Vendetta #1

A woeful regret.
A broken promise.
A meaningless vow.

Silence is not virtue, silence is weakness.

God, forgive me, for I am weak.

I brought to you, twice, the materialization of your beauty and your grace. The golden plates, the meticulous leather strap, the precious red gemstones adorning the PCW Prodigy Championship, the elegance of your design, the voracity of your creativity, you brought to life sheer perfection, your rays of light shining through a world clouded in abject darkness. I sought to restore the intentions of your creation of this world and for a time, I did. Proud as your soldier, your most loyal knight, I shed blood in your name, as your sacrament, the bodies in my wake were your consecration, and the PCW Prodigy Championship was your trophy, the holy grail upon which I let your light shine down on the world below from atop the mountains where I once sat.

I wonder now in hindsight if the fall from grace I experienced was mine, or was it yours. Was it my undying faith and devotion that made me hit the invisible wall to halt my progress in carrying out your vision? Was my reverence to you a limiter? Was your guiding hand upon my shoulder leading me to victory or hindering me from my true potential?

These questions that I began to ask myself as I fell from the heights I had once sat upon, as names like Maximus Steele, Nayati, and Damian Mordeau passed me by upon the pillars of the elite here in PCW, those questions are my weakness. Because it is not just a matter of if my devotion to my God was faltering, it became a matter of it my weakness was not a matter of a lack of faith, but because of an overreliance on faith.

What separated me from the men that went beyond me? As the landscape changed, as I went from being the big fish in a small pond as PCW Prodigy Champion to becoming a big fish in an ocean full of sharks, I had to genuinely ask myself that question. The answer, as much as it pained me, as much as I considered to be blasphemy, as much of a contradiction as it was to my faith, I had to realize that the answer was obvious, crystal clear in fact, a crystal so clear that it was not just the evidence of the truth apparent but also a prescient view into the dark future that awaited me, as a failure to my God, but more importantly, I came to realize… A failure to myself.

I did an exceptional job fighting for my God. As the 'Vidame', his warrior that would call down upon this accursed world the light of purity that would extinguish the dark shadows that plague my God's creation, I did a fine job. I carried out my mission to my fullest, I walked the path of bloodshed and brutality, sacrifices and offerings of pure virtue to my God, but along that path I lost track of something important.

Myself.

Now who am I? That's the better question. As the 'Vidame', I have purpose. Under the light of my God, I have meaning, protection, a reason to fight, a reason to live. I need not worry about who I am, why I fight, or who I am fighting for. I must merely carve out the scum of this world, bring light where there is darkness, a soldier, a drone, I need not think, nor question my orders, I must simply carry them out and execute them to perfection… But perfection was an ideal created by my God, not something that I could accomplish merely as a man.

Underneath the veneer of the 'Vidame' the cracks of the man below began to surface and rise up. Who is Mercadier de Leon? That is secondary to the title of 'Vidame' after all, is it not? That's what I thought, but perhaps I was wrong. I was fighting for my God when in reality it was Mercadier within that sought more power. Was it all just a veneer? Was that blood being shed for my God or was that just a front for the insatiable appetite of Mercadier underneath? The armor represents the nation a man fights for but his heart reveals where his home truly is.

Perhaps it wasn't just blind and utter devotion. Perhaps my commitment was not to my God but to a broken promise and a broken heart that only I could repair. Carrying out the duty that my Father walked away from. He walked away because he was weak. Now I am choosing to walk away because that foolish devotion makes me weak. You see, I disagree with my God. I don't think this world can be fixed. I don't think the light of my God can ever truly shine down upon this world. It's too far gone. The corruption has spread like a plague. It's a cancer, growing within the deepest roots of the tree of civilization that we live within. There is no incision that can be made. It is all or nothing. Complete and utter annihilation of the lifeforce of this world, this failed creation that can no longer be sustained or treated, a cure is not possible, it must be exterminated. Paying for my Father's mistakes is why I became a 'Vidame', serving a God that I disagreed with was me carrying out HIS penance, and now? Now there is one and only one option - I surpass my God, I shatter the glass ceiling that separates the Heavens above from this Hell that we live in below, I make my way back to the mountaintop, not carrying the flag of a God that no longer serves a purpose in this forgotten world, but with my shoulders free of all burdens, of all faith, devotion, and the chip on my shoulder that I once thought was the guiding hand of my God. I am free from it all, lighter than ever, no longer a soldier of light, but the bastion of fire. It is not light that shall shine down upon this world, it is ash and soot that shall rain from the sky as I burn down everything before me. There will no longer be sacrament for my God in the form of blood, merely the charred remains of any bastard that crosses my path. I have no God to look up to anymore, I will now look down upon the lepers and the impure and not try to shine that failed God's light down upon them, I shall cut them down with impunity and bring out my true self.

Mercadier.

That is God.

Mercadier.

I am my own God now.

I will not let the beast within me hide under any false pretenses anymore. The blood I shed is no longer a sacrament, it is a feast. The vows I have taken as the 'Vidame' are empty words now, a meaningless recitation that was merely a muzzle over the vow that I should have taken. A vow to repair my mother's broken heart as a result of my father's weakness and refusal to take even a single life in the name of her God, a God that I took on as my own, but truthfully, all she wanted was to watch the world burn so that her pain could find some meaning and reason in this chaotic and meaningless world. That's the funny thing about people, isn't it?

The pretenses. Hindrances and noncommittal ideation towards a lost cause. Why pretend?  Why pretend to be anything other than what you are? I am no longer the 'Vidame'. I am simply.

Mercadier.

If this decrepit, lost world cannot be saved by the light of some God…

Then it shall be cleansed and razed by the fires of vengeance.

A wife's mourning.
A mother's hope.
The son's promise.

And from that unholy trinity, the monster rises.

Mercadier.