Page 87 of Brawler
The man fumbled for the crude mask strapped to Flash’s side, tugged it on, the lenses fogging instantly. He could still taste the poison clawing down his throat, burning his lungs.Men screamed around him, clawing at their throats, drowning in open air.
Bondo’s shout stabbed his mind with a cold shard. “Endurance is not glory. It is survival in the face of meaninglessness. Stand, or Chaos will claim it all.”
There, among the smoke, the gas, the slaughter, he saw the shadows again. They were thicker this time, greedy, sliding over broken bodies, whispering into the ears of men who had already given up. Feeding on despair, on the senselessness.
He ripped the mask off, gas burning his throat raw. “I won’t play this game!” he roared, voice shredded, his mind overwhelmed from the horror of it all, slipping and sliding into madness. “This isn’t war. It’s slaughter! Pointless slaughter!”
He clawed at the air like he could tear the vision apart. His scream was swallowed by the boom of artillery.
Mercifully, it dissolved. The trenches, the bodies, the gas cloud, all ripped away into black.
He fell into the void again, choking on nothing, his lungs clawing for breath that wasn’t poisoned.
The silence this time felt heavier. He slumped into it, sweat dripping down his face, shaking his head violently. “Not mine,” he rasped. “Not my war. Not my lesson.”
But even as he denied it, the truth gnawed at him. The enemy wasn’t the Germans. It was the despair. The hopelessness. The way Chaos thrived in the cracks when men lost the will to stand.
He pressed his hands to his head. “Stop it. I’m not… I’m not yours.” But his voice lacked conviction now. The Veil had worn him down, piece by piece.
Then came the rumble. Low. Relentless. A world at industrial war.
Engines, tanks, aircraft overhead. The crack of rifles, the thunder of artillery on a scale even greater.
The void did not spit him into a trench or a harbor this time. It lifted him higher. Too high.
The first thing he saw was fire. Not battlefield fire, but cities in flames. Streets choked with rubble, glass glittering like frost, whole neighborhoods reduced to ash.
The Veil pulled him higher still. He saw it unfold across the globe as if maps themselves had come alive, arrows of steel sweeping east across Europe, armored columns rolling like iron serpents. Germany’s war machine devoured borders, swallowing nations whole.
Behind it, larger than any army, loomed the shadow. Not wisps this time, not branches feeding soldiers in the dark. This was a towering presence, massive and terrible, stretching its hands across continents. Its head bowed toward Berlin, its voice a whisper that carried through parliaments and streets, factories and barracks.
The whisper had a face—Hitler’s, sharp and fanatic, eyes burning with borrowed fire. But it wasn’t just him. He was a mouthpiece. The shadow behind him pulsed and swelled, feeding on hatred, on hunger, on the desperation of men too afraid to stand alone.
He saw the ghettos next. Faces pressed behind barbed wire. Hollow eyes. Children herded into railcars. Smoke rising from chimneys that had nothing to do with warmth.
He staggered, chest tight, choking on horror that wasn’t his own. “Jesus Christ…”
The Veil didn’t let him look away. It showed him France collapsing in weeks. Poland broken, its people ground under boots. Italy bending. Russia bleeding.
Then, Britain.
A small island, ringed by gray seas, battered by bombs falling like rain. Cities scarred. Cathedrals gutted. But in the smoke andrubble, a lion stood. Bloody, torn, but unbroken. Its mane was fire. Its roar was defiance.
The lion morphed into Churchill, his face defiant, his words echoing like thunder. “Even lions can fall when Chaos grows too great. This war was not only steel against steel, but light against dissolution. Without guardians, the Veil would have ripped apart.”
From his vantage point, he saw the globe trembling. Entire nations tipping on the edge of annihilation. Shadows thickened where men gave in to cruelty, to despair. But in pockets, French resistance fighters, and there…Shark, planning and plotting with very few resources, but with courage, nothing left but grit. Shark looked up right into his eyes, and he smiled. “I see you, brother. We’ve got you.” Those tendrils cracked from him like whips, snapping and seeking him like he and Shark were one in spirit. Flares of light pushed back shadows as those tendrils collided with him. He cried out at the sensation, connection, shared purpose, love, and an oath that bit into his skin like fire. Those tats lifted, and he fought the transformation.
He clenched his fists, rage burning through him. “This is too big. No one man can fight that.”
The Veil answered not in words but with a pull, a narrowing, dragging him down from the omnipotent height into one place, one body, one mission.
The beaches.
The water.
The men who would crawl under fire and break the way for others.
The Underwater Demolition Teams. His ancestors. His bloodline.
