Post by Non Compos Mentis on Dec 11, 2015 18:07:06 GMT -5
They called him Foss, one of the few things I knew of the wolf that had beckoned me to an inconspicuous warehouse in the Port Morris area of New York. One of the others, courtesy of my memories, was the lupine appearance of the fugitive.
For all appearances the warehouse was abandoned, a relic to the days of industry that had sailed by in years since. The rickety door had been left ajar and squealed once pushed further, revealing an interior coated in the detritus of time.
“Foss! I'm here!” I hollerred into the dust, then under my breath cynically, “Right where you want me...”
Then came the shuddering voice from nearby, a doorway I'd thought empty and then suddenly was filled with the unexpectedly form of a middle aged white man with a greying mane. “You came alone, I'm impressed. Last time we met you had back up...”
“Last time we met you took the life of someone I...” I swallowed the word on the tip of my tongue, for fear of choking on it. I'd seen Foss, watched as he in turn watched Ezra die, but then he had been in the nightmarish form of a Were. Still, as I looked at his pointed human features, he was recognisable. “You took his life. We burned that building to the ground, so if you want us to be even I think I have a lot more to give out.”
“You're quick to anger, I can sympathise. My brothers, they have the same problem. They can be hard to control...” The creak of metal above snatched at my mind. I looked up at rusted mezzanines and found three figures caught painfully between man and wolf... snarling, waiting. “But I didn't bring you here to fight.”
“Then what? I have nothing to offer now. I'm a Seeker outside The Order, I'm a renegade as far as they're concerned. You're putting yourself at risk the longer you're near me.” Foss walked out from the doorway, as if to reassure or perhaps he wasn't scared anymore.
“You're no Seeker, if you were you'd have saved your boy.” He uttered with a satisfied smile on his face, revealing his inhumanly sharp teeth. “You have something though. Maybe you got a little wolf in you, yeah, I can see it in your jowls...” Reaching out, he tried to touch my face but I recoiled from his hand. Calder had told me before that I had Were blood in my ancestry, a surly thought that made me question just how similar I was to these creatures.
It brought to me the two questions had dominated my thoughts for the last week, walking hand-in-hand through the troubled path of my mind. Incessantly the first invaded my space, posing itself from afar in the concerned voices of the Faithful.
Why attack Justin Kaard before your match?
And the second was one of my conjuring, a question scratching at a corner of my mind that had been left unchecked. I'd been caught in the cat-and-mouse chase from Calder and The Order, hiding in protection of my life. All the while the question itched but I pushed it away...
Who are the good guys? Am I still one of them?
I knew The Black Hand were mortal enemies of the good in PCW, of the world. I'd fought them long enough and now found myself detached from their attentions and directed towards Justin Kaard and the North American title. The only option I had was to face the challenge and hope I would find my way back to my real objective. So far everything was going to plan, two-to-one up in our series and the title within my reach. Just one more victory and I'd have possession of the championship that had become synonymous with my name.
And yet, I'd attacked Kaard before our match. I was fighting the sworn enemy of The Black Hand, The Order. I'd shrunk away from any and all PCW responsibilities save the ones that kept me employed. All this brought the question back... am I a good guy anymore?
“I expected them to send soldiers, maybe even their beast Murdoc. You can imagine how glad I was to get their trainees.” Foss stalked me, a wolf watching the lamb. When had I become this meagre pushover that was so dismissed, that had to resort to desperate actions.
Yes. I'd attacked Kaard, driven us both off the stage in an attempt to undermine his efforts in our series. But why?
Because nobody understood what it meant to be Non Compos Mentis anymore. Mikey Wryght stole my International title and nobody batted an eye. No rematch, no appeal, the PCW top-brass acquiescing to Wryght's every whim. I was left ignored. Then a series against a paper contender, a man who'd held titles by luck rather than skill, no matter how much determination he might have had. I'd been sidelined from the real fight and I knew it, so a display of force was needed.
“What's your point?” I jested at the Were and his cheap yet chilling mockery of Ezra's downfall.
“You need to start understanding things a little better. There are new forces driving The Order, that much was made clear when you showed up. What few rules there were in our war have been abandoned. Now instead of one Seeker the look to recruit an army, and you were just the prototype.”
“You said it yourself, I'm no Seeker. I never had the strength they needed, never believed in their philosophy... as far as they're concerned I was a heretic. They gained nothing from their experiment.” People had forgotten that I was a man to be feared. They'd forgotten the legacy I'd created, the four North American title reigns, a Hall of Fame career. I needed to show people the order of things again. They'd become heretics against the established order the North American Title, heretics against the established order of Non Compos Mentis.
“The Order had morals once, thinly veiled justifications for genocides, but now they kill indiscriminately. They don't care about your heresy. We're all heretics here, some they want dead, others protected.” Foss spat out his words with hate and vengeance. “Seeker or not, they see potential in you they aren't willing to let go.”
“This still means nothing. I want them to stop chasing me down like a mongrel but I can't attack them, they're too powerful.” Desperate men eventually turned to suicidal means of relief, but to face The Order head-on was madness. I'd spent months sidestepping them to avoid just that.
“And what if I told you we did not kill your Guardian, your love?” The last word stung like he'd sunk his canine teeth into my heart. Such ridicule, such grim satisfaction in his voice.
“He fell chasing you, I saw him through the flames...” My mind snapped to that moment over a year ago, the building in Brooklyn, the inferno, the fallen wolves and humans.
The building blazed around me, my fallen enemies a short memory ago as I looked desperately for the voice that cried out to me. "Sean! Help me!" It was a familiar scene. Squinting through the shimmering heat and smoke, I spied my Guardian hanging precariously from a ledge, clinging for dear life and losing the battle.
I rushed to my friend, a hand outstretched, but no matter how I tried, I found himself unable to move forward. Looking to my feet, the floor of the building seemed to liquefy under my shoes, miring me down like quicksand, my struggles only making the situation worse.
A scream broke my distraction. I watched helplessly as Ezra fell, swallowed whole by the licking flames. I shook his head in disbelief as I slaved to free myself from my bonds.
"Sean! Help me!" I looked on, dumbstruck as the figure clasped to the ledge cried once more for assistance. Had I imagined Ezra's death? "Stop wallowing in your guilt and help me!" Ezra's final shout as his grip failed made me feel... unable.
I stretched a useless limb to reach my Guardian before he fell victim to gravity. "Stop being so bull-headed! The Order needs you! I need you!" Again, that heart wrenching squeal sank its teeth in my soul.
Cry after cry broke the air, shattering my will as I watched my friend's death set on repeat. Time and again, Ezra pled with me to find myself within the Order, to embrace his destiny. Each time, I found himself unable to comply or even move. "Your Sloth has cost your friend his life."
The new voice gave me pause. It seemed familiar, yet was a stranger to my mind. Still slugging my way through the thick mucus that posed as a floor, I finally managed to get partially spun around to face this new voice.
As I contorted my hips and knees, I finally came to view the interloper. The Mad Magician, N. Saniti, stepped into full view from the shadows. "Your inaction, your lack of faith, all culminated in his demise. Since you have sinned faithlessly, I shall reap what your arrogance has sown."
Saniti grasped an amulet, aiming it at my ensnared body. A thick, black mucus oozed from every pore of my body, slinking its way slowly across the floor like an amoeba. The sludge reached up of the trinket, the amber at the core glowing gratefully as it drank the muck in. Pain enlivened every nerve cell in my body as I leaked the mucus. Finally, the last drop of glop slinked its way into the bauble, leaving me feeling empty inside.
"Faith is more powerful than you know, Mr. Rhodes," remarked Saniti. "Nurture it and be whole, or ignore it and remain empty. The choice is yours."
Before I could answer, the Mystical Madman had left my company, the charred remains of the long since gutted building evaporating into the air like a dream, one fused between reality and the madness of magic. It felt so real, but had Ezra ever spoken or believed those words? And had Saniti really invaded my mind from whatever hole he was crawled into?
“He fell, indeed. But did you ever see his corpse?” I saw Ezra fall, but now I couldn't be certain I'd seen his bitter end. The interloping presence of Saniti had clouded every memory of him, jaded them with those harshest of words. “Neither myself or my kin took him, I made sure of that, but no body was found in that building once the fire had dwindled to embers.”
“I know he's dead...” I muttered, but I wasn't convincing anyone, least of all myself. I felt the great agony inside me, the pain I thought was the loss of my Guardian, yet now it was challenged.
“Take it from an old Were, it takes a great deal of trauma to extinguish the brightest of lives, and your boy burned so very bright...” Foss almost beamed with a hopeful, yet manipulative tone on his words. ”You want a reason to attack The Order? If your Guardian didn't die, your friend Calder has him locked away somewhere.”
”And why would you care?” The motives of Were's were beyond my reckoning, my induction into their subtleties never extending beyond the many reasons to dispose of them with prejudice.
”From what I understand the bond between a guardian and their partner one of the strongest links possible between people. Stronger than blood...” My eyes drifted to the brutes above once more. Their Were blood on show, they were monstrous and ready for war but their leader held them at bay. “Maybe putting that bond to use can help us both get what we want. A world without The Order.”
With that, Foss turned to leave, leaving his words hanging in the air as a tempting cadence. As the leader of the Were cell left, content at his work, his band of brothers left with him in a show of solidarity. These animals still had their loyalty, but where was mine? With Ezra? With myself? Even with The Order?
And so Foss' question raised another.
Is that really what I want?
For all appearances the warehouse was abandoned, a relic to the days of industry that had sailed by in years since. The rickety door had been left ajar and squealed once pushed further, revealing an interior coated in the detritus of time.
“Foss! I'm here!” I hollerred into the dust, then under my breath cynically, “Right where you want me...”
Then came the shuddering voice from nearby, a doorway I'd thought empty and then suddenly was filled with the unexpectedly form of a middle aged white man with a greying mane. “You came alone, I'm impressed. Last time we met you had back up...”
“Last time we met you took the life of someone I...” I swallowed the word on the tip of my tongue, for fear of choking on it. I'd seen Foss, watched as he in turn watched Ezra die, but then he had been in the nightmarish form of a Were. Still, as I looked at his pointed human features, he was recognisable. “You took his life. We burned that building to the ground, so if you want us to be even I think I have a lot more to give out.”
“You're quick to anger, I can sympathise. My brothers, they have the same problem. They can be hard to control...” The creak of metal above snatched at my mind. I looked up at rusted mezzanines and found three figures caught painfully between man and wolf... snarling, waiting. “But I didn't bring you here to fight.”
“Then what? I have nothing to offer now. I'm a Seeker outside The Order, I'm a renegade as far as they're concerned. You're putting yourself at risk the longer you're near me.” Foss walked out from the doorway, as if to reassure or perhaps he wasn't scared anymore.
“You're no Seeker, if you were you'd have saved your boy.” He uttered with a satisfied smile on his face, revealing his inhumanly sharp teeth. “You have something though. Maybe you got a little wolf in you, yeah, I can see it in your jowls...” Reaching out, he tried to touch my face but I recoiled from his hand. Calder had told me before that I had Were blood in my ancestry, a surly thought that made me question just how similar I was to these creatures.
It brought to me the two questions had dominated my thoughts for the last week, walking hand-in-hand through the troubled path of my mind. Incessantly the first invaded my space, posing itself from afar in the concerned voices of the Faithful.
Why attack Justin Kaard before your match?
And the second was one of my conjuring, a question scratching at a corner of my mind that had been left unchecked. I'd been caught in the cat-and-mouse chase from Calder and The Order, hiding in protection of my life. All the while the question itched but I pushed it away...
Who are the good guys? Am I still one of them?
I knew The Black Hand were mortal enemies of the good in PCW, of the world. I'd fought them long enough and now found myself detached from their attentions and directed towards Justin Kaard and the North American title. The only option I had was to face the challenge and hope I would find my way back to my real objective. So far everything was going to plan, two-to-one up in our series and the title within my reach. Just one more victory and I'd have possession of the championship that had become synonymous with my name.
And yet, I'd attacked Kaard before our match. I was fighting the sworn enemy of The Black Hand, The Order. I'd shrunk away from any and all PCW responsibilities save the ones that kept me employed. All this brought the question back... am I a good guy anymore?
“I expected them to send soldiers, maybe even their beast Murdoc. You can imagine how glad I was to get their trainees.” Foss stalked me, a wolf watching the lamb. When had I become this meagre pushover that was so dismissed, that had to resort to desperate actions.
Yes. I'd attacked Kaard, driven us both off the stage in an attempt to undermine his efforts in our series. But why?
Because nobody understood what it meant to be Non Compos Mentis anymore. Mikey Wryght stole my International title and nobody batted an eye. No rematch, no appeal, the PCW top-brass acquiescing to Wryght's every whim. I was left ignored. Then a series against a paper contender, a man who'd held titles by luck rather than skill, no matter how much determination he might have had. I'd been sidelined from the real fight and I knew it, so a display of force was needed.
“What's your point?” I jested at the Were and his cheap yet chilling mockery of Ezra's downfall.
“You need to start understanding things a little better. There are new forces driving The Order, that much was made clear when you showed up. What few rules there were in our war have been abandoned. Now instead of one Seeker the look to recruit an army, and you were just the prototype.”
“You said it yourself, I'm no Seeker. I never had the strength they needed, never believed in their philosophy... as far as they're concerned I was a heretic. They gained nothing from their experiment.” People had forgotten that I was a man to be feared. They'd forgotten the legacy I'd created, the four North American title reigns, a Hall of Fame career. I needed to show people the order of things again. They'd become heretics against the established order the North American Title, heretics against the established order of Non Compos Mentis.
“The Order had morals once, thinly veiled justifications for genocides, but now they kill indiscriminately. They don't care about your heresy. We're all heretics here, some they want dead, others protected.” Foss spat out his words with hate and vengeance. “Seeker or not, they see potential in you they aren't willing to let go.”
“This still means nothing. I want them to stop chasing me down like a mongrel but I can't attack them, they're too powerful.” Desperate men eventually turned to suicidal means of relief, but to face The Order head-on was madness. I'd spent months sidestepping them to avoid just that.
“And what if I told you we did not kill your Guardian, your love?” The last word stung like he'd sunk his canine teeth into my heart. Such ridicule, such grim satisfaction in his voice.
“He fell chasing you, I saw him through the flames...” My mind snapped to that moment over a year ago, the building in Brooklyn, the inferno, the fallen wolves and humans.
The building blazed around me, my fallen enemies a short memory ago as I looked desperately for the voice that cried out to me. "Sean! Help me!" It was a familiar scene. Squinting through the shimmering heat and smoke, I spied my Guardian hanging precariously from a ledge, clinging for dear life and losing the battle.
I rushed to my friend, a hand outstretched, but no matter how I tried, I found himself unable to move forward. Looking to my feet, the floor of the building seemed to liquefy under my shoes, miring me down like quicksand, my struggles only making the situation worse.
A scream broke my distraction. I watched helplessly as Ezra fell, swallowed whole by the licking flames. I shook his head in disbelief as I slaved to free myself from my bonds.
"Sean! Help me!" I looked on, dumbstruck as the figure clasped to the ledge cried once more for assistance. Had I imagined Ezra's death? "Stop wallowing in your guilt and help me!" Ezra's final shout as his grip failed made me feel... unable.
I stretched a useless limb to reach my Guardian before he fell victim to gravity. "Stop being so bull-headed! The Order needs you! I need you!" Again, that heart wrenching squeal sank its teeth in my soul.
Cry after cry broke the air, shattering my will as I watched my friend's death set on repeat. Time and again, Ezra pled with me to find myself within the Order, to embrace his destiny. Each time, I found himself unable to comply or even move. "Your Sloth has cost your friend his life."
The new voice gave me pause. It seemed familiar, yet was a stranger to my mind. Still slugging my way through the thick mucus that posed as a floor, I finally managed to get partially spun around to face this new voice.
As I contorted my hips and knees, I finally came to view the interloper. The Mad Magician, N. Saniti, stepped into full view from the shadows. "Your inaction, your lack of faith, all culminated in his demise. Since you have sinned faithlessly, I shall reap what your arrogance has sown."
Saniti grasped an amulet, aiming it at my ensnared body. A thick, black mucus oozed from every pore of my body, slinking its way slowly across the floor like an amoeba. The sludge reached up of the trinket, the amber at the core glowing gratefully as it drank the muck in. Pain enlivened every nerve cell in my body as I leaked the mucus. Finally, the last drop of glop slinked its way into the bauble, leaving me feeling empty inside.
"Faith is more powerful than you know, Mr. Rhodes," remarked Saniti. "Nurture it and be whole, or ignore it and remain empty. The choice is yours."
Before I could answer, the Mystical Madman had left my company, the charred remains of the long since gutted building evaporating into the air like a dream, one fused between reality and the madness of magic. It felt so real, but had Ezra ever spoken or believed those words? And had Saniti really invaded my mind from whatever hole he was crawled into?
“He fell, indeed. But did you ever see his corpse?” I saw Ezra fall, but now I couldn't be certain I'd seen his bitter end. The interloping presence of Saniti had clouded every memory of him, jaded them with those harshest of words. “Neither myself or my kin took him, I made sure of that, but no body was found in that building once the fire had dwindled to embers.”
“I know he's dead...” I muttered, but I wasn't convincing anyone, least of all myself. I felt the great agony inside me, the pain I thought was the loss of my Guardian, yet now it was challenged.
“Take it from an old Were, it takes a great deal of trauma to extinguish the brightest of lives, and your boy burned so very bright...” Foss almost beamed with a hopeful, yet manipulative tone on his words. ”You want a reason to attack The Order? If your Guardian didn't die, your friend Calder has him locked away somewhere.”
”And why would you care?” The motives of Were's were beyond my reckoning, my induction into their subtleties never extending beyond the many reasons to dispose of them with prejudice.
”From what I understand the bond between a guardian and their partner one of the strongest links possible between people. Stronger than blood...” My eyes drifted to the brutes above once more. Their Were blood on show, they were monstrous and ready for war but their leader held them at bay. “Maybe putting that bond to use can help us both get what we want. A world without The Order.”
With that, Foss turned to leave, leaving his words hanging in the air as a tempting cadence. As the leader of the Were cell left, content at his work, his band of brothers left with him in a show of solidarity. These animals still had their loyalty, but where was mine? With Ezra? With myself? Even with The Order?
And so Foss' question raised another.
Is that really what I want?
