Post by Admin on Mar 22, 2022 20:19:44 GMT
The checkups were maddening.
Matthew Knox hated having doctors poke and prod at him. He hated the way others, especially his dear family, would try and make it a virtuous effort to keep him going to these appointments. His injuries had started to mend, or at least be manageable by whisky and whatever prescription they had given him last time. The time spent getting his back and neck checked over just seemed like a waste.
If nothing else, it could be better spent on someone in actual need and not his rich, sheltered ass…
It had gotten to the point where the only reason he came to these checkups was to talk to the nurse with her neat bun and charming smile. The one who could spend twenty minutes she didn’t have talking over the most mindless topics. World War 1, and Hall and Oates. It was obvious to anyone as it was to them that this had become a replay of the oldest dance, the one that never changed.
Had they been in grade school, he would have definitely pulled her hair.
As he walked out into the waiting room in the aftermath of yet another ‘Keep up your exercises, and take that medicine’ dialogue by his physician he took pause in his escape. She was working the reception desk. That was new. She looked up with dark eyes that met his glasz in an instant, as if they were all those deep chocolate pools had been looking for since opening to greet the day.
They shared a smile that drove his feet toward her, instantly leaning down to begin a conversation as the world around them melted. All the complaints of the inflation creating blowhard on the TV. The Bread song that flooded the waiting room. The various complaints of those packed tightly into a room they didn’t want to be in?
They faded away, for Matthew Augustus Knox and Veronica Marie Rivers. In that microsecond of eye contact, the fuse had been lit. It didn’t matter much that he had a wife and a young son at home. Her career didn’t matter.
Nothing did.
What was born of that life ruining explosion that fuse triggered stood now, forty some odd years later staring out at the sea. The one thing in life that spoke to him only in honesty. No reason to lie, and so it never did. He knew the ocean, understood it, even based who he was upon it if only in part.
It endured, and so shall he.
It controlled, and so shall he.
It was unforgiving, and so shall he be.
There was no pretense between him and Calypso. No layers. It was simple. He was drawn into her waves because he understood them, far more than he would ever understand himself. He envied the calm of her surf, where his waves only ever crashed in a hellish storm bent upon destroying everything in its path. Reshaping the world to be right, through whatever might he could muster.
Sad thing, how ‘Right’ can be so relative..
The son of Wealth and Madness doing all he could to be anything but. If old sayings were true, his road to hell had to be gilded by now.
He knew how he was perceived by most. En masse and down to the very intimate details of those that mattered. His love for them was as extreme and surefooted as they were extremely sure they could never return it.
His daughters? Two he barely met, one who couldn’t love him until she quelled her own storm, the one he chose got tired of being in his world, and so was tired of him. The smallest, the youngest of them? Wholly aware of her existence and the relationships surrounding them. The fact that her parents were never in love and she was born into this world in an attempt to adhere that which could never bond.
Friends? All convinced he was on a path of self destruction, dutifully waiting for the crash at the end so they could get their suits pressed for pallbearing. The ones who weren’t convinced he was obsessed with another man’s wife, despite his own being very present and the two seemingly deeply in love. New baby and all.
Students? His surrogate children? The only ones who seemed to hold him on any pedestal and even their faith was shaky as they seemed to gravitate toward Don Tirri and his unintentional takeover of his Academy. Something he didn’t address, because it worked for him. Tirri was a master of the basics, and he would come along and handpick the ones deemed worthy to learn more. The ones who had ‘It’ so to speak.
And then…then there was his family.
The thought turned his stomach and brought his hand up to take another long, slow drag from a cigarette nearing the end of its time on this earth. He flicked the butt into the sand, and pulled his peacoat tighter to his lithe form. Grey skies overcast the thin man dressed in black from head to toe, plumes of black hair cascading in the wind as it passes over his lonely silhouette, facing out toward a lonely uncaring ocean.
Family was skewed for him from the get go. By the time he was born, the people his parents had been most of their lives were ruined by a drug a good 30 years out from being an epidemic. As he understood it in hindsight, they didn’t exactly want, but they definitely didn’t want to be better. Satisfied with living in a big house full of squalor that he would often get lost in from the moment he could walk and they didn’t feel the need to hover over him.
A contradictory life that eventually led to one night in August 1987. They hadn’t celebrated his birthday, and his mother had promised she’d do something to make up for it. Just like last year. He remembered thinking, excitedly, that the loud ‘pops’ were them accidentally popping balloons in set up for some grand celebration of their son’s life.
Little did he know, it was the starting pistol for the race the rest of his life would be.
A race that had brought him here, had shaped him into one of the most polarizing men in a polarizing industry. Most days, he spent as much time convincing himself that he knew what he was doing as much as he tried to convince others. The thought draws a slow, sad chuckle from the spectre as he turns on his heel in the sand, his gaze coming to rest on the big, lonely house atop the hill behind him.
…Well, maybe not quite so lonely anymore.
When he entered through the usual back door after the short trek from the tiny stretch of sand he so coveted, he was greeted with an almost atmospheric silence.save for the faint sound of whatever record Marika had chosen to accompany her reading. A small smile breaks his stone face at the mental image of his beloved, curled up on the couch under a blanket Content, moreso than either of them deserved.
He veered away from the sound, making the short trek to the nursery. He stopped in the hall, sliding his shoes off and setting them neatly together by the door. Slowly, he opened the already propped open door and stepped into the quiet room, two long strides bringing him cribside. His eyes stared down at the child therein, resting peacefully. Head as light as a feather. Oh, how he envied the boy for that.
He leaned forward until his chest rested on forearms that slid to be flush with the railing of the crib, staring dreamily at the child cursed to carry on his name. A beacon of hope that maybe, just maybe the bloodline could be saved. A chance to have someone grow up to be more than bitter, more than angy.
More than a monster.
His thoughts turn to Tom, and like always a pang of sadness bites into him first as if opening space for the rage and the hatred to seep in. He pitied the man, really. An entire existence based upon pain, punishment and madness? That was not sustainable. That was not real. It was a fantasy forced upon a spineless man in a duty far less enviable or admirable than that of Atlas, though the weight was similar.
At times, he wished he could go back and undo it. Stop himself from ever bowing up to the monster so intent on trying to intimidate all of Reno. Stop the match and the rivalry from ever happening. Stop himself from being made aware of their relation to him. Never have to face the fact that his mother passed on something equal parts a predisposition to madness. And inexplicable horror within.
Supreme Machine, Veronica, Queen Machine, The Raven…they were all symptoms as much as they were beings. The worst parts of their genetic makeup that drove them to do terrible things that had they tried to be anything but what they were in this life? Would have landed them on the wrong side of a prison wall before too long.
But not him.
Not Asahi Joseph Knox.
He had to end this, for him. He had to cut the head off the monster that loomed over them, the other male trying to challenge him for the leadership role in their family. One who would see them driven further into the inescapable labyrinth of madness, and himself. Who just wanted a world where all of this made sense. All of it mattered. It all leads to something.
Anything.
Anything but what Thomas and Jennifer Rivers envisioned for the future of his children.
“I’ll fight for you…” he whispered gently into the crib, one long pale finger tracing down the cheek of the sleeping infant before a hand the size of his head near twice over rested upon the mane of black hair, caressing it.
“Always…”
“You don’t get to win, Tom.” a pause, the screen remains black “I’m not even sure you get to survive anymore…”
The shot comes to life with the image of Matthew Knox sitting within the confines of the Corvid Combat Academy. Clearly after hours as only one light is on, damning the room to a dimness befitting the somber look on the Morbid Corvid’s face.
“You have spent so much time since the last time we actually got to meet for a fight puffing up and trying your hand at revisionism. You’ve pontificated endlessly and lied even more. You’ve grown in confidence because you’ve forgotten….you’ve forgotten how much I scare you.”
His face remains slightly bowed, staring at the gym shorts he’s in and the hands folded in his lap. However, the slight and toothy smile can be seen even before he finally lifts his face to stare into the camera. Into Tom’s eyes.
“And that’s my fault, I’ll admit that much. I’ll even admit that you were right about some things.”
He runs his tongue over the inside of his cheek, a cuckle escaping him as his face drops back down.
“I spoke too much without acting. Egged you on, baited you, even pushed a couple of buttons. I’m sure you’ve told yourself that I evaded engagement because I was evading the pain and punishment I’d have to endure should I take it that far…and in part, you’re right.”
His face lifts, once more presenting brilliant and intense glasz to bore through the layers of a monster already conquered. A finger raises, to accentuate a point.
“And that is where we diverge, Tom. Even if only slightly, because we are similar. We go too far. We play games. We play with lives. We’re not good men, but only one of us still tries to be a man. Still clings to humanity and the strength therein.”
“You are so convinced that the only way to go through life is with wrath, only might to make right and damn all who dare to stand in your way. And it worked, didn’t it? Mow through them all, put them down and drive them under until only you stand, dominant and Supreme.”
He chuckles from his seat on the apron at his own pun, leaning back into the ropes to run a hand through his hair.
“And then you were put down by a man. Just a man. Sure, finding out we share blood and affliction soon after probably softened the blow didn’t it Tom? You convinced yourself that I was only able to beat you because I was just another version of you…”
His face sank as the emotion and pretense left it. Slowly, he shook in disapproval as he spoke in a lower, more edged and angry tone.
“You’re wrong. For one, simply, I'm older than you. If anything you’re a version of me, Tom. A cheaper, lesser version that is broken and undesirable to anyone who isn’t forced to endure you due to familial status. You and Jennifer…your narratiives….they must get boring, even when you’re crafting them don’t they?”
He reaches behind himself, yanking himself to stand on the apron using the top rope before casually leaning back against it as he carries on.
“You’re so convinced that just because Victoria carries Veronica that every child of mine is somehow afflicted like every other Rivers in your family tree. Like me…but I'm here to tell you, Tom…Jenny. It ends with us. Vee? She’s strong enough to overcome and push it into a corner iit belongs in. To manage it. All of my children are stronger than either of you, or I ever were…”
He leaned further back into the rope, svelte form flipping over the rope and landing flat footed on the mat beyond. Now, he leans upon the top rope with his forearms.
“Your vision will be nothingness realized, Tom. They are not us, and never will be. After Absolution? Neither of us will leave absolved…God, that ship sailed so long ago. All we’re going to do is divide from one another. Put an end to this war the only way we know how, and prove something that has been proven time and time again..”
A knowing smirk, a small scoff. He draws every syllable out as if it were a blade being slowly plunged. Past skin, meat, between ribs…and right into the heart. So slow that the victim would feel the steel’s path, aware of its destination.
Keenly aware, that they could not stop it or save themselves from it anymore than anyone else could. Aware that mercy was no longer on the table. That damnation and oblivion were all they had to look forward to…
“Man owns Machine..”
He let it hang ominously, like the sword of Damocles ready to fall and bring about a swift end Tom never deserved.
“Think of this Tom..before me, you had nothing. You wandered and maimed aimlessly but since we started? Since this war began? You have been given PURPOSE. I have given it to you, because a machine is nothing without a man to operate it. And I have been operating you since the first time we spoke, Tom.”
“You’re going to walk into the coliseum, supremely confident as ever. I’m a year older than our last war. I’m slower, my injuries are piled up, maybe I'm even less inclined to take risks because of my newborn son and a daughter on the way…maybe this would all be true, if you hadn’t done your part in sealing your fate.”
A pause for a moment, he collects himself and lets out a slow, quivering breath as he tries to quell the rage boiling up like so much acidic bile.
“When you broke into my home? Attacked my wife, and the other? You sealed your fate, and the only reason you were given these extra weeks of breath is because of Cam Roth granting you mercy and a win for you to hold onto. Funny, how he saved you from me as much as you did from him….”
The smirk returned..
“Did you bond over losing mommy?”
Joined by the scoff.
“Pathetic.”
He suddenly leaps from the ring, over the top rope. Once more sticking the landing and beginning a slow approach to the camera which moves to stay focused on his incoming face.
“I’m going to bury you, Tom. It’s predestined. But I'm going to break you down first. Dismantle the machine down to the very last cog. So that when you are thrown into that hole, into your grave? You’ll be beyond repair, and no fool will ever take you for more than what you’ve always been behind the bluster.”
“Just a sad, scared little boy who misses his mommy so and will continuously throw tantrums until he sees her again.”
He sneered viciously, taking a calming breath and letting loose a mocking chuckle before letting his face slide back to stone, eyes finding the lens. Finding Tom one last time..
“I am Raze. I am Ruin. I am….Matthew Knox. Your cousin, and your end all in one. The blood I make you shed will help nurture the field the next, better generation of our family springs from. Your absence will ensure that their madness can be maintained, treated and kept far away from narcissistic ramblings that would feed such delusions.”
“The time has come, Tom…Put up or Shut up. So answer me this.answer me this, keeping in mind how fucking terribly you failed before…”
He leans in close, whispering the question slowly. Just for Tom.
“Can You Stop Me?
The feed cuts to black, but the chuckle remains. Confident, Mocking…
Murderous.
Matthew Knox hated having doctors poke and prod at him. He hated the way others, especially his dear family, would try and make it a virtuous effort to keep him going to these appointments. His injuries had started to mend, or at least be manageable by whisky and whatever prescription they had given him last time. The time spent getting his back and neck checked over just seemed like a waste.
If nothing else, it could be better spent on someone in actual need and not his rich, sheltered ass…
It had gotten to the point where the only reason he came to these checkups was to talk to the nurse with her neat bun and charming smile. The one who could spend twenty minutes she didn’t have talking over the most mindless topics. World War 1, and Hall and Oates. It was obvious to anyone as it was to them that this had become a replay of the oldest dance, the one that never changed.
Had they been in grade school, he would have definitely pulled her hair.
As he walked out into the waiting room in the aftermath of yet another ‘Keep up your exercises, and take that medicine’ dialogue by his physician he took pause in his escape. She was working the reception desk. That was new. She looked up with dark eyes that met his glasz in an instant, as if they were all those deep chocolate pools had been looking for since opening to greet the day.
They shared a smile that drove his feet toward her, instantly leaning down to begin a conversation as the world around them melted. All the complaints of the inflation creating blowhard on the TV. The Bread song that flooded the waiting room. The various complaints of those packed tightly into a room they didn’t want to be in?
They faded away, for Matthew Augustus Knox and Veronica Marie Rivers. In that microsecond of eye contact, the fuse had been lit. It didn’t matter much that he had a wife and a young son at home. Her career didn’t matter.
Nothing did.
What was born of that life ruining explosion that fuse triggered stood now, forty some odd years later staring out at the sea. The one thing in life that spoke to him only in honesty. No reason to lie, and so it never did. He knew the ocean, understood it, even based who he was upon it if only in part.
It endured, and so shall he.
It controlled, and so shall he.
It was unforgiving, and so shall he be.
There was no pretense between him and Calypso. No layers. It was simple. He was drawn into her waves because he understood them, far more than he would ever understand himself. He envied the calm of her surf, where his waves only ever crashed in a hellish storm bent upon destroying everything in its path. Reshaping the world to be right, through whatever might he could muster.
Sad thing, how ‘Right’ can be so relative..
The son of Wealth and Madness doing all he could to be anything but. If old sayings were true, his road to hell had to be gilded by now.
He knew how he was perceived by most. En masse and down to the very intimate details of those that mattered. His love for them was as extreme and surefooted as they were extremely sure they could never return it.
His daughters? Two he barely met, one who couldn’t love him until she quelled her own storm, the one he chose got tired of being in his world, and so was tired of him. The smallest, the youngest of them? Wholly aware of her existence and the relationships surrounding them. The fact that her parents were never in love and she was born into this world in an attempt to adhere that which could never bond.
Friends? All convinced he was on a path of self destruction, dutifully waiting for the crash at the end so they could get their suits pressed for pallbearing. The ones who weren’t convinced he was obsessed with another man’s wife, despite his own being very present and the two seemingly deeply in love. New baby and all.
Students? His surrogate children? The only ones who seemed to hold him on any pedestal and even their faith was shaky as they seemed to gravitate toward Don Tirri and his unintentional takeover of his Academy. Something he didn’t address, because it worked for him. Tirri was a master of the basics, and he would come along and handpick the ones deemed worthy to learn more. The ones who had ‘It’ so to speak.
And then…then there was his family.
The thought turned his stomach and brought his hand up to take another long, slow drag from a cigarette nearing the end of its time on this earth. He flicked the butt into the sand, and pulled his peacoat tighter to his lithe form. Grey skies overcast the thin man dressed in black from head to toe, plumes of black hair cascading in the wind as it passes over his lonely silhouette, facing out toward a lonely uncaring ocean.
Family was skewed for him from the get go. By the time he was born, the people his parents had been most of their lives were ruined by a drug a good 30 years out from being an epidemic. As he understood it in hindsight, they didn’t exactly want, but they definitely didn’t want to be better. Satisfied with living in a big house full of squalor that he would often get lost in from the moment he could walk and they didn’t feel the need to hover over him.
A contradictory life that eventually led to one night in August 1987. They hadn’t celebrated his birthday, and his mother had promised she’d do something to make up for it. Just like last year. He remembered thinking, excitedly, that the loud ‘pops’ were them accidentally popping balloons in set up for some grand celebration of their son’s life.
Little did he know, it was the starting pistol for the race the rest of his life would be.
A race that had brought him here, had shaped him into one of the most polarizing men in a polarizing industry. Most days, he spent as much time convincing himself that he knew what he was doing as much as he tried to convince others. The thought draws a slow, sad chuckle from the spectre as he turns on his heel in the sand, his gaze coming to rest on the big, lonely house atop the hill behind him.
…Well, maybe not quite so lonely anymore.
When he entered through the usual back door after the short trek from the tiny stretch of sand he so coveted, he was greeted with an almost atmospheric silence.save for the faint sound of whatever record Marika had chosen to accompany her reading. A small smile breaks his stone face at the mental image of his beloved, curled up on the couch under a blanket Content, moreso than either of them deserved.
He veered away from the sound, making the short trek to the nursery. He stopped in the hall, sliding his shoes off and setting them neatly together by the door. Slowly, he opened the already propped open door and stepped into the quiet room, two long strides bringing him cribside. His eyes stared down at the child therein, resting peacefully. Head as light as a feather. Oh, how he envied the boy for that.
He leaned forward until his chest rested on forearms that slid to be flush with the railing of the crib, staring dreamily at the child cursed to carry on his name. A beacon of hope that maybe, just maybe the bloodline could be saved. A chance to have someone grow up to be more than bitter, more than angy.
More than a monster.
His thoughts turn to Tom, and like always a pang of sadness bites into him first as if opening space for the rage and the hatred to seep in. He pitied the man, really. An entire existence based upon pain, punishment and madness? That was not sustainable. That was not real. It was a fantasy forced upon a spineless man in a duty far less enviable or admirable than that of Atlas, though the weight was similar.
At times, he wished he could go back and undo it. Stop himself from ever bowing up to the monster so intent on trying to intimidate all of Reno. Stop the match and the rivalry from ever happening. Stop himself from being made aware of their relation to him. Never have to face the fact that his mother passed on something equal parts a predisposition to madness. And inexplicable horror within.
Supreme Machine, Veronica, Queen Machine, The Raven…they were all symptoms as much as they were beings. The worst parts of their genetic makeup that drove them to do terrible things that had they tried to be anything but what they were in this life? Would have landed them on the wrong side of a prison wall before too long.
But not him.
Not Asahi Joseph Knox.
He had to end this, for him. He had to cut the head off the monster that loomed over them, the other male trying to challenge him for the leadership role in their family. One who would see them driven further into the inescapable labyrinth of madness, and himself. Who just wanted a world where all of this made sense. All of it mattered. It all leads to something.
Anything.
Anything but what Thomas and Jennifer Rivers envisioned for the future of his children.
“I’ll fight for you…” he whispered gently into the crib, one long pale finger tracing down the cheek of the sleeping infant before a hand the size of his head near twice over rested upon the mane of black hair, caressing it.
“Always…”
“You don’t get to win, Tom.” a pause, the screen remains black “I’m not even sure you get to survive anymore…”
The shot comes to life with the image of Matthew Knox sitting within the confines of the Corvid Combat Academy. Clearly after hours as only one light is on, damning the room to a dimness befitting the somber look on the Morbid Corvid’s face.
“You have spent so much time since the last time we actually got to meet for a fight puffing up and trying your hand at revisionism. You’ve pontificated endlessly and lied even more. You’ve grown in confidence because you’ve forgotten….you’ve forgotten how much I scare you.”
His face remains slightly bowed, staring at the gym shorts he’s in and the hands folded in his lap. However, the slight and toothy smile can be seen even before he finally lifts his face to stare into the camera. Into Tom’s eyes.
“And that’s my fault, I’ll admit that much. I’ll even admit that you were right about some things.”
He runs his tongue over the inside of his cheek, a cuckle escaping him as his face drops back down.
“I spoke too much without acting. Egged you on, baited you, even pushed a couple of buttons. I’m sure you’ve told yourself that I evaded engagement because I was evading the pain and punishment I’d have to endure should I take it that far…and in part, you’re right.”
His face lifts, once more presenting brilliant and intense glasz to bore through the layers of a monster already conquered. A finger raises, to accentuate a point.
“And that is where we diverge, Tom. Even if only slightly, because we are similar. We go too far. We play games. We play with lives. We’re not good men, but only one of us still tries to be a man. Still clings to humanity and the strength therein.”
“You are so convinced that the only way to go through life is with wrath, only might to make right and damn all who dare to stand in your way. And it worked, didn’t it? Mow through them all, put them down and drive them under until only you stand, dominant and Supreme.”
He chuckles from his seat on the apron at his own pun, leaning back into the ropes to run a hand through his hair.
“And then you were put down by a man. Just a man. Sure, finding out we share blood and affliction soon after probably softened the blow didn’t it Tom? You convinced yourself that I was only able to beat you because I was just another version of you…”
His face sank as the emotion and pretense left it. Slowly, he shook in disapproval as he spoke in a lower, more edged and angry tone.
“You’re wrong. For one, simply, I'm older than you. If anything you’re a version of me, Tom. A cheaper, lesser version that is broken and undesirable to anyone who isn’t forced to endure you due to familial status. You and Jennifer…your narratiives….they must get boring, even when you’re crafting them don’t they?”
He reaches behind himself, yanking himself to stand on the apron using the top rope before casually leaning back against it as he carries on.
“You’re so convinced that just because Victoria carries Veronica that every child of mine is somehow afflicted like every other Rivers in your family tree. Like me…but I'm here to tell you, Tom…Jenny. It ends with us. Vee? She’s strong enough to overcome and push it into a corner iit belongs in. To manage it. All of my children are stronger than either of you, or I ever were…”
He leaned further back into the rope, svelte form flipping over the rope and landing flat footed on the mat beyond. Now, he leans upon the top rope with his forearms.
“Your vision will be nothingness realized, Tom. They are not us, and never will be. After Absolution? Neither of us will leave absolved…God, that ship sailed so long ago. All we’re going to do is divide from one another. Put an end to this war the only way we know how, and prove something that has been proven time and time again..”
A knowing smirk, a small scoff. He draws every syllable out as if it were a blade being slowly plunged. Past skin, meat, between ribs…and right into the heart. So slow that the victim would feel the steel’s path, aware of its destination.
Keenly aware, that they could not stop it or save themselves from it anymore than anyone else could. Aware that mercy was no longer on the table. That damnation and oblivion were all they had to look forward to…
“Man owns Machine..”
He let it hang ominously, like the sword of Damocles ready to fall and bring about a swift end Tom never deserved.
“Think of this Tom..before me, you had nothing. You wandered and maimed aimlessly but since we started? Since this war began? You have been given PURPOSE. I have given it to you, because a machine is nothing without a man to operate it. And I have been operating you since the first time we spoke, Tom.”
“You’re going to walk into the coliseum, supremely confident as ever. I’m a year older than our last war. I’m slower, my injuries are piled up, maybe I'm even less inclined to take risks because of my newborn son and a daughter on the way…maybe this would all be true, if you hadn’t done your part in sealing your fate.”
A pause for a moment, he collects himself and lets out a slow, quivering breath as he tries to quell the rage boiling up like so much acidic bile.
“When you broke into my home? Attacked my wife, and the other? You sealed your fate, and the only reason you were given these extra weeks of breath is because of Cam Roth granting you mercy and a win for you to hold onto. Funny, how he saved you from me as much as you did from him….”
The smirk returned..
“Did you bond over losing mommy?”
Joined by the scoff.
“Pathetic.”
He suddenly leaps from the ring, over the top rope. Once more sticking the landing and beginning a slow approach to the camera which moves to stay focused on his incoming face.
“I’m going to bury you, Tom. It’s predestined. But I'm going to break you down first. Dismantle the machine down to the very last cog. So that when you are thrown into that hole, into your grave? You’ll be beyond repair, and no fool will ever take you for more than what you’ve always been behind the bluster.”
“Just a sad, scared little boy who misses his mommy so and will continuously throw tantrums until he sees her again.”
He sneered viciously, taking a calming breath and letting loose a mocking chuckle before letting his face slide back to stone, eyes finding the lens. Finding Tom one last time..
“I am Raze. I am Ruin. I am….Matthew Knox. Your cousin, and your end all in one. The blood I make you shed will help nurture the field the next, better generation of our family springs from. Your absence will ensure that their madness can be maintained, treated and kept far away from narcissistic ramblings that would feed such delusions.”
“The time has come, Tom…Put up or Shut up. So answer me this.answer me this, keeping in mind how fucking terribly you failed before…”
He leans in close, whispering the question slowly. Just for Tom.
“Can You Stop Me?
The feed cuts to black, but the chuckle remains. Confident, Mocking…
Murderous.