Post by Non Compos Mentis on Mar 28, 2016 18:09:12 GMT -5
The hood came off somewhere around eight in the evening, as far as I could tell. That would have been by Eastern Standard, but there was nothing to promise me that I was playing in the same time zone anymore. No matter how determined you are to keep track of directions, after ten minutes of lefts, rights, ups and downs you lose track of true north. The silhouettes in the inconspicuous black van knew as much.
When the coarse fabric wrapped around my face I had been wandering the streets of Sumter, North Carolina, laying low in another new locale as I had for the last few months. I had been waiting for Cleric Altman to get in contact after a victory over Alexa Black a week earlier. When the sack came off, my wait stopped.
”Mr Rhodes, apologies for the discomfort of your trip.” Altman's pretentious English accent cut through the brief but overwhelming disjointed confusion of being exposed to the real world again.
”And here I was kinda hoping Grimm had finally lost his shit, cut out the middle man and just started abducting people. I hear he's a little bitter recently...” And I'd be in his sights in just a week too. Phinehas was a volatile beast of late, and while his record had been blighted by losses and the painful wrenching away of his title, his psychology had seemingly been all the more vindictive. Justin Kaard could attest to that.
Altman barely acknowledged what I had said, instead sitting across the polished pitch black stone table with his hands palm down on the surface. His minions, who had brought me into the room and removed my hood and restraints on my hands, left our company. With my new found freedom I scanned the room, walls of pristine glass and jet-black onyx surrounding the two of us. The disturbing yet predictable feeling of disappointment fell only moments later.
“I guess you're not going to hand Ezra over today, right?” I asked, and yet I already knew the answer. Altman's hands clenched together as if keeping each other controlled, holding an invisible anger inside.
“We had a deal, Mr Rhodes; you remove our mutual enemies from their positions and I get young Mr Colne back to you in one piece. The last time I checked Alexa Black was still standing.” It was a statement but it came out of the Clerics mouth as an accusation, almost a betrayal.
“I put her down, I did all I could. It's not my fault the masochistic broad's still standing.” If nothing else, PCW's least favourite spider was a tough bitch, and her friends were devoted to her psychosis despite her infamously fickle loyalties. Where a Lord of Misrule would stand up out of resilience, or an Adrenaline King would refuse to stay down by power of will, the Black Widow survived atrocious beatings through pure hate.
“Did you think you could just bludgeon Ms Black a few times and our problems would be solved? Dare I remind you that she is only the tip of our very sizeable iceberg and Pure Class Wrestling is a lifeboat compared to the Titanic you should be worrying about?” The shock of copper-hair on Altman's head quivered as his frustration began to leak out from his composed visage.
“And what else would you have me do?” My toughness and ruthlessness was fabled in PCW history, the name of Non Compos Mentis placed on a pedestal with those of Lantlas, Ace Anderson and Grimm himself as some of the most accomplished names in the companies history. Maybe, one day, Justin Kaard's name would be considered in the same vein. For now I claimed a place on that elite list, though, and despite all my efforts Alexa Black had resisted until the last. There was nothing more I could throw at her, and only weeks earlier I'd beaten Grimm, only months earlier I'd conquered the new World Champion not once but three times.
As if to show his distaste for what he was hearing, Altman pushed himself out of his uncomfortable looking chair and turned his back to me. Staring out from the clear wall, he clasped his hands behind his back and let out an exasperated breath. “I didn't take you for a man afraid to get his hands soiled. Our mutual friends, Eira and Murdoc, were hardly perfect and caused their own share of problems but at least they were prepared to do what was necessary.”
What was necessary... a euphemism of dire insinuations. Silence filled the sterile room, buried somewhere in an Order facility. Second after second passed with the sinister meaning of Altman's words hanging in the air. Had I misunderstood? Had I taken his words too harshly? I spoke, a sentence meant to be a question and yet spoken as a statement. “You want me to kill her.”
“Not only her, I'd be grateful if you would kill Cleric Calder and all his friends too.” So matter of fact were his words that I believed I had failed in the most simplistic of tasks... boil an egg, ride a bike, kill the supernaturally monstrous Black Widow and a band of Order operatives.
I abandoned my seat too as my outrage grew too large to be constrained by it. “I'm not sure you noticed, but Alexa left me laying at Mass Destruction. I beat her and she still got up and had her minions beat me the fuck down! What do you want me to do?!”
Altman's response to my shouts was ever understated. Without a word he turned from the wall and sent reverberations around the room as his polished Oxfords clicked along the floor to the door. Opening with a Gerdunk that reminded me of an air-tight container finally being released. “Follow me...”
Altman strode out of the room, his expensive shoes clicking along the corridor as I remained, stood indignantly in my place. I could either stand alone in an Order compound, suspicious and asking for trouble, or I could follow the one man I knew in this God-forsaken place. I chose to follow.
The corridors held a startling lack of people and those that were milling around were completed different in appearance to any others I could remember from my time in the Order. The strongly prescribed appearance remained, but the uniforms of the people had an altogether more archaic aesthetic. I felt as if I was walking through a themed museum, a library from olden times. “Where are we, Altman?”
“Somewhere far from anyone else who cares if you live or die, so please don't do anything untoward Mr Rhodes. For both our sakes I'd rather you remain alive.” With Altman's words I decided to curtail my rebelliousness and protect my life. I'd forgotten that the Cleric was one of the only people in the whole Order who still believed I was better off alive. As far as Cleric Calder was concerned, the sooner I was in a shallow grave the better.
Altman turned through the corridors like a man possessed, subconsciously navigating whilst issues of a higher calling were cogitated in his mind. I followed as closely as I could until he turned into a room with an altogether different aura.
“Ezra's being held somewhere like this... they're killing him.” The room felt more akin to a cell, the door much thicker than most in the facility and a far darker atmosphere. Three walls were covered in the black onyx-like material I'd seen everywhere, the one remaining wall comprised of an incredibly durable glass that could withstand almost anything. In the centre of the room, however, was no the withered body of an Order Guardian, but a plinth that housed a very curious item.
“I watched the video. They won't kill your lover, it's the only leverage they have over you.” Altman spoke coldly, in a manner that reminded me very much of Grimm himself. Everything was a weapon, and all people could be treated as collateral in a war... even a brother. But even to Grimm something had to matter, something had to mean more than meagre victory for him to snap as he had at Justin Kaard. He'd lost matches, lost titles, before and hadn't reacted with such uncharacteristic bitterness. Something else, something more personal, was at play with the Hangtown Horror.
I, on the other hand, had never claimed to be a war machine. I was a beast, an animal at times that fought tooth and claw, but other things mattered than the end result. “Don't you dare call him 'it', Altman. He's not just another pawn in your game.”
“How the cruel become soft in the face of love.” Altman mocked as his hand loomed close to the object. It looked like a bulbous pod, something that could have fallen from an exotic tree in the deepest Amazonian forest if it hadn't been for the mesmerising colours that danced over every inch of its surface. “Wouldn't you do the same? If you found a weakness that Calder had, wouldn't you hold that commodity in a vice and exploit it for all it was worth?”
I remained silent. Taking that as an affirmation, Altman's stern face released its constricted muscles for a tiny grin.
“While you were throwing fists at Alexa Black, to no avail I might add, I was doing some research of my own.” He slinked behind the pedestal, letting the dancing light from the seed cast itself over his suited chest. “The Order has resources and archives that are not only colossal in size but incomprehensible in nature. We have artefacts that were unearthed from planes of existence only a select few have ever seen, that not even our most diligent Archivists and Scribes know how to operate.”
“You have a big room full of shit nobody knows how to use. I get it. What's your point, Altman?”
“The disturbances I've felt for a long time, the reason you are standing her, follow not only Alexa Black but Cleric Calder and his kin too. I started to look into the darkness you saw around Black, the phenomena and anything the Archivists could dredge up from our records.” The rhetoric and flowery description shrouded the importance of what he was saying; that Alexa and Calder were in some way afflicted by the same evil as each other. Perhaps, even, that they were beings of a nature unseen in our reality. “I found this.”
Altman gestured at the technicolour seed pod with an expression of reverence. A moment of silence filled the room until, finally, I spoke. “What is... it?”
“We don't know.” He replied frankly, not even bothering to hide the fact of this ignorance. In this act he seemed to find a moment of humour and smiled. The all-knowing Order forced to admit their own lack of knowledge, I found the notion amusing too. “A seed, obviously, but from what we are unsure. An entity that has ceased to exist, on our level of existence at least. Our records make quite a colourful recollection of the first Archivist to attempt to experiment on the seed, though. She placed a single finger on it's surface and then vanished into thin air, though the others in the Archives insisted they could hear her for weeks afterwards, slowly becoming quieter and quieter until the voice faded.”
Haunting as this story was, the question remained unanswered. The seed sat on the podium, casting it's effervescent display against the Cleric, it's purpose remaining unknown. “That isn't an answer, Altman. Why are you showing it to me?”
“Because throughout history, items like this have been connected with the destruction of numerous figures. These were figures of hate, figures of undoubted and unfettered wrath. It was said of more than one that they were followed by a darkness so thick it shrouded entire towns. Exaggeration, of course, but all exaggeration is based upon some form of fact.”
A weapon, that is what the insinuation was. But how could this object be a weapon? An archaic grenade, perhaps. An object of pent-up kinetic energy that could explode when used by a righteous hand. And yet I doubted that. “So you think this is a weapon that I can use against Alexa... against Calder?”
“The truth is it's a guess, but we're running out of time to find anything better. They described a seed that danced with every colour imaginable, that it held the power to destroy great evils. The words of Mayans, Minoans, Egyptians, Celts, Romans... civilisations from across the globe and throughout time, all speak of items like this and devils like the one you describe.” Altman's almost hokey words were accompanied by a face that had returned to being serious as sin. Now he motioned to the otherworldly seed, inviting me to take it in hand.
Taunted by his story of the female Archivist, I had no intention of touching the object. Even from where I stood I felt an energy emanating from it, coursing through the air with potential for destruction. The Cleric saw my expression, the apprehension there, and sought to reassure me. “Oh, it's most likely safe. As far as I know it hasn't killed anybody in at least three hundred years.”
“That doesn't help...” I uttered, but knew that I couldn't leave the room without taking the seed. One way or another I would have to touch it and either take possession of the weapon or become vaporised in an instant. Taking a step forward, I conjured all my courage and placed my hand around the seed, sensing its alien nature flow through my veins. As far as I could tell I hadn't vanished into the ether, though, and I lifted the seed so that it sat in the centre of my palm. “What now?”
Altman stared at my hand and, if I hadn't known better, the look in his eyes could have been one of jealousy. The proclaimed power of the seed was incredible and that I was able to handle it seemed to jar with the Cleric. Composing himself, Altman straightened his glasses and spoke. “If you find out how to use it, find Alexa Black and Cleric Calder. Kill them and you get Mr Colne back and both of you will be allowed to go on with your lives.”
Find Alexa... that in itself would be an issue. With the ever fearsome Grimm and the new World Champion to worry about, I would have my hands full at Trauma. Perhaps Alexa, as she had a habit of doing, would present herself and an opportunity. She certainly wouldn't let her loss at Mass Destruction go with as little as a meagre beat down. “And if I don't?”
“Then I suspect there will still be at least one death.” The coldness was back in Altman's voice and as he spoke he made a signal. Before I knew what had happened a black hood found itself muffling my face once again. Two men grabbed an arm each and dragged my body out of the room, my hand clasped around the strange seed.
I didn't resist, the shock factor that produced that reaction had long since dissipated. Instead I waited patiently as my blinded body was transported for hours, uncomfortably, across the United States. The Order could surely afford private jets, but jets left paper trails and were conspicuous. The unmarked black van shifted across state borders with impunity.
When the hood came off I found myself greeted by a sunrise and a bank of trees, then by the sound of water in the near distance. As the engine noise from the van drifted off into the distance I looked into my pocket as a felt it weighed down, and there I found the alien weapon even the Order could not fathom. The kaleidoscope lights seemed lighter now as the sunlight began to swim through the air, and I stared around me in wonder.
As I figured out where I was and how I would be able to get back to civilisation, I looked to the trees that surrounded me and recognised them as a variety I'd seen in my mother's garden as a child.
At the bottom of the garden it had stood high above all over plants and, to my father's dismay, my mother refused to remove it. Mother had insisted they were a symbol of hardiness, of resilience against the ravages of time. But under his breath I'd always heard the protestations from the bitter old man, Only death grows from the seed of a Cypress tree.
As if it heard my thoughts, the seed pulsed in my hand and it's colours shifted faster. As I began to walk and find the nearest road, I wondered if it did so in protest... or satisfaction.
When the coarse fabric wrapped around my face I had been wandering the streets of Sumter, North Carolina, laying low in another new locale as I had for the last few months. I had been waiting for Cleric Altman to get in contact after a victory over Alexa Black a week earlier. When the sack came off, my wait stopped.
”Mr Rhodes, apologies for the discomfort of your trip.” Altman's pretentious English accent cut through the brief but overwhelming disjointed confusion of being exposed to the real world again.
”And here I was kinda hoping Grimm had finally lost his shit, cut out the middle man and just started abducting people. I hear he's a little bitter recently...” And I'd be in his sights in just a week too. Phinehas was a volatile beast of late, and while his record had been blighted by losses and the painful wrenching away of his title, his psychology had seemingly been all the more vindictive. Justin Kaard could attest to that.
Altman barely acknowledged what I had said, instead sitting across the polished pitch black stone table with his hands palm down on the surface. His minions, who had brought me into the room and removed my hood and restraints on my hands, left our company. With my new found freedom I scanned the room, walls of pristine glass and jet-black onyx surrounding the two of us. The disturbing yet predictable feeling of disappointment fell only moments later.
“I guess you're not going to hand Ezra over today, right?” I asked, and yet I already knew the answer. Altman's hands clenched together as if keeping each other controlled, holding an invisible anger inside.
“We had a deal, Mr Rhodes; you remove our mutual enemies from their positions and I get young Mr Colne back to you in one piece. The last time I checked Alexa Black was still standing.” It was a statement but it came out of the Clerics mouth as an accusation, almost a betrayal.
“I put her down, I did all I could. It's not my fault the masochistic broad's still standing.” If nothing else, PCW's least favourite spider was a tough bitch, and her friends were devoted to her psychosis despite her infamously fickle loyalties. Where a Lord of Misrule would stand up out of resilience, or an Adrenaline King would refuse to stay down by power of will, the Black Widow survived atrocious beatings through pure hate.
“Did you think you could just bludgeon Ms Black a few times and our problems would be solved? Dare I remind you that she is only the tip of our very sizeable iceberg and Pure Class Wrestling is a lifeboat compared to the Titanic you should be worrying about?” The shock of copper-hair on Altman's head quivered as his frustration began to leak out from his composed visage.
“And what else would you have me do?” My toughness and ruthlessness was fabled in PCW history, the name of Non Compos Mentis placed on a pedestal with those of Lantlas, Ace Anderson and Grimm himself as some of the most accomplished names in the companies history. Maybe, one day, Justin Kaard's name would be considered in the same vein. For now I claimed a place on that elite list, though, and despite all my efforts Alexa Black had resisted until the last. There was nothing more I could throw at her, and only weeks earlier I'd beaten Grimm, only months earlier I'd conquered the new World Champion not once but three times.
As if to show his distaste for what he was hearing, Altman pushed himself out of his uncomfortable looking chair and turned his back to me. Staring out from the clear wall, he clasped his hands behind his back and let out an exasperated breath. “I didn't take you for a man afraid to get his hands soiled. Our mutual friends, Eira and Murdoc, were hardly perfect and caused their own share of problems but at least they were prepared to do what was necessary.”
What was necessary... a euphemism of dire insinuations. Silence filled the sterile room, buried somewhere in an Order facility. Second after second passed with the sinister meaning of Altman's words hanging in the air. Had I misunderstood? Had I taken his words too harshly? I spoke, a sentence meant to be a question and yet spoken as a statement. “You want me to kill her.”
“Not only her, I'd be grateful if you would kill Cleric Calder and all his friends too.” So matter of fact were his words that I believed I had failed in the most simplistic of tasks... boil an egg, ride a bike, kill the supernaturally monstrous Black Widow and a band of Order operatives.
I abandoned my seat too as my outrage grew too large to be constrained by it. “I'm not sure you noticed, but Alexa left me laying at Mass Destruction. I beat her and she still got up and had her minions beat me the fuck down! What do you want me to do?!”
Altman's response to my shouts was ever understated. Without a word he turned from the wall and sent reverberations around the room as his polished Oxfords clicked along the floor to the door. Opening with a Gerdunk that reminded me of an air-tight container finally being released. “Follow me...”
Altman strode out of the room, his expensive shoes clicking along the corridor as I remained, stood indignantly in my place. I could either stand alone in an Order compound, suspicious and asking for trouble, or I could follow the one man I knew in this God-forsaken place. I chose to follow.
The corridors held a startling lack of people and those that were milling around were completed different in appearance to any others I could remember from my time in the Order. The strongly prescribed appearance remained, but the uniforms of the people had an altogether more archaic aesthetic. I felt as if I was walking through a themed museum, a library from olden times. “Where are we, Altman?”
“Somewhere far from anyone else who cares if you live or die, so please don't do anything untoward Mr Rhodes. For both our sakes I'd rather you remain alive.” With Altman's words I decided to curtail my rebelliousness and protect my life. I'd forgotten that the Cleric was one of the only people in the whole Order who still believed I was better off alive. As far as Cleric Calder was concerned, the sooner I was in a shallow grave the better.
Altman turned through the corridors like a man possessed, subconsciously navigating whilst issues of a higher calling were cogitated in his mind. I followed as closely as I could until he turned into a room with an altogether different aura.
“Ezra's being held somewhere like this... they're killing him.” The room felt more akin to a cell, the door much thicker than most in the facility and a far darker atmosphere. Three walls were covered in the black onyx-like material I'd seen everywhere, the one remaining wall comprised of an incredibly durable glass that could withstand almost anything. In the centre of the room, however, was no the withered body of an Order Guardian, but a plinth that housed a very curious item.
“I watched the video. They won't kill your lover, it's the only leverage they have over you.” Altman spoke coldly, in a manner that reminded me very much of Grimm himself. Everything was a weapon, and all people could be treated as collateral in a war... even a brother. But even to Grimm something had to matter, something had to mean more than meagre victory for him to snap as he had at Justin Kaard. He'd lost matches, lost titles, before and hadn't reacted with such uncharacteristic bitterness. Something else, something more personal, was at play with the Hangtown Horror.
I, on the other hand, had never claimed to be a war machine. I was a beast, an animal at times that fought tooth and claw, but other things mattered than the end result. “Don't you dare call him 'it', Altman. He's not just another pawn in your game.”
“How the cruel become soft in the face of love.” Altman mocked as his hand loomed close to the object. It looked like a bulbous pod, something that could have fallen from an exotic tree in the deepest Amazonian forest if it hadn't been for the mesmerising colours that danced over every inch of its surface. “Wouldn't you do the same? If you found a weakness that Calder had, wouldn't you hold that commodity in a vice and exploit it for all it was worth?”
I remained silent. Taking that as an affirmation, Altman's stern face released its constricted muscles for a tiny grin.
“While you were throwing fists at Alexa Black, to no avail I might add, I was doing some research of my own.” He slinked behind the pedestal, letting the dancing light from the seed cast itself over his suited chest. “The Order has resources and archives that are not only colossal in size but incomprehensible in nature. We have artefacts that were unearthed from planes of existence only a select few have ever seen, that not even our most diligent Archivists and Scribes know how to operate.”
“You have a big room full of shit nobody knows how to use. I get it. What's your point, Altman?”
“The disturbances I've felt for a long time, the reason you are standing her, follow not only Alexa Black but Cleric Calder and his kin too. I started to look into the darkness you saw around Black, the phenomena and anything the Archivists could dredge up from our records.” The rhetoric and flowery description shrouded the importance of what he was saying; that Alexa and Calder were in some way afflicted by the same evil as each other. Perhaps, even, that they were beings of a nature unseen in our reality. “I found this.”
Altman gestured at the technicolour seed pod with an expression of reverence. A moment of silence filled the room until, finally, I spoke. “What is... it?”
“We don't know.” He replied frankly, not even bothering to hide the fact of this ignorance. In this act he seemed to find a moment of humour and smiled. The all-knowing Order forced to admit their own lack of knowledge, I found the notion amusing too. “A seed, obviously, but from what we are unsure. An entity that has ceased to exist, on our level of existence at least. Our records make quite a colourful recollection of the first Archivist to attempt to experiment on the seed, though. She placed a single finger on it's surface and then vanished into thin air, though the others in the Archives insisted they could hear her for weeks afterwards, slowly becoming quieter and quieter until the voice faded.”
Haunting as this story was, the question remained unanswered. The seed sat on the podium, casting it's effervescent display against the Cleric, it's purpose remaining unknown. “That isn't an answer, Altman. Why are you showing it to me?”
“Because throughout history, items like this have been connected with the destruction of numerous figures. These were figures of hate, figures of undoubted and unfettered wrath. It was said of more than one that they were followed by a darkness so thick it shrouded entire towns. Exaggeration, of course, but all exaggeration is based upon some form of fact.”
A weapon, that is what the insinuation was. But how could this object be a weapon? An archaic grenade, perhaps. An object of pent-up kinetic energy that could explode when used by a righteous hand. And yet I doubted that. “So you think this is a weapon that I can use against Alexa... against Calder?”
“The truth is it's a guess, but we're running out of time to find anything better. They described a seed that danced with every colour imaginable, that it held the power to destroy great evils. The words of Mayans, Minoans, Egyptians, Celts, Romans... civilisations from across the globe and throughout time, all speak of items like this and devils like the one you describe.” Altman's almost hokey words were accompanied by a face that had returned to being serious as sin. Now he motioned to the otherworldly seed, inviting me to take it in hand.
Taunted by his story of the female Archivist, I had no intention of touching the object. Even from where I stood I felt an energy emanating from it, coursing through the air with potential for destruction. The Cleric saw my expression, the apprehension there, and sought to reassure me. “Oh, it's most likely safe. As far as I know it hasn't killed anybody in at least three hundred years.”
“That doesn't help...” I uttered, but knew that I couldn't leave the room without taking the seed. One way or another I would have to touch it and either take possession of the weapon or become vaporised in an instant. Taking a step forward, I conjured all my courage and placed my hand around the seed, sensing its alien nature flow through my veins. As far as I could tell I hadn't vanished into the ether, though, and I lifted the seed so that it sat in the centre of my palm. “What now?”
Altman stared at my hand and, if I hadn't known better, the look in his eyes could have been one of jealousy. The proclaimed power of the seed was incredible and that I was able to handle it seemed to jar with the Cleric. Composing himself, Altman straightened his glasses and spoke. “If you find out how to use it, find Alexa Black and Cleric Calder. Kill them and you get Mr Colne back and both of you will be allowed to go on with your lives.”
Find Alexa... that in itself would be an issue. With the ever fearsome Grimm and the new World Champion to worry about, I would have my hands full at Trauma. Perhaps Alexa, as she had a habit of doing, would present herself and an opportunity. She certainly wouldn't let her loss at Mass Destruction go with as little as a meagre beat down. “And if I don't?”
“Then I suspect there will still be at least one death.” The coldness was back in Altman's voice and as he spoke he made a signal. Before I knew what had happened a black hood found itself muffling my face once again. Two men grabbed an arm each and dragged my body out of the room, my hand clasped around the strange seed.
I didn't resist, the shock factor that produced that reaction had long since dissipated. Instead I waited patiently as my blinded body was transported for hours, uncomfortably, across the United States. The Order could surely afford private jets, but jets left paper trails and were conspicuous. The unmarked black van shifted across state borders with impunity.
When the hood came off I found myself greeted by a sunrise and a bank of trees, then by the sound of water in the near distance. As the engine noise from the van drifted off into the distance I looked into my pocket as a felt it weighed down, and there I found the alien weapon even the Order could not fathom. The kaleidoscope lights seemed lighter now as the sunlight began to swim through the air, and I stared around me in wonder.
As I figured out where I was and how I would be able to get back to civilisation, I looked to the trees that surrounded me and recognised them as a variety I'd seen in my mother's garden as a child.
At the bottom of the garden it had stood high above all over plants and, to my father's dismay, my mother refused to remove it. Mother had insisted they were a symbol of hardiness, of resilience against the ravages of time. But under his breath I'd always heard the protestations from the bitter old man, Only death grows from the seed of a Cypress tree.
As if it heard my thoughts, the seed pulsed in my hand and it's colours shifted faster. As I began to walk and find the nearest road, I wondered if it did so in protest... or satisfaction.
