Post by OZYMANDIAS on Sept 29, 2021 22:07:06 GMT -5
VISIONS ARISE
“No, No!... Ma… Mart… noooo!”
His stifled screams light up the room, his trembling form shaking the very legs of the bed. Sweat beads on his brow, his skin furrowed and pale, ghastly. His wife can do nothing but look on, perturbed by the vision of her husband in turmoil, a perpetual cycle of agonizing terror becoming elated relief. All with not a peek from his eyelids.
“It’s here… it calls to me… it calls to me… I can see… Martha… the gates, they are… glorious.”
His voice changes as if cyclical, his night fits become more erratic and more feverish. The wife can only look on as her partner enters another routine of peaceful, blissful sleep. She stands over him, her nightgown doing little to save her from the cold of the room, the brazier alongside the bed barely smoldering. But the cold in the room comes from another source, not wind nor rain.
Meredith Agnar.
Stood at the door of the room, Meredith merely watches the man in his ongoing horror, his terrors on repeat. The wife looks from her husband to her Mayor, wondering when the solution will be provided, crying silently for her husband to be saved. But as the man once again slips into a contorted pose, his brow furrowing as he begins to cry out once again, Meredith does nothing.
Her only change is an upward curve of her lip, a very mild smirk.
“Martha… it’s pulling me in, I can hear it… I can hear his teeth, his fangs chattering, he is going to drown me Martha… it’s… it’s… it’s Him!”
Once again the husband returns to a state of sheer agony, horror and defeat. Tears roll from his unconscious eyes, the nightmares fully engorging him now. The wife covers her eyes and cries for her husband, sick with grief for her lost husband, the terrors of the night now consuming him alive. She looks to Meredith once more, her eyes wet as she wordlessly begs for help.
Meredith simply shakes her head, her eyes glancing between the lost husband and the broken wife. There is not a feat she can perform, this is not her place to stop what is right.
The husband belongs to Him now. To the Great Old One.
He is coming, and the world will soon know it to be true.
THE UNFORGIVING SEA
“We may lose another one, brother. I spent the night in the home of the Hayes’, the husband… he is afflicted.” Stood portside on a fishing trawler, Meredith leans against the barrier of the boat as she speaks, her mind and attention adrift. Mid-sea with a heavy mist in the air, the wind sharp as nails and cold as ice, yet she remains as always in her black silken dress flowing in the wind, as if made of smoke itself. “I watched the man, I heard his words. He has been touched, he has been visited.”
The trawler is a vessel in action, as nets are winched up from a nearby crane, hardy fishermen moving to-and-fro alongside Meredith. But her words are not for them, only the one she finds herself endowed to.
Ozymandias.
“He has seen something in the sea, or touched something upon land. Regardless, he has been blessed with visions and invitations from the depths. His mind is too fragile to comprehend the cosmic horror that is the Great Old One, but he knows it to be true. He has been blessed by a God.”
Ozymandias continues to perform his work, pulling on the ropes as the nets struggle to raise, working alongside his common man. Outsizing all but none of the fellow crewmates, he takes the burden of the heavy lifting, but despite his challenging tasks he still pays close mind to what Meredith says, his eyes dancing between his task and hers with each brief unveiling.
“I have seen men possessed by an idea, I have watched men run to the ocean to answer The Call… but to watch a man contort and bend, writhing in his own flesh. He was in agony, true horrific agony… and then he paused to heed the Call, to stare upon R’lyeh, to describe it’s emerald glow to his wife unseen… he found bliss, if only for a moment.”
She looks to Ozymandias, the pair exchanging a moment of glances and words unspoken, before she continues.
“It sounds foolish to grow excited, to grow eager for the next step…. But we are so close now, brother. The Great Old One is coming, he is returning to us. Your prowess in the ring goads him from his slumber, your defiance in battle and in the face of oppression entices his revival.” She cracks a slight smile, her lips stretching, “You are so close to awakening our God. So, so close.”
Ozymandias continues to pull on the ropes of the net, moving Meredith aside to grab the levers to the winch. The loud screeching of the machine is dire to the ears, but he leans closer to Meredith to save his voice.
“We are gathering momentum.”
Her smile becomes a grin, a look of joy. The wind whips and catches the coats and pants of the fishermen nearby, struggling to battle the rough seas and the elements around them but to Meredith, she stands unperturbed, her friend standing firmly as she is.
“This is merely the start, my friend.” Ozymandias turns his attention to the winch, as the net begins to show itself through the aggressive surface waters, pregnant with today's haul. “Defeating Cadillac Jackson was a trial, a mere test. There will come others, more hungry and more oblivious. Pups barking for the meal of the alpha.”
Ozymandias doesn’t turn his attention away, but Meredith knows he is listening.
“I have heard the conversations from behind closed doors, from doubting your right to lead the company to questioning your loyalty to the game. They cry out that you are not worthy, not your turn in line, that you must wait as others pass you by.” He says nothing, but the force which pulls the winch shut as the nets are raised shows Meredith that he is annoyed. “They nip at your heels, cawing for a taste of your Grand gold. But our sights are far beyond that now.”
He turns to face her, briefly.
“Our Legacy is just beginning.”
She smirks, the fire in her eyes lighting him up. “The Grand was then, the Legacy is now. But first we must make an example of those climbing the ladder below us. Like this man afflicted with visions in his head, these ignorant fools are possessed with dreams of valor, of pride, of succession. They need to learn their place.”
Ozymandias lets go of the winch as another crewmate takes his place, and he walks past Meredith to guide the nets over the bow of the boat. As they are lowered he pauses, pondering his words for a moment before speaking. Meredith knows this looks, a compassionate moment shared before each battle he enters. A moment of reflection for his would-be foe, his soon-to-be prey.
“I have wanted this match for as long as I can remember. Since I first saw the Shogun, I knew he would test me. I knew he would challenge me. But now it behooves me, that I must break this man, as he is barely hitting his stride.”
Arata Asakura.
The former Shogun Champion of WrestleWorld, the unstoppable, unbeatable, undeniable Warrior of his division. While Ozymandias clawed his way through forbidden matches, carnivals of horrors and forsaken wasteground in his pursuit of gold, only one champion ever lingered in his mind.
Arata Asakura.
Cool, loud, brash, confident. He was everything that Ozymandias sought in a fighter, everything he desired in an opponent. A loud mouth to shut up, a big ego to smash, a golden belt to claim as his own. Arata and Ozymandias walked the same paths, same strides but never did they cross paths truly. Until now.
Arata Asakura.
“The Gaijin Killer, as he is known. The man that breaks monsters, that breaks Gods. His name is known far and wide, outside of even the realm of wrestling. A formidable foe.”
“A true fighter, a true match. WrestleWorld left me longing more, seeking a bigger challenge. But ultimately, only one man ever matched my expectations… and it was not Arata.”
Ozymandias guides the net lower so that it begins to swell out on the surface of the boat.
“This match is without its accolades, without its rewards. There is nothing but glory in this fight… will it weigh the same for you if you win?”
Ozymandias looks at Meredith, the foam and mist of the air dripping frantically from his metal mask, his small eyes piercing from behind it.
“It was inevitable that the Butcher would meet the Shogun. I watched his name in lights as my name was raked through the mud. I heard praise and joy for his success, while my own merits were looked down upon. He was the Golden God of wrestling…”
He turns around, and in a flash pulls a blade from his pocket and slashes the net, pouring the contents of today's catch across the surface of the trawler as the crew gets to work collecting them up.
“...I follow a different God now.”
Standing there, the wet air whipping at his coat, the shining blade in his hand, Meredith can only smirk as she watches her true warrior, her true savior before her. Gaijin's and Beasts aside, there is only one name that rules THIS wrestling world.
The Butcher of Reine.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
