Gate: The Emperor
I stepped through the vision gate and found myself standing on a field of barren, clay-like soil. The sky was dark but a full moon was shining down upon this space, illuminating me like a spotlight. Then, an earthquake began, nearly knocking me off of my feet as the clay split apart and a shadowed tower came from within the ground and thrust upwards into the night sky.
The lower part of the tower was unformed and seemed a part of the earth itself. The top of the tower was empty and lifeless to my eyes. I began to climb the lower slopes of this structure, looking for a way in but finding nothing of interest or assistance in my search.
A golem made of clay popped out of the ground beneath the tower and began climbing with me. It was difficult work for both of us as the clay crumbled and broke beneath my hands, and he was so small that he had to rush to keep up with my steps.
“I don’t know if I can climb this,” I told my companion the golem. Even as I spoke, the clay began to shift beneath me and formed itself into rough stairs leading upwards. “Much better,” I observed. “I may be able to scale the heights after all. Friend, do you know the name of this forsaken place?”
“You come to the home of the Night King,” said the golem. “Master of the Dark Time, Ruler of the Night Creatures. The Night King appears when the last rays of the sun fade from the sky and disappears when the sun rises again the next morning. He can be quite elusive and difficult to find.”
“Well, we found him together, you and I, so I wonder if it really is so difficult to do after all,” I said. “Is he a kind ruler, this Night King?”
“Depends on his mood,” replied the golem. “The powers with ties to the moon are notoriously moody. But don’t tell him I said so.”
I laughed at his blunt honesty. “I will tell no one,” I assured the golem.
By this time, my companion and I had reached the top of the clay stairs. A forbidding tower loomed before us with its front drawbridge standing open, a yawning gateway into the further shadows of the night. I took a deep breath of the cold night air, then my golem and I entered the Night King’s Tower.
The faint light of the moon was filtered through the ceiling in such a way that I could see through the mist and darkness around me, though without the moon’s help I would have been blind in such a shadowed place. Depicted in the floor of this tower at the threshold of the entry gate, there was a large crescent moon surrounding a smaller golden sun, the sigil of the Night King himself.
In addition to the customized tilework of the entryway floor, numerous bats hung from the eaves and walls lining the front hall. I disturbed their slumber as I passed and they emerged from their sleeping spaces somewhat disgruntled by my presence in their home.
When the bats’ claws touched the floor of the tower, their forms began to stretch and grow. Soon, a great crowd of skeletal figures was following me deeper into the Night King’s abode. Their ears were long and pointed like bats or other night creatures who utilize sound to travel safely through the dark and they were clothed in torn, black and tattered robes.
These threadbare lords and ladies had eyes of mirrored red, and some had no hair to cover the shining crowns of their heads. Their skin was generally the white tone of blank paper though I noticed beings of darker hues if I looked deeper into the tower’s waiting shadows.
Despite their potential threat to my safety because of the night predators they clearly were, their presence wouldn’t have disturbed me except there was such a large number of them and the crowd increased in size behind me as I moved further into the tower. Furthermore, I disliked being the center of so much attention in such a small space and the crowd was blocking my pathway out.
So gathering my courage, I turned to confront the creatures of the night. “Greetings to you, denizens of the tower. My name is Heidi,” I said. “I’ve come seeking the nature of this place and yourselves. If this is truly the abode of the Night King, would any of you consent to lead me into his presence?”
“We are so hungry,” said one of the beings who was closest to me. “So very hungry and you smell of other worlds and fresh dreams, our favorite repast.” Clawed fingers began to reach and grasp at my body from the surrounding night creatures.
“Love will provide sustenance for you, no need to consume me along with my hopeful dreams,” I said and held out my empty hands. From my palms, there was an explosion of color and a steady stream of butterflies and moths of every rainbow hue flew from my hands into the dark hall.
The night creatures moved in a feeding frenzy, leaping and pushing one another in a race to consume the most figments of my imagination. As they fed, blood returned to their faces and their clothing changed into the finest silks and patterned brocade.
When I finally lowered my hands, the lords and ladies were no longer starving vampiric creatures, but elves in sparkling robes with long and braided hair. Their ears were still long and pointed but their eyes were transmuted to blue, brown, black- all manner of colors- a welcome change from the singular, hypnotic red.
The elves whispered among themselves behind their hands to conceal the movement of their lips from my sight. “Friends, if you are sated,” I said. “I will issue my request a second time. Would any of you be willing to lead me before the Night King’s throne?”
“I will show you the way,” said the being who had spoken previously to me about my delicious dreams. She appeared now as a tall female, dressed in green with long reddish, brown hair. The elf swept past me and moved further into the darkness, and I followed quickly on her heels. As we went down the hallway, the crowd of night creatures vanished back into the walls and crevices of the tower from which they had come.
“He does not like visitors,” said my guide as we reached an arched doorway at the end of the hall. “Do not expect a pleasant welcome.” On this threshold, the crescent moon eclipsing the sun appeared again, etched into a brown clay tablet that hung in the center of the wooden and iron-studded double doors. The elf threw wide the doors and beyond there was a cavernous room.
In the Night King’s inner sanctum, the moon shone more brightly from above but the shadows in the corners seemed darker. Upon a mound of clay at the far end of the room, a cloaked and hooded figure sat on a throne, gazing into something on the arm of his chair. As we moved closer, I saw the object of his fascination was a bedewed cobweb.
“My lord,” said my guide. “This one has requested the honor of your presence.”
“Leave us,” said the Night King in a voice thick with disuse. The elf left as quickly and silently as she had appeared. “I do not entertain,” he said, turning his eyes from the cobweb to me. “I do not allow others to gaze upon my face nor do I allow entry into my fortress. Yet here you are.”
The Night King’s cloak was composed of the wings of black scarab beetles and, as he shifted on his throne, it caught my eye and glittered in the moonlight. His shining eyes gazed out from the depths of his hood. They were bright red and wild like the eyes of his subjects before they feasted upon my butterflies and moths or like the piercing light of two red stars beaming down upon the earth from the wide expanse of the night sky.
His emaciated hands and graceful fingers were mere bones beneath his skin and were as pale as the moonlight that poured down upon us both. “Tell me who you are,” he said, gripping the arms of his throne and the cobweb as well. “And explain your trespass before I lose my patience with you and banish you from my realm.”
“Night King,” I said, bowing my head in respect, then reaching into the depths of my own cloak and pulling forth the cup from the Castle of Skye. “I will explain all for my intrusion into your realm warrants a reply, but first I think you should take a draught of Love. You seem parched and that is an ill way to begin a polite conversation.”
As I came closer to the lord on his throne, I saw this elf appeared a man from the waist up, but from the waist down, he blended into his chair and had no legs. His scarab cloak concealed this fact from a distance, but up close it was impossible to miss.
The Night King reached towards me with a trembling, skeletal hand and I placed the grail within it. The cup was filled, as it always is, with shining, sparkling water, but as the King took it from me, the water began to boil with the energy coming from him. The vintage in the cup instantly evaporated into a fine mist.
Because of the special properties of the Love’s Grail, the cup was filled again, and again its contents evaporated. Eventually, a fine, rainbow-filled mist surrounded the Night King from the perpetually flowing and boiling water of the cup.
The elf lord took a deep breath of the misted water. A rosy hue returned to his cheeks and his eyes faded from glowing red of the night creatures to the brown of the clay upon which his throne sat. He inhaled again and again, absorbing the regenerative powers of the water of life through the air.
When he finally handed me back the cup, the Night King looked completely refreshed and so changed from his earlier appearance, it seemed almost impossible that he could be the same being.
As the cup touched my hands the water ceased to boil, but it continued to pour forth from the drinking vessel and sank into the brown clay beneath the throne as well as moving over the construction material of the tower itself. I marveled at the sheer amount of water consumed by the thirsty clay of the Night King’s Tower.
Finally the material of the tower could take no more, and the clay itself started to change. The brown soil was washed away and beneath the clay, a shining black stone like ebony revealed itself. The water flowed, the clay continued to fall away, and when the grail eventually ceased overflowing, I found myself standing in a tower made of mirrored obsidian. It reflected the moonlight so powerfully, all of the shadows in the throne room vanished.
Cicadas began to sing from the walls of the new tower and, where there was once death and thirst, there was now abundant, sparkling life.
“Who are you?” demanded the Night King in a powerful, ringing voice. “Tell me for I would add you to my court and keep you close at hand for quenching my thirst in perpetuity.”
“I am Heidi,” I said, bowing my head again in respect. “I have come to learn the nature of this place and you, and respectfully decline your offer of a place in your retinue. I am on an epic quest to discover the genesis of a vision I had once upon a time and cannot stop until my journey is complete.”
“Perhaps you will reconsider your refusal, Cup Bearer. For I am He Who Dwells in the Night, the shaper of dreams and innovations,” the Night King said. “I have no equals or peers. I am the friend and muse of the artist who works at night and the writer who creates by the light of the moon. I have carried many names in many different eras but perhaps you have known me as Morpheus. You want to have me as an ally and not an enemy, I promise you that.”
The elf used his arms to raise himself from his throne and he glided towards me legless as if the castle floor was simply another part of his body.
“I mean to cause no offense, Great One,” I said. “But I will not be turned from my path and stated purpose even for one as mighty as you. Please share with me your true nature so that I may resume my search.”
“You will come to regret your decision tonight in time, Heidi,” the king said. “However, you have already done me and mine a great service though we didn’t know who to thank since we knew no one of your description with recent developments in the Inner Worlds until now. Come with me if you would like to learn more about who I am, for I despise using words when a simple demonstration of my power suffices.”
I followed the Night King, trailing his glittering, beetle-winged cloak, through a side door of his throne room. We entered another hallway lined with great horned owls. They hooted at us as we passed, their large eyes following our every movement.
“All creatures of the night are my friends,” said the king, running his hands over the head of one of the enormous owls. “All things that move in the night time hours are as clay to me to be shaped and changed, both the predators and the prey. They are all mine.”
We came to another room within which a gun-metal gray machine was emitting large, shiny bubbles. The Night King glided up to this machine and began to send the bubbles up, high into the air. This room sat at the very apex of his tower and its ceiling was as vaulted as a cathedral.
At the very top of the tower room, there was an open window out into the night sky. Through this window, I could see stars glittering down upon us from the outside. The Night King waved his hands and the bubbles flew towards the exit to the night, passing the threshold and continuing outwards into the shadows.
“I have many informants throughout the worlds, Heidi. They told me when you awoke the Dream Maker in Poseidon’s underwater kingdom,” said the Night King. “Its counterpart in my tower, this machine, awoke from its long slumber at the same time and started to produce dreams again. If I had had my legs, I would have come here and sent forth the dreams myself. But as you saw, my people and I were starved from the lack of dreams and the vitalizing emotions that come with them.” The king folded his elegant hands and gazed down at them for a moment in contemplation.
“With your unexpected help, Love’s Messenger, for that is one of your chosen appellations, is it not?” he continued. “My people and I are free to shape and share dreams again. Thank you for that. I appreciate the boon more than you know, but one day I expect you will.”
There was a tremendous rumble and the stone tower shook in a sudden earthquake. The Night King took my arm to steady me as I nearly fell to the floor. “Have a care, Heidi, for I have freed my tower from the stagnant clay in which I was imprisoned,” he said. “We are now flying through the night sky again as we should have always been.”
Iridescent bubbles continued to form from the machine in that place and I watched in fascination as the Night King sent them out into the sky again and again.
“What lesson have you for me, Great One?” I asked, nearly hypnotized while watching the king at work in the light of the moon.
He captured one of the bubbles between his fingers and began to spin it. Its shining surface changed from cool moonlight to mesmerizing, spinning gold. “Do not be afraid to dream,” the Night King said. “What seems impossible in the cold light of day comes alive at night. The first steps of anything can be formed in dreams and then brought through to reality if desired and if you believe such a thing is possible. Therefore dream, Heidi, dream as largely as you are able.”
The Night King released his golden bubble and it floated towards me. I fell through its glittering surface into another reality.
When I could perceive my surroundings again, I stood on a snow-covered cliff, gazing out into the night sky. Beneath the moon free from the ground, the floating tower of the Night King spewed forth endless dream bubbles as it moved farther away from me towards the distant horizon, staying one step ahead of the promised illumination of the rising sun.
The abyss I faced belonged to a mountain at the edge of a range of towering peaks and, from the wild expanse behind me, a snow storm poured over the ragged cliffs. The storm kept flickering back and forth between snow-filled clouds and an enormous gray spider spewing snowflakes from her body in the place of a web. I watched this spider/storm come closer until I was engulfed in mist, snow, and shadow.
When I could see through the storm at last, I was standing at the edge of a new valley made of the same rock as the Night King’s tower. Spikes made of stone guarded this place so I moved carefully forward, unwilling to impale myself on the guardian’s fence.
“Welcome to my home, Dreamer,” I heard a whisper coming from the rocks of the vale.
“I am Heidi,” I said to the shadows. “Who speaks to me?”
“My son sent you to me,” whispered the stones. “He knows you connect more deeply with mothers.”
Between the rock walls of the deep valley, an enormous spider web ran from one side to the other. I saw, hinted at in the shadowy depths, the spider I had seen spinning snowflakes in the sky. A bit of web blew from this creature and formed itself in the shape of a woman made of cobwebs. She climbed down her web and came towards me.
“You may call me, Ariadne,” she said. “I am a weaver of reality from the void. I have woven many things, including my son, the ruler of the nighttime hours.” The cobwebbed woman gestured to the walls of her stone valley and I saw within the living earth the exact shape of the Night King’s Tower. He and his fortress had emerged from the very fabric of this place.
“Ariadne, my name is Heidi and I am pleased to meet you tonight,” I said. “I have met many mothers in my journeys who are creators as well. Are there others like you?”
The goddess smiled. “Indeed, I am one of many powerful weavers,” she said. “You have heard of my sisters, the Fates?”
“I have,” I said. “For who in existence is free of the touch of their unbridled influence? Certainly not me. Lady Ariadne, if you could teach me one lesson about yourself and your true nature, what would it be?”
“From introductions to lessons already, you move through reality quickly, Heidi,” the goddess said. “Let it be as you desire. Tell me, how does a spider know how to spin a web?”
“Instinct?” I guessed.
“She is the web,” Ariadne whispered and disappeared in a gust of breeze. “The spider is the web and the weaver of it.” The mammoth spider stirred in her web and shifted delicately from one place to another along its silken strands. “Tell me, Heidi, what is the difference between your ‘visions,’ as you call them, and real life?”
“They feel different,” I said to the spider as she loomed above me. “Life feels thick, material, ‘real’ if you will. Within the everyday realm, I can touch, move, and change things in a manner that feels permanent even if the waking world is ultimately impermanent.”
“These visions,” I continued. “Feel light like a fog or mist to me. I can fly, heal from any wound, and bring creatures back from the dead. I have more freedom of movement and being here than I have ever had on earth. I am only bound by my imagination which is surprisingly vast. This works both to my favor and against it.”
Ariadne in her spider form drew closer. “I tell you, Heidi, there is no difference,” she said, starlight sparkling from her myriad eyes. “The freedom you describe here is with you in the real world. The realness you describe in your life exists here as well. Your ‘real life’ is the spider, your visions are the web. The fly for the spider is your dreams, the predatory bird that consumes the spider is your vision of stagnant reality. You compose all parts of this particular metaphor.”
The goddess stood so close I could see myself reflected in her compound eyes. “When will you allow my son his legs so your dreams can walk hand-in-hand with your reality?” she said. “And that, dear one, is the lesson of Ariadne the Weaver. There is no difference between your visions and your reality. You find these words hard to believe, but one day you will know I speak true for you will see with your waking eyes exactly what I mean.”
I began to grow larger and the spider on her web became smaller. Suddenly, I discovered I was staring at a spider web on the base of a statue made of the clay of the valley, the original material of the Night King’s Tower. The statue depicted the Night King and in his right hand, he carried a dream as a golden bubble. In his left hand, he held a sword of flame raised high above his head.
As I watched, the statue came to life. The Night King now had fully formed legs which broke apart from the base of the statue and scattered the cobweb that had initially drawn my attention. He lowered his sword and blew his dream bubble at me, then strode away into the mist.
There my vision ended.
The Light Congress 