First up we have Montag. He's based on Guy Montag from Fahrenheit 451 (one of my favorite books). I figure if we can have heroes based on the legends of Sherwood Forest (Green Arrow), why not a character based on the 451? This Montag happens to be a villain... his name is Werner Sonnenvogel and he's from an alternate Earth dropped back into the main Earth. (He's also a Maltheist, and was so before 'going bad'-- uh, and I'm in danger of running off at the mouth here-- I'll just give his intro. If you guy's want more, I'll tell ya later. Oh, and the lizard-- it's a salamander.)
Earth died on a monday.
There were no remarkable signs to herald the event. It was in the sleepy wee hours of the morning for him. He'd turned over just as the shockwave hit. Turned over to kiss his lover only to find her flesh being torn from her powderizing bones with forces that should have vaporized him too.
Everything he knew was gone. Everywhere he went it was the same. Endless scorching devastation. No living human being in the entire world and an atmosphere left so thin that the stars could be seen through it even during the day-- and he'd wandered a good part of it. He was truly the last man on earth with only the cockroaches and the rotting stink of a slagged planet for company.
But he had power.
At his fingertips he could now command even the stone beneath his feet to catch fire, to melt away and burn. Somewhere fate had played a marvelously sick gag. The destructive force to level a world, the very forces that had destroyed his own, had been transferred to him in that last split second. God had made him accountable for the actions of his entire species -- the last living reminder of the foolishness of humanity-- and marked him as he had marked Cain. Marked him so that he could not die as a normal man might.
And then the door came.
It shone, cool and blue and inviting. He was drawn to the portal and the voice that beckoned. the words peace and rest tumbled out like water, soothing the man's shattered soul. It whispered of love and acceptance and companionship. The man went through the door and discovered that God was not only a sadist but a liar. The door led to a green world-- shadow world so like his own had once been that he wept to see trees again.
In the shadow world he has found that everything is much as it was in his own Earth's past. It is backward. Awkward. Violent. Nothing has changed to prevent the time coming when he will stare at himself on that last day. Until then his only companion in this beautiful hell is the fire. It is the only truth. In the burning he finds peace-- the peace of those last thoughts as the flames closed over him before he beheld the hideous face of God.
He is Montag.
His world died on a monday.
