Post by Void on Jul 2, 2022 0:06:54 GMT -5
06/26/2022 - 6:55pm
Security cam footage shows a dingy room with flickering lights. A small cellar window with bars over it is the only sign of the outside world. In the room is a large, metal cylinder, laid lengthwise and held up by legs on either side. The cylinder emits a low electrical hum.
The world is dead. That’s the only way to describe it.
Panning across the arid landscape, all that remains is dirt, the occasional scraggly tree, and wrecked buildings. The only signs of life are the occasional, cawing crow. To the right there’s a dried up riverbed, dotted with human skeletons along its banks and at the bottom. In the distance lies a mountain, or at least what remains of it. The top is flat, parallel with the horizon as if sliced in half by the sword of a giant. If you squint, you can just barely see a forest that lies below the mountain, burning down. More evident is the giant cloud of gray smoke rising up into an even darker sky.
We zoom in on a scraggly tree near the river bed. A crow sits on the branch, pecking at the trunk. It lets out a fiendish caw, then takes flight. Following it, we turn away from the mountain and see, next to the riverbed, a wooden church, painted black and thoroughly destroyed. Half the church is falling over into the dry riverbed. What remains up, part of the steeple and a long wall making up the sanctuary, is rickety and missing half of the original planks. The crow lands on the very tip of the steeple, and the entire church lurches one way, causing the crow to flap away in a flurry of black feathers.
In the shadow of this structure, among scattered pews and a shattered altar, stands a St. Andrews Cross with a man strapped to it, held down by metal cables. The man is cut up, with a giant gouge in his right side. He is clad in gaudy, golden garments, with many golden chains around his neck. As the man lifts his head up, we see that he is gagged by a golden cloth. Beneath the cloth, he wears a gray mask, seemingly untouched.
VOID looked out straight ahead. Expectant. Waiting…
There. A silhouette, across the river, steadily growing larger. As the figure reaches the riverbed, they walk down the steep banks, dropping out of VOID’s vision. A few minutes later, they emerge. The wanderer wears a coat, all white, with a hood over their head. Relatively short, the figure is hunched over, with their hands steepled. They walk towards VOID, letting out a low cackle that grows in volume as they approach. VOID’s right eye starts to twitch. Finally, about an arms reach from VOID, the figure reaches up dramatically, pulling off their hood…
And revealing the smirking visage of Dr. Reginald Royce.
Royce looks VOID up and down, a glint of madness in his eyes. VOID’s head drops, his expression unreadable.
“Oh, how I have waited for this day!. This glorious day, when I can at last put an end to this charade. You know, VOID… I tried to help you. I tried to show you that nothing would come from this. Your senseless worship, your uncontrolled violence, your devotion to chaos, it would only lead you to destruction. Of course, even I could not predict you would reach such magnitudes of devastation. And now, by some blessing, I have stumbled upon… no. I have been chosen as your final, vengeful reaper, to enact on you the justice you have deserved for so long!”
Royce reaches into his coat, and retrieves a silver scalpel. He looks down at his reflection in the blade as it glints in the sun. He raises his eyebrows at VOID, a wry expression on his face.
“I know, I know. It’s a bit sentimental. But y’know… old habits.”
Royce lifts the blade to VOID’s shoulder, a sadistic smile on his face, then makes an incision, from the right shoulder to the opposite hip. He makes a similar gouge from the left shoulder. Then. he lifts his hand, and with finality he slams the blade into VOID’s flesh, right below the rib cage. VOID convulses, his head bobbing up and down.
Royce lifts his hand to VOID’s chin raising his head.
“Oh, my dear patient, are you still with us??? But, the operation has barely-”
Royce is interrupted by laughter. Full on, manic laughter from the masked lunatic before him. VOID stares down his former caretaker as Royce becomes increasingly enraged, laughing all the while.
“I wasn’t waiting for you! You pretender! PHARISEE! PHARISEE! PHARISEE!”
As VOID continues to yell, Royce reaches back into his coat, pulling out a whole case of scalpels. He slashes all across his chest, then stabs one scalpel into his arm, then another. Still, VOID yells. Royce plunges a scalpel into VOID’s chest, then takes aim at VOID’s head. VOID finally stops yelling, and now he smirks at the doctor.
“And you called us the mad ones.”
Royce turns around, scalpel raised… only to be greeted with his own reflection in the signature sunglasses of Sara Pettis. Royce drops the scalpel.
“Sara… I swear, I can explain.”
“Too late. Duck.” Sara whips out a sawed-off shotgun from her belt as VOID drops his head. Sara unloads a full, two barreled blast into the devilish doctor’s head, blasting it straight off his shoulders, over VOID’s head, and between two arms of the St. Andrew Cross. It rolls to a stop at the foot of the broken church altar, where a crow descends upon it, plucking out Royce’s eyes.
Sara whips the shotgun back into her holster. She folds her arms.
“So… Let’s talk.”