The air was cold on my bare flesh, but I never minded it. Too many years of moving between one form and another had left my skin unfazed by sudden exposure to cold or heat. I shivered at the painful, prickling burn beginning to ripple across my back, from shoulder to the base of my spine; just because I've been doing this for years, doesn't mean a few thousand sharp feathers and bone cutting through meat doesn't hurt anymore. I barely felt the rough stone as I crumpled, gasping, to the ground. To an outsider, this would have looked more than bizarre, I'm sure. Something no one from this busy, now shattered world would ever understand.

I knew how this would appear, if someone were to have a reason to open the door to the roof right this moment. Perhaps an overworked mortal, loosening his rat race shackles, stepping out into the night to take a last minute unauthorized smoke break would cross this empty space and notice too late what unholy creature had perched here to endure his Father's wrath. What would he see, I wonder as the pain makes my vision milky white. I feel the beginnings of a blood stream drip past my surely white lips as my rips snap and shatter, straining to make room enough for the fast expansion of appendages that weren't there a moment before. It barely registered with me that I was on my hands and knees, digging my fingers into the rough concrete until nails splintered from their beds and bone ground itself to powder. No, in my head, I saw through the eyes of a mortal of my own design.

Here, on this starless night, he would witness the power of the true gods. This scrabbling rat would see that Pain and Pleasure were the sum of all things, and realize the only escape is to never have existed at all. As the black wings tear through my naked, forsaken flesh, and my screams rise to a crescendo to match the oceanic tides of blood and gore that are sure to wash this space, he will see. This is my god, these nightly abuses by a creature so many of his kind worship. This rape of my mind and body is my only constant…my universe was bound by the voice that ripped my sanity apart..

"Haec agonia manebit aeterna, sicut scortum diaboli paenitentia."