Evil Walks in the Land of Dreams

Last week we talked about the Land of Dreams and the Dream Walkers in my series Harmonic Wars. We discussed how the Land of Dreams was a fluid existence where anything was possible. Dream  Walkers could manipulate others dreams or walk around in an altered reality. What I may not have explained fully, was that in this altered reality, Dream Walkers could spy on the living without being seen.  This could be very helpful when gathering intelligence on an enemy, but it was not very reliable. The Land of Dreams might show you fleeting thoughts as reality. You know how you might day dream that you are telling your boss off, or cussing out a bully that you were afraid of? In the Land of Dreams those thoughts or day dreams might be viewed as reality by the Dream Walker. But there is still much a person can learn in the Land of Dreams. Even if things are only dreamt, it still reflects the deeper mindset and emotions of the individual being observed.

What type of evil would most likely lurk about in the Land of Dreams? My first thought  of course was Freddy Krueger, but that character was already taken. :-) So I thought more about it and one thought came to mind: a succubus. They are demons of the night and of your dreams. They are thought to seduce young men in their dreams. Perfect! I totally had the makings for a good cat fight since my Dream Walkers were also women. This was a fun section to write for me...who doesn't like a good cat fight?

I named the succubus Inshae and she is the embodiment of sex. She had jet black hair that flowed down her back and framed her pale skin and black eyes. Twisted black horns grew from either side of her head several inches up. Two more twisted white horns curled out forward of her face as part of a bone structure that surrounded her head. Two long pointed ears grew out from the bone structure, to accentuate the sharp facial features and full lips. She wore shear black clothes that highly accentuated her womanly figure and left very little to the imagination. She was a full figured female demon.

Her realm IS the Land of Dreams, so she would be very powerful there. I could not risk putting a mere human up directly against a demon... that just wouldn't make sense. Especially in the demon's most powerful environment. So I had to even the odds by finding a way that the Guardians could use the Land of Dreams to communicate and interact with the direct intervention from the Dream Walkers. In short, I made them able to pull others around in the alternate reality. I view this along the same lines as "lucid dreaming" that many people try to practice now. Now I could put up several Guardians against one demon. That made more sense, but I don't expect a demon would fight fair. I'm certain they would find a way to bring in reinforcements when things got tough.

Again, I needed more research. This time it was about demons, and I wanted to get facts as straight as I could, so I needed some religious support. The Reverend Billy Graham has a wonderful book out on Angels, and I had read it as a teenager. In that book Rev. Graham speaks briefly about Lucifer and his fall. It must have been a great battle, angel against angel. In the end, Lucifer was cast out of Heaven and with him one third of the angels. That would make Lucifer an arch angel like Michael or Gabriel. The angels that fought on Lucifer's side in this terrible war, became evil and twisted and are now the demons that roam the earth robbing humanity of its chance to be with God. With examples like this, why make stuff up? So who might be Lucifer's Generals?

In life there is much to be said for a hive mentality. There are many examples of it in SciFi, because it is such a powerful existence to defeat. Ants and bees in the animal kingdom are small, but with sheer numbers working together and thinking as one they can do so much! Interestingly enough, the Bible came through with the first example of this in the demon realm: Legion.

"Our name is Legion, for we are many." Wow... what a statement! Here I thought the demon realm would have a definite hierarchy of upper and lower demons. Over the thousands of years I see a collective of smaller demons working together would indeed become powerful with time as groups of lower demons sought to join the collective for protection against the other stronger ones.

But in my book, as it is in life, there is balance. God did not create a right without a left, or an up without a down. Since there are demons in my book, I had to balance it out with some angels. Michael the arch angel among others. He had golden hair that fell in soft curls on his shoulders. Large dimples on his cheeks, cleft chin and large glittering blue eyes stood out against his fair skin. He was heavily muscled and dressed in gold and silver armor. His four strong wings extended out 12 feet and resembled the armor with rows of alternating gold and silver feathers each edge razor sharp. His strong hands held twin scimitars that glowed and shot beams of light when in battle against the demons who spit a tar-like black demon fire. A wonderful spicy scent radiated around all the angels, where as the demons smelled of sulphur and decay. The battlecry of the demons was a raw and guttural roar, whereas the battlecry for the angels was music that radiated from their bodies much like the spicy scent.

There is so much more, but I think I'll save that until the book is released this May-Jun timeframe. If you want to find out more, please follow me at: