Metalocalypse: Impending Doom

Chapter Five: Charles

A month earlier...

Charles sat beside his window with a glass of red wine in his palm, swirling it around and pondering the situation. There were so many issues coming up and he'd be lying if he said that most of them were actually important to him and his business affairs.

He just didn't have the capacity to directly feel as much as others did. He'd cried before, he laughed, he could be generally happy or annoyed and maybe a little sad. But the depth of his emotions stopped where he no longer became actively aware of them. They sat in the back of his mind, because intelligence, logic, and most importantly work, took the front seat most of the time; putting him on autopilot, preventing the emotions from running through his body properly. He accidentally forgot about them by pushing them away from prioritizing his work over his heart. Perhaps he really was a robot.

This also made it hard for him to sometimes feel empathy for a situation he felt was logically proven to be a lost cause or to have an easy solution to, which was partially why everything had gotten messier to begin with, because logically, he should realize that not everyone was like him and thought the same way; some people prioritized their feelings and ego, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, it just wasn't how he worked. Charles sighed as he placed his wine down and pressed his hands to his face.

The door made no sound as it swung open, but Charles could still feel the presence of another person walking in. "Hello, Abigail."

"Charles." Sharp, precise footsteps clicked against the floor. "Everything alright?"

"No." Charles sighed as he lifted his head from his hands, looking up at the pretty manager for the band The Excommunicated. "What do you have for me?"

"It's not looking good." Her cool blue eyes stared through Charles's face, arms crossed over her suit shirt and soft curls against her face. "I'm sure you'd expect that, though."

Charles exhaled deeply once more, picking up and draining his wine in one go before heading to the side of his desk to pull out a bottle of whiskey. He needed something stronger. "So there's no way around it. The prophecy's set in stone."

Abigail looked away, lips pressed into a thin line as she thought. "Every step we take just propels us closer. If we chose to do nothing, it would still be the answer. It's inevitable, the only thing that has a possibility for change is the ending, based on what they choose to do."

Charles pressed his hand against his chest, feeling the cold emptiness inside of him that had been there since being raised from the dead. "I don't understand. Ishnifus called me the Dead Man. He said I was important. He wanted me to be his successor."

Abigail gave him a quick look of sympathy, before stepping around the desk as well and taking the booze from him after he had poured himself a drink, choosing to gulp from the bottle itself. "It wasn't confirmed that it was about you. It wouldn't make sense for you to die when, like you said, you already have a quest to fulfill."

"Yes, but in all fairness, being his successor was never part of the prophecy." Charles turned back to his window to look out of it. "And it never said my part would continue on permanently."

"You talk so calmly about your potential death, but your face doesn't agree with your tone."

"At this point, I'm ready for death," Charles stated, taking a swig of his drink, "but my boys aren't." Abigail raised an eyebrow and though he wasn't looking at her, he knew she was waiting for him to continue. "They don't know how to take care of themselves. Hell, they're falling apart at the seams with me here, I can't ah, imagine if I were gone."