Valquist: Dreamphase

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Alongside my best friend Isis Derrida we once ventured far from the comfort of our home in Infinity City to find a meaning within the wrestling world, to find enlightenment. Now I find myself alone, without my friend.

My name is Valquist. A former architect, a seasoned veteran. Alone, without the presence of my best friend, my family. Bound to an un-turning road, driven by the desire to do that which is right, my path is now singular. Infinity, my home, even during its darkening, though I have ignored my path’s calling, and have been labelled as desperate for trying to appease my long past, in the grander scale of time my absence has proven temporary. My preaching tone is of enlightenment in a world set in its ways. A world of black and white. The sun once set on my un-turning road, but a new day has been cast, and I will once again honour the mantra of Full Measures. Isis Derrida and Valquist.

I am The Valquist and this is a story about my undoing.

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Night had arrived, ushering in a damp and freezing evening in spring time New York City. There is a deafness as Valquist peers up to the stars, his vision blurred and vibrating. The Infinity star lays on his side, his head tilted left. Thick blood ever so slowly drawls out of Val’s busted and bruised lips. His open collared white formal shirt and trousers and ripped, torn, and also stained in the aforementioned warm red blood. His vision is still blurred because at this very second, an assailant was still kicking him in the chest. Val could do nothing but watch and take the punishment, for on this occasion he was a helpless man.

“Dad!” A youthful scream is heard. “You need to stop this, now!”

“We’re just looking out for our business.”

“He is my business,” the voice says. “I can handle it this time.”

Val could hear nothing of the exchange that was takin place less than a few metres from his fallen body. Eventually the vibrations stop, the massacre ends. Val was left short breathed, purely out of shock, as he lays writhing on the ground. A set of polished black boots hover in front of his face, but Val could not look for a means of identity, forced to stare at the stars. Eventually as Val turned his head, between the legs of the instigator, he did not see the face of his enemy. He saw Isis Derrida, knelt and blindfolded. A blackened male figure, hooded and back turned, positioned over Isis. Val’s best friend is clubbed with a metal baseball bat, just the once, left to bleed out on the same dimly lit street. Isis fades in front of Val but the vanquished wrestler blinks and the terrifying mirage is gone. Instead, the ominous unidentified figure kneels, observing Val’s body.

“Every hero bleed Mr. Valquist,” the deep male voice says. His white hand slaps Val until he nods, to understand that he had heard. “Just be sure to go home, to your own city. That way, we’ll never have trouble again.”

Despite the butchery across his body, Val laughs. The shock and awe he endured meant that whilst creased and barely moving his body, Val was shaking frantically, eventually spitting up the large pool of blood gathering his mouth. Val remained smiling until the figure slapped him again. Val then took notice of the army of fighters, their fists and boots all curdling with Val’s blood.

“Dad!” the youthful voice screams again. This time Val heard an echoed version of the voice. “Enough is enough.”

“Don’t make me ask twice, friend,” the group’s leader mocks.

Val is left laughing as the bright light of cars turn and drive off into the city night. Val’s laughing eventually stops, and left to gaze up at the wonders of space, he is left swimming in the messes of the realities that mother Earth creates. There is nobody to come to Val’s rescue as his eyes close and his consciousness fades.

Valquist opens his eyes, stood atop the ring mat in a place he once called home. Fully draped in his ring attired, a lurid combination of orange, black and white, Val was primed for competition. He faced towards the ramp and the titantron upon awakening, feeling no pain or restriction. There was nothing but silence and an empty arena. Val’s instincts meant he could not move, but a voice, a reality was forced upon him.

“Will I forever remain on display?” the familiar voice predicts. “Or will the world be illuminated, as it once was, by a measure greater than one singular entity.”

“You are but a memory, a grain of sand amongst millions,” Val replies, eager to shoot down the welcoming voice.

“You cannot arrest or bury abandonment.” the homely voice replies. “You do not want me alienated, do you?”

Val is finally able to turn around, but he feels no weight beneath his feet, no substance, no belonging. Val felt helpless, removed from reality, left to simmer in what he immediately recognised as a dream sequence. Nonetheless, Val was unable to run from this encounter as he did not know how to open his eyes, so he was left to fester with a cloaked past.

Val is stung with Isis Derrida’s words, and his sudden forthcoming. Dressed in an identical attire, Val is faced with his greatest secret. Val can do nothing but look down, he was too shamed, even in a dream, to acknowledge Isis, to give him an ounce of respect.

“I am not lying to myself, because you’re not the man I want to become,” Val demands.

“Brett Carson,” Isis says, the words alone grinded Val’s teeth, as if he felt robbed by the occasion. “Words are your weapons? Don’t let them become your greatest enemy.”

“Then let me give you the strength you deserve,” Isis proclaims, as if a weapon of mass destruction. “Otherwise, you’ll be nothing more than a harbinger of defeat. You shouldn’t hold back your true beliefs just to appease those that do not take pride in your words, or your actions. Full Measures, we rid the plains of those that did not believe in our message. A bold message of enlightenment that people flocked to, even though hatred or distain controlled their primary actions.”

“Look where we are now,” Val enlightens, still with a disgruntled face.

“Reserve your concern for your own reality, brother,” Val pleads, hiding from his own consciousness.

“You deserve neither,” Val says, his voice finally angered. “Save judgement for your own path.”

“You need Isis Derrida,” the man himself confirms with a smile. “Even when dispelled, as if the last two years meant nothing, you still need me. Without my allure, you’re stuck without a purpose. Let me be your ruthless sword.”

“Brett nor Ryder, nor anyone, is superior to the steps on my path,” Val says in fury, grabbing Isis’s attention.

“At last, truth,” Isis says relieved. “By no means is it denial. We can see the truth at hand, that we are a level above those fighting with sticks and stones. They do not see it, truth, so they dismiss it. They do not see talent, and reality, but do not reward it. They reward what they believe to be wholesome. They reward the middle ground, where words are pinched with salt, of no real velocity.”

Val attempted to talk but was overridden by Isis's dominance of the situation. 
“You said the same about our last home, and we were right. We never catered to the children that dominated our path, the hapless and moronic that littered this world with persistent mediocrity, or budged when told any differently. You said your words are honest, so why would I believe any different when you claim that the world is full of repetition. Why are these people, these Vultures, any different from those in the past, or those in your future? Just because you want it to work, it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your standards.”

“You think all of this is for them?” Val questions. “Being defeated, even if under sceptical manner, is not the issue. Winners are born from the persistence of losing, the persistence of simply being there, through thick and thin. Understanding loyalty. Isis, you jaded my perspective, you only saw blood at the end of sword, even if there wasn’t any. I’m here against my own reason and logic. You don’t need to look far to believe or know that there are people who are rooting against my common causes, people eager to dispel Val’s mythology. The unenlightened that wish me defeated against Ryder. People eager to find the truth from Isis Derrida and end the charade that is our separation.”

“You speak to others as if my headstone is already planted in the ground,” Isis laughs, possessing a similar hollow smile like Val. “Your only eagerness is to shy away from an actual reality. So you bury me as an afterthought, believing your successes to be singular.”

“Then banish me from this thought. Eradicate me!” Isis screams, his pure white teeth and muscular neck twitch and tweak, whilst his handsome face is transformed into a sinister grin, an evil that Val could not rescind from his memories. “Your consumption assaults my legacy, my being. Banish me, or wield my blade, and embrace me.”

Isis Derrida, within a blink of an eye, vanishes, leaving Val’s weightless motion reeling in pain. The silence he endures since that moment felt like a lifetime. A lifetime of loneliness, occupied only by Val. Amongst the prevailing darkness, Val lives an entire lifetime, wandering the caverns of his own creations, trying to find a home to settle, a means to subverting reality. Eventually, Val settled back in the Infinity ring, drew to it, but this time living as an outsider, a ghost in a scene where his father, Oria, and Donald Osman, were stood in the ring debating the closure of Infinity Wrestling. Val is tickled by nostalgia, a déjà vu of sorts, quickly realising that he is intruding on a memory that he witnessed before just days before Infinity Wrestling closed its doors. As ever, Osman was donning a pure white suit, the creamy black skinned Oria in full black. A parallel existed, Val believed that in his rehashing that he was idealising the moment as he wished it would have been. From a presentation standpoint, Oria and Osman were flawless reincarnations, but the Infinity ring was plummeted into a fictional hell of Val’s imagination. Fire and the traditional hot lava run around the ring, Infinity Arena crumbles all around, its pieces toppling amongst the crushed civilians, all innocent, all undeserving of such torture. Val was made to stand a top one of two podiums. Isis stood on Val’s right, but unlike Val that saw the world falling from all corners, Isis’s eyes are planted on Val. Both brothers are made to listen through the collapse and screams of Infinity’s people, to Osman’s damnation.

“Are you ready for this to all end? There is no need to let everyone involve suffer,” Osman wisely states, obviously referencing the wrestling federation. “Perhaps we offered them too much, as an excuse for them to give us so little in return.”

“Roderick and the Copycat have gone into hiding. They are powerless to your ambitions, but I believed that was always the case,” Oria replies. “They gave a glimpse of our city through keen eyes, but every take on Infinity is different, right? To some the city is just a name, to most it is a way of life. Some have a wild imagination, some can’t picture anything within our walls. They were handed the key to unlock the world, but you lacked faith in their ability to lead.”

“It was agreed upon by all parties that once Val and Isis return, greater men, that they would lead Infinity, to hold and handle the values that is demanded of them. TCK was not infinite, he lacked his own humanity. Roderick was insightful and brilliant, but driven by twisted brutality. Neither honoured the key principles that makes wrestling what it is.”

“You would risk exposing my children to a certain failure? You do not expect this federation, nor any, to stand the test of time.”

“Time has been cruel to us. Unless Val and Isis continue on their path, then everything we built, it is nothing more than a fiction, easily forgotten, easily replaced. Both of your boys are smart enough to understand that Infinity’s failure will be it’s only. Val in particular would not dare drag such a beautiful thing through the mud.”

“You cannot form a thick shell around them, in the name of certain anguish. My sons are not impenetrable. Though they might believe otherwise, they are not living Gods. They are just people, thick blooded like you and I. Good, and honest men, that given a chance at succeeding, will tease and architect the changing of history.”

Val laughed on the inside because he has done nothing but make a God of Isis since he returned to wrestling. Val immediately understand the insanity, he pictured an outsider being able to pluck his memories, such as these, judging Val and leaving with one conclusion and only one. Val’s obsession with Isis was unhealthy, unnatural, and a little annoying at times to the wrong reader that didn’t understand or appreciate a complex and layered personality. Val tussled with people’s judgements for a while, and looked at Isis to end. In the flesh of the moment, Val was doing it again. Placing Isis up high, and in doing so, elevating his own status, walking above the path of the common man, the Ryder Blades of this world. Val knew it was wrong, to subconsciously stand above, and speak with an educated manner, talking down to the Visionaries, but he has believed this confidence his whole life, and found that a lifetime of habit had partially obscured the steps on his path. He could picture each step crumbling, and Val plummeting to the scorched earth beneath.

Val blinked again, this time he stood in the ring, still a ghost in motion, and looked up to see that elevated form of Isis, listening through the screams of his native people as they were crushed to death by the disaster that they were all a part of.

“It is time that Infinity becomes a fading memory,” Osman declares, met with much grief and stress from Oria. “Wrestling in this city is not worthy of its recognition. The Battle Zone Network, and all involved, the non-committal wrestlers, the ambitious management. This world is just not capable of giving some people a blank script and being told to use it for good.”

“What kind of world are we leaving behind if we do not make it possible for Isis and Val to reach for that pinnacle?”

“We are saving them a lifetime of grief, a lifetime of disappointment. Oria, you must trust me on this, but for as talented as the guys that perform in that ring are, finding a path that ends in jubilation is very few and far between. Thousands of federations rise and fall, Infinity proved to be no different.”

“You’re denying them all that we have created, and struggled for,” Oria urges. “You’ll leave them both stranded in the wilderness, left to fend for themselves. You will drive them from the reaches of this city, and they will not wish to return.”

“The last thing they need is protection. If they’re to be what we want them to be, heroes to this city, then we need them to survive without our interference. If they’re not groomed for life in the desert, they’ll perish in its heat.”

“My sons are not soft,” the protective Oria proclaims as truth. “They’ve paved a path their entire lives to be strong and versatile, even if one is away from the other.”

“Of course, they’re almost there. But they need more time, to grow a resolve for when the world beats on you, time and again. When our boys get pummelled, I need them to get back up, and not just crawl into a ball and give up. They will not follow the Infinity Wrestling formula.”

Val was left sweltering over these words, as if time stood still and for a brief stint Oria and Osman had freeze-framed, grinding to an absolute halt. Realising what was about to happen next, Val felt ashamed because he was about to be proven the guilty party. This angered his thoughts, a repetition of events against Brett Carson dominated his unstable mindset. All of a sudden the fiery caverns surrounding the ring, and the weight they possess, fell on his shoulders. Val could only feel a repeat stabbing sensation, recycled until this still moment resumed. No longer was Val a ghost to the moment, but he was in the ring, as was Isis. The four were stood facing opposites, each occupying a quarter of the squared circle. Val and Isis. Oria and Osman. The elders acknowledged Val’s interruption of the moment by glancing at his fleshy, real form, still dressed in full wrestling attire.

“You’re wrong,” Isis demands. “You’ll always be wrong until you embrace me as the sword to your shield.”

“Then you can claim it alone,” a stubborn Isis replies with a smile. “Val, you can see the sunlight through just about anything, but even you, Full Measures’s Architect must fail to see the light through the cracks. Should you attempt to hold up the wall by yourself, you will be crushed by its pressure.”

“Nothing lasts forever,” Val replies.

“That is the Infinity way,” Val says with a confused tongue, almost telling as if it was a question.

“Irony is just one of those elements,” Isis says. “Infinity is dead in the water, Val. Its skin is shrivelled, the corpse is cold, and unless we honour it with any dignity, the Vultures will always arrive to pick at the bones to disprove absolutely everything about anybody from this enlightened city.”

“I am, in a heartbeat,” Isis proudly states, not regretting a single action throughout his life. “Val, you’ve always been honest, and you deserve it in return. I would be lying to you if I said that I enjoyed being a part of those federations, the one’s that didn’t understand or appreciate our talent. The best and only part I ever cared about was doing it with you. I tried it by myself, and although I found success, and became a World Champion, at the end of it all, I felt hollow. That victory, nor any, gained any weight because we were constantly downplayed, not a single soul believed in us, even though we were more than the punching bags they portrayed us as. Ultimately, as Osman stated, the federation did not last, nor will any. The world deserves more from Valquist and Isis Derrida than to just relive the cycles of destruction.”

“Moving on,” Val remembers saying, but his inner dialogue was also remembering his return to VOW, at Nothing Else Matters verses Ryder Blade. Val said that exact line in reference to what he believed at the time to be a one-time ordeal. “If Infinity beats its final beat, then all of this goes away. A lifetime together, striding towards something as infinite as our own home, walking a path to better ourselves. You’re giving up a path that believes in doing the right thing, no matter if it the might of the occasion topples you. This is a path dedicated to the worthy, a black path that is ruthless and harrowing. I do see the sunlight seeping through the cracks, and it points to Infinity as an inspiration. I no longer see Isis Derrida, for he fell from his spotless path and has been consumed by a blackness that no longer makes him worthy.”

Oria and Osman crumble away, the hell no longer persists, just Isis and Val consumed by a blackness, standing opposite instead of side by side.

“This is where we all end,” Isis declares. “We all fall, and though I have not arisen from this state, you’re still not impenetrable. Soon, we all fade, as you rightly said. Though your time is not now, here in a dark below, you’re here with me now because losing has reminded you of every single occasion I was right about our journey. Val, they do not see your talent, and if you’re ready to fall victim to their agenda once, then expect the cycle to repeat until you are forced here, eternally. Isis Derrida also spoke with a veracity, and that’s why my place is here, because I did not learn humility. You are the writing on the wall for children, Valquist the Vanquished, and these children that treat you like a toy, treat your path and your everything, like a disposable cheap plastic imitation of the real thing. The only remedy is to embrace me. Punch through the crack of light and take command of your destiny, or be doomed to remain known as the Vanquished when you meet Jordan Jacobs’s for a second time.”

Val’s thoughts are suddenly swept away, the fear of watching his own personal hell crumble away, and with a sudden change of environment, Val is stood, motionless, strapped to an invisible wall. Val can feel the wall, and touch it, but there is only red blood trickling. Val’s own blood. Every second or two a splattering or two line the transparent canvas with the wrestler’s innards. This pain is real and transcended of Val’s mental state. Standing as executioner is none other than Chris McCarthy, draped in thick black armour that personifies his brown skin. Val momentarily spaced away intro a brief cutaway of Chris fighting amongst Space Marines in the Warhammer universe. That moment lasts momentarily as Chris punches Val in the face because all he knows how to do is smile and laugh off the entire scenario.

Val believed that Chris had taken this form to highlight the brutal way in which wrestling news is reported in the modern world. Val knew that outside and in of the profession, people were more brutal and at times sadistic than he was. Val didn’t believe this to be true of Chris, a genuinely nice kid, a literate and punctual kid that is fighting tooth and nail to be a part of a profession he knows he does not belong in. A profession that he knows only exists on the boundaries of his limits. Chris will always be on the outside looking in.

“I am not deaf to your thoughts!” Chris says in anger, hearing everything that Val was thinking during his moment of punishment. “You are concealing the truth, your truth! Your father was right about your smile, it is a counter to your problematic path.”

Chris hits Val repeatedly, bruising and bloodying every part of his body, reflecting the reality that Val was not yet ready to admit.

Val was silent but thought to himself that he does know humility.

“Liar,” Chris says, this time kicking furiously at Val’s knees, once again reading his thoughts.

Chris isn’t even give Val time to answer. The vicious lashes that follow are in such quick repetition, mirroring how Val believes wrestling reporters crave more and more and more knowledge. Eventually Chris briefly halts, lacking in breath, and in general health.

“I can see your empathy, friend,” Chris furthers, “are you saddened that your friend has left, or are you in grievance that he is no longer your pawn?”

“Stop putting blame on your brother,” Chris proclaims. “You are the creationist, the architect, of every thought. I listened, to everything. You do realise that he too speaks from a level of grief and loss? He believes that Valquist is the one to place him in the shadows, locked away, buried. I am wrong in believing that? Am I wrong in believing that it is you, The Valquist, who is the bearer of malice between the two?”

“It is all drawn from a space more real than you could ever know,” Val retorts, relieved that the constant beating had momentarily halted.

Chris continues his assault on Valquist until the pain grows numb, and Val’s consciousness grows bleak. In his most desperate moment, when Val begins to fade on Chris, he finally speaks a truth that Chris believes.

“I’ve always spoken through Isis,” a dazed Val asserts, “He knew that he could never take me from this moment, this reality, and I believed he abandoned me for all the right reasons.”

“Do you miss him?” Chris says, suddenly transformed from a science-fiction killing machine into his casual wear. “Do you believe that you have lost him forever?”

Christ has completely stopped moving altogether in Val’s mind, reduced to being nothing more than a statue, a memory.

“I deserve this, an existence of constant torture. A realm of haunting memory and subjection,” Val states, lifting his head to see Isis standing a far, smashing Chris’s statue by simply placing his hand on his shoulder.

“I deserve to be embraced,” Isis barks again, before vanishing.

Val could no longer hold his grasp to this moment, and faded from his own thoughts, left to squander amongst silence darkness, feeling what it is like to experience defeat and have it crush the steps on Val’s lucid path.

Chris McCarthy sits patiently in a silent locker-room. Pan up close to his face, Chris’s still and depressed look lacks logic and understanding until the wider scenario is laid out. Reality finally has found its course, and Chris is left sitting on a wooden bench, his chocolate skin was sweaty through a lack of washing properly, and for the first time in his reporting career, feeling genuinely concerned for a fellow wrestler at a deep, personal level. Behind Chris’s head is a splattering of blood, already drying to the white walls. Chris feels movement beside him but does not look down, he just keeps looking forward, traumatised at an event that would have rendered him without his main wrestling outlet. Chris, a compassionate young man, striving to become something unique in the world, and having very little success in doing so because he’s constantly oppressed and downplayed by friends, rivals, and the general state of affairs for young adults who even when graduated with a first class Honours Degree, are made to fight and claw over supermarket and fast food assistant roles. This proved a taste of his own path to become the first and last Chris McCarthy, but was struck by the sheer feeling that no matter where he turns in the world, there will always be somebody out there gunning for you, be it in any sense. Professionally, educationally, socially, anything. Chris has come to loath many aspects of the world, and witnessing such trauma happen to one of his friends, a man that he believes is worthy of being called a good person, witnessing Valquist pummelled and beaten with brass knuckles, watching Val plead for his life and his honour, made Chris sit in a fit of rage. Directing such anger led Chris down a racial path, thoughts and frustrations that are best yet firmly sealed in a consciousness that finds very little charm or grace to look up to.

Valquist awakes, but before he turns to see Chris, he leans forward on his hands and knees and coughs out more blood from his body. Val’s senses were heightening, he could taste and feel Vaseline rubbed across his bumpy face to slow the cut skin on his head. Sitting back, and coughing a few times, as if waking his body up, Val leant back and did exactly what Chris did. Lose himself whilst staring blankly at a wall covered in Val’s own blood.

Val in the cold silence, actually leant back in his full wrestling attire took his time reliving what to him was a vague memory. Val had more, one last part to recite to an equally silent Chris.

Val leant forward again, crushing pain around his ribcage was pulsating, and excruciating to endure.

“No one can live a fulfilled life without a measure of darkness,” Val says, a lot more assuring to Chris to see his friend regain his voice and his pride, even though fallen. “Wise men know where they go when to a place without light. Recently, all tracks have led to Isis. Since Brett, I’ve been living the same nightmare over and over. I’m tortured by my critics, watch my own version of hell close in around my family, and Isis is the voice of my past. A dark, critical cynic that yearns for me to embrace his convictions. That’s where I’ve been led, through a cycle of destruction, witnessing what I would not dare wish on my greatest enemies.”

Val’s eyes were finally open, and in this instance he could relive the moment for what it was.

Val takes a second to swallow a trace amount of blood that pooled at the back of his throat. Sitting with his knees up, reserved and fragile, a few tears roll down Val’s left eye but given Val’s undoing, and his nonchalance over revealing himself, humble Chris wouldn’t dare attempt to drag Val further into the dirt. Instead he sat next to Val, patiently, just being there for his new friend.

“I am the reason for a broken family,” Val continues, slightly stuttering his words as he tries to keep himself in check, the only way he knows how is to turn on an aggression to repel a sustained slobbery state. “My ideals, my everything. I understand that I am a partially broken man. Defeat against Brett Carson sent me back to a time when I bounded to no light, where my focus had not been found. I am powerless to change opinion and perception, it’s followed my forever, people in one shape or form attempting to humble me, to prove that I am not above the letter of any law. Yes, I think I was worthy, more than worthy, worthy enough to wield Thor’s hammer level of worthy, in my pursuit of four consecutive victories. But what else can I do? These Visionaries might still have a tunnel vision in regards to Valquist, in regards to my city, and its wrestlers at times naïve and foolish, but for me, there is no ulterior. Nowhere else to go. Defeat left me in that dark patch all wrestlers have ventured, weighing up the little opportunity you’re offered against the sanity of leaving the politics and the anger behind. Not everyone can bottle it, especially those as stubborn as myself. I contemplated walking out the door, as I’ve done before, holding my values and standards up as high as ever, but then I would just be as loose in ambition as my dear Isis Derrida. I am worthy, but I am humble in admitting it. I know how good I am and can be, but repeating the past will leave another scar in my memory. Repeating the past will get me beaten, again. My instinct right now, in my pulped state, suggests I should acquire a life lending favour to selfishness, brutality, and constant controversy. All traits of he who has already been named.”

“This torture isn’t healthy Val,” Chris inputs. Val laughs slightly, but coughs heavily in doing so, finding the irony of what just happened with Chris in mind to be a delightful pick up. “Longing for something I don’t believe you need. I’ve been there, caught in a spiders web with not enough strength to break the durable silk. Fascination leads to alienation, isolation, it’s what wrestling has done for me. I’m left yearning for a professional art I know I’ll never do, one I’ve no ambition to actually be personally involved with. But it’s funny, you know, being dragged out of my bedroom and actually being here. Being up close to that fascination and dealing with it head on, making this damn world my own, it’s been fulfilling. You my friend, have gathered too much distance on your fascination, and now it time to make it your own. Whatever that may be, hell, I know nothing about you or Isis together at a personal level, but I know nothing is right if his absence has been haunting you. 

“Val, this is the first I’ve heard of any of this,” Chris interrupts, eager with a question. “I’m a kid with my ears of the street, in wrestling terms of course, how do you know this? Ryder come across as legit in everything I’ve researched about this deliberately illiterate, and penal cool guy.”

“This mystique of character is not to be explored on the site, this secret remains between us, forever and always,” Val says, moving his knees down to the cold shower tiled flooring. 

“Let’s just get you out there first,” Chris emphasises, worried for Val’s physical state. “Where you’re going, there might not be a better time for Isis to eliminate the distance.”

“He’s with me every day, one way or another,” Val reassures. Chris helps the shaking, wobbly wrestler to his feet and they embrace by pulling in their tight handshake to form a quick body-bump.

“You’re doing it again, making Isis sound like his headstone is already planted in the ground,” Chris jokes.

“He’ll forever be the sword to my shield,” Val retorts with his own mystique. “No matter from what plain he watches.”

“You did?” Val jokes.

“You’re actually the worst,” Chris ends, with the younger of the age literally having to drag the elder to the ring.

As the duo get further away from the blood stained locker-room and towards the manic New York crowd, they share a silence, realising that no matter the outcome, all will be well in camp Valquist, regardless of tonight’s eventuality.

“We both know that you stole the Copycat Kid’s tech for a reason,” Isis Derrida opens, bombarding a still reality-stricken Valquist with another test. The mystery of what technology never registered into Val’s head. All he saw was darkness, he refused to open his eyes, meaning Isis had devolved into nothing more than words amongst the lightless grains that existed eternally.

“Do you remember why Full Measures began, Val?” Isis asks, knowing Val possesses the answer. “To escape becoming the products of failure. We built ourselves a podium to stand tall, we crafted a new path that allowed two kids with nothing to become honourable people, with honourable intentions. But this existence, and the people who occupy our lands, they are not honourable people. Most are vile, creative zapping, selfish incarnations, lacking moral guidance. Lacking general humanity. Give them an inch to offer, Val, and they will bring you down to a level where your head is pressed against dirt, and your head is a springboard for those wishing to trample and abuse. Our Full Measures was a counter agent against a world that treated us with no respect, and these Visionaries that you have sworn your allegiance towards, they have already shown disrespect. They will all attempt to reveal your humanity, and will do everything in their power to expose that our podium is readymade to crumble.”

“Isis Derrida has been suppressed long enough,” Isis replies with conviction. “You have ignored my words, believing your path to be true and worthy. We are not worthy people, Val, our lives have both become twisted and in parts bitter. We both imagine the reality of planet Earth as cruel and unavoidable. We paint an unforgiving view of the world in relation to everything inside and out of professional wrestling. We are a storm of damnation, and having seen the eye of the storm, our own beloved collapse and crumble, we owe this world no humility. We own only ourselves conviction and honesty. Your greatest honesty will finally be accepting that Isis Derrida is more than a mounted memory. Honour me as you honour your path. Where you’re going, you will need my embrace, you will need my thicker skin. Ryder Blade is no exception to my reasoning, that having found his true identity, his skin has grown with equal roughness and paranoia. His instincts are led by the masses, and cultivated through established conventions. His existence is Immaterial, and abusively predictable. His words lack elegance, and his persona lacks depths. When your eyes awake, and reality dawns, you must show Ryder no remorse, you must ensure that he remains where he belongs, in the shallow water.”

“Then extinguish him, or embrace him,” Isis says, knowing full well that he has come full circle with his thoughts. “Let me be the first to feel the sword reach out from the shield. Finally, Full Measures.” 

Instantaneously Val’s eyes open. Chris sat silently, consumed by grief, as the immobile and downed wrestler sits in silence until he is ready to talk. Humbled in his undoing.

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