It was a full moon night in the tower. Back from the depths of the forest of a forest. Because for each place there is a deeper place. In each house, there is a secret door. In each forest, there is a secret path. I have been in many secret places, yeah, I have wandered all around for so long! It’s been a long time since I came back to the Tower, to the Tower I built with my own hands, to the Wandering Tower. Many parents scare their children with stories about me. The Crazy Magician that kidnaps kids for his Wandering Tower. The Tower shows up in dark fairy tales, as having two chicken legs, like Baba Yaga’s house. Or like Howl’s in Howl’s Moving Castle. It is the same old concept. The witch, the sorcerer, that wanders the lands with a moving structure.
What they don’t know is that it’s not always a Tower. I have hundreds of different places that I go back to. My tower is one of my favorites, though, because it was the first I built after my rebirth. And I find hilarious that there are so many dark stories about me. I enjoy them. In those dark times, there is nothing better than warming your heart with stories, no matter what they are. Heroes, magicians, sorcerers, witches. Kings, princesses and dragons. Swords and treasures.
There is, yet, another thing they don’t know.
And it is hidden in my magic cards.
On the round table, I spread my cards, one by one.
The first card is “The Artist”. A Wandering bard with a lute on his back and a big sword on his side. It is said that this legendary hero is able to create life out of Songs, worlds out of paintings and stories. A total artist. His creativity is like a mystical Cauldron that overflows with the Mead of the Poets that will never cease. He just lives for free self-expression. And that’s why he is loved and hated. People either follow him, mad, like the followers of Bacchus in Bacchanals, or they are just terrified by him. Because the frenzy of poetry, dance, music and stories is a terrifying and beautiful spiral. Once you start dancing with fairies, you can’t stop dancing, and you might end up dead. Or taken into another world. Or with a magical wand in your hand. Or blind for life. Rich, or sick. There is no mediocrity, no middle ground in this Card. The enchantment of the unknown, of all manifested possibilities, of the brutal expression of a brush stroke. The tragicomedy masks, laughing and crying. The rabbit hole of Rabbit holes. He has a lute that saves you with music, and a sword that kills you with confusion.
The Artist is Me. It’s one of my aspects, of My Me’s. I just have to focus, concentrate on this card, get into a trance, and then I just become it. I live his life. That’s the Secret, my secret, unique magic nobody knows about. That’s my only magic. The rest are fireworks, shallow demonstrations, some wand movements, theater for the masses. And no, I am not a “separate” entity from this card. I am also one of the cards. No, don’t put this face. Surprised? I am the Magician. Bam! On the table. Do you see it? It’s transparent, you can’t see the magician in there. Guess why? Yes, because I am living its life, right now. So you might ask: who is behind all the cards? Nobody is behind the cards. All cards are Me, there is no separation.
Another Card. The Traveler. The Traveler of Worlds, the rider of the hidden paths, the wild man of the green tunic, the protector of the Portals and the Sacred. Sometimes, he manifests himself with a wagon and two horses: one black, the other white. Other times, with a wandering tower, a wandering house, a wandering castle. You see how the cards blend together, how identities mix up in the Cauldron? A wanderer magician, with the lute on his back. Heh. Did you think we are separate? The Traveler is the eternal wanderer, the disruptor, the stirrer of lost magic. When he appears, the spirits awaken, and a terrifying night with a bloody moon ensues. But after that night, the land starts whispering and the borders between reality and fiction disappear. You never know when the traveler will appear. Or who he really is. He is also a master of disguise, a master of masks. If you know a person that seemingly came out of nowhere and start talking to you, disguising himself like a mad man, chances are he is the Traveler. He likes wearing Fool’s clothes. The face of a clown. The mask of theater.
He travels, sings, enchants. The Artist, the Traveler, the Magician.
Who’s next?
The King.
He is the King without crown, the wandering King that has come to reclaim his lost Kingdom. But this is not a conventional Kingdom. It’s the Kingdom of the Forest, of the Wild, the Kingdom of the Spirits, of the Soul. It shows up in many disguises. The Wandering King, the expelled Prince that hides his true identity, unwilling to become the King, protecting the weak and the poor behind the veil of legend. But he must step into the crown sooner or later, he must pull his Sword, he must accept the Maiden’s steel from the Lake. He is also the King of Magicians, and sometimes appears as a God of the forest, with horns. It is said that he had a thousand daughters and sons by laying with the nymphs. He is a Dancer, a Lover, the sword, the phallus of command. Sometimes he is sleeping within the hill, waiting for the time when someone will find the Horn and blow it, calling him back. Sometimes he is riding with eleven other riders, with green tunics, wandering the lands, and it is said The Kingdom is with them, always, no matter where they go. They bring the Kingdom with them. Is the Kingdom the Cauldron, The Grail? Nobody knows.
The Wandering King is also a Wandering Bard, that sings the lost Songs. And the Songs have an enchantment, to make people remember what was lost. And what was lost was the Kingdom within. So you see? The Artist, The Magician, the Traveler and The King.
And I will pause here for a while. As you can see, even though we seem to be separated, we are one and the same. The problem is, the majority of the time, those aspects think to be different fom each other, they are like a scattered mirror and thus, they are incomplete. The Artist stuck in his old attic. Where is his crown? The magician, stuck in his tower. Where are his wings? The Traveler without magic. Where is his wand? The King without his songs. Where is his lute?
Who’s next?
The Sage.
He is the solitary man, the hermit, in his Tower, his Cabin, his attic. A library filled with thousands of books and volumes that cover all the walls. Mountains of books. He destiles the Knowledge of the ages, of thousands of years, of the eons, slowly, drop by drop, into the Secret Symbols. He is the One Eyed, who hanged from the Sacred tree and pierced his heart, in exchange of the Runes. He sacrificed sanity in exchange for knowledge. He is insane but not crazy. We all are insane, but he embraced it. With the distillation of that knowledge he created his own Book, the Blank Book, the Secret Book of his Own Magic. And his own magic is not a mystery. The Magician told you, already. It’s Stories. Art. The magic of stories and art. There are no incantations, no rites, no prayer. No runes. No special words.
Just stories and art. And he wrote them with the Secret symbols of his own language. He painted them with the brush made from the wood of the Sacred Tree. He played the songs, the strings of his guitar made of the crystalline waters of the Fairy Fountain.
You see? The Sage became the Magician. Because once you are drunk from knowledge, where do you go next? You stumble, like a fool, fall in the stairs of the solitary tower and become lame.
He had to burn his own Tower, his own abode, all the books inside. And he allowed all that knowledge to be forgotten. But he covered all his body with the ashes of the burnt books and purified himself in the Fountain of the Fairy.
Naked and purified, he wandered the lands, looking for a place to create his own Abode, a magical abode that is no longer created to gather knowledge, but to gather Oneself.
I pull the next Card.
The Builder.
Naked, he found the Sacred place where all Paths converge, the center of the Labyrinth, of the Spiral, the navel of the Forest. Stone upon stone, log upon log, he built his own house, his own tower, his own palace. He is the restorer of the forgotten world in ruins. A lonely traveler that comes back home, to the origin, to the countryside where time stands still, where the wild is no longer beating, throbbing, with spirit voices. He builds his house, humming the old songs he learned. He whistles with a smile in his face. People no longer whistle in the cities. A shrine he builds, near the house, an empty altar. No statue is enshrined there. It is empty, on purpose.
He said: “To the Spirit of the Wooded Hill, to the wandering spirits of this land, here is your new vessel. I offer to you my art, my stories. For this is all the magic I have. To the spirits that feed on Imagination, on Legends, on fairytales, come forth! I have arrived”.
Spirits of water, fire, air and earth.
Spirits of the fountains, of ponds and lakes
Of the rain, of snow, of the flood
Make love with me, for I am now the earth
turn me into mud, into clay
so I can take the shape that you wish
Soul of mine, overflowing cup,
My cauldron and grail
fill me, since I am your vessel
so that I can be overflown by you.
And a lake emerged from the depths. A profound, dark lake. He invoked it, called it upon, for centuries it was invisible, thousands of people walked upon it, treaded upon it, without noticing. The winds are raging, ice shards over the skin. He smiles inwards. And outwards, he is serious. The crawling of the Raven. The mists are floating, drawing spirals over the waters.
He looked at the mists and said:
Spirits of air, mists of what is concealed
become the vehicle of my Soul
come forth now,
breath of a new aeon
breath of a new heart
that I forged.
The mists, slowly, gathered at the center
of the lake,
and became
a silver boat,
with a dark blue sail.
And it came towards him
shrouded in a sacred
silence.
He climbed onto the boat
and it took him to the center
of the Lake.
And when the boat stopped
he raised his arms and said:
Spirits of the Earth
I have come here, from afar
I am brimming with seeds
that I want to give away to you
my Love, my Goddess
Let the mists, the night and the ice
dissipate
A Song of Springtime
my heart I offer in return.
And from the depths of the lake
an island grew
flowers in bloom, wheat fields
A girly embrace of Spring
a stone circle, a fairy dance
their tiny feet, jumping
over the sweet dew of a Beginning.
They sang the sweetest song
he ever heard.
The last trial, the mistake that all men
make, they will fall prey
to the dance of those beautiful girls
turn mad and lose themselves
and to the depths, everything returns.
So he quickly closed his eyes
And, while walking towards the fairy circle
he said:
Spirit of fire
come here to illuminate
The Center of my World
for I am about to build
the abode for my Soul.
Become the Hearth
that enlivens my Soul
Come forth
for I have returned!
At the center of the island
a blue fire grew
and around that fire
he built his house
with his own hands
stone upon stone
log upon log
and when the work was complete
he opened the Secret Doors.
I pull the next card.
The Rebel.
The drums echo throughout the valley. Are those drums, or thunder? A young man clad in black armor is standing on the Great Walls. He is looking beyond the Black Forest, towards the setting Sun. Tonight is the New Moon. Like every single month, tonight there will be a massive attack. The Monsters attack the Fortress from all directions. But he is calm. He always allows his men to rest the day before the night of the combat. How many will die, tonight? How many young men will sacrifice their lives? How much blood will be spilled? He walks, his chest high. On his chest, the crest of the New Moon. And seven stars surrounding it.
Courage, honor and glory.
Nobody mourns their dead in this Fortress. They glorify them. They appear in their Songs, in their legends, in their stories.
Cycle of Death and Rebirth. After the bloodbath, a procession takes place, with music, dance and wine. They go up the wooded hill. And, on top, they burn the bodies of the dead. They are now joining the spirits of their ancestors. Then, they go down to the lake. And the warriors offer the heads of the slain monsters to the dark waters. The best warriors get to choose the girls. The virgins. Each month, there is a batch of “new virgins” for the warriors that got the most heads. Orgies ensue, around the lake. Many of the girls get pregnant with the seed of future warriors. He was already 30. At this age, it would be normal that he’d be dead, already. He lost count on how many children he conceived, after so many battles. But the children do not belong to the warriors, not even to the mothers. They belong to everybody in the Fortress. The boys are trained from a very young age, for battle. Girls are trained into becoming the consorts, the vessels. Also, the musicians and storytellers. And healers. Because in this society, art is for the weak, is for women. But Songs are important, because that’s what inflames young hearts with courage.
Nobody is ready for the Monsters, for the Lamat. They are massive. Ogres with arms like big tree trunks, shark-like heads with hundreds of sharp teeth and dead-span eyes that only know one thing: devour humans. They were born for this. They are great at this. They are primed to hunt and kill them. They are primed, just by instint, to know what terrifies them the most. With the help of their short, sturdy legs and long arms, they can outrun the fastest animal. Every full moon, for centuries, they invade the Fortress, with their terrifying howls and growls. Normal weapons don’t even work on them. They have impenetrable skin. Like a turtle. They only have one weak spot: the spot between their eyes. But, as you can imagine, is not easy to stab a massive monster, four or five meters of height, between its eyes. The warriors use poles and ropes, and attack from the top of the trees, in groups. They also place traps around the forest, so that the Lamat will get trapped and immobilized. But it is not easy. Those monsters have great sense of smell, they can smell the traps very well. They know those forests at least as good as the warriors. They have another weak spot: blood. They love human blood so much, their senses become dull. They swarm towards it like moths to the light. So warriors use it for their advantage. It has to be warm blood. They inflict wounds to themselves and place the blood in several places, to attract the monsters. Then, they attack.
There are many strategies, but, in the end, the result is the same. They barely manage to contain their attacks, and dozens, sometimes even hundreds, of warriors have died. The warriors that survive attack after attack, slowly become the captains, the commanders, the leaders. It happens naturally. The most skilled warriors become, naturally, mentors for the younger, role models. In a society with no gods, with no temples, with no religion, people need heroes just as much as they need food and water. And the heroes become their gods. Living gods who, once they are dead, become Legend.
Everybody wants to be part of the Legend.
But nobody knew about something. Something very important.
Secretly, a group of people are pulling the strings. They are behind the attacks. And they have been for centuries. They feed on the blood of sacrifice and offer it to their Gods. Because there are gods and spirits, but those people denied access to them. They are magicians. Dark magicians. They live in a hidden place in the Dark Forest.
And our guy, the Rebel, the warrior of the card, stumbled upon these people. And started to feel that there was something about them. He knew about them thanks to a dream and a vision. You see? People in the fortress never dream. In fact, people don’t even know what dreams are. But he has always had dreams. And, for whatever reason, he always felt he had to keep quiet about it. He saw many strange things. He saw the world beyond the mists of the dark forest, the mists where the Lamat originate, the terrible white sea of death.
He dreamt of green valleys, wheat fields, shepherds, a peaceful, silent life. He dreamt of the ocean, of the steep cliffs, of powerful waves. And ships riding the waves. The seagulls. And the freedom to explore the World.
The Worlds.
“There is something in your eyes, that seem as if you are never here” – girls would tell him. Yeah, girls are more perceptive than men. He would just say he was just tired, but they’d never believe him. “There is something about you. You are hiding something”.
The Rebel, the Warrior. Through dream and vision, he liberates the fortress, from this cycle of death and blood. But when I deepen into this vision, I don’t see all the fortress liberated. Oh, no. Only him and eleven more warriors, escape the Fortress. Nobody believes them. Nobody follows them. They tried to liberate everybody, but for no avail. And that’s how it is with the Rebel. When the Rebel tries to liberate everybody, he ends up dead and tragedy ensues. But when he becomes homeless, when he got to escape and become a vagabond, the leader of a group of riders with a free spirit, it’s only then, when there is a way. There is this concept of the “savior”, the liberator, the hero. But the hero was never meant to be the liberator of everybody in the world. At the end of the day, each one of us has to be the hero of our lives. Nobody will save us from outside, while we are imprisoned in our minds.
That’s how the warrior became a vagabond, a traveler, a nomad. He, then, learned how to play music, embracing the artistic side he was denied in the fortress. And he decided he’d build his own Kingdom, his own House, his own Lineage. A bard, a warrior, a traveler, a builder. Do you see how everything ties together?
You might be enticed to think that all those characters, all those cards, belong to the same person. Or they just belong to different people that, for a mysterious reason, seem to have many things in common. The truth is that I don’t know myself. I am the Magician. I am one of the cards. Am I the same as all those other cards? I truly have many things in common. I am a vagabond, a traveler, a musician. I created my own kingdom, I am the king of that kingdom. I am a warrior and I fought many monsters. And I also escaped a Fortress. But was it a literal Fortress? Not at all. And monsters were not monsters. Many humans play the Monster much better than the monsters of legends and fairytales. So this is the same for those people in the cards, in the stories. Archetypes that contain all the other archetypes. The human being is a Cauldron of archetypes. And each one live them out in many different ways. That’s the beauty of it.
The writer that is writing me (who writes the writer?) is also living out his own archetype. He is also one of the cards, but he is too proud to say it out loud. Who is playing him? Who is the magician that is playing his Card?
I take a step back from the Magician. I look at him, spreading the cards over the round table. Then, I take another step back and I look at another magician. He is playing the Card of Me. He is looking at me, here, writing on the computer. And then, another magician. And yet, another. A neverending chain of magicians playing cards, exploring their Souls. A Matroska of worlds within worlds. A never-ending spiral of constant exploration. We are all playing together in this self-discovery journey.
Another card.
The Free Man.
Stripped from everything, he emerges from the Primordial Lake. He has been purified by the Nymphs of Water, the Snakes of Earth, the Dragons of Fire, the Singing Birds of Air. He has emerged from the Abyss, covered in wounds, and the dark blood from the monsters of the Depths. He vanquished the Darkness and, thus, he returns the sword into the Stone. The Work is done. But it is only the first part. Destruction and disintegration. Union and conception. Rebirth. He just lives to be free from any chains and ropes. As he walks, he dances and sings. He lights the lanterns of the dark forest, so that it can breathe again. He makes the right offerings to the forgotten Spirits, Gods and Goddesses, say thanks, claps his hands and carries on. Because he is a Free Man, but his Heart belongs to the Sacred. It’s time for the Old Gods to come back, naked, renewed, with the surging power of a new Spirit. Who are them? The Dancing Girl of the wind, her blond hair swirling among the wheat fields and meadows. I offer her Bread. Her twin sister, the Singing Girl of the water, her blue hair covering all ponds, fountains and lakes. I offer her a garland of flowers. The Red Dragon of fire, I offer him a Riddle. The Tree-Man of the Earth, I offer him a lantern with blue fire.
The Free Man does not kill the Dragon. He tames it. He rides it. He does not need the Sword, anymore. What was the treasure of the Dragon? Did he hide it from him? I will tell you the Secret. The Dragon was protecting the Treasure. He waited centuries, millennia, eons, for Him to come and release him from under the Mountain. But to release him, he needed the Hero to Kill him with the sword. A challenge to Death. And when the Hero emerged victorious, the Dragon shed his old poisonous skin, and a Golden Dragon emerged from within, renewed, reborn. The hero rode the Dragon and emerged from the Depths, naked. And when the dragon came to the surface it became a beautiful girl, with amber eyes. And so they made love for six days and six nights. And from her belly a new Race of Men was born.
Another card.
The Child.
The child is a kid that runs through the fields, without a worry in the world. Many times he appears along with a girl, his best friend, a childhood love. They are both running together, holding hands, through a Garden or among lavender fields. Other times he is riding a bicycle alone, exploring the fields, the forests, the valleys. Every single day, the child walks into another world. He can do this with ease, since he has the pure eyes of a child. No magic is required, no incantations, no visions. Nothing. The eyes of the child are what is magical. What are those worlds or how do they look like, is a mystery to me. I haven’t asked him, yet. Today is not the day to become him and find out.
The eyes of the child remained in Him. The eyes of the child remain in Me. Yes, those eyes are tired and a thick veil covers them. It’s hard to see. But I can still see. And, with the sword, I will pierce the veil so that I can see again, with clarity. I am still that little boy that found those creatures in the forest, the fairies of the meadow, dancing. With a fairy, hand in hand. The child and the fairy. I believe every child has a fairy, but when they become adult, the fairy vanishes. I still got my fairy. I can see her very clearly. No veil can hide her from me. There are many legends about fairies kidnapping children and I think this is part of a Great Mystery. The love between a human and a fairy. There is a price to pay, for that kind of love. The poet is an adult with the eyes of a child. But with a heavy heart. He is tired of the weight of this world. He longs to become spirit, to wander among forests, rivers and mountains, unhinged, united with his Soul, free from the prison of the flesh. But the fairy longs for a body, for blood, for a beating heart. She’d love to have a heart so she could love in the way she wants to love. She looks at the poet and sighs. Both reclaim each other. The muse and the poet. But the poet must abandon himself to the frenzy of imagination, of spirit, transcend the prison of his ego. And the fairy must abandon her immortality, her old, familiar, fairy roads. The fountain, the pond, the temple. And the altar.
The child is a sort of fairy. There is something fairy-like about a child. There is something fairy-like about the poet, the musician, the artist. The child is him in everything. He sees himself in everything. In every rock, every blade of grass, on the dew that hangs from the branches. There is no separation. Everything breathes with life, with intelligence. He has seen trees smiling at him. He truly has. He has seen the gnomes spying on him, the pointy, strange houses, the pointy hats, the green robes and tunics, the riders of the hills. Later, he will likely forget. But the poet never does. He slowly remembers. Poetry is the sword that pierces the veil of forgetfulness, the veil that separates himself from childhood. The poet is nothing more than a child with amnesia. In fact, adults are nothing more than that.
The child, sometimes, lives in a castle, in a palace. Is he a prince? He has a strange relationship with another kid, a girl his age. She is not human and only he can see her. They meet in the Garden of the Middle. The Garden that stands between the human world and the fairy world. And they play there. And they run through the Secret Paths that lead to Other Worlds. And the Garden becomes a dark forest. Doors to other worlds. They explore them. They open the doors. They don’t need keys for that.
Some other times, the kid has a strange relationship with a young woman, that seems to be his mentor in secret. A witch? No, she isn’t human, either. She teaches him the Secret Magic that everybody forgot. It’s more powerful than any other magic in the world, but so subtle that nobody notices it. It is the Magic of the Arts, the Magic of Songs and Stories.
And then, a big fire and the terrible separation. It’s so filled with sorrow, that a veil falls upon it. But it is not a dark veil woven by dark forces. It is the benevolent veil of the last song that the fairy taught him. “You will forget about this, so that you can be Human again”. That was the biggest sacrifice. Because the fairy could never forget.
But he remembers, now. I remember, now. Because not even the fairy could fathom the Immense Power of Poetry. Or maybe she did?
I pull the next Card.
The Lover.
The sound of a mandolin, a silent gondola sailing the narrow channel. The Lover seeks, incessantly, between the bed sheets. One after the other, different smells, different fragrances. Wine, sunset, caressing, moans. Every lover is an adventure, a spiral of emotions that, like winds, pushes him into mountains and abysses, heavens and hells. Above and below. Chemical wedding. So many anchors tried to root him into different ports, but he is always sailing and sailing. Channels, rivers and seas. A pirate, a captain and sailor. A lover, a poet. But for each woman he loves, the deeper the shallow well. For so many waters he sails, everything is dry within. Broken pieces. The memories of each women, so many women, starts to blend in his memories, and the resulting face is just a caricature, a broken mask, of the one that he truly loved. The love of his Childhood that he lost. He is trying to remember her, to compose a face from the faces of others. How many hearts has he sank? But he can’t help it.
I’m trying to remember you, through the skin of others.
But don’t be mistaken. There is no guilt in him. In those women there is a thirst, a hunger, that can only be satiated by someone like him. Love, sex, drama, tragedy. A broken heart. This is the stamp of the sailor, of the poet, of the wandering soul. Deep down, they never expect him to settle. You know you can’t come with me on the ship. No women are allowed. Part of his magnetism, is this nonchalant love, this flow in his movements, of someone that is more used to walk on a ship, than on land. And the sadness in his eyes, that silent nostalgia when he looks at the horizon, beyond the ocean.
Have you ever heard of the Island of the Immortals? He’d ask. Each girl would answer different things. My father used to tell me, that the night of the Solstice you can see a floating castle in the sky, my grandmother told me that there is an island where all sailors that died in the sea, lived together, in a land filled with fruit, wine and beautiful women. My grandfather told me the Land of the Immortals is the hidden continent where the old Gods and Goddesses left. As you can see, those were variations of the same myth. The land of the setting sun, of the dead, of the ancestors, of the old gods and spirits. He was sure that the love of his childhood was from there. He could remember her voice, her soothing, whispering voice, on those wheat fields, on those lavender fields back in his Family state. And deep in that strange forest within the forest. They both played there, for hours that seemed like days. Among the huge trees, among the tall figures clad in celestial tunics.
From her face, he could only remember those big, golden eyes that have always been with him. He even painted those two golden eyes on his Ship. But the rest of a face is as if it was covered by a veil, by a mist. The veiled goddess. In many legends, he heard that madness comes to the one that sees the True Face of the Goddess. But he wouldn’t mind madness, if he could see at least a glimpse of her true face.
Maybe it was just a dream.
But he knows it wasn’t. Sometimes he wishes it was just a dream that he could then forget. Just a story, a piece of art, a song, to enjoy, to read, to listen to, when he feels alone. And then, to carry on with his life. But it wasn’t. It was, in fact, the most real thing he has ever felt. Since then, his life is like a dream.
And he keeps sailing the seas, the channels, the rivers. And the lakes.
And some days, he can still hear her whisper, in the western wind.
And when the wind is pregnant with that whisper, the ship seems to fly over the waves.
After that story has been revealed to me, I look at the Lover Card. It is the only card that has two people in it. Two kids holding hands. The boy with silver eyes. The girl, with golden eyes. On the boy’s chest, a stone. On the girl’s chest, a key. The key to the fairy world? To the land of the immortals? Because the cards are magical, they change shape whenever you look at them, differently, like a kaleidoscope. Now I see a king and a queen. They both wear a triangular crown and are clad in silver tunics. A palace on top of a hill. Eight hills and, from them, eight rivers wash the eight valleys. They all converge in the Lake. In the middle of the lake, the Forest Island, the Hidden Kingdom, the Palace. The night of the solstice, the people of the hills come to give them offerings. They kneel in front of them. Are they royalty? Or are they gods? Their magic provide abundance and peace to the lands. How did the royalty become two kids? Are they reincarnating? What happened to them?
They haven’t reincarnated just once. They have reincarnated hundreds of times, countless generations. As they get closer, tragedy always ensues, and then they get further, once again. Start again. There is a dark force trying to prevent the two from uniting again. The Lost Kingdom is a threat for the Dark forces, for those vampire forces that feed on human suffering and fear. Because in that Kingdom, everybody lived their lives in full, blooming as they should. And we still got the Seed of that blooming within our Souls, and that’s why the Soul longs for this Immortal Land of eternal abundance.