I remember the flames like it was yesterday.
The inferno raging around us, the fire flickering at my flesh as the smoke filled the air, making it near impossible to breath.
The sickening smell of burning flesh as she sheltered me from the flames, as she sacrificed her own body to save her only son.
I still don’t recall how I escaped the house that night, I don’t recall much of the next few days either but her last words still echo through my mind.
‘Make Me Proud’
They say time heals all wounds, that even the sharpest barbs dug deep into your soul eventually pull themselves out.
Yet there are some that never truly heal, some ghosts that continue to haunt you long after they have passed.
Usually her memory is warm and inviting, a beacon of light showing me how to save this world.
But over the last year, there’s been this constant, irrational fear that her memory is disappointed in what I have become.
Her death is my fault, my father’s so called corruption is my fault, this anger festering inside of me is just because I’m a failure.
It’s a tune I’ve heard all too well before and I didn’t order a rerun on this nightmare.
The twisting nightmare as I woke terrified and alone is a psychological attack very few use in Olympus cause most have the balls to look me in the eyes.
I know who beat me, who tried to break my bones, who kidnapped me. Hell even the psychopath who tried to eat me had the courtesy to tell me first.
But only one person has twisted her imagine into something vile. Only one asshole has morphed her loving and kind words into hateful venom.
Only one person has dared to desecrate her ghost for simple mind games.
Not this time Tombstone, I’m not in the mood for your bullshit.
Because last time you tried it, you were up against a broken old man and a scared child who’d spent months being tortured. And what happened when you faced a sure victory?
I knocked your ass out cold and dragged my father away from your lies.
That was the child who believed the best in people, who would’ve begged to understand why you were going this low once more for a simple match.
But that child is dead and the man standing before you doesn’t give a fuck why you’ve done this.
He doesn’t care why you kidnapped him, why you trapped him inside a glass cage and messed with his mind again.
All I care about is beating the living shit out of you for daring to utter her name.
I once thought you were simply a force of nature Ferryman, but now I realize you’re just another evil piece of shit like the rest of them.
No mercy, no forgiveness. You want to use her memory so badly, it’s time I do what she wished and make her proud.
As I put the worst of them all in the ground where he belongs.