August 25, 1172

It’s a cold night in the Knighton Gorges Manor. Hugh de Morville had gotten up to put a log on the fire. He, and the other three men he was with, had now been exiled here for a year. Time had passed slowly. The three men had moved from meaningful conversation with each other to speculation on how the internal battle being fought in England would end. They knew they served the King, but the men they fought against believed they had God Himself on their side. It had been a year since Thomas Becket had died, a year since they killed one of the men believed to be closest to God.

God must be punishing us

Hugh turned to another man exiled with him, William de Tracy. They were the only two who felt any kind of remorse for what happened.

Why does it seem colder than normal?

It was the beginning of nightfall, but something felt darker. A glance outside revealed no moon at all.


I should turn in then

Hugh walked upstairs to his bedroom. Once inside, he changed into his nightwear and glanced out the window. The stars seemed blood red. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. This scared him terribly, but he looked away to refocus. When he turned back the stars were redder than before. Then it happened, one of the stars appeared to be bleeding. Blood started dripping through the night sky like paint on a canvas, and the rest followed suit. The night sky looked like a gaping wound.

I must be mad!

De Morville screamed as loudly as he could, but no one answered. He moved to his bed and lay down, sobbing at the sight of what he had just seen. The world went quiet. All De Morville could hear was the sound of his own breath getting louder and louder. Then the screams started. This wasn’t one man in the distance, it sounded like an entire village moaning in agony.

Stop It!

Hugh covered his face with whatever he could to stop the noise but it wouldn’t stop. He writhed in agony at the sound he was hearing, begging God to make it stop. Crying out to the Lord to give him comfort and relief. But did he deserve comfort? Was this his punishment?

Then the hands came. Too many to count. They came from under his bed and ripped at his clothing like beggars to free food. There was no way these were human hands. The demons grabbed at him and he could feel the dark silhouettes manhandling his body. Finally the many hands departed, but a much larger one came. It was twice the size of De Morville and it pressed against him like a weight. He felt it tear apart his chest cavity and reach inside his organs, grabbing his beating heart and crushing it. He screamed with every part of his being…

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De Morville woke up to William de Tracy shaking him awake. This felt too real, and it was the third time he’d had a dream like this in the week. William had been having them as well. The two men sat in silence refusing to talk about what had been happening in their sleeping hours.

If this was from God, this was punishment, and it wouldn’t ever get any better the rest of their lives. They would have to seek penance from Him and try to earn back a clean slate.

If this wasn’t from God, they were in the hands of the devil, and guilt was allowed to take free rein in their lives.

He just needed this to stop

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Neville was spending the day fishing. Staying in a cabin alone allowed him to catch his own food. He had heard a rumor that the Yarmouth pier allowed for some good bass fishing, and he decided to try his luck at it. Last night he had caught a nice plaice and decided to cook it up with asparagus and mushrooms. But there was nothing like the taste of sea bass. He would need to get lucky today.

Fishing was something Neville had learned to love. It wasn’t that he needed to catch his own food like the working class, it was that it allowed him to have time alone with his thoughts. Sometimes Neville found his own thoughts went undigested and spoiled inside of him. He couldn’t feel things, he couldn’t move past them. But that was what was so nice about this self-imposed exile, he had time to be alone with himself and think things through.

Today he had spent a lot of time thinking through his purpose in the XWF. Was he accomplishing all that he set out to do? There was some guilt knowing that he could do more in life, but this was what he had chosen. Neville felt everything today.

Chris Valerius, thank you for letting me see a few things about you this week. One of the things I actually like about you is that you seem like you have fun with filming your promos. You bounce around from location to location, talk with interesting people, and seem to have a good time.

But that’s about the only positive thing I could say in watching you. You leave me with more questions than answers and like seeing Katy Perry’s “Swish Swish” music video for the first time, all I could think was “what the hell was that?” I’ve made my living putting up a bullshit meter that rings when people do stupid things, and what I just saw from you might have been some of the stupidest shit I’ve seen wrestlers do, and a good majority of them have noticeable brain damage.

Neville feels a bite and reels in quickly, nothing.


I have to admit Chris Valerius, before this week I barely knew who the hell you were. I knew you lost to Finn Kuhn, and you had a win last week. But other than that, you’re just another new guy on the roster. Nothing about you stands out. So I glanced at the bio you gave the federation, the information you want people to know you for. I figure there will be a few things to help me study you there. I come across this important piece of information. You self-identify as a sociopath. You tell everyone this is what defines you, and you allow the federation to place it as a title on your part of the website. People are nervous about the sociopath, because you can go off hinge at any minute. This is who Chris Valerius is.

But then an interesting thing happened. You got called out by Neville and you claim that you only show some tendencies for sociopathy. The second I call you out on your bullshit self-diagnosis, everything changes and you use it try and make me look bad? You bring in some fake doctor to claim you only have “some” tendencies and that’s all you say about yourself? I could tell within one time of seeing you that you didn’t have any kind of sociopathy. In fact, you don’t seem to know anything about it. For a man who displays “some” tendencies, I would challenge you to even name one. I don’t think you know the first thing about it, but it sounds really gritty and bad-ass to tell your new federation that you’re a sociopath right? I bet you get the cries of attention you seek from people who are nervous about you.

Which brings me to my next point: who the hell are you? Honestly, without the sociopath gimmick, you get even more boring than you already are. If I were to ask different XWF stars who you were, I’d bet I’d get 20 different answers because there’s nothing about Chris Valerius that is even remotely interesting. Believe me when I say that it was a struggle to find something about you I could talk about. You seem to take on the exact same, recycled, indy-wrestler persona that I’ve seen a hundred other times. But you’re in the big leagues now, you’ve never fought anyone like me. All I’m asking is that you can list something interesting about yourself and make it stick. Don’t play this bullshit game of saying something about yourself and immediately counteracting it the moment it gets called out.

That’s weak Chris, doctor’s note or not. I think you’ve got some changes to make in your bio on our company’s website. I suggest going and doing that immediately.


Neville feels a quick bite on the end of his line. It stops almost immediately. He pulls the line out of the water and casts again, this time in a different spot.

Lesson #2 – Address Your Opponent

This brings me to my next point, you’re in a goddamn title match against a champion, it might do you some good to focus and actually address the other person. I don’t deserve to be talked about simply in the third person. I have the belt, I’m the one you’re against, and you barely give me the time of day. What the hell man? Are you so lost in your own little world that this title doesn’t matter to you? Are so you so transfixed with the people around you that you don’t spend time living in reality? The difference between myself and you is that I actually try to learn and study the other person. But I guess that’s hard to do when you can’t even let the world know anything interesting about yourself. You’re coming into a match that can prove yourself in unprepared, uneducated and annoying as hell. Why do we care about homeless people around you when you can’t even focus on the match at hand. You get that’s what we’re doing right? That cutting promos in a wrestling federation is about calling out your opponent and getting hyped for the match? In absolutely no way did you accomplish that. Instead we had to sit through boring-ass vignettes about other people that in no way pointed to or got people excited about our match. This is what pisses me off the most. I want people to want to watch my matches, not flip the channel because my opponent is so off in his own world that people don’t care.

A few weeks ago, it was Finn Kuhn’s chance to have a title shot. Much like you the first time he spoke, he completely ignored me, only to try and wait for all his trash talk until after I’d gone to bed the night before. He knew I couldn’t call him out that way. Wait until the last minute and you can say pretty much whatever you want with no response. But it didn’t work. I caught things and called him out for it while I was in bed. Why do I get the same feeling it’s exactly what you’re doing Chris? Waiting until the last second to actually deal with the accusations I’m making because you’re too much a damn coward to actually let me respond. You would be an embarrassment as a champion Chris Valerius. I actually want to make an example out of you, if you try and pull the same shit as Finn did the other week, you’ll find I’ll be saltier than the sea I’m in right now.

Neville feels a tug on his line. This felt big. He reeled in as hard as he could, and the battle was on. Man vs. fish, Man vs. animal. He could feel the fish getting more and more tired as time went. Neville would win this battle. He had to. It put his mind to thinking of some of the other battles he’d been in. He pulled the fish in. Tilapia. Damn it. Garbage fish. Not the type of fish worth doing battle with.

Lesson #3 – Make What You Show People Matter

This brings me to my final point, I’ve already kind of made it previously, but this is an important one. Do you really think people care about watching all these other people in your promos? There’s so many characters I feel I need a guide to keep track on who everyone is. And the hilarious part of it all is that even if someone is there for 2 or less minutes, they are all still more interesting than the character of Chris Valerius. Seriously, I would rather fight the homeless guys in your promo than have to play the game of “this is me, no it’s not” that you seem to be accustomed to. You seem to scroll through personalities faster than a drag queen scrolls through hairstyles.

You see Chris, when we cut promos we get a chance to show people things about ourselves. We get to choose what goes out to the world. We can either spend that time deliberately, thinking through what present about ourselves and allowing the rest of the world to hear it. You either have extreme ADHD and can’t focus on something for more than a few seconds, or you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. There’s more storylines going on in your promos than Love Actually, and everything seems underwhelming. There’s no payoff, no focal point, nothing to keep people engaged with what’s going on. This is OUR match Chris, we have a chance to impress the XWF and it’s fans this week. But you seem more interested in creating this annoying Seattle drug-riddled wonderland that no one has asked for or cares about.

Check your head man, it might not be sociopathy, and yes I pointed that out before you did, but there’s something really wrong with you. And I’ll be using that against you come tomorrow night.

Neville thinks back to the past couple “challengers” he’s had, all young guys with big dreams thinking this could be their big shot in the company. One by one he’d dismantled them all. Killed their hopes, killed their career trajectory. Maybe he should feel guilty about things. Maybe he should stop, let one of the young guys win.

Fuck that

Guys like Chris Valerius made Neville want to win even more. Guys who think they’re smarter than the game they’re playing, who use annoying tactics to try and make him look bad. Neville wanted to hurt Valerius this week, make an example out of him. Tomorrow would teach Chris Valerius a lesson. Tomorrow he would learn how things really worked.

Tomorrow

Educating the XWF since 06/08/17