I'll be honest, it was a very difficult decision to decide on a sequel story, mainly because, as my fellow writers will empathize, it's not worth writing a follow-up unless the story is big and better, and I wasn't looking forward to the endless nights of writing...but I just couldn't get this story out of my head!
This is the sequel to The Dark Knight's Crusade, and I think it's really going to satisfy the readers. This one is actually more independent of Nolan's Batman, and it won't be following the story of TDKR as much as TDKC did with The Dark Knight. Of course, there'll be some elements from the movie, and from Nolan's trilogy, but I'm really going back to the comics on this one. I've done major research, and this story is a very wide amalgamation of various Batman comics and some of my own ideas that I've been playing with for awhile.
I hope you guys enjoy!
(And if you've read the previous story, you know that this chapter isn't my usual writing style, but for the story's sake, it's proper to introduce this chapter in this form.)
There are many places on this earth that have been long since forgotten.
Some of these places are paradises. Paradises so enthralling, that many of those who stumbled upon these mythic lands perished as they stared in paralyzed ecstasy, forgetting to eat and drink, powerless to experience the bliss at their fingertips. Only a few held the willpower to tear their eyes away, and even fewer held the wisdom to not look back. These fortunate few who managed to venture back to their homes rarely spoke of what they saw, but in bars and taverns, where the tongues of men are loose, they whispered legends of the mythic paradise, legends that haunted the ears of those poor souls who picked the wrong night for a drink...and the legends spread, luring the poor and the rich alike into fruitless expeditions, dragging the foolish and the wise into insanity...forever hoping that they might just glimpse such an otherworldly bliss...
But, like all balanced scales, there exist other legends as well. Legends that do not speak of heavenly lands, but of tortured and damned hells on earth...places where men are thrown to suffer and die, places where sunlight doesn't dare to enter...places where the few who escape are damned to walk the earth with a tortured soul, begging for death, if death means freedom from their very own haunted minds...
It was in such a hellish place, where those who have knowledge of its existence don't dare to give name nor direction, that a small child was born.
He was born to a poor mother who begged for food and water, not for herself, but for her only son. The mother walked for miles barefoot, carrying the small infant on her back while the sun bore down on her face, hot sand scorched her feet, and the dry wind parched her throat. Most would have perished in those wastelands, but she willed herself onward, not out of fear of death, but out of the sheer love she felt for her only son. For her valiant efforts she was rewarded with the scraps and crumbs from the bottom of waste and garbage, and with such pitiful sustenance at hand, she ignored the painful twists and lurches of her starving stomach, choosing to feed her son while she closed her eyes and prayed for the numbing gift of sleep.
It was in such a merciless place that the child grew, surprising the callous observers who were sure death was raking at the child's door, but like his mother, the child was gifted with immense strength and will. He scoured the lands for food and water, he taught himself to read and to write from tattered remains, and he still managed to care for his mother's failing health. But no matter how plentiful the bounty he gathered, the mother refused to take a bite until the son ate his full, and because of this, the boy grew strong and the mother withered to skin and bones.
In her failing state, the mother fell dangerously ill, and despite the boy's efforts, despite the mother eating her fill and drinking past satisfaction, her condition failed to improve. The boy's eyes then fell upon a nearby village, where he knew medicine was available but exclusive to the rich. He crept in and stole, relying on his clever skills to sneak away, but the alarm was rung and the boy was caught the moment he returned to his mother. She was taken by men, and the boy was punished in the cruelest and wicked way, because in hell on earth, there are no morals, there exist no ethics.
So the boy was chained into a chair, his eyelids forced open by a crude device that drew blood at his eyes, and he was forced to watch as men violated and tortured his mother. The boy howled and cried in agony, begging for forgiveness and mercy while the mother was thrown and tossed like a doll, and only when the mother could no longer scream, for her throat had given way, and when she could no longer twitch, for her strength had been sapped, did they pick up a knife and slice her throat.
But the boy's torment didn't end there.
Still howling with anger and grief, the boy thrashed in the chair as the men picked up the same knife and went to work on him, carving and stabbing while he shrieked in agony, his eyes still forced on his dead mother's corpse, lying naked and beaten a few feet away.
After what could have been days, the men grew tired of their fun and cast the boy out into the badlands again, his mother's corpse tumbling out a few moments later, and purely for jest, the men tossed the boy the medicine along as well. Howling with laughter, the men left the mutilated boy and his naked mother's corpse to rot under the sun, and again, for jest, they tossed the bloody knife they had used on the boy and mother behind them.
Under the boiling heat of the sun, the boy tried to mourn his mother, but the tears wouldn't come, because his entire body was roaring with pain...pain like never before. He couldn't move or breathe without his mind screeching in agony, without clawing at his eyes, and it was his iron-will alone that allowed him the decision to dress his grievous wounds, certain that time would heal his body...but as the days passed, the pain, unbearable and all consuming, did not lessen. The boy shrieked and screamed to the sky, his entire body thrashing against the earth, damning the men who did this to him, and as the madness of unbearable thirst and hunger overcame him, his eyes fell upon the medicine bottle lying at the feet of his mother's rotting corpse. With the frantic desperation of a deranged man he seized the bottle and swallowed it whole, throwing himself to the ground, praying with all his might that his torment would end. And to his miraculous surprise, the pain receded; the medicine seemed to rush through blood, numbing and obliterating the pain until his mind seemed to fall back into place.
But the boy was no fool, years of living in the worst hell imaginable sharpened his senses, and he knew it was only a matter of time until the pain overcame him again. So the boy grabbed the knife and plunged it into the dry and cracked earth, ripping away, inch by inch, working with a fierceness in his eye, until, hours later, a large mound of dirt lay next to him, and a large open grave lay in front of him. Stripping away his own clothes, he bound his mother up so that he could lay her to rest respectably, he cried freely as he lowered his mother into the ground, and then his watery eyed turned red with rage, and he bellowed to the heavens that he would seek revenge, he roared and screamed hate until his throat might have tore. He buried his mother's body, and he wedged the empty medicine bottle above her grave because it was all he had in his possession to show the the world where his mother, a woman possessed of such extraordinary strength, was forever resting.
With murderous rage, he walked through the badlands, glaring away the pangs of thirst and hunger, holding death at bay by the sheer hatred that ran in his blood. At night fall he came upon the village, the place where they all watched as his mother begged for food, where they all ignored her cries, where the men had violated his mother and left him in agony.
Under cover of the night, he crept into each home, as silent as death itself, and he slit every throat his eyes fell upon, child and adult, his knife knew no mercy. No one was safe from his vengeance, because they were all equally guilty, nobody helped, no one came walking out of the darkness to answer the boy's cries...
Finally, he came upon the home where the men rested, and he could hear them laughing and drinking inside. The boy waited patiently outside the home, envisioning his revenge while he sat plain and unafraid, because the entire village behind him lay slaughtered, and the dead could not raise the alarm. Eventually the laughter died out and empty bottles clinked to the floor, and when the sound of snoring drifted on, did the boy finally act.
He crept into the home and targeted the closest man to the entrance, the boy immediately blinded and gagged the unconscious man, and dragged him outside where he bound his hands and feet. He repeated this for each of them, and when the boy finally had all of the men outside, he quickly slit their heels and woke them, and they all lurched and writhed on the floor as soon as they understood they were at the boy's mercy. The boy smiled and held up the knife they had so joyously used to murder and torture with, but instead of slicing their throats, where they would have had a painless and easy death, he calmly gouged out their eyes.
The men shrieked, watching in horror as they witnessed their companions lose their sight at the hands of the boy and the knife. The men screamed for forgiveness, promising the boy treasures and wealth from their raids and travels, but the boy was merciless, and as he gouged out the last eye, the idea of the men's raids struck an idea in his mind. He made his way over to the stables, and found a wagon, the tool the men used in their raids, and the boy piled the men's bodies into the bed.
After trekking for hours and hours into the wastelands, the boy threw the men out and cut their bonds. With their heels sliced, the men were forced to crawl and drag themselves across the hot sands, crawling blindly without direction. Realizing that death was at hand, they howled to the sky, screaming and screeching damnation for the boy, but a few still leapt at the boy's feet, begging for mercy from the murdered mother's son...but the son only smiled. He climbed back into the wagon and set off back to the village, leaving the men to blindly crawl their final days on this earth, praying for death as hunger and thirst were sure to torture them into madness...
The Son smiled fondly as he passed a blind man waiting at a bus stop, the man's hesitant walking lope reminded him of the men crawling on the hot sand...their bones were now surely dust, scattered across those badlands, forgotten...yet, even now, several lifetimes later, the thought of those men begging for death still brought a smile to the Son's face.
He threw his hood over his face and calmly made his way down the streets of Gotham.
There was work to be done.