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  Destroyer of Worlds

  ( Kingdom of the Serpent - 3 )

  Mark Chadbourn

  Mark Chadbourn

  Destroyer of Worlds

  The Final Age

  I am the Caretaker. I keep a light burning in the darkest night. I serve all who come to me, whether their hearts are filled with hope or tainted by despair.

  Here I stand, at the end of the world, where the night is darker than ever, and the lamps have gone out, one by one. What lies ahead is mystery. But the road to the end is clear.

  It began one misty morning, close to Albert Bridge in London, where Jack Churchill wandered, lost in the depths of grief for his dead girlfriend, Marianne. Drawn by the sounds of struggle, Jack — an archaeologist known as Church — stepped away from his world and into a stranger and more real one when he encountered one of a race of shape-shifting creatures from the depths of Celtic mythology: the Fomorii, also known as the Nightwalkers. Though the creature fled, Jack met the woman who would become the great love of his life, Ruth Gallagher, and together they uncovered the first signs of an invasion by the Fomorii.

  But Church and Ruth were also inducted into a greater and more uplifting mystery, that of the Blue Fire, an energy that ran through the land along leys, its power focused at ancient sacred sites. For more than two thousand years, this force for Life — Existence — had chosen groups of five champions, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, who would fight to protect the land. Bound together by the Pendragon Spirit, Church and Ruth were only the latest members, and they soon met the other three of their team: an Asian mystic, Shavi, the acerbic Laura DuSantiago, and Ryan Veitch, a tough ex-criminal from South London.

  The Fomorii were engaged in battle with their ancient race-enemies — the Golden Ones, the Tuatha De Danaan, who had been the gods of the ancient Celts. Many of these golden-skinned gods were contemptuous of humans — Fragile Creatures, as they named them — and manipulated them to their own ends. The Tuatha De Danaan, however, had an odd, symbiotic relationship with their mysterious shape-shifting companions, the Caraprix, which at times appeared to be more powerful than the gods.

  With the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons in the middle, this war thrust Britain into an Age of Misrule. Science and reason were overthrown, and magic returned to the world.

  Church and his comrades found their abilities honed in the crucible of battle. Ruth became an exponent of the Craft, drawing on the long heritage of wise women tapping into the power of the land. Laura became more nature spirit than human under the guidance of the Celtic god Cernunnos, also known as the Green Man. Veitch found his destiny as a powerful warrior, and lost a hand in the process. Shavi grew into a role as seer and wise man. And Church became the great leader the world needed.

  In their quest, they were accompanied by their elderly guide, Tom, who had been kidnapped from his home in the Middle Ages and altered by the gods at the terrifying Court of the Final Word to become the great hero of myth, Thomas the Rhymer, who had the power of prophecy.

  He was not the only human to be caught up in the gods' manipulations. Callow, a bitter wanderer, joined forces with the Fomorii and almost caused the downfall of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.

  As the war raged across Britain, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons overcame numerous hardships. Shavi was killed, but Veitch journeyed to the Grim Lands, the Land of the Dead, to reclaim his spirit and return him to life. This heroic act, however, had unforeseen and devastating consequences.

  Callow was eventually killed, but he was not the only one; Tom, too, gave up his life, as did Niamh, one of the Tuatha De Danaan, who had fallen in love with Church. And in the Battle of London where the Fomorii were finally defeated, Ryan Veitch lost his own life. A tragic figure, Veitch had been manipulated by the gods to betray the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.

  In the cataclysmic battle against Balor, the great god of the Fomorii, Church was flung back through the ages, separated by more than two thousand years from Ruth, the woman he loved.

  Though victorious, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons had paid a high price. The survivors went their separate ways, and Existence set about forming a new band of Five who could be champions in the devastated world that remained.

  But these Brothers and Sisters of Dragons would be different. Veitch's journey to the Grim Lands had broken one of the great rules and thereby attracted the attention of a terrible dark force beyond the edge of the universe: the Void, also known as the Devourer of All Things, the dark reflection of Existence, Anti-Life, the true ruler of the universe. Through the Mundane Spell, it kept humanity in thrall and deflected it from magic and wonder, which could eventually lead to the dark god's rule being usurped. Now that the Void had noticed magic had returned, it was coming back to Earth to ensure the Mundane Spell remained unbroken.

  And so Existence needed to find five Brothers and Sisters of Dragons who could operate beyond the attention of the Void. From another reality, it plucked Mallory, who had killed himself in his own world after committing an undisclosed terrible crime. In Salisbury, Mallory joined the ranks of the new Knights Templar and learned to become a warrior. There he met the first Sister of Dragons, Sophie Tallent, who had mastered the Craft, and Miller, whom Existence had gifted with the power to heal.

  Meanwhile, rural doctor Caitlin Shepherd also became a Sister of Dragons, after a plague claimed the lives of her husband Grant and son Liam. Caitlin escaped the Void's attention because her consciousness was fragmented: known as the Broken Woman, she developed several distinct personalities and was eventually possessed by the Morrigan, one of the Tuatha De Danaan, the goddess of death and violence, sex and life.

  In her travels, Caitlin encountered several helpers, amongst them Carlton, a young boy who was killed during their quest; Jack, who, like Tom, had been kidnapped by the Court of the Final Word and had the destructive force of the Wish-Hex embedded inside him; Jack's sociopathic girlfriend Mahalia; and their guide, the dissolute academic Crowther.

  The final two Brothers of Dragons were Hunter, a Government Special Forces officer and trained killer, and Hal, a lowly clerk, so insignificant that he escaped the Void's attentions completely.

  The Void eventually realised that the only way it could maintain the Mundane Spell was by completely changing reality back into its familiar form, the age-old ways of money and power, where magic and wonder did not exist. All the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons were locked into fake, mundane lives, forgetting their true heritage — except Hal, who gave up his corporeal existence to become part of the Blue Fire. His mission was to seek out Church, the true 'king', and help bring him back from the past to defeat the Void.

  In the Iron Age, Church had been adopted by a Celtic tribe in the village of Carn Euny, in what would become Cornwall. He lived a simple life, but the Void recognised him as a threat and set out to destroy him. Through time, it despatched its agents, the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders; the Libertarian, a sardonic, brutal killer with lidless red eyes; and one other: a rejuvenated Ryan Veitch, corrupted by hatred, who blamed Church for his death and the loss of the woman he truly loved — Ruth.

  Time became the battlefield. In different ages, Church fought the Void's agents, while in the modern world, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons began to awake from their fake lives.

  Paradoxically, Church established the line of Brothers and Sisters of Dragons in Carn Euny, long before he was chosen to be such a champion. But the first group were killed by Ryan Veitch, and eventually reanimated by the Void as the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders to help Veitch destroy Church.

  The paradoxes continued thick and fast. Church was taken to the mysterious Otherworld, also known as the Far Lands, by Niamh
, who would fall in love with him over time, and there he also encountered Tom in his younger days. In Niamh's court, Church befriended Jerzy, the Mocker, a surgically altered Fool who would play a large part in what was to come.

  The magical Far Lands were timeless, and Church realised that he could while away his days there while centuries passed in the real world, and eventually return home when his own age rolled around again.

  On occasional trips back to the real world, under Niamh's control, Church encountered many other Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. In Roman York in AD 306, he met the Dacian barbarian Decebalus, and the Roman Briton Aula Fabricia Candida, both of whom returned with him to the Far Lands when they discovered that Ryan Veitch was systematically killing off the line of champions. Over the centuries, Church rescued many others and brought them back to the Otherworld, where they formed an Army of Dragons in waiting.

  The Great Powers continued to manipulate humans to their ends. The Void controlled many human leaders through the spiders, while gaining power over several gods from other pantheons in Earth's mythologies, amongst them the dual-faced Janus, god of doorways, and Loki, the Norse trickster god.

  In Elizabethan times, Janus arranged the capture of many humans to be slaves in the Void's Fortress in the Far Lands. Amongst them were the New World colonists of Roanoke, including the young girl Virginia Dare, the first European to be born in the Americas.

  Meanwhile, the Tuatha De Danaan continued their own manipulations. Dian Cecht and the gods of the Court of the Final Word were involved in a desperate attempt to probe the heart of Existence, not only to ensure their survival in the face of the Devourer of All Things, but also to prevent the Golden Ones from being supplanted by Fragile Creatures. In one of their experiments, they inserted a Caraprix inside Jerzy's head, to control him and use him against Church.

  In 1851, at Stonehenge, Jerzy mysteriously disappeared from Church's side. He had been kidnapped by the shape-shifting trickster Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow, one of the Oldest Things in the Land, to undisclosed ends.

  As Veitch, the Libertarian and the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders continued a campaign to stop Church, they also launched a search for a world-shattering magickal artefact, the Extinction Shears, which could cut through all reality. Locating them, the Void's forces used the Shears to sever the Blue Fire from its source and condemn the world to the Mundane Spell. But after this act, the otherworldly Market of Wishful Spirit reclaimed the supremely powerful artefact, and disappeared with it.

  At the Woodstock Festival in 1969, the Libertarian offered a world-weary Church a deal — if he allowed himself to be placed in the Sleep Like Death, and locked for ever in a casket in the Far Lands, Ruth, Shavi and Laura would not be killed. Church believed this was the only way to save his friends.

  As Church slept in the casket, events he had previously experienced continued apace. The Fomorii invaded, and his past-self fought them through the Age of Misrule. Tom and Niamh died. The Battle of London took place.

  Locked inside his head, Church experienced what he thought was a dream or a hallucination: he met me, and the Daughters of the Night, the true owners of the Extinction Shears, and then he was guided to a cave that housed the Axis of Existence, which he perceived as a great reality-altering machine. Using the Axis, Church changed events in the same way that the Void had done, though not as catastrophically: both Tom and Niamh returned to life. But there was a price to pay, as there always is for these things, and Niamh became an agent of the Void.

  Returning to the fray, Ruth, Laura and Shavi rescued Church from the casket in the Far Lands and returned to Earth for a final confrontation with Veitch. In the battle, Veitch was killed, his body taken away by the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders.

  But now the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons faced their biggest test: to destroy the Void before it could reshape the world in its image for all time. From the depths of the Blue Fire, Hal told them what they would need: the missing Extinction Shears; and the Two Keys, two humans, one with the power to create life, the other with the power to destroy, hidden by Existence somewhere amongst the world's billions.

  Church knew that they could not complete this quest alone, and so he set out to locate Mallory, Sophie, Caitlin and Hunter, still living the fake lives the Void had given them. With Tom once again joining them, they split up into two teams. Mallory, Sophie and Caitlin travelled to the Far Lands in search of the Extinction Shears, under the guidance of a returned Jerzy.

  With the Libertarian hounding them at every turn, Church and the others raced to Norway in search of the First Key. But there they discovered why they had encountered only the Celtic gods during the Age of Misrule: each pantheon of gods from Earth's mythologies had their own Great Dominion over which they ruled. For centuries, they had slept, but every time the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons trespassed in a new Great Dominion, they woke the old gods.

  In Norway, Church and his team were confronted by gods from the cold northern climes, including Tyr and Freyja. To save the lives of his friends, Tom agreed to an undisclosed but clearly tragic deal with Freyja, who gave him the cursed ring Andvarinaut to help them locate their hearts' desire — in this instance, the Two Keys.

  Veitch, meanwhile, had returned to life through a ritual in the Grim Lands, and with the help of the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders, he kidnapped Ruth. Feeling even more betrayed and bitter, Veitch had turned his back on the Void and was now determined to bring all of reality crashing down around him.

  In Oslo, Veitch found the First Key before Church — Mallory's former friend from Salisbury, Miller, who was using his Existence-given power to heal the sick. And so the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons set off across the world in pursuit of Veitch, Ruth and Miller, awakening the gods of several Great Dominions in the process.

  In the Far Lands, Mallory, Sophie and Caitlin had fallen under the manipulation of Niamh, not realising that she had become an agent of the Void. The influence of the Devourer of All Things was spreading across the Otherworld: its Fortress was growing, the Army of Dragons was missing, as were many of the Tuatha De Danaan, and the Enemy's forces were on the march, destroying everything they encountered. Meanwhile, at the Enemy's Fortress, the Burning Man was being created, a giant, flaming matrix that would contain the essence of the Void on its return.

  At the last, Niamh's corruption was exposed and the Army of Dragons and missing gods were discovered, but at a terrible price: Niamh used a magickal artefact to wipe Sophie from Existence, a fate truly worse than death, where the Sister of Dragons would never have existed and therefore be forgotten by everyone who knew her. Niamh escaped, and though Mallory liberated her court, he failed to find the Extinction Shears. Unbeknownst to him, they had been hidden with the Market of Wishful Spirit somewhere in the Grim Lands.

  Back on Earth, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons closed in on Veitch, Ruth and Miller. Though Veitch was still bent on revenge, Ruth's influence gradually began to strip away his encysted bitterness, allowing his former heroic nature to surface. In the process, the pair grew closer.

  In Egypt, many of the old gods had agreed to help the Void, and were destroyed by the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. Only Seth escaped, vowing revenge.

  Soon after, in the Forbidden City in Beijing, the gods revealed to Church a shattering truth: the Libertarian was Church's future self. He was given a vision of the moment when he would transform into the psychopathic killer, thus betraying Existence and ensuring victory for the Void. Church's only hope was that in the fluid nature of time, the future could be altered and his vision would never come to pass.

  In China, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons did claim one great victory: the connection to the source of the Blue Fire was reopened and magic flooded back into the world.

  The Second Key was hidden in New York: Jack, Caitlin's former associate, who still carried the vast, destructive force of the Wish-Hex. Here, Veitch finally overcame his hatred and agreed to help his former comrades, t
hough he was still treated with suspicion by all.

  Realising it faced defeat, the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders set about remaking the world, in the process closing all the gateways to the Far Lands. With hardly any time to spare, Church and the others escaped Earth on the supernatural Last Train, ready for the final battle with the Void.

  And so the pieces move into place for the final battle at the end of the world.

  Prologue

  The World-Tree

  'The snake came crawling and struck at none. But Woden took nine glory twigs and struck the adder so it flew into nine parts.' From the Anglo-Saxon 'Nine Herbs Charm'

  1

  It is the beginning of the end.

  'Church! Church! Wake up — you're dreaming! Please wake up, Church!'

  'Maybe it's just time.'

  It is the beginning of the end.

  'Where is the meaning in life?'

  'What is real?'

  'There are signs, certainly, but in the end, who knows?'

  'You don't have to leave me, Church.'

  It is the beginning of the end.

  'So cold. Oh, please, why are you letting this happen?'

  'Everybody describes it differently… like a shadow falling over them, or a jolt of electricity. I wish I could be more helpful.'

  Chilled to his bones and aching, Church wakes; and then he wakes again, and there is the rhythm of the train, like the pulse of blood.

  It is the beginning. Of the end.

  2

  Snow falls. A flurry caught in the unforgiving wind blowing relentlessly across the frozen wastes that stretch to the horizon. In that wind, there are whispers, lost souls, telling of the end of the world, of all worlds. Their stories are caught in the ruddy glare reflected in the rolling snow dunes and the crested waves of ice.