▶Time After Time
There is nothing here.
Just the cold, unrelenting reality of lifetimes gone by.
Did you think you would fit back in?
Did you think you could readapt to this?
Did you think you would achieve anything?
“Has the warm embrace taken me?”
No, not yet. You’re just within the blackness of your head. You needed to rest. I took the wheel for a moment.
“The wheel?”
Couldn’t let you have all the fun, surrounded by the vermin wanting to claw your eyes out. There’s only so much energy you can spare to drag them to their graves, so I had to jump in, like a reserve.
“Not to assist…”
“...for pleasure.”
Bingo! Glad to see that we still understand each other, and I thank you for allowing me to indulge a little for the time being.
“Doesn’t seem like you’re doing a good enough job.”
Ah, but that’s your weakness, you measure the worth of the outcome rather than this moment at this exact time. Observe what I am doing during this. No thoughts of strategy, no second opinions or pauses, just the wonderful euphoria of unrelenting violence. Drink it in. Drink it all in. It’s incredibly intoxicating.
“They did deserve this treatment, though.”
Oh, how so?
“The outer walls of the manor. We couldn’t let such a transgression go unanswered, alongside their trespassing.”
Hah, purely trivial reasons; thoughts of someone wanting a grounded reason, rather than doing it for the sake of it.
“You have a problem with that?”
Your problem is that you still demand justification for these actions, whether for selfless reasons or pure selfishness. There just has to be a reason.
You want my reason? Let me open your head to the harsh reality.
You couldn’t get the job done.
Nothing has changed with you, nothing will, not even after three hundred years.
You didn’t even notice that someone successfully found that forsaken book that you claimed was in your possession. Did you ever think about that? You were so focused on preparing for this one moment that you forgot about the leverage you had. And now it’s gone, and you don’t know what lies for us on the other side of your teammate’s stunt.
“Stunt?”
The cold skies crashed down through impossible geometry, remember that? Remember the twisted successor to Lewis Carroll’s rabbithole, tearing the fabric of reality?
“...”
Do you!?
“...vaguely, depending on when you gave me back control and if I maintained it while those cretins were laying the boots to me.”
Well, what’s left of it is on the other side, and since you cannot see either St Peter nor Cerberus, you are, at the very least, alive. Wouldn’t you agree?
“I suppose we’ll find out then.”
Wake up, Silas.
“Gah!”
The unending abyss sank back into the shadows as Silas shot awake; his arms jolting in unison with his consciousness. The man had not taken a private meeting with the passenger for some time, even during his three-hundred-year slumber. He had forgotten how intrusive the soul was and the cruel conditions in which he conversed with them. If possible, he would have the voice silenced.
His vision was blurred, but a quick shake of the head fixed it, and his eyes gazed at his surroundings. He had expected to still be within the Colluseum, which had caused so much hardship on a cosmic level only moments ago, all while the audience was entranced by Mia’s conduct towards her opponents and the staff. It would make the most sense.
Surrounding him were polished statues of the aristocracy who existed once upon a time, all part of the same bloodline by virtue of looking strikingly similar, yet different in the most subtle ways. These statues stand guard over the paintings that presumably depict their wives and daughters in various striking dresses; all sitting within luxurious furniture and facing towards whoever looks at them.
To an outsider, they could’ve sworn that they were staring at them as they wandered past them. But to Silas, they were, and still are, family.
The cold marble floor of the manor was unmistakable as his vision became clearer and clearer, with his accompanying groaning echoing through the main foyer, though far less dense than when he previously sprinted towards the entrance a few weeks ago. Sound waves tend to bounce off surfaces less the more decorations and furniture laid within, something Silas had reassembled while reclaiming the manor from time and the elements.
Within his hand, he clutched a strange sheet of paper with a shining yellow hue. His thought was that it could have been a parking ticket, but he turned it over to see the writing through squinted eyes as his skin finally got adjusted to the cold floor.
“Invitation to the Golden Intensions Rumble.”
Silas breathed out a long sigh from his tired body. The CWF wasn’t done with him yet.
“...great…lovely,” he let out ruefully.
“I need to express my regret for the failure of that last fight.
I was brought in to level the playing field against a team that cannot be restrained by the morals that keep the human race reigned in on a fundamental level. If anything, we should’ve walked out of there as victors, but alas, we were a team composed of individuals with our own motivations, while AnHellica and their band of merry men were on a more united front.
Alas, despite us descending into despair and my consciousness drifting thanks to their subordinates, it hasn’t escaped me that something under my possession was stolen and…
….and….
…
To be truly honest, I didn’t know what that book would do if anyone laid their eyes on it. It had sat in the manor’s archive for as long as I could remember, and I presumed it was a prized family possession that shouldn’t have been touched. One would assume that keeping their hands off it meant to show such an item respect.
But now it seems that it contained elements beyond any individual’s understanding, and thus acted as its chains, like a prisoner bound within the dungeon of a castle.
And the parallel didn’t escape me. It was intentional.
It does make me wonder what else my home contains that would be coveted by individuals with such impure motivations, but I can ascertain that, for as far as I know, nothing else has caught my attention in the time I have lived here.
And yes, this is a statement that serves double duty to not tempt you into coming back to the manor. I honestly don’t know what I have, and even if I did, I wouldn’t mention it to this federation, especially after that performance from Mia.
Mia…
…what did you…
…it didn’t…matter?
So why was I brought on board?
Why am I even here?
I was invited to partake in Golden Intensions, but…why? Was it because they saw my previous work and thought it would be a spectacle to put my name on the long list of participants? Or was it because they didn’t have enough people already and just threw my name in?
One look at my previous time here would tell you a story of two halves.
The second half is celebrated; a brutal tournament of which I had to overcome opponents that pushed me to the limit, all without rest and without much time to even breathe.
Even with the setbacks, I overcame the half-year endurance test! I was crowned the CWF World Champion, not through fluke victories or through advantageous injuries, but through shedding the skin on my bones and throwing my soul at my opponents.
And it was euphoric.
But the first half–actually, no! The first two-thirds of my time in CWF was, let’s just say, incredibly difficult.
You look at my history, and it will say that I won the championship and was also in the inaugural match for the Paramount Championship, becoming its second champion through a gruesome ladder match.
If you look beyond that and look through the raw numbers, you’ll know that it portrays a different picture.
One of repeating failure.
Time after time after time, I couldn’t get the job done.
Singles, tag teams, four-ways, rumbles, nothing.
Week after week.
Pay-per-view after pay-per-view.
One, two, three.
And your winner isn’t the man who is talking to you at this present moment.
Most of my matches were losses.
Over fifty of them.
Fifty.
What sort of winner allows fifty losses in the span of a single year!??
And let’s not forget that I lost the championship to Freddie Styles on my first defence.
After all that time, after all that work, I still, still, couldn't get the job done.
What did I do wrong?
What was I missing?
That was what was going through my head the last time I failed…
…and it’s what started going through my head when those Amoralists succeeded in defeating us.
…again…
…and again.
As you might’ve gathered, I tend to ruminate on things; my thoughts, my mistakes, my regrets. They circle me, and I try to make sense of them, even shortly after they enter my head. The amount I need to spend on the process is wasteful, and yet I cannot help but spend time skulking in the mire that haunts me.
Ten minutes.
Twenty minutes.
An hour.
I’m not even close to making them clear.
A day.
Two.
A week.
It feels like I am staring ahead while my memories taunt me. It mocks me, no matter what I do right.
A month.
Six months.
Double that.
I’m nowhere closer than where I started, and I’m tempted to let my madness swallow me whole.
Double that.
Then double it again.
And again.
I’m just looking at an abyss that continuously mocks me despite my vain attempts to make things right, but I need to know what I am looking for. Even in my dreams, there are no answers. I can’t take a break from them.
I look around me within this federation that beckoned for my return, and I see everyone driven with passion and purpose, through gold and glory, some form of closure, for the sake of their own bloodlust.
Maybe survival might be their end goal.
Maybe they know they can’t survive and use this avenue to numb the pain and replace it with some form of bliss, if only temporarily.
So where does that put me?
The great thing about Golden Intensions is that if you don’t know the direction you should be going in, by the end, you’ll have found your way forward. It is a truly, if brutally, honest reflection of yourself and your skills, and where you lie on the pecking order. Whatever you do within the rumble and in your preparation for it, it inevitably betrays a truth about you.
I see everyone else diving into the mass of bodies and blood with drive and purpose. Within such, they’ll exit with a clear frame of mind and an avenue to continue forward; a clear end goal where there may not have been one before.
On the contrary, I’ll be running down into the ring to find that drive, that motivation that keeps everyone coming back to fight in this sacred ring; to find that passion within the exchange of blood and sweat, to find something that will drag me out of the mire that is sinking me deep into directionlessness, and, ultimately, find the way towards happiness within this savage corner of the world.
I don’t know what to expect from the Golden Intentions rumble, but I know one thing.
Happiness has to be fought for.