We begin in the waking world... which humanity insists on calling the real world, as if your dreams have no effect upon the choices you make. You mortals go about your work, your loves, your wars, as if your waking lives are all that matter. But there is another life which awaits you when you close your eyes, and enter my realm. For I am the King of Dream, and Nightmares. When the waking world leaves you wanting and weary, sleep brings you here to find freedom and adventure, to face your fears and fantasies in Dreams and Nightmares that I create - and which I must control, lest they consume and destroy you. That is my purpose and my function. Or it was, until I left my kingdom to pursue a rogue Nightmare. Day after day, he pleaded for gifts that are not mankind's to receive nor mine to give. So I remained silent. I was powerless, trapped by a spell cast by an amateur with no concern for the damage he had done to my realm and to his own.

For a hundred years, I sat and waited. Roderick had lived and died, leaving me under the care of his son, Alex.

"Do you think you will be able to get him to speak? We just want to be free of him" Alex had been bound to a wheelchair, the youth drained and replaced with wrinkles and gray hair. I watched silent and blank faced as the new person looked me over in the subtle horror everyone had.