Not only all of this, but Iago was slowly being stripped of every last drop of his sanity. The viruses and the insects were eating away at his brain, until it had completely shriveled up into a rotten object that looked like an enlarged raisin. He became unable to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. He couldn’t know if something ahead of him was true or a mere illusion of his dementing mind. Living felt like dying. So much so that he had begun to wonder if dying would feel like living.

Iago wanted to die. He couldn’t bear the misery and torment any longer. He wanted the sweet and final release of death to come to him. He wanted the pain to end, and he believed that death was the only answer. Death never came. No matter how long Iago waited, he was never blessed by Death’s arrival. His brain was far too damaged and diseased for him to think of any other solutions. Many people claim to have watched Iago fall to his knees and look up at the sky, as if to pray, only for him to do something no one had ever expected from the beast that he was. Iago discovered his unknown and undying secret:

He unknowingly possessed immortality.

“Is this how you’ve chosen for me to be punished for my actions?! You bestow the curse of immortality upon me so I can feel all the same suffering as everyone I slaughtered?! I do you the favor of filling up both afterlifes with souls in need of divine judgment, but ‘No’ say you wretched gods! He can’t benevolently massacre! Curse you! Curse all of you! Just let me die already!!”

Iago never got his wish. How the mighty wished to fall.

“No matter how much you beg or plead, you might not get what you wish for.”