- Messages
- 44
- Points
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O R I S O N
0 1 9 . 0 1 3 . 0 1 / / D Y N A S T Y
From the deeps below and betwixt dreaming, it arises to claim you: a black hand of force and darkness, vast of palm and many of finger, the barest expression of its strength enough to dwarf the sum totality of all you've ever known. You are as a dandelion seed in its grasp, flitting and fluttering as digits like the very pillars of eternity curl and close around you, and it is with an effortless, otherworldly celerity that you are hauled down into the abyssal chasm separating the hemispheres of your own brain.
Your descent slows, as do all such plunges into waters dark and deep, and as you adrift amid sable, subsurface tides there comes a creeping sensation of presence, of unaloneness. The owner of the black hand draws near, a vast and cyclopean thing whose size and shape suggest nothing your mind can name, and upon the rippling murk there comes a soft, soundless whisper, its every utterance a silken caress upon the surface of your mind.
Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy... just kidding. Honestly, can you imagine?
... hm. Why do I get the impression that your answer differs from the answer?
...
I digress. Might be a new personal best for me, how 'bout that.
...
Hello, Drake. How are you?
Well, I hope. You'll need to be.
First and foremost: an apology, one I hope (but am not so foolish as to expect) you'll accept, for the conditions and circumstances of this little rendezvous. With all due respect to the brand and bit you have, no doubt, carefully curated over the years, it's best we get this particular peeve of mine out in the open early: I don't deal with secretaries.
Far better we hold palaver in this manner, at this depth — just the two of us, without audience or intermediary. It's better this way, I think. Cozier.
...
I must admit, Drake, that when I first caught sight of this week's Dynasty card — when I first saw our names, yours and mine, opposite one another — I found myself beset by something like a loss for words. Three weeks, three shows — Dynasty, House of Glass, and now Dynasty again — and three opponents therein, each possessed of singular and inimitable esteem.
Rex McAllister. The Lionheart. The Hall-of-Famer.
Limmy Monaghan. The Ace — or Ace Eternal, if you prefer, though I will be taking full and unqualified artistic credit for that little epithetical wrinkle.
And lo, thereafter cometh the Lord: your own insipid self, in fine and in full. Drake King. The Prophet, the Messiah, God with a capital Gee-Oh-Dee, and BRAE's table scraps to boot.
To what, I can't help but wonder, do I owe such an embarrassment of riches? So hale and hearty a gauntlet of such lofty, lauded opponents — a true who's who of the best Dynasty, and indeed Elite Answers Wrestling as a whole, has to offer — unrolled at my feet for no apparent reason save my own indulgence, and with nary a glimmer of that garish fool's gold your ilk chases to tarnish the affair. I ask again: to whom do I address the thank-you note?
... that was my initial reaction, anyway. But then I thought about it.
I thought about Rex. About how when he and I first crossed paths, some nine years ago, I laid the ambitions of his early career well-and-truly to rest: first, by beating him in my return match, thereby earning a spot in his then-upcoming defense of the promotion in question's top championship title; and second, by at once taking said title and breaking his neck in the span of said defense. Poor guy had to take flight to recover. Had to retreat to this inane little atoll, one of the less-interesting little backwaters I've encountered upon the high seas of wrestling, just to rehabilitate his sign and signifier and self. I'll admit to a degree of optimism, even excitement, at seeing his name so indelibly etched into the weft of this place upon my arrival; a measure of hope that he might've grown, might've changed, might've ascended beyond the man I battled and so thoroughly bested once upon a time... but alas, I confess, our reunion in the ring left me wanting. Seems the wounds I left him with are not so easily mended — next time, maybe.
Thought about Limmy, too. About what a frustrating, petulant little project he's become. Twice now, I've had the flimsy pleasure of facing him in the ring, and twice I've exited the ropes unfulfilled. We were so close to a breakthrough at House of Glass, he and I. So unbelievably, impossibly fucking close. But when the moment of truth came — when he stood over me, sledgehammer in hand, the weight of worlds beyond his reckoning or yours or any other's hung helpless in the balance — he just didn't have it in him. Poor guy. Such aspiration, such ambition, but when push came to shove he proved nothing if not unequal to his own self-aggrandizement.
Your dolled-up little concubine saw fit, in her recent diatribe, to ask me what it is I want out of this place. Whether she did so of her own volition or as a function of you directing from off-camera, I neither know nor care to guess, but credit to her all the same; while not quite on the right track, she cleaves far closer to it than most.
In lieu of the answer entire, which is more than either of you are ready to hear at this point, all I'll say is this: there is no version of Limmy Monaghan, not in an infinity of infinities, who fails to bring the hammer down and remains worthy of my time or effort or attention.
oH bUt DaVe hE BeaT yOU iN tHe — shut up. Shut the fuck up, you insufferable, simpering little —
...
I thought about you too, Drake. And it was in thinking about you, moreso than either of the aforementioned two, that my opinion of my circumstances turned sour.
Do you know how long it's been since I signed with Elite Answers Wrestling? I'm not speaking in generalities here — can you, Drakoby Shaddix King, recall with perfect crystalline clarity when it was I first set foot upon this iniquitous, ignoble little islet?
...
I put pen to paper on the thirty-first of March, two-thousand twenty-five. Couple weeks went by before I was first booked — how it took 'em so long to land on DGS v. Clayton Golde, I'll never know — but I did not spend the days theretofore idle. Refamiliarized myself with those of you whose names I'd heard before, got acquainted with those I hadn't, and decided to cap off the aforementioned crash course by taking a good look at the lot of you in person. I say again, that I do not speak in generalities: when I say the lot of you, I mean it.
Do you understand?
Grand Rampage, Drake. I was there. Lower bowl.
I saw it. Saw you. And I'll say it plain, Drake — in seeing you triumph there and then, forcibly rendering yourself superordinate and superior over so vast a swathe of your contemporary competition, some small part of me ordained you as a fixed star in my firmament, a glimmer in my eye to outshine all others. Forget champions and their challengers. Forget Aces, and Legends, and Hall-of-Famers. Forget, for a moment, even the trite and tiresome divinity you seek to mantle.
You were the winner. The winner. The foe to face, the man to beat, the eventual and inevitable apex of the climb I set out upon some six months ago. And if I knew then what I know now — if you'd told me in mid-April that we'd be squaring off on the first of November, that a mere six months and change stood between me and what I perceived to be the single most towering challenge Elite Answers Wrestling had to offer me, then... well.
Suffice to say, I'd have taken a moment to temper my expectations.
...
What? Don't tell me you're surprised.
Grand Rampage was there and then. You and I, Drake King, hold pre-strife palaver here and now. And man, oh man, has the shine ever come off.
A loss to Joso, thereby granting him entry to the main event at Pain for Pride.
Another to Cy at the big dance itself, rendering your grandest of rampages redundant.
Mike Machina at Reckless Wiring.
Team Voltage at Territorial Invasion.
Fucking BRAE at House of Glass.
...
What conclusion's a guy to arrive at, bearing witness to such consistent inconsistency, aside from the very best you have to offer being a fluke?
I know, I know — God with a capital Gee-Oh-Dee. Put in less than a third of the linear time I have, did something real big and special back in twenty-twenty-three, already enshrined for eternity in the absolute utmost echelons of the pro wrestling empyrean despite an overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary... you forget, I've just come out the far side of a second go 'round with Limmy. I've heard all this before.
You two are a lot alike, you know. Just not in ways either of you are likely to take very kindly to.
Case in point: you, Drake King — like Limmy Monaghan, like Rex McAllister, and like a great many before and still to come — are no good to me defeated. Not here, not now.
Not yet.
Thus do I give out pinfalls and eliminations like Halloween candy: in the hope, however fleeting, that you kids are able fatten yourselves up a bit by my efforts. Gotta get some meat on your bones — no farmer worth his salt butchers the gaunt and emaciated among his herd, after all. I'd give just about anything for a chance to square off against the Drake King who won at Grand Rampage, just as I'd give anything for a chance to face the Limmy Monaghan who first inherited the mantle of the Ace, or the Rex McAllister who fought and forged a place for himself in EAW's Hall of Fame. And if downing me for three on Dynasty helps you — any of you, all of you — on your way back there again? Fuels your return to those high and hallowed spaces?
Then sit down, square up, and dig right the fuck in.
This is the prayer I offer you, Drake. My orison unto God, down here in the dark. Eat of this bread. Drink of this cup. Take this offering, this sacrament of flesh and blood and bone. Let it nourish you. Hone you. Make you sharp.
Hell, let it make you like Michael Machina. He alone seems to have taken the hint, to have gotten the message I tried to impart, and wouldn't you know it? Guy couldn't make it more than the gap between two of EAW's Big Four before finding himself back to the top. My star pupil, truly.
All that's just food for thought, though. Don't dwell on it.
If anything, dwell on this: what I want from EAW, Drake, only you can provide. You and all your kind, incapable though you are of it at present. I don't expect I'll attain what I'm after at this week's Dynasty, or at any Dynasty for the foreseeable future... but that's not the point. Never has been, never will be.
Despite popular belief, Drake, I deal in journeys. Not destinations. And I look forward, in a way neither god nor king could ever imagine, to walking for a while at your side.
Be seeing you.
Thus are you released, relinquished back up to the bright bastions of dreaming, possessed of no more on ascent than you had upon descent save a hopeful prayer from the deep, a sable sacrament from below.
An orison from the dark.
Your descent slows, as do all such plunges into waters dark and deep, and as you adrift amid sable, subsurface tides there comes a creeping sensation of presence, of unaloneness. The owner of the black hand draws near, a vast and cyclopean thing whose size and shape suggest nothing your mind can name, and upon the rippling murk there comes a soft, soundless whisper, its every utterance a silken caress upon the surface of your mind.
Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy... just kidding. Honestly, can you imagine?
... hm. Why do I get the impression that your answer differs from the answer?
...
I digress. Might be a new personal best for me, how 'bout that.
...
Hello, Drake. How are you?
Well, I hope. You'll need to be.
First and foremost: an apology, one I hope (but am not so foolish as to expect) you'll accept, for the conditions and circumstances of this little rendezvous. With all due respect to the brand and bit you have, no doubt, carefully curated over the years, it's best we get this particular peeve of mine out in the open early: I don't deal with secretaries.
Far better we hold palaver in this manner, at this depth — just the two of us, without audience or intermediary. It's better this way, I think. Cozier.
...
I must admit, Drake, that when I first caught sight of this week's Dynasty card — when I first saw our names, yours and mine, opposite one another — I found myself beset by something like a loss for words. Three weeks, three shows — Dynasty, House of Glass, and now Dynasty again — and three opponents therein, each possessed of singular and inimitable esteem.
Rex McAllister. The Lionheart. The Hall-of-Famer.
Limmy Monaghan. The Ace — or Ace Eternal, if you prefer, though I will be taking full and unqualified artistic credit for that little epithetical wrinkle.
And lo, thereafter cometh the Lord: your own insipid self, in fine and in full. Drake King. The Prophet, the Messiah, God with a capital Gee-Oh-Dee, and BRAE's table scraps to boot.
To what, I can't help but wonder, do I owe such an embarrassment of riches? So hale and hearty a gauntlet of such lofty, lauded opponents — a true who's who of the best Dynasty, and indeed Elite Answers Wrestling as a whole, has to offer — unrolled at my feet for no apparent reason save my own indulgence, and with nary a glimmer of that garish fool's gold your ilk chases to tarnish the affair. I ask again: to whom do I address the thank-you note?
... that was my initial reaction, anyway. But then I thought about it.
I thought about Rex. About how when he and I first crossed paths, some nine years ago, I laid the ambitions of his early career well-and-truly to rest: first, by beating him in my return match, thereby earning a spot in his then-upcoming defense of the promotion in question's top championship title; and second, by at once taking said title and breaking his neck in the span of said defense. Poor guy had to take flight to recover. Had to retreat to this inane little atoll, one of the less-interesting little backwaters I've encountered upon the high seas of wrestling, just to rehabilitate his sign and signifier and self. I'll admit to a degree of optimism, even excitement, at seeing his name so indelibly etched into the weft of this place upon my arrival; a measure of hope that he might've grown, might've changed, might've ascended beyond the man I battled and so thoroughly bested once upon a time... but alas, I confess, our reunion in the ring left me wanting. Seems the wounds I left him with are not so easily mended — next time, maybe.
Thought about Limmy, too. About what a frustrating, petulant little project he's become. Twice now, I've had the flimsy pleasure of facing him in the ring, and twice I've exited the ropes unfulfilled. We were so close to a breakthrough at House of Glass, he and I. So unbelievably, impossibly fucking close. But when the moment of truth came — when he stood over me, sledgehammer in hand, the weight of worlds beyond his reckoning or yours or any other's hung helpless in the balance — he just didn't have it in him. Poor guy. Such aspiration, such ambition, but when push came to shove he proved nothing if not unequal to his own self-aggrandizement.
Your dolled-up little concubine saw fit, in her recent diatribe, to ask me what it is I want out of this place. Whether she did so of her own volition or as a function of you directing from off-camera, I neither know nor care to guess, but credit to her all the same; while not quite on the right track, she cleaves far closer to it than most.
In lieu of the answer entire, which is more than either of you are ready to hear at this point, all I'll say is this: there is no version of Limmy Monaghan, not in an infinity of infinities, who fails to bring the hammer down and remains worthy of my time or effort or attention.
oH bUt DaVe hE BeaT yOU iN tHe — shut up. Shut the fuck up, you insufferable, simpering little —
...
I thought about you too, Drake. And it was in thinking about you, moreso than either of the aforementioned two, that my opinion of my circumstances turned sour.
Do you know how long it's been since I signed with Elite Answers Wrestling? I'm not speaking in generalities here — can you, Drakoby Shaddix King, recall with perfect crystalline clarity when it was I first set foot upon this iniquitous, ignoble little islet?
...
I put pen to paper on the thirty-first of March, two-thousand twenty-five. Couple weeks went by before I was first booked — how it took 'em so long to land on DGS v. Clayton Golde, I'll never know — but I did not spend the days theretofore idle. Refamiliarized myself with those of you whose names I'd heard before, got acquainted with those I hadn't, and decided to cap off the aforementioned crash course by taking a good look at the lot of you in person. I say again, that I do not speak in generalities: when I say the lot of you, I mean it.
Do you understand?
Grand Rampage, Drake. I was there. Lower bowl.
I saw it. Saw you. And I'll say it plain, Drake — in seeing you triumph there and then, forcibly rendering yourself superordinate and superior over so vast a swathe of your contemporary competition, some small part of me ordained you as a fixed star in my firmament, a glimmer in my eye to outshine all others. Forget champions and their challengers. Forget Aces, and Legends, and Hall-of-Famers. Forget, for a moment, even the trite and tiresome divinity you seek to mantle.
You were the winner. The winner. The foe to face, the man to beat, the eventual and inevitable apex of the climb I set out upon some six months ago. And if I knew then what I know now — if you'd told me in mid-April that we'd be squaring off on the first of November, that a mere six months and change stood between me and what I perceived to be the single most towering challenge Elite Answers Wrestling had to offer me, then... well.
Suffice to say, I'd have taken a moment to temper my expectations.
...
What? Don't tell me you're surprised.
Grand Rampage was there and then. You and I, Drake King, hold pre-strife palaver here and now. And man, oh man, has the shine ever come off.
A loss to Joso, thereby granting him entry to the main event at Pain for Pride.
Another to Cy at the big dance itself, rendering your grandest of rampages redundant.
Mike Machina at Reckless Wiring.
Team Voltage at Territorial Invasion.
Fucking BRAE at House of Glass.
...
What conclusion's a guy to arrive at, bearing witness to such consistent inconsistency, aside from the very best you have to offer being a fluke?
I know, I know — God with a capital Gee-Oh-Dee. Put in less than a third of the linear time I have, did something real big and special back in twenty-twenty-three, already enshrined for eternity in the absolute utmost echelons of the pro wrestling empyrean despite an overwhelming body of evidence to the contrary... you forget, I've just come out the far side of a second go 'round with Limmy. I've heard all this before.
You two are a lot alike, you know. Just not in ways either of you are likely to take very kindly to.
Case in point: you, Drake King — like Limmy Monaghan, like Rex McAllister, and like a great many before and still to come — are no good to me defeated. Not here, not now.
Not yet.
Thus do I give out pinfalls and eliminations like Halloween candy: in the hope, however fleeting, that you kids are able fatten yourselves up a bit by my efforts. Gotta get some meat on your bones — no farmer worth his salt butchers the gaunt and emaciated among his herd, after all. I'd give just about anything for a chance to square off against the Drake King who won at Grand Rampage, just as I'd give anything for a chance to face the Limmy Monaghan who first inherited the mantle of the Ace, or the Rex McAllister who fought and forged a place for himself in EAW's Hall of Fame. And if downing me for three on Dynasty helps you — any of you, all of you — on your way back there again? Fuels your return to those high and hallowed spaces?
Then sit down, square up, and dig right the fuck in.
This is the prayer I offer you, Drake. My orison unto God, down here in the dark. Eat of this bread. Drink of this cup. Take this offering, this sacrament of flesh and blood and bone. Let it nourish you. Hone you. Make you sharp.
Hell, let it make you like Michael Machina. He alone seems to have taken the hint, to have gotten the message I tried to impart, and wouldn't you know it? Guy couldn't make it more than the gap between two of EAW's Big Four before finding himself back to the top. My star pupil, truly.
All that's just food for thought, though. Don't dwell on it.
If anything, dwell on this: what I want from EAW, Drake, only you can provide. You and all your kind, incapable though you are of it at present. I don't expect I'll attain what I'm after at this week's Dynasty, or at any Dynasty for the foreseeable future... but that's not the point. Never has been, never will be.
Despite popular belief, Drake, I deal in journeys. Not destinations. And I look forward, in a way neither god nor king could ever imagine, to walking for a while at your side.
Be seeing you.
Thus are you released, relinquished back up to the bright bastions of dreaming, possessed of no more on ascent than you had upon descent save a hopeful prayer from the deep, a sable sacrament from below.
An orison from the dark.
ɸ
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