[AG] NO LEGENDS. - vs. AV Club.

"All fun and games until you're dragged into the light, isn't it?"

The cold voice of Aurora Ray, not heard before now, can be seen as the girl herself stands in the midst of a rotted cabin. She runs her hands along the crackling wood, the softening structure of the cabin that she finds herself in. Her feet sink and shift as she steps across the wooden floor.

"Night-Stalkers. Creatures of the shadow. Lost Boys. You can speak the words all you want, but it never makes them more true every single time they leave your mouth. You feel yourselves the true terrors of this world, don't you? The bump in the night, the Cold Death that stalks, the breath on your neck as you round every corner in every cellar, every basement of the world. You are what they fear when they tuck their children in at night, aren't you? You are terror incarnate, and you seek to use this platform here to ascend to a new level of fear. Why? To bring in new followers, to court new sources of food...or to hide what you truly are behind that flesh?"

Aurora smiles.

"Because we know what you are, 'Lost Boys.' We know where you hide, what you keep behind those fangs. You are no true terror. You are no cold death. You are the pages of a novel, worn out by the bright lights of Hollywood and the lowest lows of made-for-TV. Bastards born of pulp fiction, you Vampires want to make your mark, rise above the office that this culture has given you, don't you? You don't understand, however, what true fear, what unbridled violence can do to you. You don't understand what a nightmare is, because you feel that you see one when you look in the mirror day in and day out...but you are no nightmares.

You are no waking terrors.

You are nothing."

Aurora lowers herself to the ground.

"True terror is when you wake up, morning after morning, travelling in the woods with your feet worn to bone, unable to discern dream from daylight as you are forever pursued. True terror is when you rest your head upon the pillow at night, but you hear not just one bump, but the splintering of wood as a man forces his way into your abode, no pouch at his side to contain the treasures within, only the cold steel of an axe in his hand as he seeks to take from you something more valuable than any piece of jewelry. True terror is when you see the reflection of eyes in the cold night, frozen in place as you know a movement back risks your footfall, a movement forward risks its appearance...and standing in place only offers you the reality that this thing will come and tear your throat from your neck and spray the woods down with a crimson blood so bright that it blots out anything else.

Euan and I, we are not misguided. Our Father was vestigial, he served a purpose long ago and he long outlived his usefulness. He simply existed until something better came along to replace him. Lazarus was that thing, but the betterment runs through all of us. Project Death is far more an embodiment of what we could be, what we could accomplish, than the Father's Doctrine ever could be. Euan and I, we show the truest rage, the most violent, volatile honesty that this business can offer. We have suffered, independently, together, and we've tithed one another to our pain. We've tied our hands together so that we can suffer equally, so we can share our burden, so that we can bare and share the agony of our sins.

We are products of a war-torn world, of a culture that chewed us to pieces and spat us out, of a society that would rather see us dead.

And against all odds, we survived."

We see Aurora heading deeper into the rotting cabin, heading down a shallow staircase. It nearly falls to pieces as her footfalls run down it, and beyond the staircase, we can see a form in the shadow-hulking and immense-and it's quickly revealed as Euan Hill. In front of him is a shallow hole, now covered up with moldy planks. He lets out a shallow breath, staining the air white with fog as he exhales. He steps past the hole, and stands behind Aurora as she continues speaking.

"We've buried our past, and with it, our fears of creatures like you. Old stories do little, and you may have your attempt to shine fear into our hearts, but there is little you can do to scare us that we have not already seen. In fact, you are the ones who'd wish you'd paid more attention, for you have so much to learn. A near-child like me, and a megalith like Euan...we can do so much more harm than you could ever imagine. We could carve those teeth out of your jaws and hammer them back into your skulls, but what good would that do? We'd rather send you packing into the void...and collect what we take as trophies forevermore.

If you're what you claim to be, if your legends are true...then let us pull you into the sunlight and see if you burn. Expose to the world what a sham you truly are, and show the gathered crowd that such creatures of the night like yourselves have so little to offer to a business such as this. We don't, either...but we don't claim to. We just want our platform.

You just happen to be the next offering."

Ray looks back into the shallow hole for a moment, and Hill lets out another gruff snarl. Ray chuckles, and then lights a match, throwing it behind her and causing a liquid spread about the molded wood to catch flame. She and Hill step away from the cabin, which lights up the night as the flames catch dead leaves and dying trees around it. Ray turns back toward the camera as she admires the flame.

"Isn't this light beautiful? Isn't it magnificent? Imagine the meaning...the legend we will destroy when we send you unto this Funeral Pyre forevermore."

We see Aurora smile once more, and Euan Hill's dark, brooding voice echoes through the world-a single haunting line.

"Come and see."

We fade to black.