Volume V: The Tragic End of Treason

Chapter 12: Shadow of a Legend

            Lyric is a most confusing fairy tale, one that spans the broadest reaches of the physical and emotional. Her saga is completely separate from the rest, her tragedy is her own. It requires a bit of explaining for this...Lyric was the child of Faith and Gavin. Coming from such a background, littered with pain and madness, everyone knew that Lyric would be far from normal. She, like most of the demons, clung to the stories, cherished the fairy tales, and desired to live the legends. The difference between Lyric and the other street demons was that she took her obsession a bit too far. She became her favorite story, she turned into the martyr that she loved so dearly. Lyric became Harvey. In her mind, she was someone else. Lyric suffered personal loss at a young age - Faith’s untimely death and Gavin’s blindness - leaving her very much alone. With these resources at her disposal, Lyric was able to manifest a world of complete fiction, becoming someone and something else. She became the pseudo-Harvey - the world’s bastard child; born of pain and bred of madness. When this fiction wasn’t sturdy enough, she began to manifest others in their place. By the time of her death, not only was she completely insane, but her fictitious universe had begun to crumble. She gets her own story because of the complexity of her situation. Lyric, who called herself Harvey, died at the young age of 17 at Vincent’s hand. Why? Because he was bored. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lyric is an immense study in terms of personality, event and consequence...her story is one that everyone takes as warning. Everyone knows the legend of Lyric & Harvey...the infamous “three days” and the tattoos that tell the tragedy. The more important parts of the saga are still hidden away, buried deep where nobody could surface them...six feet under.

            Jack, Lyric’s creation. Her mental representation of a significant other/protective parental figure. Jack is still a mystery - nobody’s been able to discern whether he was or wasn’t real at one time or another. Most people argue that he was just another fiction of Lyric’s misplaced sanity - others say that he was another legend brought back to life by way of a too-curious child. Either way, he was something, and his voice does hold bearing in this tale as its’ omniscient narrator and truth-holder. Jack, whether forgotten fact or distorted fiction, he is still accountable in the cycle of stories.

            Vincent, the killer of killers, Cicero’s illegitimate brother. Born and bred from madness and deceit, darling Vince turned his victim’s fate into a killer’s malice. His heart never knew compassion, his mind couldn’t comprehend love. Vincent was denied by his true family - the Merricks, and then further refused by his own mother. His “illegitimacy” as a son fueled the fire that would eventually envelope the streets he lived in. His desire for power started at a young age, giving ample time for his influence to spread and for a following to emerge. Finding salvation with a new family, his foster father - Artemis Tyme, provided the perfect background for getting away with murder. The Tyme Funeral Home. An ideal situation to erase bodies, no questions asked, especially with such a devoted father as Artemis. Vincent was ruthless in his methods, his idol, of course, being Cicero. Not only did he take after big brother, but he surpassed him...in more ways than one. Cicero’s madness can be blamed on insanity - one could argue that he didn’t understand what he was doing. He knew. Of course he knew. Vincent knew too, and the sick part? He enjoyed it that much more because he knew. Vince killed entire families, innocent people, without so much of a qualm...I know this because I watched him do it. I know this because I was there. I remember those times. And I remember Vince’s downfall - betrayed by his own overconfidence. He was so sure that he couldn’t lose, he didn’t think he’d ever get caught in his own web. But when he realized how close was too close...it was too late. And then the cycle picked up and started over. With his fall, another rose. Except there was mass hysteria with his fall; his fall was the end of an era. His fall, Lyric’s death - the beginning of the end. The Endless finally had enough.