Candidate: Thresh

Date: January

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**OBSERVATION**

The chains clinked. Moonlight shone down through the broken roof of a dilapidated prison. An old place, a place where once a man tortured his prisoners. He delighted in their torment. He sought to break his captives, he destroyed their minds, twisted them into an image of his own liking.

One of his favourite devices was a lantern. He learned to manipulate it's eerie green light to drive his victims insane. He could show them visions of horror and gore. He could show them paradise, only to jerk them back into his harsh reality. He could manipulate his subject's perception of their world to the point where they could be lost completely, unable to distinguish between the vivid dreams imposed upon them by their tormentor and cruel existence they suffered at his hands.﻿

But one day the prisoners escaped. They seized him and enacted their own form of vengeance. For years his body remained in the place of the their retribution, and the lantern remained lit beside him. But one night, the corpse's eyes blazed with the same green fire as that of his lantern, and a great, roaring cry emerged from his long dead lips as the green flames consumed his body.

The Chain Warden had returned.

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**REFLECTION**

Fear. He only knew fear. All he could remember was fear. So early in his life he had been taken, living in a dark prison cell with only whatever hungry rodent passed through his prison. The only contact with the outside world he had was the Prison Warden. The Warden would bring him food. That was all. Nothing more.

One day The Warden took the boy from his cell. He tied him to a chair. A short while later another man was brought, bound by chains. The boy was forced to watch as the Warden enacted his cruel machinations on the man. The first voice the boy ever heard was a scream. A scream of agony.

Over time The Warden took the boy from his cell more and more often. Till one day, years later, The Warden brought a woman to the room. The woman had eyes that seemed to bore into the boy's soul. Never did those eyes leave him. The Warden had long since stopped tying the boy to the chair, since the boy had never made any move but to sit, paralyzed by fear. But this time he rose. He cried out for the Warden to stop. The Warden turned to look at the boy, then returned to his gruesome task. The boy attempted to pull The Warden away, but he was young, he was weak. The Warden threw him back and once again tied him to the chair and continued.

Something broke that day. The boy no longer feared. The boy no longer felt. We was merely a shell. He could only comprehend one thing. Hatred for his captor.

Years passed by, the boy grew. For weeks after the incident with the woman The Warden continued to tie the boy to the chair. But after a while he once again stopped, seeing the lack of emotion in the dead eyes of the boy. This was his mistake...

The Warden lay dead on the bloodstained floor. The boy stood above him with a small blunt knife. It had been many hours since the boy overpowered The Warden, and the boy reveled in every moment of the torment he enacted on his captor in that time. He finally felt something once again. Pleasure.

More years passed. The boy took up the mantle of The Warden. He continued to carry out the only task that brought him pleasure; the torture of his captives. He found many ways to torment his victims. Blades, machines, darkness, light, heat. Even a mere drop of water could be used to drive a man to the brink of insanity.

But one time a woman came to his prison. Not an uncommon occurrence. What was strange about this woman was that she came of her own volition, a cruel smile on her lips and a fire burning in her eyes. She showed the man a lantern she possessed. A lantern that glowed with an unearthly green light. The man was filled with a desire for it. He couldn't explain why, but he felt drawn to it. She told the man about the lantern. She demonstrated it's use, what it could do to a person. The man saw things he had never even dreamed of. She showed him one more thing. She showed him how to steal the very soul of a living being, how to trap it for eternity and keep it to be used for whatever purpose the bearer wished.

She offered to give the man this lantern, on the condition that he give her half of the souls he took. He eagerly agreed. Before she left she whispered something to him. She reached up, placing her lips by his ear, and uttered a single word; "Thresh".

Decades went by. Thresh remembered little about them. They merged into a ceaseless blur of blood and screaming. The woman would return every year to collect her tithe from Thresh. However, he grew more and more bitter and resentful every time she came to collect. He hated giving away his souls, souls HE had taken, not her. They were his. HIS!

These feelings grew, until one year when the woman stood outside his prison Thresh turned her away. He struck her down and refused to pay. Suddenly he was blasted backwards and up against the wall. He slumped to the floor, dazed. When he finally managed to stand up the woman was gone. But plastered in blood all over every wall was a single phrase; "You will regret this. You will repay your debt."

...

Shouting. Fire. Darkness. These were all Thresh could comprehend. The prisoners had escaped, they had taken him. It had been a single day since Thresh had turned the strange woman away. He felt regret, something he had never felt before. He was blindfolded and being dragged by someone.

Fear was the last thing Thresh felt as the chains closed around his neck. Fear was all that was left as his last breath was slowly choked from him.

...

Thresh awoke. His burning eyes boring into the shape of a robed man standing before him. His eyes burned with anger at being forced to once again feel afraid, to once again feel that which he had dedicated his life, and his death, to inflicting upon others. He tried to take a step towards the man, but found himself unable to move.

"Why do you wish to join the League, Thresh?"

Thresh stood silent, rage boiling from him. The green flames that made up his form burned brighter.

"Why do you wish to join the League, Thresh?"

Thresh roared, "I HUNGER!".

The flames engulfing Thresh roared towards the ceiling. Eventually they began to die down. More quietly this time, Thresh spoke again.

"I have a debt to repay."

"How does it feel, exposing your mind?"

The Chain Warden glowered at the robed figure as it retreated into the shadows. He could not smile, but a sadistic joy could be seen in his eyes as he strode towards the opening entrance before him.

﻿