Perchance To Dream - Priscilla (Carna)
| Perchance To Dream - Priscilla (Carna) | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 15 January 2018 |
| Location: | Fearful Symmetry |
| Synopsis: | A half-breed receives a vision. |
| Cast of Characters: | {{{Cast of Characters}}} |
| Tinyplot: | Return To Escher |
A man stands before Priscilla. A great man. Magnanimous. Clever. Peaceful. Kind. But also very sad. This is her first memory. Of a towering figure who looks upon her with a warming smile, and yet a melancholy in his eyes that makes such a gentle expression painful to see on him. When he speaks, his words touch her, fill her, make her spirit soar, with the hopes and aspirations put into them, the story that will unfold in time.
"You will be joined by others eventually. Friends and family who will walk with you, learn with you, and share their lives with you. You will be the heroes and heroines that save everyone and everything, and put to right what was made wrong by those who came before you." It is said with such certainty, such confidence in her, that she can not help but believe it.
"When shall they make their appearance?" Priscilla hears herself asking eagerly, young, high in voice, enthusiastic to be part of something important, to be with these others.
"That will depend on the actions of others."
"By what names shalt I know them?"
"That is for them to decide."
"Hath I a name?"
"You will know it when the time comes."
"What might thou be known as?"
Words are spoken, but go unheard.
Feeling doubt suddenly, as Priscilla looks down at herself and sees how incomplete she is, she asks, "Art thou certain that thou chose correctly? How dost thou knoweth that I shalt succeed?"
"Only Water and Flame can see the future, little one. But know this: I have chosen you and this place. Out of all the times and places, and out of all the souls that might have been, it was you and they who were selected. Take pride in that, and believe in yourself as I do."
The man begins to fade then, receding into the distance and leaving the girl who is not named Priscilla anymore alone. "Where art thou going?" she cries out in alarm.
Again, words are spoken, but go unheard.
Then a pair of invisible doors slam shut, and the world goes cold. The ground is sundered all around for great distances, huge swaths of terrain simply DROPPING into some depthless Chasm, cutting her off from the bridge that leads to the outside. Wet white paint begins to fall like snow, and twisted creatures arise from the soil. Large paint palettes, like wheels, dripping with spindly limbs in a riotous profusion of colors. Ink blots in the sky that screech static signals as blobs of black scatter from their huge sweeping wings. Knights in ever-shifting patterns as though unseen paint brushes were dabbing colors on empty space with enormous speed, only for the paint to evaporate into nothing moments later, and then be replaced so that the cycle repeats.
For a long time, she forgets that she isn't Priscilla anymore, and she plays the role of a girl left alone in the world with only these creatures for company.
But then something starts tearing at her. Something unseen. Unravelling threads from this world that is part of her, and winding them out into some unseen aether. Like strings of her flesh, pulled out of her one by one, sending her incomplete form into even greater chaos. Color leeches out, the creatures are siphoned into whatever lies outside of here, twisted to some unknown purpose.
A man appears again. He is somehow familiar. But she, Priscilla, has never met him. And the already-unwound world falls apart even faster with his appearance, exposing a gaping darkness far into the distance.
The familiar man speaks to her, as forms flicker all around him, too fast to see. She can not understand his words. But he points beyond her frantically, as bodies begin to fall and fall and fall to fill the Chasm. She turns to look.
And she remembers who she is, not Priscilla, just a nobody who invalidated the trust put in her by that man, as a scythe finishes connecting with the back of her neck.
Priscilla is the one holding that paint-dyed scythe, aware of her identity again. The brilliant array of colors staining her weapon is offensively incongruous for the act just committed.
The colors spread up the scythe, even when she tries to drop it. She shakes the weapon frantically, as the paints spread up onto her hands, dying them in the bright hues of a killer.
They spread and spread until they cover her whole body. Right as they begin to pour into her eyes, nose, and mouth, the headless body of that other self lying there, the decapitated head looking up at her not in accusation, but in surprise, confusion, shock... Something roars, first hunger, then in rage, then in pain.
The paints all turn the rust red of dried blood.
The vision fades.
