Wrath of the Red Lanterns

#0.9 -- Atrocitus

My name was once Atros.

I am the High Lord of the Red Lantern Corps. I created the power battery with the arcane blood of the Four Inversions, of which I am the lesser-known Fifth.

The Guardians and their impure organizations see me as many things. A rage-fueled Red Lantern, a powerful leader, a tactician, and a brute. They know nothing of my sorcery, nothing of the blood magic that powers my own Corps and makes them unique. The pseudo-science that powers their own batteries is simple, predictable. Able to control and circumvent by merely understanding the way it works.

The red rings obey my commands, and mine alone. The power of the Sacred Order is mine, and mine alone. It is through this that my Corps stays intact.

Though, from time to time, I admit to a sense of concern. While certain members of the Corps – Dex-Starr and Ratchet come to mind – seem to be fully loyal to the cause of the Red Lanterns, I know that things are not always as they seem. There are threats coming from within, threats that I don't always know that I can keep in check.

Laira was once a member of the Green Lantern Corps. I acted in foolishness and haste when I allowed her to bathe in the arcane plasma of the Blood Ocean – with her mind restored, she shows an ever-increasing amount of clarity and focus. When she fully recovers from her own death, and recovers her own self, her willpower will be unrivaled by any within my own Corps. If she should get her hands on a green ring, her strength could be too much for me to handle alone.

Veon is an unchecked threat. Attempting to restore his sanity is akin to playing with fire: he represents something unknown in the power of the red ring, a type of Rage so intense that it cannot be controlled or overcome. When Ratchet unlocks the secrets of his mind, the results could be catastrophic.

Even Zilius Zox's infinite cruelty is not unknown to me, though his history of incompetence marks him as a lesser threat. If he gets it into his mind that I must be destroyed, I don't know what he may be capable of. Along with the others, he must be watched.

However, even with Razer sprinting through our ranks and Skallox's unknown motivations, no member of my own Corps presents as much of a threat as my own second-in-command. Bleez was the first Red Lantern to be converted, so many years ago in Havania. The first one among us to start recovering her intelligence without being dipped in the Blood Ocean. The most powerful Red Lantern, eclipsed only by me.

Yet she schemes in the dark. Continuously examining the rings, the power battery, the lesser lanterns. She drinks from the Blood Ocean daily, like some sick vampire. Though I have turned my eye to her machinations, they are too sinister and convoluted – too much like Bleez herself – for me to figure out. Using blood magic in an attempt to scry on her has met with... mixed results. She has already taken precautions against it, of a sort I cannot know.

The easy answer would be to destroy her. I could do it, I would be only a small challenge. Strike her down in front of the rest of the Corps, show them all the results of mutiny. But my Corps is too volatile and too chaotic for me to control – when they were but mindless raging machines, I could direct them, if not truly harness them. Now that each Red Lantern has regained their intelligence they are violent and destructive individuals, too vitriolic to keep in line.

When everything is said and done, I need Bleez. It is her personal power and sensual cruelty that keeps the majority of members under control. Her influence over the Corps is both a godsend and the biggest threat of all. Should she find what it is she's looking for, and divides the rest of the Corps against me... I cannot predict the outcome.