Take It Back [From Red Dawn Rising: The Musical]

[Lights up on centre stage. Draven Nosk stands in some private room at the Dawn Fortress. He rests with his hands upon a great mahogany desk, which stands upon an intricate hand-woven carpet. Off to one side of the carpet stands an end table that might have been bought at Ikea, and has either been kept immaculately or replaced a part at a time over the thousands of years. On top of the table, just the right size for it, is a record player. Nosk crosses to the record player and sets the needle down, and music begins to play. It is heavy on strings and is drawn out and brooding]

NOSK:
It isn't right... it isn't fair
This wretched world... this world of theirs
How it lives on... how it survives
A shameful lie built on the back of seven billion lives!

[The musical crescendos as Nosk builds to the close of the first verse in a howl to the heavens. He begins to stalk the stage as the music settles into a methodical beat]

NOSK:
This miserable, magical world, it cannot be
Not while it rests on the bones of the world that was taken from me
Let mankind prevail, and make it the mankind I knew
I will tear down this world of lies, and return to what is true!

[Nosk halts in the middle of the carpet, the lights falling away to two spots on him and record player for the chorus]

NOSK:
It isn't the end, nor the beginning
It's just a return to form
I will rouse this world from the nightmare
And bring it to bask in the dawn
This foul world's champions can't stop me
So please do not halt the attack
I swear to the world that I lost that day
That I will take it back

[The light expands to fit the whole area again and Nosks pacing grows more frenzied and erratic]

NOSK:
This abominable realm full of chaos and sin
I will impose its final order so a new day can begin
Let these daemons all tremble and fall in my gaze
As the world that they cling to like maggots is facing its dying days!

[As he sings out the last note he falls to his knees, the music quietens and strips away and rather than a spotlight all but one light now focuses on his kneeling form. The last light still illuminates the record player]

NOSK: [Kind of spoken]
I'm so close...
I'm so close now I can feel it
Will I know it when I see it?
It's been so long!
Oh but the sights that I long to see
I wonder
Will that world..?
Will that world know me?

[Silence. The lights shut off one by one until we're back to the two spotlights. Music swells back up for the chorus. Nosk sings like a man reciting a mantra that keeps him from going insane]

NOSK:
It isn't the end, nor the beginning
It's just a return to form
I will rouse this world from the nightmare
And bring it to bask in the dawn
This foul world's champions can't stop me
So please do not halt the attack
I swear to the world that I lost that day
That I will take it back

Yes I will take it back

I will take it back

[As the music begins to fade out, the spotlight on Nosk fades so that he is barely visible while the record player remains illuminated. The record skips and begins to play the song's introduction again. Nosk does not appear to have noticed]