The sting of thick, heavy claws in the back of his head made Skallox thrash and kick, reaching up with long, skinny arms in a desperate (an eventually futile) attempt to escape the Blood Ocean. Overpowering Atrocitus was not a possibility – he had no choice but to embrace the ocean. Embrace his endless rage.
He remembered betrayal. Crime. He remembered being innocent – well, maybe not innocent, but innocent of the crime he was punished for. His old... what was it? His boss. His old boss had betrayed him, when Skallox had been nothing if not a loyal right hand man.
“Rrrrghhahghghhh!” he wailed out from beneath the Blood Ocean, bubbles burbling out in the thick, red, viscous slime but no sound. “...Cyber... eggs....”
He had been taken away by his boss to be interrogated for a theft he had not been a part of. Blamed wrongly for something he had never done, would never had done. He had been loyal, loyal to the end. And he had been thrown in the fire for it.
And that rage... the rage he felt, the agony and the fury had brought the ring to him, coated him in that embrace of anger. It had changed him from being a simple man – a bad man, but a simple man – into what he was now. A beast of vengeance, a slobbering creature who would never again show such love to his employer. From now on... it was business. And Skallox's first plans would be to find Lancer. Find his old boss.
And burn him.
He burst out of the Blood Ocean with a gasp when Atrocitus finally released him, his thick fingers clawing at the edge of the massive red lake as he tried to crawl back up.
“Excellent job, Skallox,” came Atros's rumbling voice. “Tell me... how do you feel?”
Skallox looked up slowly, his outfit beginning to shift and change very slightly, modifying itself to his actual desires. He had desires now – desires besides that to kill. He had a desire to look imposing. A desire to be respected. A desire to be good at his job....
And a desire to eat.
“I feel... hungry,” Skallox growled, a slow smile spreading across his inhuman face.
Atrocitus folded his arms and nodded before gesturing to Bleez, who casually tossed the still-shaky Laira into the Blood Ocean. “Good,” he growled. “Then you shall feed.”
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Wrath of the Red Lanterns
FanfictionThe Red Lantern Corps receives a re-imagining -- a new roster, a new direction, a new story. This diverges from Blackest Night and follows a different path than the path DC chose for the Corps.
