Duchess Ryaen ni Fiona ruled over the land with a light and benevolent touch. Romance flourished amidst the shimmering colours of the St Elmo's Fire, and dark sprites and chimera darted amongst the dampened branches and marsh reeds that sung softly in the moonlit night.

But the age of wonder in the city of enchanted marshes didn't last forever, and soon a terrible darkness was sweeping across the land, suffocating everything under its cold, black oblivion.

Winter began to come to the city in a series of cold, frosty dawns. The long ferny leaves of the trees hung heavy with frost and soon the deep green of the living, breathing dreams of London began to die.

The marshlights flickered coldly over the crumbling buildings and even the dreams of the youngest and sweetest of London's children turned dark and desperate with hunger and loneliness.

In her palace, Duchess Ryaen ni Fiona grew sad and sick, staring out her window each day at her Duchy as it withered and died, starved of the dreams that fed the lights and the trees, the long, singing reeds and the flickering fireflies that darted among them.

Eventually, the Duchess withdrew her court to a place once held by the monarchs of men before they fled the city in search of other places where the lights shone brighter and the darkness wasn't so suffocating.

But, even these echoes of the dreams of men were not enough to sustain the Duchess, and she grew colder and hungrier as the nights grew longer and the land around her died.

Then, one night, the Duchess disappeared. Some say she fled the starving city to chase the distant dreams of children, others that she lost her life to the knives of those who hungered after her dying domain, and others that she simply starved into nothingness with the coming of the winter and the death of her dreams.

Whatever the case, the Duchess was gone, and into her place stepped the dark Duke Sesus, as beautiful as he was cunning, and as enchanting as he was deadly.

The Duke took over control of the land and the darkness became absolute. Where before, the people of the city had nurtured the dreams of the young and the creative souls, the Duke's men ravished the dreamers and stole the last of what was good and bright in the city, taking it for themselves or hoarding it for the days when winter froze even the most dazzling of dreams.

And in stealing and ravaging, it hoarding and collecting the last of the city's warmth, they only made the land colder, only made it darker, only made it more desperate.

But all was not lost. And even in the seething blackness of the city's heart and in the most twisted of its dreams, those who remember what it was to see the fireflies amidst the stars and hear the song of the reeds in the summer breeze live on still.

Those who still knew how to love and nurture lived on in the tiny glittering corners of hope left hidden amidst the roar of the city and the empty sleep of the people.

Those who still knew how to love the darkness in its shades of violet and blue found new homes in the gasps of a lover, or in the pitiful crying of the children. All this, they knew, was life, was love, was feeling. And life, and love and feeling bred the dreams on which they fed as they once fed on saucers of honey and milk left outside on wet, wild nights.

But over all of this, the Duke and his men knew how to steal, knew how to hoard the little life left in the world and keep it for themselves, knew how to revel in the dark and the desperation of Winter, for this, they knew, was their time.

This is the London of 2013.

This is where dreams go to die.

Will you roll over and accept your fate? Will you fight against the cold with the last of what is warm and sweet? Or will you revel in that darkness? Will you make it your home?