Mark Ward once made a prediction when the vast entirety, or at least those with a conscience, became isolated in the Saxon Hotel to better protect both themselves as well as their peers alike. he stated that this would be the Year of the Flashback. Well, not to prove him right, but there was much left unsaid and untold since that last time that I had been seen. Since the last time I had a spoken word with the man I had tormented for months on end. Ben Jordan challenged me in a way that I had never been challenged. In a way that I can best describe as ... unexpected. After all, I had made this man's life quite literally a living Hell. Why then would he make even the slightest attempt to do for me even the slightest of cordiality?"
"Because, as my wife put it best, that is what Ben Jordan does. He is the angel to my devil, I suppose one might say. The yin to my yang. Equal yet opposite in every way. The man sat across from me and spoke to me as if I were simply another man to him, and not someone who attempted to end him. And perhaps what I found most surprising, a man that helped me. Perhaps not directly, but he did suggest I do what no other in the history of forever attempted to do."
"So I did."
The knife slid down the length of first one arm, and then the other, splitting open the tender flesh with utter precision. The blood came in small rivets, running down his skin and to the floor where he knelt in a circle of five black candles, each one at an equal point; their flickering light dancing off the walls of his private chamber. He wore no clothes, and as the blood reaches his hands, he used his fingers slick with crimson to trace the five pointed star surrounding his person as he sought allocution with the One he had struck an accord with so very long ago.
"That easy a thing to break a covenant with me, you think?"
"If there was anything I was taught before all of this, it is that anything worth doing is never easy."
"Ah yes, the words of Martha Cabot. Your High Priestess. Your adopted Grandmother. The woman..."
"The woman I sacrificed along with her Coven, yes. A regret I will take with me to my grave."
He pressed a thumb into the blood on his arm and used it to trace an archaic symbol against the center of his forehead, a crimson, inverted cross.
"And then...? Do you think your regret alone will allow you to ascend to heaven and dance with His angels? Do you think yourself forgiven for the sins you committed in the name of power?"
"I never said that, and I do not hold to such fancies. I know what crimes I have committed in life, and in death? I know where my soul will be."
"The very same place as it is now; in the palm of my hand."
"Yes, about that. All things considered, I think you will find yourself mistaken, and our contract to be null and void."
"Because of your failures with Ben Jordan? Of that much we will agree. But the rest? I'm afraid not. Your soul remains my own."
"You think this has anything to do with Ben Jordan and my business with him? I got the revenge that I wanted on his ancestor. The rest? You siccing me on Ben Jordan, using me as a weapon in order to claim his soul?"
"Yes, well... I admit a pure soul has so much more value here than one that was tainted long before."
"I never was one to claim purification in any walk in life, but this has nothing to do with him. Ben Jordan's soul remains his own, and mine? It is not in your possession as you seem to believe."
"Do go on, Kedron. I find these wisps of fanciful thoughts absolutely enthralling."
"Another holds the keys to my soul, and has for quite some time. The very one you tried to poison me into believing had betrayed me. My wife. When we were wed, I pledged my heart and soul into her care -- and you allowed for it to happen. The very moment you did, my being became hers, and when she returned my heart to me, my soul became my own."
"Is that what you think?"
"That is what I know."
"And if I should decide to take it back by force?"
"I happen to know that is an impossibility for you. It is, after all, the entire point behind your Faustian deals. I just happen to know that there is a loophole, and the moment I was joined in matrimony, I exploited it."
"Now Kedron, what makes you think that it is your soul that I was referring to? I was speaking of something you hold far dearer than that. I mean the power I loaned you."
Kedron was unable to help himself. He laughed. He threw his head back and simply laughed.
"Do you honestly think that I still need that? I never needed what you traded! Before you, before any of this, I had power of my own! Those I had surrounded myself with, those I actually trusted..."
"Those that you betrayed."
"Yes, we've been through that already. I'm beyond that now, for the most part. But they themselves said they had yet to see a warlock with the gifts that I already possessed. What you gifted me with? It was just an insurance policy. And every insurance policy has an escape clause."
"And you think to exploit it, and break our deal, do you?"
"I already have. I had not felt anything in literally hundreds of years! The moment Ben Jordan caused me to feel remorse for my Coven's deaths, I knew I was whole once more. And your grip over me a thing of the past."
"But was it? It was something that had been preying on my mind even before I performed this ceremony to contact the Pale One, once I had realized the conspiracy between Rinoa and Benjamin for my benefit. I got my answer in the most simple of ways the very next morning, when I was awoken where I had blacked out following my bravado with one that could have ended me where I knelt there and then."
It was as if Kedron had simply fallen asleep, and now woke with a weight on his bare chest, feeling as if he were being watched. Before he had first opened his eyes, he would have believed himself simply in bed, were it not for the hard, cold floor beneath his body. He would have thought it was his wife watching him sleep, yet he felt more than one pair of eyes on him.
Hm, curious.
Yet when he opened his eyes, he got his answer, and all became clear. His beautiful wife's three babies, the felines who normally hissed and ran whenever he entered a room, who swiped and clawed at him if he ever extended a hand to stroke their fur or tickle their chin, were right there with him in this otherwise cold, empty room. The matriarch of their little family, Cleopatra, was nestled in a curled ball just below his sternum, her eyes pinpointed to his own as they slowly opened.
One questioned answered.
The other two, Achilles and Isis, sat on their haunches, watching him with renewed interest rather than the familiar loathing and fear he had become accustomed to where his wife's precious babies were concerned. None of the three purred in his presence like they did whenever Rinoa was in the room. Small steps.
With no small amount of vacillation, Kedron lifted his hand and extended it toward Cleopatra, and she did not so much as flinch or growl when he ran his fingers down her silken skin...
Kedron Williams: Do they ever stop this?
Kedron asked his wife from their Victorian estate in Salem, Massachusetts. And before anyone has a bug crawl up their backsides, this particular piece took place just after Mark Ward made his announcement as to the precautions the rosters would be expected to undertake to ensure the safety of themselves as well as those around them.
Rinoa turned around from the kitchen counter where she was pouring a cup of tea, and it was a rare sight for her lips to part in such a brilliant smile at the sight before her. Kedron had walked into the kitchen to fetch a cup of tea for himself, and at his feet trailed all three of her babies, the Sphynx felines, their eyes trailing up at their 'daddy' and all three mewling to him for attention.
Rinoa Williams: Don't complain. You wanted for the longest of time for them to stop swiping at you and treat you as they did me.
She was unable to hide her smile as she passed Kedron a cup for himself as he took a sip of the scalding black tea, plain.
Kedron Williams: I would hardly say that I wanted this, and you didn't answer my question. Do they ever stop?
Rinoa nodded.
Rinoa Williams: They will -- eventually. ... Just as soon as you give them what they want.
Kedron rolled his eyes and turned to take a seat at the kitchen table, almost tripping over the three bodies that bobbed and weaved through his legs as his personal escort. No sooner did he take a seat than Cleopatra leapt up onto his lap while the other two climbed onto the table's surface to be closer to him, much to his faux annoyance. Rinoa's demeanor was never changing as she strode around the table to have a seat near Kedron, but he could tell she was loving every moment of his discomfort with the three other residents of their home.
His ice blue eyes fell to the contract that had arrived certified from "Hot Stuff" Mark Ward, laying on the table and beneath the butt of Achilles.
Kedron Williams: They can not be serious about this. Isolating ourselves inside of a hotel when you and I have this estate to call our own?
Rinoa Williams: Darling, you know as well as I that it's a precaution against this Corona virus.
Kedron scoffed, but before he could say a thing to the contrary, Rinoa spoke up over him.
Rinoa Williams: And you know as well as I that just because you and I are immune to this disease, does not mean those around us are.
Kedron simply stared at his wife for several seconds, his comprehension to her words completely lost to him, until it clicked and he started.
Kedron Williams: Oh, this is one of those 'human emotion' things you've told me about, isn't it?
Rinoa stood up from her chair and walked around gracefully to his side and leaned in for a kiss, laying the palm of her hand on his cheek.
Rinoa Williams: Something like that.
The skyline of the Las Vegas night was as much as what one would expect, with only one subtle difference; the lack of people. Under normal circumstances, the Vegas Strip would be crawling with people -- both tourists and locals -- numbering in the thousands. These days, because of the grim reality of the COVID-19, not so much. The Casinos have been closed down, as has the hotels and resorts. As a result, the famed Strip had become virtually a ghost town.
However, the famed lights would remain. And they were visible by perhaps the only hotel that had been booked at full capacity thanks to the efforts of its proprietor, Henry Saxon and his daughter Brooke, the General Manager of Sin City Wrestling. And it was a face that had not been seen in many months that was now at the forefront of the evening, for this promo at the very least. The distant, Vegas Strip lights danced off of his pale skin, and his cobalt-blue eyes shifted in many directions, taking it all in. All of the -- nothingness.
Kedron Williams stood atop of the Saxon Hotel, on the rooftop bar where many stars of SCW, SCU and GRIME at some point had spent some time to stave off the boredom of their isolations. He stood at the bar's highest point, atop of a stairwell platform with its own mini-bar and tables, all alone. His knuckles, adorned with bejeweled rings, gripped the rail as he stood upright, taking it all in.
Kedron Williams: I can honestly say that after my final encounter, I had little to no interest in ever setting foot inside of a wrestling ring ever again. I had tried, and failed, to do in a man I had considered to be my mortal enemy, and for what? Crimes that someone he had never met, a distant ancestor of his, had committed against my own and others like me; both guilty and innocent.
He took a deep breath and his posture was anything but relaxed.
Kedron Williams: I was wrong, and that is not a statement that I make lightly. And...
He brought up a hand, his forefinger extended in focused concentration.
Kedron Williams: I have both Ben Jordan as well as my beloved wife to thank for such -- revelations. Co-conspirators, I suppose one might think of them as, but not to such a point I begrudge either of them.
He paused, his eyes downcast as his mind lay dormant in thought.
Kedron Williams: And yet now here I am, back in the thick of things in SCW. Booked against two men with high stakes for a championship match. Caleb Storms. Stephen Callaway. One a young man still in his rookie years, and the other a so-called ring veteran who is still living vicariously through his own glory days. Of which are long since past.
Do you know what the greatest mistake that you two are making going into this match? And this goes out to not just Stephen Callaway, but Caleb Storms as well? That you are dealing with the same Kedron Williams now that you did way back when. There is something different about me, body and soul - literally - yet you have it stuck inside of your sad, feeble little minds that because you defeated me in the past, that it means you can do so once again. Yet you do not ask yourself if this difference in me will carry over to the ring, and what I am capable of inside.
Kedron shook his head and smiled, baring those white teeth of his and giving the briefest of glimpses of what would appear to be either his incisor, or -- a fang?
Kedron Williams: I swear, the conceit of humans has never ceased to amaze me, and that is one sad, little fact that has not changed over the course of many a century. Is it then any wonder why I have held such contempt for people when Stephen and Caleb are but mere examples of what passes for humanity walking this earth? Well gentlemen, let me fill you in one hard, cold truth.
Kedron slipped his fingers around the stem of the crystal goblet filled with a wine of such a deep, rich red that it almost appeared black in color. As the fingers of his free hand glided down the rail, Kedron took one step at a time, his face calm -- passive. And as any, including Rinoa Williams and Ben Jordan might testify, that would be when he was at his most dangerous mentally.
Kedron Williams: The simple fact that I am whole once again, should not be an indication that I am entirely changed. As my wife would tell others, I am something 'colorful' where personality is concerned. I am neither good nor evil. I simply am. If anything, my being whole has made me stronger than I was before. After all, what man can be at his best physically when a piece of him is missing?
Kedron arrived at the bottom of the steps and calmly walked across the roof's surface to where a plush love seat was set near the edge and he had a seat, leaning back and relaxing.
Kedron Williams: I suppose the both of you thought that perhaps you struck pay dirt when my name was announced as the third in our match. And while it is true that you both hold victories over me, I hold wins over men who neither one of you would have a hope in defeating. Ben Jordan, the World Champion. Jake Raab, the very man who will soon be challenging Mister Jordan for the World Heavyweight Championship. I hold wins over both, and if I was able to accomplish that at my worst, I want you both to take this small amount of time to contemplate what I will be capable of at my best.
Kedron's eyes glanced down to the coffee table before the love seat, with three pillar candles set on the surface of a silver tray for mood lighting. The candles came to life, and his eyes stared into the cold flames.
Kedron Williams: The human mind is incapable of full comprehension of the world around it, and the both of you are a visual aid to this fact. So please, do go on with all of your false bravado based on something that you accomplished in the past at my expense. The two of you have had all the time in the world to better prepare yourselves, yet all you do is rely on the past. Stephen Callaway, for everything he had done everywhere but here in SCW. And Caleb Storms, for the rare few times he had held some form of gold around his waist and that ever elusive victory here and there. Well Brava, I say!
Kedron lifted his glass, raising a toast beneath the Vegas sky and had a slow drink of its contents.
Kedron Williams: I'll be seeing you both very soon.
