Stories begin where they begin. That is what my dear Annie tells me. She also tells me the beginning of the Story isn’t always the first thing that happens.

However, it tends to be confusing if you jump into the middle, I always thought. But this story began with a dream: A dream that would show me the future.

The idea of prophecy was something I believed was only in the bible. But I began to have prophetic dreams. But with no context to understand that I thought it was just a dream at the time.

 It was a dream that followed me from the future and into the past. A dream that was a gift from my Dear Annie. I remembered seeing her in a dream before we met. Before I knew who she was.

It all started in a dream, before I crossed into Ayalos in the mists I dreamed of it. I dreamed of the events that lead to me becoming the High King of Ayalos……and I dreamt of her. My Annie…. She who is three, sometimes four, often five but always one.

She is known by many names: The washer at the ford, the Phantom Queen…. the daughter of Ermas father was a proud son of Ulster, he taught me the stories of her and Setanta. The similarities to her old stories never came to my mind. And if I did The Morrigan was a figure that would come to you in your dreams.

My lady wife The Morrigan. She came to me in a dream. A dream I remember well. But in this dream, I saw things as she did. Past, Present, and Future I saw with her eyes. This was happening just before our family trip to Mexico.

She looks down upon me, this woman in my dream. The insubstantial nature of the dream is different she is clear…. almost realer then real. I am fighting to get my breath. I feel warm and flushed. The place looked strange and alien to me. But my attention was focused on her.

“Get up Brian” she says in an imperious and commanding voice. “Get up, you do not have my permission to die yet.” As she commanded me to rise, I saw desiccated corpses as far as the eye could see. But I knew if she called me to rise, I would not be one of them.

The dream changes. This is later…. I knew its later but not how much later and she looks me in the eyes. We are laying on a green hill in a beautiful field. I see cows and sheep about us in the field. She is on top of me like a hungry and ravenous beast and she stares into my eyes. Into my soul and she pulls back. I said something? Yes, I think I did say something to her. But the dream obfuscated those words from me.

The dream changes perspective for a third time. I see her again, but she has changed her shape. This is before the first part of the dream. This is the first time I would see her. But I knew her. The second I saw her I know her. She looks at me. Her form changes from that of the weathered old woman. “Men like you aren’t chosen Brian Kane, but you always choose……” I hear the words again. The words haunting me. “Wake up Brian.”

I snap out of my bed. My mother was there…. the Commander, my father, is down at the car. She was the one who called me to wake up from the dream.

It was the trip to Mexico, the last vacation I would ever have.

I don’t remember the drive to the airport. It was the last time I would see my home for decades. But I don’t remember. I was all of 13 years old. When you are thirteen you don’t really know what is important.

At the time I was nursing a broken heart. I broke up with my first girlfriend. Loraine, that was her name. She taught me Tarock. She taught me the myths of the tarot cycle and the story of the cards. These secrets would put me on the path that lead me to become High King.

 I had spent all the money I had in the world on a silver locket. It’s the silly sort of thing a child not yet a man would feel. And with what was due to come….it feels silly to look back on these memories…They are almost funny. One hundred and fifty dollars felt like a small fortune to me.

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The Commander said she did me a favor. I was a navy brat and so was she, and her family was moving to another port of call soon. Better to rip the bandage off he told me. Mom didn’t agree but she didn’t speak up on the trip to the airport.

I showed my passport to the man at the airport. I didn’t think this would be the last time I would see America until I was a man.

The locket was burning a hole in my pocket the whole trip. I could have sold it, and I should have sold it. But the burning of that silver heart wouldn’t let me think of doing that. We were in the jungles…. hiking towards a Pyramid. If I was back in the Yucatan I could lead you to it, but I don’t remember its name. I saw something out of the corner of my eye, a Cenote.

I thought that was the place to sacrifice the burning silver heart. No one noticed me walk from the tour group and follow the path from the jungle road. I got to the edge of the great sacrificial maw. I wound up my arm in an exaggerated posture and I threw the locket. I watched the burning silver heart fly from my hands and drop into the pit.

The satisfying feeling of throwing this trinket away was soon interrupted. I felt the earth give way under my feet. I was soon joining the burning silver heart in the sacrificial maw. I hit the water fast, and it felt like I was dropped hard onto concrete.

I remember dropping quickly into the water…. Most of the rocks bellow were jagged. But there was a square patch. I tried to drift towards it. I knew if I could get there I could push off and dry to get to the surface. The flat surface as it came into view had a carved motif. A rocky desert valley with 4 moons. Had I not been fearful of dying I might have thought more about that.

The rest of the water was warm but the spot where the motif was carved was cold. As I touched it, I found myself falling again. Not through water…. but through the air. I feel maybe 40 or 50 feet before I felt the embrace of the ground again. Looking up I saw the four moons high in the sky. I soon passed out from the fall and the pain.

I woke up close to mid-day. The baking of the sun did me now favors. I saw a group of men arguing. Many of them had a greenish skin. I thought those men to be Orcs or Goblins at first. I came to know they were men who came from places where food and water were not good. They were twisted and deformed. Some of the men were also grey and ashen of skin for similar reasons.

I didn’t understand their language, but I understood they had a chain of people they were leading through the desert. Young men bound in iron chains. What I remembered in hindsight is I was larger and more fit then all those brothers who were bound in Iron. I was bigger than the short green skins, and most of the large green skins. The grey skinned men were about my size, maybe a half a foot taller…. but were fully grown men.

One of the grey skinned men offered me food. It wasn’t very good. But I took it. I saw two of the green skinned men approach with chains. They spoke in their language…. I didn’t respond to it as I didn’t understand it then. I took the chains because, if I didn’t, I would die, and I knew survival had to become my first priority.

Everyone dressed in what to my mind then was an archaic fashion. I spent the next two days trying to figure out their speech. I also tried to take the weight of the chain for people I was attached to. I didn’t notice at the time the lead man in grey was watching me.

The green skinned men took to slavery as a custom. The grey skinned men were somewhat more pragmatic about it.

We came upon what looked like a strip mine. I saw 3 men with skin that seemed healthy. They saw me and spoke with animated energy. The Green Skinned leader seemed to feel I was a problem, as near as I understood at the time. The Grey skinned man seemed to think my safety had value. The man with pale pink skin inspected me like livestock.

 There was anger in my face as I felt the red of my hair bleed into my body. He seemed to laugh at that. I was lead away with the other slaves to a big central pit. We were given a better-quality food, decent quality water, and we were given the luxury of sleep.

These luxuries calmed my fury, and salved the indignities I felt from being treated as a piece of meat. But escape was the only thing I had in my mind. It was the only thing I could have on my mind.

I looked up at the alien sky. The constellations were all wrong, from what I could see of the stars. And the four moons in the sky. “We aren’t in Kansas anymore,” I said to myself. The first utterance of speech I entertained since I woke up on this alien world.

I was not skilled in the beginning so I would push carts with rocks. I was stronger than the others. But all of the rest of them were so sickly looking. None of them had a proper set of teeth in their mouths. Their skins were sickly yellows, greens, and greys. Their bodies were malnourished and twisted. And I didn’t just endure in the pit. I thrived.