Angels and Dreamers

I am an angel. I was born in a time of dangerous dreams.

A time when men no longer controlled their own minds. Behind veils of fantasy, great corporations bound the earth with chains of flame. These Lords of Flame, the Ophanim, plucked the strings one by one, until none were left but puppets. Mankind achieved their fondest dream – freedom. The price? Sleep.

Every night and every day teams of enforcers would ensure that the puppet silence would not be broken. Great swarms of writhing shadows watched and waited, plucking dreams as they ripened.

With every cycle, the dreamlines linking man to this world range further beyond control. Like beasts on the scent of wounded prey, there are things beyond the walls that follow these dreamlines to earth. The walls that had protected man - from deep in the antiquarian past to the information age – were kept strong by waking knowledge. At any given time, half of the population was awake, and the other half were asleep. The walls were kept in balance. With sleep comes the forgetting, and the walls come down.

The Ophanim had their power. They were undisputed Lords of all the Earth. Yet they could not control the things that came through in dreams. While they archived and secreted away the most powerful dreams, they could not stem the tide. Their vain hope was that observation of these dreams would never occur (based on the Observing affects the observing reality), thereby diminishing the power of these dream entities.

The Ophanim sought gifted dreamers, from both their own ranks and from the sea of humanity, that could enter into this new world of encroaching dream and contain the threats against mankind. Always there are teams of three –