A desolate alleyway in Arcadia, graffiti on the brick. Grimskull sits on a broken cinder block.
“Hatchet… I’ve known a lot of people like you.
You want to be the one who ends Grimskull.
You think you’re the one who can do it. I see it in your beady little eyes. You believe you’re the one who can break me, split my skull wide open, and scatter my ashes in the gutter.”
Grimskull leans forward.
“But you won’t.
You could drown me in your filth, let your Gathering take their knives to me and dance in my blood. You could suffocate me in your vomit-stained depravity, force my corpse into a shallow grave, like you did the Rijen woman. You could do it a thousand times, Hatchet. A thousand times. And still… I would survive.
Because I am not what you destroy. I am what survives.”
Grimskull tilts his head.
“You’re a scavenger, not a conqueror. You pick at the bones of the weak, you prey on the desperate and the depraved, but I am neither. I am more. You want to break my spirit? You think I still have one? You want to take my hope? Hope is for the living. Hope is for people who think their suffering might one day stop.
I stopped believing in that a long, long time ago.
So what will you do when you realize that I am not afraid? That the violence you wield is nothing but a child’s tantrum to me? That your brutality is just another storm, and I am the mountain it crashes against?
Will you scream? Will you rage? Will you call your Gathering to hold me down and cut me into pieces? Will you look into my hollow sockets and see that no matter what you take from me… I will still be here?
No, Hatchet. You are not my executioner. You are a sideshow.
You put on a good act, I’ll give you that. But you’re small.
You have ambition, but no vision. You think you can carve out an empire from the filth, but you’ll never be more than a rat king in the sewer.
And me? I am Conquest. I am what remains when everything else burns to the ground.”
Grimskull lowers his head in contemplation.
“You think I fear the Gathering? I’ve fought worse. You think I fear you? I’ve bled under the hands of men greater than you, and I’m still here. You think you can break me? You cannot break what is already dead.”
A slow, joyless chuckle escapes him.
“And that’s the joke, isn’t it, Hatchet? You’re a killer who can’t kill me. A monster whose teeth will break against my bones. A man who wants to leave his mark, but all you’ll find is a void that swallows it whole.”
He rises, the cinder block crumbling beneath him.
“When it’s over, when your hands are shaking, when the Gathering stands in stunned silence because they’ve never seen their leader fail like this before… when the blood dries and the laughter dies, you will understand.
That I do not end.
You do.”