Icebreaker
Icebreaker: Summarization and discussion of Paradox (after installment 6) in order to maintain consistency and to fill in anyone who has been missing meetings.
- Characters' physical descriptions
Nickolai has short golden hair and blue eyes normally, but long silver hair and black eyes when enraged. His inner fire is like a furnace, very large and very powerful.
Calina is very thin and frail, and wears glasses. She is also about a foot and a half shorter than Nickolai. Her inner fire is like a trick birthday candle, flickering in and out, sometimes blazing, sometimes almost extinguished.
The ancient evil thing (called a demon or a beast, for lack of a better term) is genderless: referred to as "it." It has wings and is quasi-corporeal. We think it can probably manipulate its shape and size.
Maximillian is Nickolai's twin brother, currently not described; all we know is that he is somehow incapacitated or imprisoned in a hospital on the Council's orders.
Lydia is Maximillian's girlfriend or lover. She has a bruise on her cheek, somewhat frizzy hair, hazel eyes, and is called beautiful. - Characters' personalities
Nickolai usually maintains a strict control, but has very uncontrolled outbursts of anger; he is very intense. At birth his soul was corrupted by the thing below the church. He has a twin brother named Maximillian, with whom he has a strong connection. He is a loner and has an extremely high regard for life, as well as a stringent moral code. He is impulsive and mostly introverted.
Calina is intelligent but, at this point, doubting her sanity. Since she is physically frail, she seems to be quite mentally self-analytical; she wavers sometimes, but usually tries to be tough. She is more morally flexible than Nickolai. She is very curious and does not fully understand anything that is going on.
The thing is centuries-old (or older) and very powerful, with a dark sense of humor. It is chaotic evil, very calculating. It broods. It feeds on human fear, tortures more than it kills, and its plan is to reduce the world to ash after fighting Nickolai and Maximillian to the death. It can be bound with religion.
Maximillian is trapped in a hospital, kept unconscious with drugs. The Council sentenced him to death for falling in love with Lydia; since his soul was corrupted he is not supposed to be with anyone else for fear of spreading the corruption. The thing taunts him in his dreams. He wants to escape both the medicated sleep and the thing, but is unable right now.
Lydia is strong and described as beautiful by Max. She snuck into the hospital to see him, despite apparently fierce opposition. It is not quite certain whether or not she is real, since she disappears suddenly from the hospital room, but it seems that she is. - Plot-wise
Nickolai and his twin brother, Maximillian, were raised in the cathedral under the guidance of Father Alexander, who took the role of surrogate father. Their mother died giving birth; because she was forced to give birth in the cathedral, the ancient evil thing bound beneath the church corrupted Nickolai and Maximillian's souls. As such, they are strictly regulated in order to control their half-demon sides and forbidden to be with any women so that the corruption will not be spread. Maximillian, however, falls in love with and wants to marry Lydia. When he goes to seek Father Alexander's blessing, however, the Council intervenes. They sentence him to death, but Nickolai, in a rage, kills the entire Council before the execution can be carried out. In the process, he accidentally kills an innocent nun. Horrified, he attempts to cleanse the cathedral by burning it down but, in doing so, only manages to release the thing from its ancient bindings. Those whom he killed can speak, to a certain extent, within his head. When Calina first meets him, he is trying to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. After the thing rescues him, he enlists Calina's help in finding Maximillian.
Calina is a pyromaniac and an epileptic; when we meet her, she is starting to have more seizures than usual, perhaps from an increase in stress or perhaps due to the thing's influence. She lives with her Gran and her brother, Ben. She witnesses the cathedral fire and thinks she sees it in the smoke, although it might have just been her imagination. After the cathedral burns, she discovers that she can now see fires within everyone. She is not sure if she is going crazy or not. Fascinated by Nickolai's inner fire, which is the largest she has come across, she follows him to the bridge in the hopes that he might have the answers she seeks. She witnesses his attempted suicide, reads the letter he wrote explaining some of his background, and feels the full impact of the beast. She and Nickolai struggle against one another; to prove that she is not a coward, as Nickolai insinuates to get her to come with him, she accompanies him to the ash-covered ruins of the cathedral. There, in the midst of the ashes, she witnesses somewhat of a replaying of what happened in the cathedral before it burned. Nickolai tells her that she must have some demon-blood in her to be able to see people's fires, and that it is too dangerous for him to track Maximillian through his fire, but neither of these points have been developed yet.
The thing is first introduced before it is released from its bindings. It has been trapped for centuries, possibly millennia, and its name has been forgotten. It dreams of a world reduced to ash. It has retained all of its power and possibly grown even stronger for its captivity; it looks forward to freedom, but finds that the souls upon which it preys are too slow and sugary. They do not understand what it is, and so they cannot properly fear it. It keeps its eye on Nickolai and Maximillian, referring to them, ironically, as flesh of its flesh. When Nickolai jumps off the bridge, it drags him from the river and informs him of its plan: it will face and defeat him when he grows into a man with a sword in his hand, it will face and defeat his brother, and then it will burn the rest of the world. It is some kind of religious demon, and it quotes the Bible to Nickolai, to his chagrin and fury.
Maximillian is in a hospital, kept unconscious and unmoving by drugs administered by a staff that is waiting for word from the deceased Council. He wakes up occasionally, but usually he sleeps. The thing haunts his dreams, manipulating his thoughts and whispering of the fight to come. He does his best to ignore it, but it is very difficult to do so. He is in love with Lydia. He wants more than anything to escape the hospital and be with her.
Lydia is Maximillian's lover. She seems to have literally fought to see him; her cheek is bruised, her eyes tired, her hair unkempt. Despite all of this, she acts strong for him. She may be alive, or she may be a mere memory, or she may be a ghost, or she may be an angel, since she disappears so suddenly when the nurses enter the room; this point, again, has not been developed.
