Prologue 1.1

A large black car drives down a lowly lit street, one that was just barely populated by the brackish masses of the homeless and destitute.

It was rather odd to see such a car in this particular area, though not that uncommon. The car itself was old and refined, but stylish, with a cool dark violet glossed matte that shone black in the night and slick roundabouts and an enframed curvature that made it standout even in the late night. The car was fashionable, kind of out of place, but no less charismatic with a sense of taste and class even in the modern day.

Then again, however, no matter what year, the 1996 Lincoln Town Car always was classy and nothing would ever change that.

"Ah'khai", the driver grumbled, "fuck".

Before him, the urban sprawl of the city of Los Angeles was nothing more than a cesspool of debauchery and filth.

Well, at least it was to Wilhelm.

Located near the center of Highland Park, the place to which he was driving used to be relatively lively and filled with people. But driving up Figueroa St. heading towards the intersection at York Blvd., he could see the damage done to the area leaving many of the buildings closed or outright abandoned. No doubt in part the pandemic took its toll; those 5 years it lasted the whole city took a sharp turn for the worst. What with the wildfires and pollution skyrocketing, it seemed almost as if the city itself was constantly under siege. Of course, the people of Los Angeles could always be counted on to casually snide these occurrences and try to enforce their own self-absorbed sense of propriety on common sense during the period, but Wilhelm found it amusing how the earthquake that followed shortly after the pandemic truly hit home how feeble and weak these superficialists actually were. In the grand scheme of things, they were no different from the starving hovels of humans in countries where access to clean water was scarce or the freedom of living to eat decent food was rare. They simply had to die on the rocky slab that was their own hubris in order to understand.

But he digressed.

Even in the daytime and the busyness of the wandering masses, this skid row of sorts felt antiquated and dilapidated, like it simply refused to adhere to the class and privilege it was surrounded by.

Or rather as far as Wilhelm was concerned, all of this was the case.

"Hmph", he resolved softly grumbled to himself, "what a stinking shithole".

Driving the limo half across LA, Wilhelm sat silent and astute, barely saying a word while the radio politely attuned his attention to the road, reporting on the latest headline of the evening.

According to the reporter, a recent spike of COVID-19 infections had resurfaced in various parts of the Middle East—namely, the country of Iran being the hardest hit in a string of sporadic upstarts across the globe. What was interesting, he mused as he listened, was that the virus had been effectively cured all but 2 years ago, only to return in seemingly random ticks due to reasons unknown.

Maybe it was governments and their experiments running amok, since it was eventually confirmed to have been created in one such lab. Maybe it was terrorists, who've started to take advantage of the chaos to make use of biological weapons and chemical warfare.

Maybe…

No, He stopped himself from thinking any further.

Now's not the time for that.

He could've continued to ponder such in consequential things, it's not like he didn't before. But he couldn't, and he wouldn't, for now--especially now that is.

As it all currently stood, none of that really mattered.

Not to him at least.

And besides, he knew better of what was really going on to understand how the world truly worked in the shadows.

"Reports are sketchy at best", said the reporter, a woman with a mild air of ambivalence given her British accent, "but according to official news outlets, only 237 cases have been openly documented. This, however, has largely contrasts the figures according to various public officials who say that there are actually more than 3,900 cases loosely spread across the country that have largely gone ignored. And with the death toll having now risen to nearly over 900+ a day, it seems these accusations have gained considerable traction."

"To that end", she went on, "riots have simultaneously broken out across Iran's major cities as protestors decry the government for vehemently suppressing all knowledge of these claims in the hopes of retaining its political strength overseas. With the near disastrous peace talks with the United States during the WHO Health Consortium that was held in Geneva two weeks ago, these new developments have stifled any form of resolution to accurately providing proper medical aid to the region as many militia groups, and separatist factions have sprung up decrying the state of the country now enduring its 3rd major drought in over 50 years."

"In Tehran", she concluded, "several districts have been completely shut down and currently, more than 20% of the city's neighborhoods sit lifeless or largely abandoned as hundreds of citizens have fled into the countryside desperately looking for any refuge they can find. Unfortunately with vaccines rendered inaccessible due to government mandate over resource allocation, until the President's official address during the press conference scheduled for Friday, there is little hope of—"

"I believe that that is quite enough Wilhelm", saunters in the rich, ancient voice of the passenger in the backseat, "turn it off if you please".

"Yes Master", replies Wilhelm, clicking the power button on the radio dutifully. The pleasant chatter of the woman is emotionlessly silenced, and the quiet of the ride is only comforted by the low the hum of the air conditioning unit, leaving an air of meditation in its ambience.

Wilhelm looked down at the GPS on the dashboard, they're not too far now from their destination, wherever that may be, then moves his eyes towards the clock. It's 2:23 am; their arrival will be marred by an unsavory 2 minutes.

He scowls.

We're late, he thinks.

He shifts in annoyance and then out of curiosity he looks through the rearview mirror into the backseat.

The entire back end section of the car is shrouded in pitch, a lightless void that seems to swirl in tandem while never retracting or reframing itself. Even with the tinted windows on either side, the darkness refused to move, like a still of inexorable fear that strangles its prey with an unseen force that then drowns them in despair, as they curse their own damnation.

As the car pulled up to its destination, the light turns red, and Wilhelm puts the car on park. Outside, a street lamp opposite their side of the street glowered at them; the light, a sickening hue of orange, stands tall and, as if in offense towards the passenger, dared to beam a single ray into the window, reflecting into the back seat and revealing who exactly they were.

Wilhelm took a deep breath, and then shot a quick glance at the clock.

It was 2:25.

In the backseat of the Lincoln, a gentleman sat standard issue on the leather, every inch of his body perpendicular to the framework of the seat beneath him.

The passenger was an old man of a respectable age, with silvery hair and a finely weathered face. His nose was shaped like a crow's beak, casting a shadowy hook in response to the light while his cheeks looked visibly perturbed—as if they were under assault with the intent of spontaneously combusting. His hair was slicked back while his muttonchops pointed outwardly in triangular shapes. A long scar drew itself from the top of his left temple all the way to the lower end of the underside of his jaw--a memento of a thousand battles he fought in times long forgotten by mortals. Combined these gave him the appearance of a warlord only he looked very clean and proper—regal, and imposing.

His eyes were closed, and his breathing slow but shallow. His clothes were old, but not too old; venerable in fact in the sense of pride he took is his personal image as befitting a man of his caliber. His suit was rather dull looking, though, with a long suede coat jacket that covered the vest and suit shirt underneath. The color of the coat was an impressively worthless shade of grayish green, while the pants were olive and the shoes, conquistadors, were a fecklessly faded, shade of brown. In all, his fashionable apparel gave him the impressionable visage of a well to do Baron or Count, the tailoring reminiscent of the middle to late Victorian and early Edwardian periods.

He was crisp and clean, and clearly knew that everyone who saw him knew it.

Old money could always be depended upon to properly represent privilege and sophistication at its finest.

Diverted from eyeing the street before him, Wilhelm found himself staring into the mirror, looking intently at his master. For a while, there was a hovering silence between them that suffocated the air with awe and fear. Suddenly a low vibration penetrated the silence as a tremor swayed the car ever so slightly. Looking at his master and focusing on the waves of energy the ground emitted with each tremor, his body drew memories from his past as the sudden sounds of swords clashing and crowds jeering filled his wandering mind as the chanting of one name echoed in his mind. The sounds of horses beating hooves against gravel, and chariots racing across the sandy expanse.

Mathos!

Wilhelm closed his eyes, and steadied his heartbeat, taking slow controlled breaths.

The harsh Mediterranean sun glowered on the soft white sand which steamed as puddles of red liquid dripped from open wounds, and metal bit flesh while cries of anger turned into wails of pain. Rays of silk draped in hundreds of colors swirled in his vision; hues of purple and royal blue, covered by gleaming golden wreaths.

A bronze gladius blazing in the sun, and the sudden taste of blood.

Ah yes, the blood.

So much of it, so much blood.

Mathos!

His grip on the steering wheel lessened and his thumbs massaged the leather cover as he titled his head upward a bit so that his chin pointed at the upper section of the windshield.

A crowd of thousands watches the spectacle below, stinking, sweating, shouting, and hooraying as bodies crumpled to the ground. Their shocked, contorted expressions were frozen forever on their faces as they realized too late the error in their folly and the sudden chilling hand of the final sleep coddling each of their lips waiting to gift them the kiss of eternal damnation.

*rumble*

Mathos!

Mathos!

Math--

*Rumble!*

The car shook again, this time more terribly so.

Above them in the intersection, the streetlights flickered and trees swayed furiously. A flicker of black caught Wilhelm's attention, and darting a quick glance turned into a full-on stare down. Several blocks away, a shadow fell across the city slowly stomping its way towards the Lincoln. It was small at first, skipping every other block and building, but then the looming wall tightened up, shutting out every speck of light it touched with a profound slap, racing ever faster until it was speeding in the direction of the intersection. Wilhelm turned to his right, then to his left, then behind them.

The veil was no longer a shadow, but now a wave—a living wave of pure darkness—and it was surrounding them.

It was very, very, much alive. In its liveliness, it made sure that the area around the Lincoln distance wise was an entire 16 feet radius.

It's toying with us, Wilhelm noted.

Wilhelm, unperturbed by the recent events, looked down on the dashboard at the clock.

It was 2:26.

A measly minute had passed, but a minute no less was what it needed. The radius of those 16 feet became as blank as the underside of a corpse. Cars parked along the sides of the streets suddenly bonked to life as their alarms were triggered, before many of them were soundly crushed or pulverized, while others simply continued onward. Animals that happened along the alleyways in the cracks and crevices of buildings were mostly slaughtered; either dropping dead where they were or having their corpses splattered across the pavement.

The shaking increased with a resounding crash and if Wilhelm could guess, had most likely reached a 4.0 on the Richter scale. At this, hundreds of windows cracked while their contents were tossed off their shelves, and metal frames that held together many floors rattled and sporked as their nuts and bolts popped out; the darkness etched ever closer. Wilhelm looked on himself amused but unimpressed, and casually eyed a sleeping bum huddled in an alleyway to the west of their position cradling a bottle of Jack Daniels while a raggedy coat on a makeshift bed made of a chunky old mattress and stuffed with trash bags. The loud snoring the bum made was boisterous and comically boring, but as the shaking intensified Wilhelm's brow furrowed as his mind thought the obvious.

If the shaking intensifies any more, he thought, then it won't be long before this homeless sack of shit wakes up.

Contrary to this, the bum did nothing but sleep (surprisingly). He must've been that inexorably drunk off of his ass to sleep during a quake like this, and it was that fact alone that gave Wilhelm a microscopic twinge of respect for the homeless bastard. Not a lot, but enough that Wilhelm would make a personal note to see that no harm came to him.

Well… not completely.

He simply liked to give his victims just a little taste of hope before he killed them.

Then.

Ka-Boom!

A gas station 3 blocks away to the south of intersection exploded in a raging inferno while surface cracks appeared under the front tires of the Lincoln. The shaking had now truly reached its worst; pipes burst under foot and several light and telephone poles fell and broke. Powerlines snapped and the entire front face of a 4-story building buckled under the immense shaking and collapsed on itself. Small sections of city blocks and streets followed, crashing and collapsing downward on each other, sinking into a sudden abyss of fire, gas, and asphalt while other splotches of land just simply shot upward. In all it looked a living creature burrowing beneath the city, causing land to upheave and dishevel itself as it moved about in its sense of state of natural being. In the car, the radio abruptly snapped to life, screaming and jumbling its speech, gargling and mangling its various tones as the knob jumped between stations. The chatter of the radio, mixed with the sudden smell of ozone and nitrogen coming from the backseat would've easily overloaded the senses of most weak-willed of humans, but not Wilhelm.

Years of serving his master had made him used to the sudden feeling of insanity that came with each interaction. By now it was almost second nature for him being so close to the gentleman.

But then again, Wilhelm's master wasn't human.

And neither for that matter, was Wilhelm.

The ripping of powerlines, the snapping of wires and the whooshing of water from uprooted pipes and crackling of glass continued until the quake finally ceased its temper tantrum and consoled itself with the peaceful bliss of the sheer level destruction it wrought in its wake. Wilhelm looked around waiting for a follow-up that never came (to his relief), and far as he could see from inside the car, Figueroa, York Blvd., and wherever else within 15 to 20 block radius effectively looked as if a bomb had detonated directly under it. In all, if you'd snap a photo and compare it side by side to its original state, it'd be like comparing a newborn baby to the daddy you assumed was his—you'd never even believe there was a resemblance at all.

Huh, he thought, and I liked Mexican eatery to used be around these parts. Oh well, guess its Uber Eats for now.

Diagonally across the street from the left side of the car, a single street light shone; one of the few remaining left with no damage, save leaning to it side. A second later, the backseat leather makes a creaking sound.

"Ah", the Master said stirring from his transcendental state, "it would seem that our guests have finally arrived, how kind of them to drop by on such short notice."

At this, the old gentleman turned to the left car door. He moved ever so graciously, that on cue, Wilhelm moved as well, shifting the gear to park and then stepping out of the car to open the rear door on his side. As he did so, a group of figures appeared before him standing 12 feet away on the other side of the intersection.

He shot them a quick glance as he touched the rear door handle, and while opening the door his sight didn't improve his own personal feelings about them.