Visions (Introduction)

It was another world, the world of the Savage Queen. To you or I, it would be barely distinguishable from a dream, for so much like a dream it was, and so alien to our senses, so foreign to our comprehension it remains. It was without time, stolen away in some hidden fold or secret pocket of the infinite cosmos. The space which comprised it shifted and metamorphosed in this shadowy womb, swelling and rising and falling in and over itself, lapping its ever-changing borders at the edge of the cosmic shore, whereupon so many stars glittered like grains of sand beneath the sinking sun.

And like a dream, it lurked on the periphery of consciousness, glimpsed but never grasped, conceived but never comprehended. Yet, more than a dream, it existed, formless as water and weightless as air, as real and tangible as the towering summits of snow-capped peaks, or the sullen depths of ice-black seas.

Of this world, I have known visions of arresting and breathtaking detail, exotic and incongruous fantasy, where beneath the lithe hand of a cruel and beautiful tyrant, bizarre and aberrant theaters of life, death, undeath, and beyond unravel before my captivated mind’s eye.

These visions have come to me, and me alone, stretching across the icy maw of time and space to reveal a tale that was old when the universe was young, a saga of a time before time, and the Savage Queen who at once ruled the everything and nothing within its boundless bounds.

I deliver this to you, asking nothing in return, save that you fill your head with these fevered dreams:

Breath deeply of Her perfumed breath, lay your head upon Her molten breast; Her heart beats like the drums of war, lungs swell like sails in raging storm.

Sow into your consciousness this seed and let it take root: Such fruits line the path to your eye unseen. The memories exist within you, forgotten but ancestral, and within you, the Queen – fierce and grim, supple and raven-haired, brimming with burning passion and smiting scorn – will live and breathe again, again, again…