An explosion coloring the sky shades of scarlet. The screaming of armies clashing. sounds unknown to his ears, yet somehow familiar all the same.

"Well, what's going on?"

My eyes moved, seeming to fly over a great battlefield, before settling to fall through the cloth of a great green and gold tent. I saw a man before me, garbed in strange robes and a complex crown.

"Are you mute or something? God, why do they always give me the defective ones?"

He was in my face now, spittle flying all over as he raged about how he was always shafted by his superiors.

The world shifted, I now saw an idyllic valley, full of flowers and long grass waving in the wind. I looked to my right, and saw a man seemingly made of stars and void. He smiled at me, a thing that brought me great comfort though I didn't know his face.

"This will be our home now, my friend. No one will find us here."

And the world spun, morphing once again. I now stood at a seaside cliff, with the sound of clashing ocean waves to my back. I was face to face with the same man of noble clothes as before, though he was now tattered and torn.

"I'm sorry, but your crimes cannot be forgiven."

Before I knew what was happening, I was falling. I turned to the ground below and caught one final glimpse of the spikes below.

And then i awoke.

Sitting straight up in my bed, I could feel the cold sweat on my face. The same nightmare, come again. The man of stars, and the murderous green noble.

I looked over and saw my alarm clock. 8 AM. great. now I was going to be late for work.

I stood up and dressed myself. After walking to the bathroom and splashing myself with cold water, I stood and stared at my own reflection. Where did this dream come from?

Where did my mind get the idea of a man made of stars? I had never had much of an imagination, why did my own mind begin conjuring such things now?

But I had no time to question it, I was already late, and my boss wouldn't be very merciful after I was late for the 20th time.

The day went by slowly aside from being chastised as soon as I arrived. On the drive home, I put on an old playlist from my childhood, comfort music that never failed to soothe me.

While listening, I began to think. Was there something that could have triggered those strange experiences? The dreams had been coming with increasing regularity, often focusing on the same characters. Maybe it was some childhood experience, I'd have to ask my parents next time I called them.

As i looked up, i saw the intersection light above me. A second ago, a beautiful green, it was now red. In the moment before impact, I thought of the irony, the color itself seeming to betray me when most needed.

When I next became aware, i was sitting in a high-backed chair. I was in a comfortable living room, what one would visualize the old log cabin in the woods to look like.

But stranger than that was the man that sat across from me. With his shoulders drooped, the man of stars and void stared right at me.

"You're finally awake. Took you long enough."

I tried to respond, but I felt lethargic, like every inch of my body was submerged in a kind of Jell-O.

"You won't be able to respond to me yet, still haven't worked completely free of those damn Clankers yet. just listen."

I nodded, not being able to do anything else.

"You are in a dreamscape I made, a place I've been trying to pull you into for a while. Your material body is in a coma currently after your accident. You aren't going to die, but you came close. and that's exactly why you're here."

"Such an experience has a power, letting you do something that not many have been able to do for a while. With my help, you will be able to relive your past lives, gaining all the knowledge you used to have. It won't be an easy or fast job, but you've already been doing it on your own as you've grown."

Well this was a lot to take in.

"I know you don't know much yet, so I'll give you the short version. Millennia ago, humanity wasn't the only race. There were myriad races who inhabited just as many worlds, parallel to your own. the world was full of energies, conflict, and what you might think of as magic."

"But as time went on, societies solidified. the elite took the magic for themselves, and warred against other nations to keep the commoners under their heel. Those damn metal men knew few were happy about it, so they rallied the lower masses and revolted."

"They swept across the world, campaigning for the magic-less common people to take back the power. And they won. But they betrayed those who brought them into power. They plunged the world into an age of gears, oil, and smog. They destroyed the human lifespan and ran off all others. soon enough, even you humans, traumatized by the cruelty of your masters, were forced to lose the ability to remember your pasts lest you lose your sanity."

I found myself suddenly able to speak.

"So Tolkien lost to communist industrialists?"

The star man chuckled, "I guess you could think of it that way. But the age of cruelty has ended as your people have pushed back on those in power. Despite their best efforts to teach you a false history, the past has begun to seep back into the minds of humanity. Soon, the magics of old will return. And I want your help to make this happen, old friend."

Though I had just met him, the smile he offered me was completely disarming.

"I guess I can help out a little bit"

(My first time doing a writing prompt! excited to hear feedback. I know the end was dense, but I felt it was dragging on and couldn't find a smoother way to do that much exposition without making it way too long.)