“Did you feel what I felt?”
Grimskull stands on the precipice of a pool. Its still waters are pitch black as he drops a single pebble into it.
“The edge of damnation yawning wide, straining to swallow you whole?”
The ripples coalesce into the image of Walther staring down into a pit of boiling liquid, then Stubbins Doom falling into the Odyssey Pool.
“The moment before, there is a cruel mockery of calm—an eternity of dread bound within the horrid grasp of a single, solitary second.”
As the screaming men head towards the liquid, another pebble drops, rippling the image.
“And then… the plunge.”
The pool begins to surge, bubbles stretching from the surface like fingers outstretched for some hint of clear air.
For salvation.
“The pool picked apart the strands of our hope with skeletal fingers, carving their painful gospel into our very essence, melting away the men that we once were.”
Stillness, a pitch-black pool with no reflection.
A reflected hand breaches the surface of the pool, broken and deformed just as the reflection appears of a body lifelessly thrown out like trash.
“Our faces, once a symbol of identity, have become a distant memory.”
The hand becomes a mask, the mask of Doom, just as the skull of Walther opens its eyes with a start, violet eyes shining through.
“All anyone sees now are fleshless faces. Glimmering eyes, once windows, now gurgling echoes of a bygone era.”
Another pebble drops, this time forming into two images.
Doom.
Grimskull.
“We should have died, Doom. Our pools should have killed us, drowned us in their torrent of pain. But it appears they did not.”
The Preacher looks at the pebbles in his hand before crushing them into fine dust.
“Just as you are no longer Stubbins Doom, I am Walther no more. I emerged from my pool as Grimskull, wearing the torment, the scars, not hidden behind a mask, but a new self. A true self. In appearance and voice.”
The excess dust creates a million ripples in the pool, each one slightly distorting the image.
“But you, Doom? Your unbearable trial, what does it amount to? All I see is a mask, an ornament testifying to your refusal to rise from the Pool. To me, your mask appears… false. Less a shield, and more a shackle.
On the surface of the pool, the face of Stubbins Doom appears, void of emotion, eyes hidden behind opaque glasses.
“You are caught in the crossfire of who you once were and what you could become, chained to the ghost of Stubbins and intimidated by the shadow of Doom.”
Grimskull clenches his hand, the pebble dust pouring from his fingers like sand through an hourglass.
“You cannot escape the Pool, Doom, not until you rid yourself of the shackles of your past and show your true appearance.”
The pool’s abyss swallows the remnants of pebble dust, leaving behind the reflection of Doom’s mask.
“For those who refuse to embrace the pain will still drown in it.”
The face of Doom flickers as the image ripples, finally settling on a skull.
Grimskull.
“Thus saith the Grimskull.”