"A guy who's been around the business a lot longer than I... has said 'The Road Will Own You.'"

Cowtown Wrestling Academy. Fort Worth, Texas.

Lamont Danielson and Scott Rojas stood in a ring addressing a dozen sitting students. This was their most successful class yet, a few days from now and the two young journeymen would host their first student show with this group. Before that, however, they would have to give the warning talk about the business.

Groups around the world give the same talk.

Joe Black would give the same talk to the boys at his school. Kyle Morris has given it for years. Max Danger, J Leslie Voss, Joey Malone, you name the trainer; they gave the speech. The warning/etiquette speech was one that the business was built on. The trainers get up and start telling the code of wrestling: Rats are fun, but keep them separate from home life, defer to the veterans at all time, heels call the matches, shake everyone's hand when you walk into the locker room, avoid the hard stuff.

Avoid the hard stuff.

Everyone knew from the past few years what the toll of the road has left on this industry. Men like Brian Pillman and Eddy Guerrero died due to drug abuse and its after effects. Some, such as Tom Billington and the Iron Shiek, lived with the repercussions of the life style. In the 80s boom, everything was big: booze, cocaine, and steroids. Billington became a shattered shell of the Dynamite Kid that he was in Stampede, now he lived on the Dole, forever handicapped by abuse of drugs.

Their tale would be one more personal.

Scott scratched the back of his head. The former ACW and SbW wrestler always hated this part as he started his speech.

"Many of you know our trainer. He went by the name of "Impulse" Brian James. He became a bit of a legend in this area. "

A murmur erupted. Most of these young trainees were at such an age that they were teenagers when the Squared Circle had their televised run, focusing in Texas. For many, this would have been the promotion that led to their love of wrestling.

"He started off in the business at age 15. He was a run away and quickly absorbed himself in its culture. Instead of maturing in high school and at home in Fort Worth, he did it on the road; with men who weren't much more mature than he. He was talented, almost a prodigy. "

"It started to get rough on him. It was about when he joined 21wrestling."

More murmurs.

"Traveling to and from Britain, wrestling in two companies. When you take the beating he did, you find solace in something. And you all will take a beating in the ring. Brian, first found peace through beer, then whiskey, then finally, one day on the beaches of South Florida, he found Crystal Meth."

"The drugs consumed him. Instead of caring for his family or his craft, he became consumed with the pursuit of escaping it all. He wanted to mask his pain. And what was sad was that the rest of the world missed out on, they saw the man who quickly was making a name for him. He elevated his career, which in turn elevated his habit. Ultimately, it started to interfere with wrestling. In Action, he was falling through the cracks. When he joined Wrestling 101, they hoped it'd get better."

"It just masked his problem. When he joined tSC, he had the greatest opportunity of his career. He could have been the man the company was based on, and they wanted him to be that paragon. But he tested positive. They hid it as a personal decision, but his run was over. Since then he's been a shattered shell of a man. He got divorced; he lost his ranch and his wrestling school. He lost everything due to meth."

Scott paced around the ring.

"He is just one of many guys. He's a bit more personal story to us since he was our maestro. The road to the top of this industry is littered with the bodies and shells of men who just made one slip up, one mistake that equaled their end."

***

He looked across the room. Seven men with sanguine capes and bronze rope over their black European tailored suits. Blood red ties and crisp cream shirts shone in the candlelight. Down at his wrists, two artists were hammering in their tools into his skin. They wore complete robes with hoods. All that was seen was their hands and their primitive tools. Bone into flesh. He would scream, but that would be ill fitting for this sort of ceremony. For a man assuming this rank, this position in the syndicate.

Ink was flowing and mixing with his own blood. For the past two days the attendants worked from his shoulder blades down. Soon the scars of their work will give away. Tales of war, of conflict, of tribulation.

Of his patron forging his way from the godly realm to our native realm, leading the departed to their eternal resting place

He was his new representative. For millennia, they fought, godly realm wanting to extinguish each other. He who gains control over all the others, controls the rest of the realms. In our world, they cannot directly interfere. They must fulfill their purpose, as stated through legend. His patron leads the dead to their new realm. His patron can’t simply go and fight the one who opens the sky each morning, or the one who pleases the harvest so that it can be bountiful and supply the world.

They need people like him. Their agents. The ones that fulfill their obligations, the ones that wage their war.

“We are done. The markings are complete.”

The two men dropped their tools on the ground. They then slid wide dishes towards the front of the man’s chair. Very suddenly, they lifted him up by the armpits and he looked at the markings on his arms. His shoulders and upper arms have long since scabbed, but his triceps and forearms bled down his hands and dripped into the vessels. Soon enough, the bowls filled with ink and blood and the artists picked them up and left the dark room.

The seven men stepped forward and each touched him on shoulders. With a slight focus of pressure, he sat back down in the chair.

By this time, the ceremony was in its third day. During it, he would look straightforward and not move. Occasionally there would be reprieve, long enough for the artists to file down their bone tools and retrieve new pools of ink. But he wouldn’t move, he wouldn’t drink or eat. He would sit and think and reflect on his calling, why he was named his patron’s agent on Earth.

That first day in October in Nova Scotia. He stabbed a man that at one time he respected and would even call a friend. But, in that incision there wasn’t the normal feeling of metal against flesh. He felt a shock. He stabbed some device before he reached their midsection. The electrocution sent him back and gave him visions.

He saw his god’s birth and his relationship with his brother; both sons of a virgin birth. The god becomes the crooked foot dog faced psychopomp. The patron’s protection of the Sun as it passed through his underworld. The wars and the destruction of a once great society by Cortez, and from that, the establishment of the syndicate in 1517, forever waiting for him to gain the visions so he could take their god’s mantle.

And now almost six months later, after months of searching and training, he has received the imbued markings of Xolotl, brother of Quetzalcoatl. Aztec god of death and protector of the Sun.

He looked up through his greasy dirty hair. It laid in clumps and locks over his head. His salt and pepper beard was full and matted down in spittle, blood and other fluids. His blood starting to congeal and make the tattoos indistinguishable. Through the hair, his gray piercing eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep watch as a new man walks into the room.

The man was covered in green velvet, a stark contrast to the rest of the room. He walked in unmasked. He was Latino, with shocking white hair parted down the center and tied back into a ponytail. His goatee grey with black at the corners. Wire John Lennon glasses illuminated his blue eyes. In his hands was a box. He stepped forward to the chair. Another man took the box and opened it. The green man put his hands into the box and pulled out a golden mask. Embued on the mask was a dog’s skull, with eye ports and an opening for the mouth. He gingerly placed it upon the man’s head and knelt on his left knee. The seven crimson men followed.

“For almost six hundred years we’ve waited for you. The man who has descended from Mictlan. As Xolotl must guide the dead on their four-year quests, he is his agent on our plane. He has already attacked one deity of another pantheon and has survived. Tonight he’s been anointed to finish the job. Through the power of our markings and the death mask of Xolotl, rise Brian Spaes and kill Héroe de Pulpa, in the name of the Sons of Sinaloa and Xolotl!”