In the universe that the Smiting Chamber has designated 1121, there was once a man called Leeland. He’d been born to a single mother who died in childbirth, and if he had a father or any siblings, Leeland would never know.
He grew up with his adult cousin, Steph, his last known living relative, who had lived alone before Leeland was brought to their door by social workers who had been looking for a relative for many years.
“If you can’t care for him,” the social workers said to Steph, “you can sign over all rights as next of kin and he will be in the custody of the state until he becomes an adult.”
Steph had never imagined raising children. Before their transition, the thought of being a mother was so foreign and repulsive to them that it made them question not only their sexuality, but their gender identity. They finally found peace as an adult, after a life of hostility from their parents, particularly their mother, who assumed they rejected femininity as a personal slight to her. But Steph was never the nurturing type and they were terrible at faking it.
Steph looked at the small boy, their stranger cousin that they had never even heard of before, and the look of fear in his down cast eyes, almost made them cry and Steph agreed to take Leeland with little conversation.
Steph lived alone in a one-story house that had more rooms than were obvious from the outward appearance of the house. Leeland was surprised at the difference between the outside and inside and when the social workers left him standing just inside of his cousin’s front door, he stared with a serious look on his face down the long hallway from the front door that led to a kitchen he could see in the distance. The hallway was lined with closed doors and there were two rooms through entrances with no doors to the left and right inside the foyer.
“Do you eat?” Steph asked, fumbling with the two small bags that Leeland had with him.
Leeland nodded enthusiastically and followed Steph down the long hallway, forgetting to glimpse into the two opened rooms.
Steph put Leeland’s things in a neat stack in the dining room and helped Leeland up into one of the chairs. Steph’s dining room was small, large enough for the square table with just two chairs, but Leeland could see that the actual kitchen was much larger and looked out onto the bright backyard where the sun shone brightly through the window. Steph went into the kitchen and Leeland heard pots and pans, plates and cutlery.
When Steph reappeared in the small dining room, they sat two plates on the table and sat across from Leeland who already had a smile on his face as he took in deep breaths enjoying the smell of the steaming food on the plates. Then the two ate in silence. When they were done, Steph smiled at Leeland who seemed to enjoy her simple lunch of scrambled eggs and a thick porridge of oats seasoned with bacon and spring onions from their backyard garden; Steph wasn’t the type to be awake early enough for breakfast, so usually enjoyed that for lunch.
“I will do my best to help you grow into an adult,” Steph said sincerely and Leeland listened dutifully while he sipped at a warm mug of hot chocolate that Steph had gotten for him as he cleaned his plate. “We are family, our parents were brother and sister. I didn’t know your mother, I barely knew my parents, but I don’t think now is a time for sad stories. If you will live here with me, it is important that you understand this house. I’ve been looking after it for a long time and I probably will until I die, and that’s ok, I don’t mind, but I’m not alone any more, am I? When it was just me, it was a risk I was ok to take, but if I have to look after you, and I promise you that I will, we have to assess this risk together and come to a conclusion. We can find a different home if we need to.”
“I like this house,” Leeland said, “it’s so much bigger inside. It’s like a cartoon house, there’s so many doors.”
“That doesn’t scare you?” Steph asked. “There could be anything behind those doors.”
“I won’t open them if there is,” Leeland said and sipped his hot chocolate.
“This house is a hub, do you know what a hub is?” Steph asked and Leeland shook his head. “It’s the place where you can come to get anywhere else you might want to go. Those doors, four on each side of the hallway, and the same in the basement and on the second floor, they can take you anywhere you might want to go.”
“What you mean second floor?” Leeland asked. He hadn’t seen stairs and the house didn’t look like it had a second floor from the outside.
“If we stay here, you’ll see it eventually,” Steph said. “But that’s beside the point, Lee, what I want you to understand is that if we stay here, we’ll be living in a hub, a magical hub that has doors to everywhere, to nowheres, to yesterdays and tomorrows. And people come here, I can’t always control who, to use these doors and I have to make sure they’re worthy of this magic. Does that make sense?”
Leeland shrugged, “I guess, you don’t want bad guys being able to go everywhere and do bad stuff.”
“Right, so if we live here, that means we have to be strong enough to do that job. Not just me, either. I know I can take care of myself, I’ve been doing this a while, but if we stay here, Lee, you’re gonna have to get strong and help me protect these doors.”
“That sounds like a superhero or something,” Leeland said with excitement. “You can teach me to get stronger? And learn magic?”
“I have to if we decide to stay here…”
“We’ll stay!” Leeland said enthusiastically. “We’ll protect the doors.”
Leeland was so excited at the prospect of becoming a super hero with magic that he hadn’t let his cousin tell him about the reality that not only did people take the doors to any place they needed to go, but sometimes things randomly came through the doors. It frightened him awake often as he was slept in his small room that was connected to his cousin’s room that didn’t have a door and was off the main floor hallway opposite the kitchen. Steph explained that guarding the doors meant sleeping light and listening for dangers, and Leeland learned first hand that things came randomly through the doors when a minotaur burst through the door closest to the entrance to Steph’s room and rampaged through the house. Leeland was scared, but he was mostly excited to see his new found cousin wield magic in bright, flashy colors to tame the minotaur and fling him back through the smashed door that Steph repaired with their magic.
Leeland was an eager student of his cousin from the start and by the time he was eighteen, he was powerful enough to allow Steph to have a life away from guarding the enchanted doors. Leeland couldn’t resist his curiosity for very long and probably the second time that Steph left him alone to guard the doors so that they could go out and enjoy meeting and mingling with others, Leeland went through one of the enchanted doors in the basement that he had dreamed about. In his dream, Leeland saw the door in the basement with light issuing from the seams around the closed door in a way that he had never seen in his waking life. It was a simple dream, just the door illuminated from behind and nothing else, which only made Leeland more eager to go through it.
Leeland understood that the enchanted doors of the first floor led the person passing through them to whatever place they wanted to go; the second floor doors led the person passing through them to whatever place they needed to go, and the basement doors were a complete mystery and seldom used. His curiosity dwarfed his apprehensions, though, and Leeland went through the door that had been illuminated in his dreams even though it was not illuminated in his waking life.
On the other side of the door, Leeland fell into blackness and he instantly regretted his decision. He was sure that he was going to die, but more than anything, he was extremely sad that he had disappointed his cousin who had raised him and trusted him, and now there was no one guarding the enchanted doors. Leeland was sick from falling through blackness and from his own disappointment when he suddenly stopped, like something had caught him, but he wasn’t on a ground, he felt more like he was suspended in the nothingness around him.
“Good,” a voice said and suddenly there was illumination, like a spotlight shone down on Leeland though he couldn’t be sure from where. “I’m glad that you came. I have been watching you and I would have you as my apprentice.”
“Who said that?” Leeland asked as a body materialized before him. The body was naked, it was a full grown man, but he was not ancient, and soon his body was covered in a hooded cloak and Leeland couldn’t see his face.
“I am Dream,” the man said, “I am the lord of this dimension and I brought you here to give you the honor of studying to take my place. I have heard great things about you, young one. The many visitors through the enchanted doors of the hub have told of a noble young man who guards the doors with another who reared him. Your parent should be commended, beings of magic aren’t usually impressed by beings of your realm. But you have learned a lot in your short life, I believe that you have a capacity for much more. And I cannot do this job forever, well, not another forever, I have done it already for many lifetimes, and this domain deserves a spry custodian. I believe that you are that one.”
Leeland accepted before he realized what he was agreeing to and he was sad when he returned to the home that he shared with his cousin. When Steph returned home, he told them about the apprenticeship that he’d accepted and Steph understood that their time together had come to an end.
“My little cousin is going to become the God of Dreams,” Steph said proudly as they struggled not to cry. Leeland struggled just like them and they laughed at each other. “You have to go, but I didn’t think our time together would end so abruptly. I’m sure that you will come back to visit me often? You know the way back.”
Leeland nodded and he spent another week with his cousin in the hub of enchanted doors before he reported to his destiny through the basement door.
Leeland is a human God and he is only able to exist as a God because his mortal body expired long ago, and with it, so did his human name. As the God of Dreams, Leeland became Azalaan; in his mind he couldn’t be known as Dream because he had known him before he disappeared to nothing and passed along his godly mantle. Azalaan’s spirit form is formidable, more tangible than a physical body, but capable of phasing in and out of reality at will. He would only do it in case of emergency, but Leeland can access the dreams of anything that does and he can send messages through dreams.
He is in the realm of Dreams when he receives a message from an unfamiliar voice that asks him for help to save the multiverse. Azalaan is skeptical of the call, but it is an easy trip for him to investigate it and he is shocked to meet the large force of beings from the multiverse who had gathered to face an unfathomable evil.
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