Clashing Symbols

He dreamt that night of the deep ocean and the flood below. Nameless things spoke, in voices that grated beautifully on the edge of his hearing, just as their physical forms moved ever at the edge of his vision. He dreamt that Churchill said, "Little Eichmanns, all pursuing their banalities of evil," but it was the wrong Churchill, and that confused him.

In the morning he visited the Citadel. He saw the eagles, and realised that the floorplan of the headquarters was patterned on the arms of of a swastika. He saw the Black Table, and the Black Throne. He saw the small but unaccountably hungry fish, and the deep black loam that would never grow anything but stank of rubber even on the coldest days.

There was a bust of a holy man. It had been chained upon a black pedestal. Sightlessly, the disembodied statue gazed out upon the empty space where the angles were all wrong. The archives below had all been removed. The air stank of mould and damp rot. Somehow, the new was already corrupt.

He listened, as he walked through the oddly-angled rooms. There were tinkling sounds like the invisible shadow of glass in the wind. He got the impression that change was coming, but uncertain. Something huge was waiting to be (re)born.

He drew his sword, and watched as the pawns aligned. It was the Kalashnikov variation of the Sicilian. He had to reload his sword, and do it quietly.