Armageddon: Legend Of The Chosen One

"Uhng!" Stefan grunted.

A cutting and stinging blow to his mouth made blood lash through the air before dropping and staining the already bloody floor of the enclosed arena with a splash. The surrounding police men shouted again, "Hey!"

Stefan had been taking blows from a beast-like man, who was at least a head taller and two times his size. 'Poof! 'He took yet another one in his belly, which had been twisting in pain, and that sent another round of shrilling and flesh-peeling-and-needling kind of agony down his screaming spine, for a period which seemed to have been a decade. He'd sure taken a lot of beating from this guy that his whole body was now aching, and his white shirt was all red with his own blood.

And the heck! He's shaking now? His whole body was sort of vibrating...

There was an uproar among the cops surrounding the cage calling to the super chief and Stefan at the same time. "Hey, stop it already !" "Surrender man!" "... got... death wish? "Super chief..." "Put a stop to this!"

They were yelling now, just as Stefan staggered backwards and spurted out blood.

'Bastard!' He cursed silently. His eyes were tired and becoming too heavy to keep open. Another staggering and shaky step backwards made him fall butt-down. "Please, Stefan stop!" A shout came from within the roaring crowd of police. "You can't fight...!"

Stefan's ears were now playing tricks on him?

But he knew the first voice belonged to a woman. 'Margie?' He thought as a memory flashed through his mind. He tried to stand up, but his arm was too weak to carry his body, so he fell back. "Stefan please..." Hearing this, his eyes welled up in tears and his mind drifted off to the memory lane of how his lover died...

He closed his eyes slowly, and tried finding his breath again_ He didn't care if that voice came from the gathered spectators or not, he was ready to find out. He found a new surge of strength, and applied it to his arms, standing up wearily.

"Please."

He heard again as he felt the sticky and sharp coldness of the floor against his feet. "You shall pay for what you did!" He mumbled coldly as he took on a wrestling stance.

The beast man grinned evilly looking okay and unharmed. In fact, he had only sustained an injury to the head, his gruesomely tattooed head. He looked tireless even with the blood dripping from his temple, through his jaw and down to his chest.

Stefan stood there, his legs looking fixed, though he might have wanted to move. "I shall pay you with this," the man retorted in a deep voice and started towards him.

He dodged the beast-man's attack and was going to counter it with an elbow to the middle of his head, as he swiftly stepped behind his large body and climbed his back. There was a tattoo; of a wolf skull and an arrow running through the hollow in it's mouth, on the same exact spot Stefan was going to hit. Did it just move!?

'Boom!'

"Ah!"

Stefan's arm was swung back in the air immediately it made contact with the skull. He felt a sharp squeeze-you-face-or-hurt-more kinda pain go through his entire body and then numbness in the whole of his right arm but he still held the thick neck of his opponent tightly with the left.

The man swung Stefan off of his back with a grunt and pinned his neck down the sticky floor with his two hands.

"I shall pay you with this!" The beast-like man growled again applying more strength to his arms. "Shoot down this goddamn animal!!" Someone shouted from among the watching crowd.

Well, nearly all the cops -both those who were on-duty and those off-duty- in the city were present. "You shall do nothing!" A decisive and familiar voice ordered. "No, please..." Yet another familiar voice cried out loudly, "Stefan! !"

Stefan was fighting for his life, he could hardly breath as he tried to raise his hands to push up the arms squeezing the daylight from his mind and at least reduce the force pinning down on his neck, but he found out that his arms were too strained and heavy for him to do anything even related to that idea. So, he gave that up and let his arms drop.

His eyes were already red and looking as if they were soon gonna pop out of their sockets, his face going from red to purple, the veins on his head were all devastatingly visible to the eyes now and all looking like a gruesome artistic lightning bolt design, he was in so much pain, sweat, blood and could feel his head swelling and ready to burst.

'Margie...I think I've failed you'

Just when Stefan thought that his life was gonna end and had subconsciously closed up his lids, he suddenly felt that the grip around his neck had loosened, and the pressure on it slowly dwindling, he lazily opened his eyes, the ones he didn't realize he had shut -thought he was seeing dark all the while.

"You dying like this is a happy ending. " the bulky man straightened his body, although he was still kneeling over Stefan, his two knees on each side of his waist. He was shaking his head lightly and grinning when he spoke earlier but after some moment the shaking became violent, he tore the remaining already tattered clothe covering his upper tattoo-covered body and laughed out so loud,

" I shall make your death as painful as hell. Yes, I shall make it worth my while." He reached down his right hand and grabbed Stefan's neck again and stood up bringing Stefan to a sitting position without his buttocks touching the ground.

'Urgh.'

He was going to vomit blood but his neck was held tight. The man drew Stefan's remaining body right out from under him with just the one right arm as Stefan struggled to free himself by grabbing that same arm.

The beast-like man didn't bulge, instead his grip tightened. "I shall feed your stinking soul to my daddy," he shouted as his right hand started glowing and he reached for Stefan's forehead. Everyone watching was shocked, they'd seen lots of things happen in the city but never had such a scene -where a dark magic master would be eliminating a cop in a sport cops arranged- occurred! Was he not examined and found to be ordinary before their superiors arranged it all? They were trying to come up with something... They couldn't interfere, it was forbidden. "No..." They started shaking their heads and saying all kinds of pitiful things.

Stefan managed to turn his head a bit to catch a glimpse of the woman crying and begging him to stop earlier just in case he died. Well, it's not as if he didn't know that he would die, he just couldn't believe that he was gonna die before avenging his Margie.

Although his vision was blurry he still saw someone familiar evilly smirking at him, one hand in the pocket and the other menacingly rubbing his jaw. That person was just right on the other side of the enclosed arena. 'I'm coming for you all' Stefan screamed in his mind. He couldn't accept defeat, he could not die.

'No!'

He faintly shouted in his mind again.

This man gruesomely trying to kill him had killed Margie, his girlfriend and didn't even try to abscond. He murdered her and stayed with the body, smiling so wild at him after he did the deed, and when his colleagues handcuffed him and pushed him down into the police car.

He had cried and cried his balls out when Margie's blood dripped from her already blood-soaked clothes down his hands as he held her lifeless body close. He'd wanted to investigate and unravel the mystery behind this strange man, his connection to the underworld and find out why he killed his Margie. But the Super Chief never allowed it, claiming that he was not 'qualified' enough to investigate such. He had also tried many times to put a hole in this criminal's skull but would still get caught by other cops, either because he was wasting too much time at the fucker's cell, pointing the gun at him or that he actually wanted to beat life out of him with his own hands dealing each deadly blow in wild abandon.

He didn't like playing by the rules but the Chief was bent on him killing this frigging murderer only in the Police Execution Game. A death game which allowed for a cop to get promoted by executing a prisoner of the TCPD. It's always been their only way of elimination. They would usually allow the family of the victim watch the offender die by the hands of an armed police officer. Punching and hitting the condemned, with all kinds of weapons strapped or glued to various parts of the cop's offensive body.

Although, Stefan had declined to arming himself, he just realised he had made a huge mistake. This criminal was four times as strong as all the former ones and the cop was now the one dying.

He had underestimated him... He underestimated the conspiracies...

There weren't many occasions like this, it's rare. But in any of these rare cases, where the criminal seemed to be having an upper hand, he'd get silenced quickly with a bullet in the head -and this can of course only be done by one person, the Super Chief.

Stefan now realised it was all an evil conspiracy but he was too late. Venoma, as Stefan later learned the murderer's name to be, never showed any sign of remorse or pain as he was detained for twenty-one days, a period of time that was three times longer than the normal time of detention.

Normally, a condemned-death prisoner of the TCPD, would only be held for seven days for examining and scrutinizing without food or water before he/she is released to the cop who would be daring enough to take him or her on in a battle to death, to get a promotion at work.

The excuse the Chief gave was that tripling his time of detention was to further disarm him of his powers and even physical strength-because they'd detected black magic in the examination they did on him-and also to give Stefan more time to prepare and get ready for battle. 'Get ready for battle?' Stefan almost spat blood out of his mouth. " I'm of course always ready! " he'd shouted at the sky when he was heading back home, with tears in his eyes.

What they all didn't know was that Venoma was the one actually being prepared...

Venoma's right hand started glowing green as he released Stefan's neck and held him up by his head. Raising himself off the ground, he lifted Stefan and held his head so tight now with two hands, that Stefan could feel his own skull cracking. By now his legs were already dangling in the air, and just like that, he breathed his last.*****

***************************

"And that was how you died." A man with an expressionless face -or was it without any facial features at all- appeared, but the more Stefan looked the more he thought the face of this man dressed in a mix of blue and green was moving, appearing and disappearing and, then appearing again. His face were moving upward restlessly.

"Who are you?" Stefan stiffened and took a step away from him but his legs only caused some ripples on the floor as if he'd just stepped on water - white water, because the whole place was now all white, after he had watched his entire earthly life on the walls, and the distance between them didn't change at all. "I am the keeper."

"Keeper?" Stefan questioned again. Startled by what just didn't happen, (the unchanged distance between them) he clenched his fist.

The keeper seeing this now showed his mouth which was once not there and smiled but the mouth immediately moved on with the rest of his face. "Are you keeping me here then?" Stefan asked yet another question as he took another step backwards, "I am dead... and you... you're keeping my spirit? "

"Yes," The Keeper answered, "and no." He added abrubtly. Stefan frowned a bit at this. "For now, I am keeping your soul, so yes. But I shall soon release you..." He paused, " For I am not the keeper of life but of time."

Stefan chuckled with some traces of sadness to it," You're a time keeper?"

"The time keeper." He corrected with a stern look. "You died on earth, but you shall go back to re-live the life you lost and stop yourself from dying at the time and the way you did" He added.

"I am going back?" Stefan suddenly stepped forward again, with a frown he realized that no distance was still covered though he didn't really mind anymore. 'But what's the use of going back when he said I'd die anyway?' he thought.

Well, maybe he thought he was thinking, but everything he said in his mind resounded in the room just as he concluded the last word. "Yes" The Keepers voice echoed in the box-like room.

"You're going back and everyone truly will eventually die, but I wasn't talking about a death that would happen soon when you get back."

A pair of blue eyes appeared on The Keeper's face as he closed the gap between them with three steps. And so did the rest of his facial features stop moving and finally stayed. "Your destiny has a very long life."

Stefan with his fists beside him, said through clenched teeth." I will go back... I'll return and only then shall his end be soon ."

"You shall kill only those who are worthy of death, Stefan." The Keeper folded his arms across his chest, " And that man didn't kill you."

"He wronged me not by killing me!" Stefan snapped.

"I know he killed your earthly lover," The Keeper walked closer again, and stood just a meter away from Stefan while looking him straight in the eyes. "In fact, it was still not him."

Stefan wasn't surprised by this because he'd always known that there was a conspiracy, a lot of people behind it all. The death of his partner, his future father in-law and then the death of his daughter, Stefan's girlfriend. "Then tell me who did." He took a short step forward but couldn't get closer as usual.

"That's one of the reasons you're going back."

"If I go back now without knowing who to confront and fight_ what if I make a mistake and go against someone even worse?"

"You're not going alone this time." The Keeper smiled. "You're coming with?" Stefan raised a brow.

"Not really_ But my master shall bestow some powers on you before I send you back."

"Oh, so, um, is your master God? " Stefan inquired.

"My master is the god of time, Thy'aime. I know you think I'm also a god, which I understand may be why you thought the most Supreme Being is my direct master. Anyway, I'm an immortal. One of the minions of Thy'aime, but the most favored out of 'em all." He winked while smiling.

"Okay, since you said 'The Supreme Being' has no hand in this, what is in it for your master? What has he to gain from this? Why is he helping me?" Stefan squinted his eyes at him. "Oh, come on, you sure are quite a questionnaire..." He rolled his head around then stopped after a brief moment. "Only, you're not a sheet of paper..."

"Okay, so this are actually trivial matters The Supreme Being leave to his sons. The gods and goddesses, whom I believe you know so well. Hmm, and about the gain thingy, if I tell you nothing, then that's a lie. But my master is not doing this only because it will profit him. You've actually aided Thy'aime before. Master wants to pay you back, which is why he forcefully took your spirit from he who wanted to suck away your soul, to perform a ritual on you, to make you go back.... An algorithmic metempsychosis"

"An Algoryth?" Stefan was dumbfounded.

How could he suddenly understand this?

"Wouldn't that be needing you to collect something... "

The keeper cut him short, "yes, yes, you'll need to offer up something you love... But don't worry, master has taken what is needed so you don't need to choose. " He smiled, a suspicious one.

"What!?" Stefan's fury was building up and he was also getting disturbed and a little scared.

'What could he have taken?'

"Oops. Don't get all worked up boy, it's something tangible but not something you can't live without. By the way, my actual name is Zaarha... and you can just say Zaar."

Then almost immediately Stefan was alone.

Ka! ka! ka!

The sound of footsteps was coming from behind him and he made to turn around as he heard a familiar voice.

"Hello, there handsome."