The Revelations of a Remnant

1: Visions

My origins before becoming an avatar of the darkness are fabled and became subject to stories matching folklore, myths and legends of the ancient times. Many believed I was a God. A vicious, mighty lord of the skies who ruled with an iron-clad grasp around the ways of the world and that my corruption was a form of punishment to cleanse the world of my tyranny. Other stories describe a gentle soul whose curiosity showed no bounds and one day lead him astray into a pit of oblivion, thus creating the darkness within his curious nature to grow and form the outline for my current stature. The way I was described to people in these myths and legends depicted me as having long golden locks or slicked back blonde hair as well as being well proportioned for each tale it suited to. I wore the finest clothes to the smartest attire and my voice could do many seemingly amazing feats.

The people who created these stories, the people alive during these times in general, had no idea of the battle raging on around them between the will of the world and the powers that seeked to taint it. I was no God or explorer. All I can truly remember were two things: I was a young man with ambitions to be someone who would make the world a better place before I became ravaged by the plague of the darkness and that I fought alongside an army of pure-hearted people in an attempt to end the ongoing struggle once and for all.

Whenever I look into the murky waters of distain and acid, I can sometimes see a reflection of my former being. Bright blonde hair which was just passing my neck at the front with a fringe and short at the back with blazing sapphire blue eyes, a brush of stubble resting on my chin. Comparing that to the savage and restless mop of meek black and hints of blood crimson that shadowed the paralysing amber eyes and scars like train tracks across my face. 

After trying so hard to regain my former self and the power of my unrelenting courage from the depths of the shadows that dragged me down and changed me, I can see insights into the battles I fought in that tried to establish an outcome for the good I was protecting. Some of the battles were brutal due to the methods we had to use to assure ourselves that what we fought died and stayed dead. Anything promoting the darkness back then was deemed to be unsavable and treacherous and thus had to be killed in a permanent manner. One distinct part of me in both incarnations was my use of chains. The ones I used before becoming an avatar where clean-cut and gold plated, every third link had two titanium spikes pertruding from the plating. The handles of the chains were a mixture of tape and leather strips bound onto a solid bar of titanium and held by resins.

The most prominent vision I saw of me killing an advocator of the darkness was during one of what seemed to be the last couple of fights before I was subdued. I would launch myself towards the enemy, leading with my right arm and chain in tow. Before they got shoulder barged by my direct assault, I would switch to my left and swing out my chain, aiming to bind a couple of the spikes into the victim. If successful, I would jump up, launch my right side chain towards them and embed more spikes into their body before landing. Checking to see if there was enough spikes in their bodies, I would tug on both chains and rip a good few chunks of flesh off their bodies. If that didn't wound them enough to bleed out, I would wrap a chain around their neck and sever their throats with the spikes.

Back then, I was not completely savvy with using the chains. From what I could recall, more times than I care to try to remember, I would always need back-up because my actions would not always get the job done. But the day I became subdued, I had been working with a new set of chains, spiked from first to last link, standard titanium base and grip for the handle, in my efforts to gain more acceptance. Before the incident, this battle was where I had earned most of my reputation as a brutal warrior. My usual run in and jump tricks did more damage with more spikes and I began using the trees and buildings as extras in my set-ups for kills.

It was my intuition and my growing skills with the chains that got me recognized by the lords of the darkness. Seeing their men fall so quickly to me angered them greatly. One of them decided to challenge me up-front. He was a brutish behemoth of the shadow that bore muscles which looked like they where growing muscles. He stood a great deal taller than I was at that time and he wielded a long, thick steel butchers knife which could easily have doubled up as a European-style katana. All I can recall from the next bit was taking a sharp blow to the stomach from his blade. It pierced through every single fibre in my body, whatever dark nature or spirit that blade held was unleashed into my living shell as the blade broke through my spine on it's way out.

As soon as I slid off the brute's blade, the last bit of the vision i can remember is feeling my body burning and changing in a cloud of black dust and the smell of rotting flesh and metal slowly circulating around my body. My chains disintegrating and joining the fumes of which slowly enveloped my eyes and other parts of my body. I guess from my perspective that was the day the child in me died. The pure aspect of my nature tainted and ripped out for the hounds of the darkness to bask upon as my torture would continue until my mind was set up on nothing more than carrying out the orders of the darkness. From dying at that moment, I cannot remember anything else. Although after every time I see and watch the vision in my mind... The taste of blood and the scent of people I used to know and be friends with always became so real as the visions conclude themselves.