Draymer’s Dream: The Glowing Man

It was the season of The Academy’s Scholar’s Tests of Skill and Draymer stepped out of the Hall of Apprentices disheartened. It was evident in the way he moved — downcast teary eyes and slow movement. Looking like this, he walked to his quarters.

He slumped onto his bed, face down. He felt like bursting in tears, but instead, he fell to a deep sleep. He had a dream.

In the dream, he was standing on top of the Hall of Scholars, enjoying the smooth brush of the wind on his face. Suddenly, the earth began to shake. The roof of the building was beginning to crack beneath his feet. Eventually, it crumbled and Draymer was falling into a deep deep hole. From the opening whence he fell, he could see the faces of his mentors and fellow scholars. His mentors — the great philosophers of The Academy — had a very disappointed look upon him. His fellow scholars looked surprised at first. Then they began laughing. The faces were getting farther and farther, yet he could see those faces so clearly as if they were up front — the faces of disappointment, and of ridicule.

“Look! Lord Draymer of Stormsrock falls!” the faces exclaimed. The philosophers were shaking their heads slowly, and the scholars were laughing and pointing at him.

Draymer was filled with shame. I might as well fall and take no more of their mockery, he thought to himself. He mustered the irony of finding comfort in falling into the blackness and soon, the thud that would end his miserable life, as he thought it.

“Pshhhhh!” came a loud splash instead of a dull thud. He fell into a pool of liquid. It was not water, for it was thicker, and more fragrant. It must have been perfume. Draymer cannot see it in the pitch black, but he found the liquid to be more fragrant than anything he had smelled in his lifetime.

Then a light appeared in the distance. It was getting closer and closer. Moments later, Draymer saw that the light was coming from a man approaching him. He was fascinated, for the man was glowing.

Somehow Draymer knew that the man could make his light even brighter — enough to blind him forever, but the man intended the light to be just gentle enough to light his immediate surroundings, and for Draymer to see him.

When the man was near and some light had shed on Draymer, the latter saw that the pool he was in was actually a pool of blood. Human instincts would have told him to panic at the sight of the thick red blood all over him, but he could not. It gave him comfort, as if it was giving him more and more life. The fragrance grew stronger as the Glowing Man was getting closer.

By the time that the man was a stone’s throw away from Draymer, the blood had gone. Draymer checked himself and saw that he was perfectly clean, when the blood would have colored him red all over. The dirt he got from the crumbling stone and earth was washed away. Even his scars were gone. The blood had made him flawless. When he looked to the glowing man, he saw that it was the High King Agapé.

Draymer fell to his knees. King Agapé placed his hands on Draymer’s head and asked, “What bothers you, child?”

“I failed the Scholar’s Test of Skill”, Draymer said. “I am humiliated before the great philosophers of The Academy and have become a laughing stock to my fellow scholars. I am ruined.”

He again felt the agony of seeing those faces of disappointment and ridicule that he saw during his fall. Tears were starting to fall from his eyes.

“I!” exclaimed the King. At this moment, the feelings that Draymer felt while bathing in the pool of blood came rushing back.

“I!” shouted the King louder and his light shone very bright and all of their surroundings could be very clearly seen.

Draymer looked around him and saw that they were in Amaora, his home kingdom. He relished seeing the green meadows, blue skies, magnificent castles in the distance; the sound of birds tweeting in harmony; the smell of fresh Amaoran air and the aroma of its flowers. It could not be mistaken — it was Amaora at its perfection.

“Have you forgotten, child?” asked King Agapé. “The blood you are in, the blood that is most fragrant above all things, the blood that have made you so alive, it is my blood — blood spilt in exchange for the freedom of my people from Terran slavery. My child, look around you. Soon, everything in this land will be swept away — even The Academy, even Amaora. But Child, you are a co-heir to a land that makes this view (Amaora “at its perfection”) seem like a pile of dung. That land is the The Realm of the Forefather, which you will inherit. All that because I have given up my life so you could have my birthright. It is very true that excellence in the academy — and tasks, in general — brings glory to your King and Kingdom, but tell me, what is that compared to the glory of being with your King? What is that compared to the everlasting glory that awaits you?”

King Agapé got down on one knee and embraced Draymer. The latter was feeling so alive, so fulfilled, as if his heart was overflowing with life.

“No amount failure can blot out my love for you, my child,” King Agapé whispered. “Now with the infinite love and strength that I give you, rise from the rubble and manifest the conqueror that I have empowered you to be.”

A bright light showed again, and Draymer was in his quarters once more. He was awake, but could still smell the fragrance of his King’s blood.