Destroyer of Worlds

6

Church stood just beyond the outer ring of Stonehenge. High above the megaliths, the moon cast intricate shadow-patterns across the surrounding grassland. It was still, and quiet, and it felt to him as if there was magic everywhere.

How long it felt since Tom had first revealed to him the secret of the Blue Fire at these stones, and he had become a willing supplicant to the numinous spirituality that pervaded these sites across the world. A few rocks, roughly shaped and proudly raised towards the stars millennia ago, yet they provided a window to the heart of Existence.

Breathless after his run from the processional river path, he approached the stones as any supplicant would have thousands of years ago, looking from the dark silhouettes to the stars and the moon, breath held in awe, and feeling the charge of well-being rising from the earth.

This is our land, he thought defiantly. This is who we are. This is why we fight.

The seemingly random connections and coincidences that had brought him back to Earth to recover the First had served another effect: renewing his purpose. In the Far Lands, the Libertarian had done everything in his power to break his spirit and drive him off the path. But here he could see clearly; think; breathe.

He moved into the circle. Electricity buzzed around his fingertips as he stroked them along the megaliths in passing, and once out of the direct moonlight he could see the faint blue light limning every stone.

Narrowing his eyes, he let the Pendragon Spirit drive his perception. After a moment he saw the serpent amongst the stones, as his ancestors had done so long ago: a sinuous trail of Blue Fire forming a spiral pattern that had so entranced the Celts they had carved it into stones and worn it on their jewellery. A symbol for the path a human takes through life, which was also a real manifestation, which was also a symbol for life itself. Did it have other meanings too?

He walked to the centre of the spiral — death and rebirth into a new life — and drove both hands palms down onto the turf. Blue sparks flew, and within seconds the ground trembled and a large area rose up to reveal a tunnel leading into the depths: the womb from which all life emerged. Quickly, he scrambled inside.

The tunnel led to a large cavern, the glistening rocks overhead washed by a sapphire light emanating from a lake of Blue Fire, one of the reservoirs that fed the searing leys criss-crossing the land. Scattered all along the rocky shore was treasure beyond imagining: gold coins, chalices, plates, jewellery, ornaments, silver artefacts, weapons, helmets, chain mail — ritual offerings to the great power from across generations.

Beneath the waves, a dark shape swam sinuously. The liquid fire cascaded off the Fabulous Beast's head as it surfaced in front of him, as majestic and awe-inspiring as the first time he had encountered it. Scales, tines and horns glimmered in the blue light, and the leathern wings gradually unfolded from beneath the fire. Behind it, he could see smaller, newer Beasts swimming.

The creature towered over him, the heat from its breath enough to bring him out in a sweat, but he wasn't afraid. Looking it deep in the eye, he let their consciousnesses merge, coping with the queasiness of processing two images in his mind: him looking at the Fabulous Beast; the Beast looking back at him.

'I know there's more to you,' he said to the creature, to himself. 'What are you?'

'Existence.' A deep, masculine voice rang out strong and clear across the cavern, but when Church turned, he saw the same woman he had encountered with the Fabulous Beast in the cavern under Boskawen-Un in Cornwall more than two thousand years earlier. Pale skin, black hair, eyes burning with the Blue Fire. 'I gave you knowledge and purpose the last time we met,' the woman continued, although her lips did not move.

As the Fabulous Beast moved beside the woman, its scales and bone and tissue changed until it appeared as if it was made of the Blue Fire.

'Two of you,' Church said. 'Two faces. There's that duality thing again — another of those patterns that keeps repeating through the universe.'

'The dark and the light are spread throughout all there is, in every fibre, every atom,' the woman said. 'But to enable direct change, the two powers must focus upon one place, one time. The Devourer of All Things has chosen the Burning Man-'

'And Existence manifests in this form,' Church interrupted. 'You've been influencing things directly all along.'

'There is a reason why all things have happened, from the very smallest to the greatest. In your own personal story, there is a reason. You have been shaped, schooled, prepared for everything that lies ahead. You were chosen Brother of Dragons — the first and the last, the once and future. Of all the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, only you can join your consciousness with the essence of Existence in this corporeal place. Only you.'

The words stung Church as he began to understand their deeper meaning. 'The murder of my girlfriend, Marianne-?'

'Necessary.'

'Being torn apart from Ruth and hurled back in time, having to fight my way back to her, seeing her torn between Veitch and me?'

'All necessary. All part of the shaping of the hero… the king… who will save the land.'

'The Libertarian?'

There was a long pause before the rich, deep voice continued, 'There is always a risk. Death is a powerful catalyst. The experience of it shapes the soul, but its potency can sometimes lead to corruption and despair. The other factors in the transmutation should mitigate against that — love, friendship, support — but in the final account, the landscape of a human heart, and a human mind, is unmappable.'

'So I could still ruin all your careful planning?'

'The fate of everything rests with you, Jack Churchill.'

'Shavi was right. The pattern…' Church said to himself, his head spinning as he tried to accept the weight of what he was being told. 'How much has been manipulated?'

'Everything, in every life. Sometimes Fragile Creatures make choices against the direction of the plan, choices with unforeseen but enormous consequences, and other changes must be made to reaffirm the pattern.

'But, essentially, everything. Everybody plays a part. The person they choose to hurt, the one they choose to help. The work they do, the things they create, the words they pass on, which then get passed on to others. Everything.

'The pattern materialises in seemingly random events and coincidences, in ancient tales and contemporary stories and music and works of art. In the patterns in nature, the patterns on the landscape, the patterns men make in life. Numbers are key. The hand of Existence is clear if one only looks with care.'

'But we always dismiss it,' Church said. 'The human brain has evolved from the earliest time to see patterns in everything, but we dismiss it as a quirk, a throwback, in the same way we dismiss random events and connections as coincidences.'

'There are no coincidences.'

His thoughts raced. 'The legends, the old stories, are the key to the pattern. The king shaped by events to be a great hero, who waits in some symbolic under-hill to be called back in the world's darkest hour, with his knights, to beat the forces of darkness. The king who represents both a man and the Blue Fire. The same story repeated over and over in different legends, even in modern religions in a slightly different form. There's the pattern in its biggest form. There's… me.'

'You are the legend. You are at the heart of the pattern.'

Church looked into the woman's face, and then into the shimmering features of the Fabulous Beast, and was convinced he saw a glimmer of something important that was unspoken. 'If this was all the creation of a dying brain, then I would be the heart of the pattern — because I created everything. I'd be the true god of this world.'

'What is life, what is death? What is real, what is not?'

Church could see he wasn't going to get anywhere with that line of questioning. 'And this pattern that's been building… it's designed to overthrow the Void?'

'Yes.'

'And it began… when?'

'At the beginning. And it will end at the end.'

Deep in the lake of Blue Fire, the dark shapes swam closer, some large, some small.

'Tell me,' he began, 'how the pattern developed. Then maybe I can work out how it's going to end.'

'In the beginning, tiny shards of Existence were placed in every Fragile Creature. Hidden in plain sight from the Devourer of All Things. These sparks, in some, would eventually fan into the blue blaze of the Pendragon Spirit.'

'And in everyone, over time,' Church added. 'That's part of the Gnostic secret… and the key to humanity reaching the next level. That's why the Tuatha De Danaan were so afraid we would equal, then surpass them.'

'Fragile Creatures gradually ascended, shaped by their experiences, and the spark inside them flickered into a flame, still beyond the perception of the Devourer of All Things. Forged by the many challenges in the crucible of life, the Pendragon Spirit became stronger, and Fragile Creatures became stronger and more able to face the demands that would be made of them.'

'Existence set everything going from the start,' Church realised. 'The good and the bad. A cascade of events, each one impacting on the next.'

The woman smiled.

'Everyone has been manipulating everyone else — the Tuatha De Danaan and the Fomorii manipulating humanity. But you and the Void were manipulating them, and us, and each other. Nothing is clear. It's all movements in the fog, and you only find out the consequences much later.' He considered this. 'The Tuatha De Danaan used the Fomorii so that the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons would bring about the Golden Ones' return. And the Fomorii god Balor was supposed to stop humanity rising up the ladder. But… but… because we got involved, Shavi ended up getting killed and Veitch went to the Grim Lands to bring him back, and that break in the rules of the universe attracted the attention of the Void. And brought it back here. And that's exactly what you wanted!' His thoughts raced away with him, and he had to steady himself. 'Existence arranged for the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons to play a part in all of this, and you directed the Tuatha De Danaan behind the scenes because you wanted the Fall to happen.'

'The Fall removed your Brothers and Sisters of Dragons from the heart of the pattern so that a new Five could arise, who would also play a vital part. Mallory, Caitlin, Hal, Hunter and the Forgotten One, brought together with particular skills so they could operate, for a time, beyond the perception of the Devourer of All Things. So they could bring their peculiar skills to this time, this fight, at the End.

'This was all present, right from the start. The Golden Ones had legends of this happening. So did humanity. The final pattern was fully formed at the beginning, and embedded in everything, from the smallest part to the greatest. There to be discovered-'

'If you only had eyes to see,' he repeated. 'So, right back in the Iron Age… me setting up the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, the rise of the Culture, who are here now, protecting this site, and you, the formation of the Watchmen… you directed all that, with a subtle push here and another there.' His proximity to the reservoir of Blue Fire soothed him, but there was still a dull spike in his gut. 'All the pain we suffered, all that terrible heartache, you caused that. Indirectly or not.'

'To a definite end.'

'That doesn't make it any easier!' Steadying himself, he tried not to think of all the awful things he had gone through to become the force that Existence wanted. It felt so unfair. He could have lived a quiet life, untouched by strife, lived and died and left no mark by his passing, but he could have been content.

'Is being content enough?' the woman said, reading his mind. 'In the final reckoning, do you judge the value of your life by what you had, or by what you could have had?'

His head knew the answer; his heart dragged him in another direction.

'That is the eternal dichotomy of the Fragile Creature,' the woman said perceptively. 'The curse and the gift.'

'What happens at the end, when we can all see the final pattern?'

'That is up to you.'

'How did I guess?' he said bitterly. For a moment, the ringing cavern was filled only with the faint hiss of the flickering Blue Fire, and then Church said, 'I came here to take you to the Far Lands with me.'

'And I have been waiting for you to come for me, Brother of Dragons. We are joined, inextricably, for all-time-to-come, and all-time-gone.'

'Then let's go.' His thoughts were still swimming, but everything that had been planned for so long was so close to a resolution that he could put his doubts and fears to one side. It all came down to him; whether he was capable of navigating what lay ahead, whether he had learned enough; and whether he was prepared to make the final sacrifices that would be demanded of him.

Church strode from the cavern. Behind him, he could hear the tornsailcloth sound of wings, growing louder, not just one pair, but more, and more joining every second until the sound was deafening, and the cavern shook.

Emerging into the summery night in the moon-shadow of the ancient stones, Church was surprised to find the Morvren waiting for him in an eerie crescent of blue-black feathers, unmoving, every beady eye fixed upon him. They had always appeared as a portent, following him in a detached manner. This was different. As he looked around the semicircle, he felt a similar connection to the one he had experienced in the cavern. They were a part of him now, this symbol of death joining him at the same time as he had raised the spirit of life. Two sides, two faces.

'I am the Raven King,' he said, quietly. 'I can do anything.'

He smiled. The heavy beat of a different kind of wings grew louder far behind him, tearing out of the hidden caverns of the soul and into the harshness of the real world. Underneath his feet, the Blue Fire surged into the land. It was now so powerful in the leys that he could see it glowing through the grass.

Battle had been declared.