Prologue

Lee.

On the horizon, above the forest canopy, high mountains stood defiantly against the encompassing, true blackness of the heavens—a silver crown under black. Behind their snow-capped peaks, the fiery glow of stars twinkled and sparkled like ships, blazing, drifting in the night. I was walking on a narrow, dirt road that looked like a brushstroke of pale brown on a canvas of emerald green. The trees beside the path seemed to have grown in accordance to the pathway for they curved towards it: an archway of branches and leaves, and among its serpentine roots, a multitude of flowers, unknown to me, bloomed and glimmered like gems arrayed with leaves.

Every time, I appeared on this plane, I would find myself here in this forest, which I named John’s—an English variant of my name—Landing, and a sense of tranquility would overtake me. The chirping of the birds and the buzzing of the insects interspersed among the low howling of the winds only added to the calming ambiance and though I was isolated from the problems that were present in reality, it did not mean that I was alone here, because within the confines of this dream-space, there exists several personages that I was not aware of, until a year after I discovered—well, not so much discovered, considering this is my mind—imagined (I guess) this place. The oddest thing was the fact that these people had autonomy here, I could talk with them and vice-versa, they could walk all around here but most just stayed inside their respective realms.

I had walked out of the forest now and into a wide, circular clearing. I had stuck to calling this place, the ‘Garden of Congregation’, owing to the fact that it was most likely the center of this realm. Every path in some ways always led to here, even if you never noticed it. But what was more unusual was the fact that a long, wooden table was at the center of the Garden, surrounded by at least twenty armchairs of a similar make that were in turn surrounded by the myriad medley of alien flowers growing all around. I started walking towards a chair at the western head of the table. I hadn’t known why but I knew this was mine because I was always drawn to it. It was at first to my surprise that upon closer inspection, the chairs weren’t at all the same—they each had their own design—mine was made from some black material and dark, purple fabric, and embroidered on the cushion was a simple circle.

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I sat down, gazing at the blend of colors that was the sky, and then the seat beside my left trembled and a figure materialized: a tall, black-haired person sitting with his feet on the chair. He had pale, white skin and looked to be Nihonjin or Tiankongese but his eyes were a piercing blue, looking like two small, burning Suns of sapphire flames, suggesting perhaps mixed-ancestry. He was older and taller than me by some significance. “Spectre,” he called me. Spectre was what the Figments—the collective term I had for them—called me. He was wearing a worn-out jacket over a blue v-neck, checkered shorts, and flip-flops that had x-shaped straps, footwear usually worn by old people in the Philippines. He looked like he had worn them all his life.

I gave him a nod. “Archon…” I was going to speak more, but then the world trembled.

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