Wings of Light: Prophecy of Ages - Prologue

Chapter One: Darwin't's Dreams

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DARWIN’T’S DREAMS

Standing at the top of a tower, the sun cresting the mountain range in the far distance, wind rushing in his ears, Darwin’t Utsa manages to utter the single word, why?  The scene before him changes.  A boy is running from a flock of raptor birds, his red hair trailing behind him.  A shadow moves off to his right.  Something about the shadow seems important but the boy keeps running.  He does not see the snake-like tentacle snap out of the lagoon.  The boy screams as he is pulled under the red waves.  Darwin’t calls out, yet it is too late.  Now he knows he is having a nightmare.  He always dreams of Damilayas before one of his true-dreams.

He is back at the top of the tower.  He scans the country around him.  It is mainly flat, green plains beyond a sprawling city, which grows like a forest at the base of the tower.  Not my home country, then.  He looks for any symbol, crest or coat of arms to focus his memory on but cannot find one.  He turns his attention to the door of the tower and shrinks back as a man with two ravens perched on his shoulders runs towards him.  Before he can see much of the man, other than he has a beard and has deep black pools for eyes he disappears. 

The world is darker now, the sun setting.  The sun.  He looks at it drop below a mountain range on the other side of the tower.  Where am I?  Before the answer comes, he is standing by a lake.  The sky is blue and the sun is at its zenith.  Nine white swans glide passed like ferryman's boats on feast days.  He notes the number and as he does so the world begins to burn.  The water bubbles and hisses into huge clouds of steam.  A shadow swoops from the sky, screeching like a firework.  Darwin’t raises his hands defensively to stop it from hitting his face, yet the strike does not come and the roar fades to nothing.

Slowly he drops his hands to find he now stands in a grand garden.  Three huge towers rise all around him.  The top of each of the towers shines gold with the sunlight.  The sun now rises again.  These must be the towers of Atlantia.  There could not be more than one set of towers this huge in the world.  He glances around him at the gardens.  There is no city near the towers.  So the first tower in this dream is somewhere else.

He takes a step towards the tallest tower, one with a dome at its top when the world becomes a huge sea.  He wobbles at the edge of a cliff.  A few stones fall into the crashing waves below.  “Can I die here?” he muses as he steps backwards.  In the distance he sees a tree growing from the waves.  The beauty of it fills his eyes for only a moment before he is in the dark.  Tree roots and dirt ceilings press down on him, fire rages everywhere.  He screams and is back by the lake.  His skin still feels the heat from the flames.  He sees a blackbird in flight, followed by two doves.  The doves fighting to be beside the blackbird.  He wonders what it means as slowly the sun sets into night.  A girl wearing a maid’s dress bends her neck to a man not much older than her.  Both of their faces are hidden by shadow.  As she stands, he kisses her.  A secret affair maybe.  Sand blows into his eyes and he clenches them closed.

He takes a step into an empty but grand arena.  A man appears in the centre of the stadium brandishing a short sword.  He jumps and vanishes into the clouds.  Clouds, the sky had been clear.  Rain pours over him, lightning flashes fill the sky, thunder bellows into his ears.  A galleon breaks through the blackening sky, a flag of skull and crossed bones ripping into the wind.  The sky flashes white and he is standing in the middle of a field.  It is sunny and dry; however he still drips from the earlier rain.  He scans the sky for the galleon, but it is gone. 

Suddenly he recognizes where he is.  The large field in his home village of Gressgs.  They have all of their feast days in this field with a maypole and dancing and one sun, even fireworks!  He turns to see if the maypole has been erected at the western end and stumbles at what he sees.  A monstrous castle fills his vision for less than a second before he is standing at the top of a mountain, the wind trying to blow him over the edge to his death.  Can I die here?  The wind stops.  A tower rises in front of him.  It must be a day or more ride to it from the base of the mountain going by the amount of open plains between.  But he can still see that the tower is huge and flat at the top.  The sun is behind him.  The sun.  He turns to look at it and finds himself surrounded by trees, though only for a second, and then he is standing back on the tower again.  He stares at the distant mountain range – the mountain he had just been standing on.  The sun is just about to break from behind the tallest peak.  Something about the sun seems to be important.