Post by Cartier on Mar 29, 2021 22:33:53 GMT -5
Sunday, March 28
The night air is black, a sheet of darkness punctuated by thousands of pinpoint stars, locked in their spectatorship like members of a captive audience. The moon, a massive disc, full like a pregnant belly, hangs in the spot of the guest of honor.
Somewhere on the Earth below, as one might descend from the heavens, the sound of primal, tribal drum beats would grow in pace and intensity the closer one came towards meeting the ground.
A fire, healthy and hot, a maw of embers and disintegrating wooden teeth, gapes from the cold Spring ground. The climbing flames, pulsing like a lung, belch smoke and sparks that rise up into the night like fireflies escaping a nest.
There, dancing barefoot in the soil, is Cartier. The Revo1 Legacy Champion, alone in the night, swivels her hips and stomps her feet in perfect time with the beats of the drum.
Cartier swings her hands out from her hip, gripping her long skirts as she moves her foot over the flames, then dragging her ringed toes through the dirt and kicking it into the air. She brings her sole down in a heavy step and hangs her head as the drums cease. She walks slowly to the side of the fire pit then, to where a small portable radio sits on a stump. She clicks button on the top, opening a small door on the face of the radio where an audio tape sits.
“Bet it’s been a while since you seen one of them, huh? Sometimes the old ways is just the easiest, though. Like the way the Zulu would dance to war drums before going off to battle… get the blood pumping, stomp the ground to tell the dead there was gonna be more joinin’ ‘em soon… move your body like the spirits move through you… for war… war IS like a dance. We push our bodies to the limit, to the point of exhaustion, because to stop movin’ is to DIE.”
Cartier pulls the audio tape from the player, flipping it around and setting the second side into the tray.
“The Zulu was one of the fiercest peoples of all times. Not because they had the biggest numbers or the strongest men or the newest weaponry, but because they used their surroundings. They knew their land an’ they knew each other in a way that was untouchable. That’s what the music did. It’s what the rhythm of hundreds of war drums beat into their minds. It’s what thousands of hours of practice, moving their arms an’ legs in perfect angles, working their skin into shining sweats, using every drop of air in their lungs… the Zulu, from head to toe, were the perfect evolution of man for warfare. What the white men of Europe did with gunpowder, armor, an’ steel, the Zulu did barefoot with animal skins stretched across bone. To attack a Zulu on his home turf was suicide.”
Walking in a slight circle in front of the radio, arcing back toward the flames, Cartier’s body throws a long shadow onto the ground. Her movements create the illusion of a sundial, her shadow like the hands of a clock, winding down time.
“See Khaos… back in Rome, the Idea was when their god-king was deposed. Killed by his own men for growing too strong. Politics was the game. No one trusted no one, because sons was killin’ they own fathers just to get a sniff of the crown. But in Africa? Among the Zulu? They stayed strong. They ran the continent by bein’ one - one made of millions, but bleedin’ the same blood, breathin’ the same fire, an’ dancin’ the same dance to the same drums. For generation after generation after generation, the story was always the same. To the North, empires was built an’ fell within a year sometimes. The Athenians an’ the Spartans an’ the Romans an’ the Carthaginians an’ the Persians… all constantly conquering one another. Destroying one another. An’ for what? Not to build a stronger unity, a stronger country, but for the few heads of state to claim more an’ more riches, more an’ more power… but in the land of the Zulu, there was no such problem. Because none of those men who had so much lust an’ greed for richness would ever dare set foot in the Zulu Kingdom. To do so, whether your name was Caesar, Xerxes, Cyrus, Mago, or even Alexander the Great… would mean failure, famine, an’ death.”
She lowers herself, kneeling, and pulls a handful of dried twigs and leaves into her hand. When she stands, she throws her arm forward in an underhand movement, tossing the dead foliage into the fire, which leaps up to hungrily devour the offering. Within moments, nothing remains.
“Khaos, what you should have learned on the inaugural episode of Legacy was simple - if you set your foot in my empire, you best be prepared to die. When you came into Legacy, you had an element of an advantage. You was a unknown. You was in a position of power. I knew, as a champion, that my title was not on the line. I did not have to fight as if my life depended on it, because at the end of the day, win or lose, I was going home Legacy Royalty. You? You had somethin’ to prove, boy. You had to make a statement. You wanted to roll up into another turf, an’ take a shot at the top of the top. When you do that, K? When you walk into someone else’s domain an’ try to take what belongs to them? If you get them in your crosshairs for even a second, Khaos, you got to be quick to drop the hammer. You got to take the shot when the shot presents itself. You got to align the beating of your heart with the beating of a war drum, marching you to battle, and squeeze that trigger an’ you can’t hesitate for even a single breath. Because when you get a shot at someone who moves thousands of men into war, sends thousands of ships into battle, someone who topples walls an’ puts would-be emperors in chains? When you get a shot at someone who holds the world in they hands that way, you absolutely cannot miss.”
Cartier continues to circle the pit of flames, her shadow racing away in every direction as she walks slowly in a hypnotic spiral. From time to time she repeats the process of leaning forward to retrieve some desiccated grass or fragile branches, then tossing them into the fire. She feeds the flames as if throwing blood to a pack of wolves, allowing the heat of time to erase the sacrifices from existence.
“Khaos… you came into my house on Legacy. My debut as the very first, the very best, the only an’ forever Legacy Champion, you came to me an’ you hesitated. You got in my face an’ you blinked. You held your breath for too long, an’ by the time you found the surface of the water you was gettin’ buried underneath the waves. You had all the opportunity one could ask for, all the momentum you should need. You had the advantage. You had the tape on me, whereas I had relatively little to go on from you. You were bigger. You were stronger. Wit’ SO MUCH to prove in that ring, tell me, how was you not hungrier? You should have been STARVED. You should have had one single, solitary goal in your life when you walked down that aisle… but where was that focus instead? Because ut sure as Hell wasn’t on the opportunity you was receivin’ that night. Not a word of Cartier escaped your lips. Not a mention of the champion you were set to meet. The woman yet to be defeated in true singles combat. The woman leading the charge an’ raisin’ the banner of the Legacy brand for all the world to see. Somehow, that was nowhere near your mind as the clock ticked its minutes an’ hours, as the days got cross off your calendar until it was time to step between the ropes an’ SHOW UP. You couldn’t do it. You… couldn’t… do it.”
Her voice quiets as she inches closer to the twisting flames. She stands near enough that her skirts are nearly blown into the pit with even the slightest gusts of wind. Cartier holds her hand out over the highest of the flames, practically petting it as if she were running her fingers through the mane of a wild stallion.
“When all is said an’ done, when history turns her unblinking eyes onto Revo1, they’ll see a beautiful black champion, skin of ebony, turning away yet another unprepared challenge. They’ll see Khaos, a man who impresses in bursts, but disappointing as a matter of course. They’ll see a man who had a chance to make a statement… and who failed.”
She turns away then, pulling her hand from above the fire and resuming her slow, methodical march around the pit of fire. The long shadow thrown from her form like a hand drifting across a clock’s face counts the seconds as she continues her purposeful walk.
“If you had the blood of a champion inside of you, Khaos, you would have struck when the iron was hot an’ won that match on the first ever Legacy. You would have made that statement when it was possible for you to do such a thing. But now? Now you’ve already shown that when the competition is stiff, you crumble. When the lights are too bright, you melt. An’ you think you’re going to beat me? After you already failed to do so when it was a much easier opportunity? When I had no reason to risk it all in defense of my own legacy? You think that after you were barely able to break even with me, that you are in any way shape or form prepared to lead a kingdom? Child… you already lost. You already missed the mark. You walked into a fire an’ asked the flames if they was impressed… an’ the answer was no.”
She says this while behind the fire, her glowing eyes peering through flames lapping at the air like tongues. They they stab at the night and jump like dancing moon worshippers as she once again empties a handful of detritus into their famished, bottomless hunger.
“Now, of course, even though you weren’t able to beat me on Legacy you were still given a second chance on a silver platter, weren’t you? An’ maybe the powers that be in Revo think you’ve still got what it takes. But they haven’t looked into your eyes the way I have, have they? They haven’t seen you wince in pain, or suck a gasp of pain between your teeth. They haven’t felt when your heartbeat rushes into a panic, or the way your breath gets quick an’ shallow. I have. I’ve felt you at your strongest Khaos, an’ I’ve sent you away. Only two weeks ago, in Indianapolis, you was handed a chance to enter a pantheon… an’ you ended the night still a mortal man. A man outnumbered by the spirits of a million nations.”
Cartier turns her focus back toward the little radio. She makes her way toward it once more, leaving the corona of light thrown by the fire pit and momentarily vanishing into the black. Even on a night with a full moon, the shadows are legion. They fall like curtains and hide the world a mere few feet away from the brightest of lights.
“After the Ides, when I’ve shown you what it takes to be a champion, perhaps you can go home to your tribe an’ carry that lesson with you. In time, you may grow into a stronger warrior an’ even become a champion in your on right. But the night of the Ides belongs to me. You have nothing that you didn’t have two weeks ago, Khaos. You are no better now than you were that night. But me? At the Ides, I will be forced to either win, or to die. I will not have the option of bringing my legacy home with me whether or not I rise to the occasion, which would have been the case on Legacy… no, Khaos, whereas I am facing the same man that I have already deflected once, you are walking into the cave of a completely different lioness… and this one has her teeth bared for a life an’ death struggle. One you simply do not have the wherewithal to survive.”
She puts her finger on the plastic button, not quite pressing it down just yet. Instead, she stands in silence and watches as errant embers float through the darkness just past her. Tiny remnants of some living thing or another, consumed by the insatiable furnace of time. With a long breath out through her nostrils, she presses down the button, hitting play, and seconds later the deep thudding sounds of drums are once more filling the empty night.
Her hips sway, and her eyes close. She begins once again to dance to the rhythm of the beating drums, kicking up dirt and cutting the night with her knees and elbows like daggers.
“Take this lesson back with you, Khaos. Learn from the battle you lose at the Ides. To prepare for an enemy, to RESPECT an enemy, is impossible if you can’t even bring yourself to allow that enemy to cross your mind. You refused to speak my name leading up to Legacy. You refused to acknowledge this brand, this company, this business we both occupy… an’ as a result, those things chewed you up an’ spit you out. We watched while you had to be dragged practically kickin’ an’ screamin’ into an interview chair in some unofficial capacity. We saw how it pained you to even speak my name then, while you laughably tried to pretend your failures were some sort of clandestine setup to get my guard down. But child, my guard is never down when my legacy is on the line. Now… will we see an acknowledgement of those facts here as we move into the Ides? Because yes, Khaos, the Ides are indeed upon us. Will you remember my name when it counts? Will you have absorbed the wisdom of your failure or will you instead see ‘almost’ as ‘good enough?’ Unfortunately for you, Khaos, you’ve left me with no expectation for that to be the case. You’ve left me with the impression that you find yourself ENTITLED to what belongs to me… and you, again, are very, very wrong.”
Cartier’s feet kick away at the Earth. She sends sheets of dust and rock into the fire, burying the light with the smothering avalanche of cold, dead dirt. The flames flicker and begin to lower, dying as she chokes them down.
“When the bell rings at the end of the night at the Ides, when the flames reach for you from below, to rip your skin from your bones and melt the hairs from your head, will you have the strength to stand tall? Or will you fall to your knees at the feet of your suffering? Will you beg time to spare you? Will you raise your arms over your head and reach for the heavens to save you? Will you allow yourself to be lifted up? Are you, like me, going to wield the flames of time and history as a weapon? Grow into a champion of fire, as is my true Legacy?”
She smiles, barely visible in nearly nothing more than naked moonlight as the fire is nearly completely snuffed out. A few small flames still fight to free themselves from underneath the dirt as the orange glow in the center of the pit wanes.
“No… no, Khaos, I’ve been through centuries, I’ve been on both ends of the spear, and I’ve seen the eyes of conquerors as well as the eyes of the conquered. You, Khaos, do not have the mettle to withstand the heat of destiny. You will feed the flames like so many dried and twisted twigs. Because your legacy could not be more different from my own. You, your legacy, Khaos… is ash.”
Cartier kicks the sandy Earth into the pit once more, a massive deluge of dirt that blankets the pit where the large fire once roared, killing the last of the dying tongues. Cartier’s face, now bathed in shadow, turns upward to the sky as she watches the last dying breath of smoke float upwards into the heavenly firmament, twisting up into the stars until no trace remains.
Somewhere down below, the drum beats continue. The march to war unfulfilled.