EDIT: The more that I think about it the more that I think that Alexandria was the tyrant’s era. This post is way too long to change every reference to it though.

Last night’s dream was great. It was long, detailed, and adventurous. Of course, I don’t recall every detail, but I’ll write what I do recall.

The setting was gorgeous. It was a rolling mountainous region. Not much flat land here, the area had a large, cloud capped mountain off in one direction and the town itself was built upon many rolling hills. The architecture of the town was a mixture of Victorian and Gothic designs, with the large cathedrals sporting much of the town’s Gothic look.

You could stand in one location and look out over the town at the roofs of the various houses. Some were red, others white; it was a peaceful view. It was a Spring or Summer setting, so no snow or cold chills ruined the setting.

The basis for the story was described, even visually in the dream, as a pyramid. The pyramid was divided into four or five sections, and each section had its own color. Each section represented an “era”, or a “generation”, depending on how you want to decipher it. In each era the human race would go through a “phase”, and of course each phase repeated itself eventually.

It all represented how we live our species life out in cycles.

The phase that we were in in the dream was the bottom-most phase, which was not the worse of the phases. In fact, the top section of the pyramid was the best phase, but each phase gradually gave way to the next. Therefore, each era or cycle of the human race was a natural, not sudden progression.

So being at the bottom-most phase of the pyramid was not a bad thing, it was a comfortable era to live in. The best part of human existence had passed, but much of the comfort and enlightenment still remained.

Unfortunately we were giving way to the next phase, colored red on the pyramid. A fine time to choose to go vacationing in the area, eh?

The sections on the pyramid were also “controlled” by a different Pagan faith. The phase that we were in was still attributed to peaceful gods & goddesses and was a beige-like color, but the one that we were fading into “belonged” to a tyrannical war god. This particular deity saw the existing humans as “weak” and was bent on bringing “strength and order” to the world.

Oh, and before I forget to mention it, each phase had its own name. I don’t remember if the phase that we were in was called Arcadia or Alexandria, but you get the idea. Each name was the title of the kingdom that ruled during that phase.

Yet I’m getting ahead of myself…

In the dream, I visited this area as my choice of vacationing areas. As beautiful as it is you really couldn’t blame me, and it’s not like humans generally knew when each phase would end or begin. Granted, I was shown the pyramid at some point in the dream, but I don’t recall when this happened.

I was there with a fellow who I’m no longer pals with. I strongly encouraged us to go up the mountain because there was a resort there, and I suspected that it would be a lovely, relaxing place to visit; perfect for a vacation. This fellow didn’t want to visit the resort, but heck with it, it was my vacation.

So we get there. The place is decorated with a great many wicker designs, from the chairs, to the support beams, to the screens separating areas. They weren’t all identical designs, but they were all done in wicker and I have to admit, it actually came across quite nicely. It was an “airy” design, too, which definitely lended to the place’s comfort.

I walked up some stairs to the right and took a seat at a round table. The banister behind me, which provided a bit of protection to those on the raised level, was also decorated in wicker and was topped with a nice, smooth, polished brown wooden hand rail.

Anyway, this woman comes up to our table and introduces herself as Monica, and asks if we would like to order anything. She’s Caucasian with golden colored curly hair. She really wasn’t the prettiest woman around, but definitely not unpleasant either, and there was something about her that I immediately found to be attractive.

So when she asked us to wait a moment so that she could lift something, I of course gladly offered to do it for her. I don’t quite recall what it was, but she was having quite a bit of trouble lifting it up onto a top self.. or was it off of the shelf? Ah, details, how they can escape memories of dreams.

Monica was hesitant to allow me to help her, but I nonchalantly brushed aside her concerns and lifted the thing for her. She sort of stumbled over her words, not sure what to say as I effectively (though not entirely disrespectfully) ignored her.

I’m not quite sure what attracted me to this woman, but I knew that she was very special. The next section of the dream was all about relationship building with her, and eventually we became quite close and had built up a very nice relationship. I also learned that she was well liked in the community, and though we never made our relationship officially known (she wanted it kept a secret, officially, for a reason that I don’t know), everyone in town knew that she and I were “special” to each other.

It was, in other words, the secret that everyone knows.

Monica, as it turns out, was part of a secret order (or group) in town. This group knew that the changing of eras was going to begin very soon, as in the order of days or weeks. Their deity was a child-like being depicted in an almost Tibetan manner, sitting cross legged, a sun on his forehead (I think?), his hands up in different gestures and holding different things. A wheat in one hand, maybe?

Their idea was to “give the child birth”, which was a euphemism for freeing their god from the restrictions of the pyrmid’s order so that their god could “grow”, become more powerful, and control the next phase of order. Remember that this era is one of considerable peace and enlightenment, and the next is one of tyranny and war.

What they were all doing, the god included, was against the rules of “the grand order of things”, and most of the gods of each order at least looked down on the actions. So they kept it as secret as possible. However, Monica and her people (and their god) knew that the deity who would gain control of the next phase also had aspirations of permanently changing the schema of the pyramid.

His control of it would be nightmarish, and little could be done to stop him if his reign was allowed to begin.

Well, begin it did. This god, obviously, was one of war, and his introduction was announced with the sky and light becoming a shade of red. Perhaps this was a stylistic effect of the dream, or perhaps it was something that everyone in the dream world could see. Of that I’m uncertain.

This particular god.. who wore a metal helmet, may have had horns, and was quite huge in size… had his followers round up everyone in town who worshiped the peace loving deities. He took over their cathedrals and shrines, and arrested anyone who would visit them.

Many people were rounded up into trucks and shipped away to what I can only figure were concentration camps. Monica’s people, of course, were dealt with most harshly. This tyrannical deity had his most powerful people hunt them down and they were shown no mercy.

I was away when the shift in eras took place, but everyone of course knew that it was happening. My first thought was of Monica and the danger that she was in, but I soon found that I had some issues of my own to deal with. Things were coming after myself and my family (”family” being my parents and siblings). They were most likely doing so because of my relationship with Monica.

As dreams would have it, this is where things turned somewhat fantastical. It’s also the part where a part of my mind began to realize that I was dreaming, but I opted to allow the dream to continue at each moment that I could have made a different decision.

At any rate, in this dream I revered my goddess, which is nice to know, but the fantastical nature of the dream would have that she gave me certain “spells”. In fact, I think that Monica may have taught me how to begin the learning and practice of these divine-gifted spells.

So when things came for myself and my family I was able to fight them off. At first they were of little consequence because the ones who came for us were of little to no real power. We thought that it was just an affect of the changing era and not so much that they were targeting us specifically.

The latter became obvious when more and more powerful “hunters” came for us, and there eventually came a time when it was just too much for us. We had to run, and there was only one place that I knew to run to.

Unfortunately, in this dream, my father’s health was quite bad and he was also blind. Thus making a run up a mountain was going to be very dangerous, but I didn’t know where else to go. I made it a point to protect my father as best as I could, but I pushed us to run to a “church”, of sorts.. which was also a trade center… up on the mountain. It was quite modern, with large machines to track the progress of the sun, stars, planet, a large telescope, and various other inventions.

I had become friends with the… for lack of a better word… “pastor” of this place during my relationship with Monica, who apparently spent much of her time here as a part of her role of this secret order that she was a part of.

At some point before we escaped up this mountain I had ran back into the town, alone, searching for Monica. Unfortunately I never did learn her last name as she proudly always claimed the title of her era as her last name. Thus “Monical of Alexandria”.. or was it Arcadia? I forget which.

I yelled for her, and asked passerbys if they knew where she was. There were others named “Monica” so they didn’t know who I was searching for. One eventually recognized the title and, putting herself in danger, told me where she was. She was being loaded into the back of a truck with several other people. They were all going to be shipped off to some concentration camp.

Stalking around the truck and watching the behavior of the guards I quickly made my move, jumped onto the “loading platform”, snatched her hand, and pulled her out of the throng of people. She urged me to leave her behind because of what would happen to me, but I would have none of it and I more-or-less dragged her after me.

So we all ran up the mountain - my family, me, and Monica - but we couldn’t take the road because it was filled with followers of this new era’s deity, who of course would be looking for us. So we climbed the thing, and I put significant effort into helping my father up the side of the mountain. On the way up were were accosted by various members of this tyrannical deity. I would “cast” balls of fire or streams of electricity at them, but as we got higher and higher on the mountain we were faced with stronger & stronger foes. It came to the point where each “spell” would only knock them back, or otherwise do little damage.

We eventually arrived at this “church” and entered through a side door. The “pastor” was very surprised to see us, but knew the trouble that we must be in. It was a great burden to him, but he allowed us to hide there.

This leads to the climax of the dream. Monica’s people were still fighting against this new deity and his era - all was not yet lost. This enraged the tyrannical god, and for some reason he saw me as one of the key members of the group (though this was almost certainly false).

Several powerful hunters from this deity came to the mountain “church” and forced entry. Before this happened, I made a deal with the “pastor” to take my father as a tutor of sorts, explaining his health and eye sight. In this way the hunters (that we knew were coming) would not know that he was my father, but rather would think that he was just a student of this church. This church, by the way, was allowed to continue normal operation because of its position as a major trade center.

Myself, Monica, and the rest of the family escaped further up the mountain.

Things become confusing here, but I know that they ransacked the church in their search for me and my family. After this was done, this tyrant deity decided that he had had enough, and he sent one of his most powerful people after us.

This guy was very stereotypical. No shirt, hairy chest, and some sort of leather “X” across his chest that held either weapons or something similar, I forget. Your stereotypical bad guy. I would “cast spells” (insert eye rolling here) at him as we ran up the mountain to try to escape from him, but each hit only made him larger and larger until he reached the size of a great giant.

This is where the dream ends, and becomes significantly influenced by - of all things - Final Fantasy.

The deity that was now in power was the most war like of all of the gods, and much bloodshed and suffering always occurred during his reign. As such, every god opposed him, or at least the lengths to which he took his behavior. This era was to be the worse of all, where he was outwardly attacking the order of the pyramid and was attempting to usurp most, if not all, of the other eras.

So where the other gods once frowned upon the attack of this deity’s era, they were now much opposed to him. Not necessarily to him having an era, but certainly of his behavior.

Thus the dream ended in fantastic nature, with me some how levitating to a height greater than this giant had become tall, glowing white, and praying to each of the other deities. Yeah, I know, very anime-like.

The massive Final Fantasy reference comes in by way of what I was praying for. Since no other “spells” were hurting this giant - indeed, it was only making him stronger - I prayed that they send me “the most holy of holy rocks”. Yes, insert more eye rolling here.

The giant, for his part, was laughing something fierce and decided to not squish me while all of this was going on. After all, why should he? I had only been making him stronger up to this point, so he “couldn’t wait to see what else” I was going to try/do. The sod realized too late that meteor was being summoned.

The giant saw the meteor appear in the sky and come burning down through the atmosphere. Shocked, he done what ever stupid villain does, and simply watched it as it streaked toward him while he yelled “Nooooo!”

The meteor flew straight into the giant’s mouth and, while still inside of his body, slammed into the ground with great force. Much of the giant’s body exploded from the impact, and being somewhat lucent, I decided that much of the earth should be destroyed by the impact… and it was.

The giant wasn’t entirely defeated however. What was left of its body rose up and began to chase after us. It had only its arms and legs and most of its body, but its torso was ripped open and it had no head. It wasn’t too bloody though, despite how that sounds.

We all ran, and this giant, now the size of a mountain, chased after us. Luckily it began to fall to pieces, breaking apart almost like a golem, and great pieces of its body crashed into the ground. We barely escaped, and luckily no one was hurt or killed by the falling pieces. By the end, the giant was more-or-less made of stone, and all that was left were giant rocks that littered the landscape from how it had begun to fall apart as it chased us.

That’s how the dream ends, with myself, Monica, and my family cowering on the side of the mountain after the giant had finally collapsed completely. So I don’t know if they won their struggle against this tyrant deity or not.

- The End -

~Steph

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