ICP4: S1.E01.3

|pRoj<ec>T_</fo>uR|

What precedes: S1.E01.2

WHAT FOLLOWS: S1.E01.3

When the first hot drop hit his face, he flinched in surprise as it burned him and brushed it from his cheek before it had the chance to run down it at all. He then ventured a brief glance up at the clouds, so heavy with snow that they sagged below the tops of the massive factory cranes to either side. The second drop hit his nose and he brushed it off just as quickly, turning his face down and lowering the brim of his hat. He pulled his weathered gloves a bit farther onto his wrists, the greyish cards dangling from his coat sleeves – three each – clattered together like cardboard wind-chimes. Then the drops fell a bit faster, and the men around him began to shuffle and close up their own clothes to keep the scalding raindrops from working their way in.

The policemen-soldiers had moved concrete partitions into the spaces between the parked vans, using both to form a solid wall that fully blocked all lanes of the highway. Their riot shields were propped against the wall, ready to be heaved into place above it to form the upper half of a taller wall, one that they would move and fluctuate as they needed it to. It looked a bit as though they'd carved a trench from concrete and plastic, an archery pit where knights in suits of black silicon carbide and canvas armor would fire bolts of lead and metal and ballistics, slugs with exploding arrowheads, at an oncoming enemy.

ICP4: S1.E01.2

|pRoj<ec>T_</fo>uR|

What precedes: S1.E01.1

WHAT FOLLOWS: S1.E01.2

She awoke to an aching pain that sweltered and rippled through her skull, her neck; a fire flicking about the nerves in her spine; to the taste of steel in her mouth, blurred vision and slow thoughts. As she squinted and lifted her head off the cracked tile and became slowly aware of still-warm blood pooled about the glassy crater her head had made in the floor when she fell, she became very cold, and then very warm, and a rush of goosebumps over her body left her feeling naked. Weakly she rose, laboriously, slowly, all the while muttering broken and confused words under her breath. She reached a sitting position and let her head hang between her legs, waited for her eyes to focus as she watched red drops trickle down the sticky strands of her long-hanging black hair. Breathing slowly, steadily, waiting out the waves of pain and panic, trying to will her mind to work, a thought finally took form.

What happened?

ICP4: S1.E01.1

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In time immemorial, a monster of fire, a flaming thing tearing over the horizon, a monument of a beast galloping heedless high above the mountains, over the ocean, over the forests and deserts; its flame lit the sky orange and red, spreading out over the atmosphere of an Earth imperceptibly small and forever beyond to overpower the light of all God's celestial gems. A maw the size of a continent split wide to reveal teeth great as California redwoods, breath like an arid Phoenix. Black and crimson eyes perceived the expanse, trespassing upon each layer of existence, seeing through the concept of mankind and dedicating a judgmental glare to the Spiritus Mundi.

All of this presented an image, and the beast sifted mindfully through it, turning aside and looking behind each subtle strand of each person's life, unweaving the webs of their God-seeming composition. And in the midst of it, the beast found HER. And with unnatural, fervent speed did it pursue.

HER.

Then the image changed, and our Great Lady Babylon sat atop the corpse of that beast in an unfamiliar golden ocean, the size of which defied the curve of the world. She and HER alone atop it. The ocean glowed yellow and as the fire of the beast slowly died away, a sepia twilight fell over the scene. And the Lady rode the corpse as though a vessel to convey HER across a sea of bitter honey.

|pRoj<Ec>T_</fo>uR|

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