In the Act I Epilogue, we experienced a piece of Ulver Zandalus‘ history:
The year is 4683. Thirty-five years ago.
Ulver Zandalus is awake. At last.
His heart is racing, he’s gasping for breath, and he’s soaking wet. Like he’s sweat every ounce of moisture out of his body and now it’s clinging to his skin. And he STINKS. Body odor and fear.
It’s hard to see. He feels like his eyes are wide open, but his field of vision is really, really thin, as though in reality he’s only barely begun to open his eyes. Is there something sewed to his face? He has no idea where he is. Why he’s here. Or what’s going on.
He can see that there are people with him. Sort of. At least, he’s aware of humanoid shapes in the shadowy darkness. Three of them—maybe four or five? It’s impossible to tell. They’re arrayed in an arc. A semi-circle.
And then he hears the footsteps.
Heavy boots on hard stone. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.
The sound bounces off walls, echoing through him and over him like radiation.
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.
A figure in elegant nobleman’s clothing approaches. He’s wearing an iridescent hummingbird mask. It’s beautiful. Breathtaking. As the hummingbird slowly turns its head around the arc of figures, looking one helpless person to the next, Ulver can hear whimpers and retching and pissing. He can smell fear, like an animal might smell it, as though it were something tangible. The hummingbird looks directly at him.
“This one,” he says.
Young Ulver screams helplessly as figures swoop in from the shadows to surround him. They whisper, close in his ear, “Have you found the yellow sign?”
And that’s the last thing he remembers for certain. Before the drugs and the music and the orgies and the torture and the feasting began. As he was made to watch. For three days straight. Dying inside with every moment.
First Reference: Act I Epilogue
Other Notable References: —