Perchance To Dream - Count Kord (Carna)
| Perchance To Dream - Count Kord (Carna) | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 15 January 2018 |
| Location: | Fearful Symmetry |
| Synopsis: | A demi-god has a dream. |
| Cast of Characters: | {{{Cast of Characters}}} |
| Tinyplot: | Return To Escher |
Jakob stands upon a palace balcony overlooking a vast marble city. Greek architecture is prevalent. Light shimmers and distorts in slender threads, playing across the white marble streets, the broad, square roofs, the support columns, that blend with some other, less earthly construction design, as though developed separately from the culture of ancient Greece over thousands of years. The city lies on the shores of a great black sea, its level, calm surface interrupted very little by waves and instead by huge statues of gods and heroes, stretching all the way up to the source of the distorted light above.
A second ocean in the sky, stretching on and on without limits. Whereas the ocean below is black as night, the one above is blue and shades of green. The actual light source is somewhere beyond that, the columns bearing the features and forms of mighty beings piercing through that layer and extending on into the second ocean, to whatever lies above that.
Standing next to Jakob is another man. Even though he's right there, Jakob can't see all of his face, his gaze somehow trapped just below it.
"Trapped between two worlds, eh? Me too." The red-haired man is looking out across the city, reaching forth to rest a hand on a column carved with the stylized face of a bird upon it.
"They say that two people can never truly understand each other. That even if there were a way to connect with each other, and read each other's hearts, the experiences they had before then would have already shaped their perceptions and understanding. They would not truly be able to see things from the same point of view. But you and I are different. Aren't we, Jakob?" There is the pulse of life, and the convulsions of death, and the man who calls himself Count Kord is that person, not the one he once was. Further, intestines and innards flow out of his torso and into the man next to him.
There is a tension in the air that has been building, and now it becomes nearly palpable. The faint breeze off the stagnant ocean ceases. The small wavelettes upon the water cease completely. Far below, tiny figures step out into the streets, leaving the buildings. All together, exiting out into the open as though heeding a cue.
The sky ocean above rumbles, becoming unstable. The light distorts more and more as the water in the sky seems to bend down, stretch into pseudopods and then crash back 'down' into its upside-down surface like hills and mountains of fluid diving into an inverted ground.
"They need guidance. They need protection. They need to also be made strong enough to stand on their own. They need to learn fear, to know it, and to conquer it, but to never forget it is what keeps them alive. Otherwise..." The rumbling becomes thunderous, and then the surface tension breaks. From far into the horizon in every direction, horrific volumes of water begin to pour down in rapidly closing walls of liquid death.
The marble edifices of gods and heroes fall one after another, out of the sky ocean and down into the black one below that now rages out of control as waves close in on the city's shores. Awful shapes can dimly be made out within the wall of water moving at incalculable speeds for its sheer scope. It gives the impression that the city and island are falling towards the water instead.
The people in the streets below just stand and stare, knowing they can do nothing. There is nowhere to go.
On Kord's side of the balcony, a column with the sign of the moon cracks. On the other man's side, the column with the bird's face does the same, falling to pieces on the ground.
Out there, a great lighthouse is swallowed up by the ocean, now so close that there is almost nothing that exists outside those vibrations, and that approaching doom.
But still, he can hear the other man speak. "There doesn't have to be one king, you know. How about it? Shall we rule together? Twin kings?"
The statues of a siren and a griffin, facing the ocean, are the first parts of the city to be casualties when the wave hits with the force of an atom bomb. The ground is shredded by the two converging oceans. Cracks open spontaneously in structures as overwhelming volumes of water tear forth from within and below. Buildings are tumbled and destroyed on the wave as easily as dandelions.
The last thing Kord sees is the other man smiling as he mouths words that go unheard.
Then the wave hits.
And he wakes up.
