A/N

So, Doom Eternal is apparently a thing. To be honest, I never was that enamoured with Doom 2016, and this looks like more of the same, but at the least, if you want to revisit the premise of Doom II, it at least looks like Hell is taking over rather than whatever 1994 graphics were attempting to portray.

Anyway, drabbled this up.

This Side of Eternity

I've been here before.

My boots have not trod upon this soil, but the feel is the same. Across the barrens of infinity, there has been an Earth before. They have been there before. I was there before. I have walked the path of the righteous, as those less worthy fell before the claws of the damned. I have trod through flesh and bone, across dust and steel, among the ruins of those who reached the heavens, cast down by the hand of Hell. I have trod the path, and sanctified it with the blood of those beyond the reach of lesser men.

Yet it is different.

In that time before, in that place beyond, I was with those who sought to reach the stars. To reach their light, lest they be consumed in fire. The spaceport…yes, the beacon that called to us all. Heaven's gate, where we might find an ark, before the flood of fire reached us, as the world drowned in tides of sin. I remember the fight against the monsters that infested it. Rip and tear, rip and tear…rip, and rip, until all were sundered, and the arks were launched beyond the fire. Arks launched without need, as I travelled across the umbral wastes, through ruined edifices, across barren plains, straight into the jaws of Hell itself once more. Where the one born of sin, and that which birthed sin, was defeated by my hand. The one by whose death others may be given life. A ruined world, yet not dead. Arks returned, to rest upon Ararat, from whom their seed may spread. Not Eden, yet not Hell. Thus, a world I could no longer tread. For my steps were death, and my hands sullied.

It is not true here. The world is already dead.

Scarred is the skin of this world, and its blood comes rushing to the surface in streams of fire. Barren is the cradle of Man, and dark is the sky. Edifices already gone. No arks in this place, for all were taken by the fire. There will be no salvation. Even if the tides recede, barren shall remain the Earth, and those left upon it damned, not saved. The fire is here, and will not go out. A fire large enough to consume entire realities. A fire always burning, a fire never quenched, a fire that not even the holiest of water could put out, nor any tide of blood. For as I tread across the barren plains, as I rip and tear, as my hands offer sacrament with the pull of a trigger, I cannot but tell myself that you are too late. You have failed. You have walked the paths of Hell, but doom is upon this world, and this fate you cannot change. No matter how many of Doom's children you slay, this is now the womb of the damned, and their numbers shall come ever forward in unholy birth.

Still I slay the children. Still I avenge the living, and those never born. On and on I tread, as broken bodies make the path by which I know none shall walk. One road only, never ending. This is not my world, but I have seen much, and slain much. The sight and smell of fire may be repeated a thousand times, and then a thousand times again, but always they remain the same. As so, those whose blood I spill. Those who fight, die, and flee, but in the knowledge that they have won. I could slay every one of them that walks this world, and ten times their number would come through.

All that remains now are the final rites.

To avenge the fallen.

To rip and tear.