Monarca del Feltro

A Heavy Draft

ACT 1
As Santino Draco stood amidst the flickering lamplight of his workshop, surrounded by his beloved creations, he couldn't shake the feeling of impending doom that was in the air. It was the year 1964, and the essence of war loomed large over the world. Despite his best efforts to remain hidden from the turmoil of the outside world, fate had other plans for Santino. One fateful day, a letter arrived bearing the dreaded news - Santino had been drafted into the Vietnam War. With a heavy heart, he bid farewell to his puppets, knowing that it might be years before he would see them again. As he traveled to the far-off lands of Vietnam, Santino made friends with his fellow soldiers, finding solace in their camaraderie amidst the chaos of war. But as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, Santino found himself haunted by the traumatic memories of comrades falling in battle. Despite his best efforts to find happiness amidst the horrors of war, Santino could not escape the gnawing feeling of despair that clawed at his soul. In the cold light of January 1968, Santino made the fateful decision to retreat from the battlefield, his mind and body battered by the ravages of war.

ACT 2
But as he returned to his workshop in Palermo, he found no respite from the demons that plagued him. Night after night, Santino tossed and turned in his bed, tormented by visions of death and destruction. And as the months wore on, his once vibrant spirit was slowly consumed by the suffocating embrace of memory. "How can I leave?" Santino muttered to himself, his voice barely a whisper in the stillness of the night. Desperate for escape, Santino turned to the ancient remnants of his workshop - the abandoned supplies from the closed-down planetarium. With a feverish determination, Santino poured over ancient texts and forgotten manuscripts, searching for a way to transcend the confines of his reality and escape into the unknown. And then, one fateful day on May 12, as Santino toiled away in his makeshift laboratory, his enemies from the Vietnam War finally caught up with him. With a deafening crash, they burst into his workshop, their faces twisted with rage and hatred. Santino stood frozen in terror as they advanced upon him, their weapons gleaming in the dim light. But even as death loomed large before him, Santino refused to surrender to despair. No, not just yet. With a final burst of strength, he activated the interdimensional rift that he had spent months painstakingly constructing, a shimmering portal to worlds unknown. And as his enemies closed in for the kill, Santino seized his most prized possession - Timoteo il Secondo - and hurled him into the swirling vortex of the rift. "Farewell, il mio bambino." With a blinding flash of light, the rift closed behind Timoteo hurling towards the otherwordly floor, leaving Santino alone in the darkness, his body battered and broken, but his spirit soaring free. And as the last vestiges of life slipped away from him, Santino Draco smiled, knowing that his beloved creation, and son, had escaped to a world where pain and suffering held no power. So he thought.