Comes The Magic Warrior

By Tii-G

The legend of King Arthur as we now understand it originates mostly from the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welsh cleric who in the 12th century wrote his ‘Historia Regum Britanniae’ (translated as a ‘History of the Kings of Britain’) a work which was intended to describe the lineage of the British monarchy in the form of a chronological narrative, ostensibly over a 2000 year time Span; starting with the Trojans - who apparently originally founded the British nation, until the Anglo Saxons assumed control of much of Britain around 600 A.D. It is a document which is now considered to have little value in history as it is wildly inaccurate when compared to other more reliable contemporary histories, which describe amongst other things Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain in much greater detail.
References to Arthur’s existence appeared in a cross section of texts poems and stories originating from locations both here in Britain to as far afield as southern France, which suggest that he was responsible for creating an empire which stretched from Iceland to Gaul (a region of Western Europe in the iron-age which included present day France, Luxembourg, Belgium and much of Switzerland). This is in some ways not surprising as the Celtic tribes held sway over much of Western Europe and even parts of northern Italy. Indeed Gaul was an acknowledged thorn in the side of the Roman Empire until the area was finally conquered around 51 BC.
That which follows is in no way intended to impact or muddy the waters of the Arthurian legend. It was simply an opportunity to entertain two impressionable young ladies who continuously demanded I regale them with stories out of my head at bed time, whenever they ran out of new books for me to read. What follows therefore is a figment of my imagination straight from the depths of a mind shaped by the broad cross section of the science-fiction and fantasy novels which fed my voracious appetite for the written word as a child. It is therefore as uncertain and apocryphal as any other work surrounding legend of King Arthur and his mentor Merlin, but it does have one advantage over the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth, it is specifically and unashamedly a work of fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tii-G
• Release date: Feb 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9780463496602

Tii-G

About the AuthorI learned to read and appreciate fiction at an early age and indeed started Infants School already literate. My father however was very strict and felt that I should not waste time reading fiction, believing that the time wasted on that would be better spent studying. My mother on the other hand understood that leisure time was as important as work and supplied a torch and batteries so I could read my books in secret under the blankets at night.It was my wish to become a ‘Product Designer’ but as there was no degree in this endeavour at the time. to achieve my goal I would have needed to acquire an ‘Art Degree’ as a starting point and this was a source of friction with my father, who felt that all artists were ‘Spivs’ or ‘Beatniks’. I would have studied Architecture as an alternative but that too proved too artistic for my father who was an engineer, so I plumped for ‘Construction Technology’ instead.I can’t say I didn’t enjoy my career in construction as it did involve the interpretation of the Architects creative concepts into the detail designs and technical specifications required to turn them into reality. It was therefore always challenging and often stretched my creativity to the limit, but I always harboured an underlying desire to be truly creative.As a youngster I spent a lot of time sketching mad creations which ranged from space ships to hydraulically stabilised brassieres and over time realised that behind each of these drawings was a story and so I attempted to write one. My first attempt just after leaving school was only half a foolscap page and the second about one and a half (we hadn’t gone metric then) and there it would have ended had it not been for the invention of the ‘Computer’, ‘Word Processor Software’ and latterly ‘Voice Recognition Technology’.While the idea of the written word fascinated me the unenviable experience of being forced to change from left to right handedness at the age of eight made writing a nightmare, but with the arrival of the lightweight digital typewriter and the concurrent opportunity to work in Sudan my horizons changed. I found myself in a foreign country with very little to do with my spare time but read and watch videos, and soon reached the ‘Video Event Horizon’ (that point at which you know that if you are forced to watch one more repeated movie you would have to kill!).Now it so happened that at the time I left a young four year old named Darren had become used to me reading him a bedtime story whenever I visited, and on my return from the first of several trips abroad he made it clear that he was not happy about my sudden unannounced disappearance. To appease both Darren and the ‘Wrathful God of Unhappy Children’ I made a promise that I would write a book and send a chapter back every month (and here I must apologise to his parents for the fact that every time the postman arrived it was accompanied by Darren demanding ‘Is that my story!).For the first time I had both the time and the tools to pursue my dream of authorship and fulfilled my promise, delivering over the next twenty four months a complete book (which I will soon have to dust off and publish – because the children for whom I wrote now have their own little ‘Ankle Biters’).And so by degrees we come to Vicki and Obsbobs daughters of another friend who demanded I regale them with my inane bed time stories whenever they ran out of new books for me to read, and then insisted I write them down because, ”You said it different last time!”. At the grand old age of fourteen Vicki said to me “Now that I’m grown up you should write an adult story for me.” and so I crafted this story to fulfil that request. Vicki is now the mother of two and I can finally say to her after sixteen patient years it’s finished!The only problem is that writing is like an avalanche, once you start its hard to stop, so my second book is already almost complete and it only took a year!

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PROLOGUE

The legend of King Arthur as we now understand it originates mostly from the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welsh cleric who in the 12th century wrote his ‘Historia Regum Britanniae’ (translated as a ‘History of the Kings of Britain’) a work which was intended to describe the lineage of the British monarchy in the form of a chronological narrative, ostensibly over a 2000 year time Span; starting with the Trojans - who apparently originally founded the British nation, until the Anglo Saxons assumed control of much of Britain around 600 A.D. It is a document which is now considered to have little value in history as it is wildly inaccurate when compared to other more reliable contemporary histories, which describe amongst other things Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain in much greater detail.

References to Arthur’s existence appeared in a cross section of texts poems and stories originating from locations both here in Britain to as far afield as southern France, which suggest that he was responsible for creating an empire which stretched from Iceland to Gaul (a region of Western Europe in the iron-age which included present day France, Luxembourg, Belgium and much of Switzerland). This is in some ways not surprising as the Celtic tribes held sway over much of Western Europe and even parts of northern Italy. Indeed Gaul was an acknowledged thorn in the side of the Roman Empire until the area was finally conquered around 51 BC.

That which follows is in no way intended to impact or muddy the waters of the Arthurian legend. It was simply an opportunity to entertain two impressionable young ladies who continuously demanded I regale them with stories out of my head at bed time, whenever they ran out of new books for me to read. What follows therefore is a figment of my imagination straight from the depths of a mind shaped by the broad cross section of the science-fiction and fantasy novels which fed my voracious appetite for the written word as a child. It is therefore as uncertain and apocryphal as any other work surrounding legend of King Arthur and his mentor Merlin, but it does have one advantage over the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth, it is specifically and unashamedly a work of fiction.

THE FIRST PHASE:

OF CAPTAIN MICHAEL WESCOTT – AD 21.07.1954:

21st July 1954. Captain Michael Wescott - forty thousand feet above Anglesey Island - had just been vectored to a high altitude radar target, flying erratically towards England from the East. The Soviet Union? It appeared on radar quite suddenly at an altitude of more than one hundred-and-fifty thousand feet, and in a very peculiar way. The ground control intercept (GCI) radar team was baffled, because airborne targets usually originate as radar noise when over the horizon, which a good controller would identify as a potential target several minutes before it became a proper blip. This one however, had simply popped into existence without warning from absolutely nowhere, and at a velocity which initially at least, was several times as fast as the fastest aircraft the RAF could muster.

It was common knowledge that only rockets are able to achieve such speeds, and as a result, several controllers were watching it hawkishly, but this target was not flying like a rocket. Rockets moving at several times the speed of sound follow a ballistic trajectory, a predictable arc which allows a controller to readily extrapolate its eventual point of impact; this one however, was gyrating drunkenly about the sky following a path which made its eventual impact point anything but predictable.

Michael Wescott's Gloster Meteor NF11 night fighter was gaining height only slowly now, because although it had a service ceiling of nearly forty thousand feet, being a heavily loaded radar equipped night fighting model, it's ability to climb deteriorated rapidly above the tropopause.

While it seemed to fly with no obvious logic, Wescott quickly realised that the target to which he had been vectored possessed a general tendency toward the north, which made little sense for an invading Russian aircraft; after all the juiciest targets were located to the south. As the erratic interloper continued pushing northwards, Wescott noted that it was gradually losing height and the implications of this were that it was planning to land somewhere; possibly in the Prestwick area. He glanced at his fuel gauge and after a rapid mental calculation, estimated he had at most fifty minutes before he must return to base. He commented on the fact to his radar observer, but knew that as the closest unit to the errant blip still airborne he dare not break off pursuit now. There was insufficient time for anyone else to take off and reach them, so if he broke off now the target would be lost and might land unobserved. In Wescott's mind it was more important to keep this enigmatic interloper under surveillance than to preserve his aircraft, so he was quite prepared to risk losing the plane rather than lose track of an airborne insurgent, which seemed able to do whatever it wished in British sovereign airspace. He voiced this opinion to the GCI duty officer, who authorised him to continue the chase, and make an emergency landing at a suitable civilian airfield - Glasgow or Prestwick – on ascertaining the bogie’s ultimate destination.

For twenty minutes more Wescott doggedly tracked the mysterious intruder, following its wildly fluctuating switchback course to the bottom end of the long valley which begins at Mull Island in the Southwest and continues till it reaches Moray Firth, near Inverness. The valley forms a geographical scar, which sears its way diagonally across the body of Scotland, taking in Loch’s Lochy and Ness, and it was here that the interloper unexpectedly changed tack; suddenly accelerating to a speed Wescott had no hope of matching, while following the line of the valley.

With the throttles against the fire wall, Wescott was pushing his mount as fast as it could go, but then with equal suddenness, his quarry came to a halt more than one hundred miles away. Wescott and his observer were only aware of this because the GC I controller told them so; for at this distance the target was well beyond their own radar. Once again the GCI officer directed them to their quarry, which was now hovering at about thirty-thousand feet, but Westcott’s Observer barely had time to reacquire it, before it suddenly plunged earthward, entering a wide spiral as it descended rapidly towards the ground. Wescott caught sight of it against the bright horizon and was convinced it would crash, but as it broached the southern end of Loch Ness, it levelled off.

Wescott followed it down as low as he dared then lost sight of it against the ground and as he descended, wondered what kind of pilot could possibly have survived the crushing G forces arising from the sudden change of direction but this was no time for introspection. Unable to see his quarry Wescott began an orbit of its last known position and for several seconds in the fading light saw nothing, then his observer picked it out, hovering over the loch about a quarter of a mile from its bottom end. As he orbited, Wescott saw it for just a few seconds, a dark blob against the moonlight reflecting off the loch’s surface, and in a last ditch attempt to get a decent look, took his plane down almost to water level, skimming across the lock at more than three hundred knots. The sun had set more than half an hour before and he would have lost sight of it were it not for the fact that this was summer, and because of Scotland's northern location the sun never truly sets at that time of year, thus it was a combination of the random factors of his location, the time of year and blind chance, that gave him a single fleeting glimpse of the target, skylined against the bright northern horizon.

It was vaguely triangular in shape, though the corners were rounded off with arcs of such broad radius that the straight edges were almost non existent. There appeared to be a small illuminated wedge shaped aperture at one corner which due to its direction of movement Michael guessed was a cockpit, and to reinforce this impression, four almost vestigial fins, two above and two below adorned what was apparently the rear end. To the meteor crew it seemed ridiculous that something so obviously unbalanced could stay airborne let alone manoeuvre in the manner they witnessed, but having spent an hour chasing it they knew better. Even though they lost it on their own radar for a few minutes the GCI radar managed to track it without interruption so they were quite confident it was their quarry.

Westcott estimated it to be some one hundred and fifty feet in length and about half that across, but from his vantage point, with no point of reference his estimate could have been way off the mark. It was impossible to make out any colour, for Michael was seeing it in silhouette, but as he watched, for or just an instant, it reflected the moonlight and a few highlights which became momentarily visible on the visible face, indicated a metallic structure, but before he could see anything else, it accelerated suddenly, forcing Westcott to ram the throttle forward and claw for altitude. Then as the meteor’s nose began to rise, it just as suddenly it slowed, forcing him to drop his flaps and undercarriage to dump airspeed. Immediately it lost speed the mysterious vessel let down to within a few feet of the surface and touched the water lightly, leaving a billowing wake; like a flying boat landing in heavy whether.

The meteor was still moving relatively quickly compared to its target, which had slowed considerably and was rapidly coming to a halt, so to keep it in sight, Wescott flew the length of the Loch, executed the tightest horizontal turn possible and tracked back along his previous course. As he levelled the aircraft out he felt the buffet that warned of the onset of a stall, and quickly lowered the flaps to take-off setting, slammed the throttle forward and held his breath. The left wing slowly began to droop, and for a moment he thought they were going in; but gradually the aircraft stabilised and Michael was once again able to turn his attention to his target. For a moment he thought he’d lost it, but then he saw it again, moving at about 50 knots now, ploughing through the water like an air sea rescue launch.

The meteor overshot again, severely limiting the time available for its crew to observe the target, and another 180 degree turn at the other end of the loch by the Meteor had the two craft heading directly towards one another at high speed. Michael had no flares, but the meteor did have a gun camera, and though it was almost dark, at this time of the night at their current latitude, with the aircraft heading north they did at least have a bright twilight to work with. Michael pitched the aircraft down so as the point the gun camera at his target and switched on the override, so it could be operated without the guns, and as he over-flew his quarry yet again, could see that it was still skimming across the water at better than 50 knots, but they hadn’t been filming for long when it suddenly pitched up, nosed over and plunged into the dark waters of Ness.

It was a close run thing for Michael and his observer, for they had long surpassed the fuel-state at which they should have turned for home. Even Prestwick was out of the question now, they had flown at low level for too long, and the crude turbo jet engines of their aircraft - which were unbelievably thirsty at low level - had used up almost all of their fuel. They were flying on vapour now, and facing the prospect of having to bail out, lose their ride and spend an uncomfortable night out in the open, so they had no choice but to discuss where in the forbidding mountainous terrain of Scotland they might safely eject. Indeed, they were still discussing this when they were interrupted by the G C I controller who offered a ray of hope. He informed them that the extended concrete runway at the air station near Kinloss had recently been completed, and though landing trials for their newfangled jet aircraft had not yet been carried out, it might offer a last ditch opportunity to save the plane. They barely made it, completing their adventure with a dead-stick landing, but Wescott's perfect approach made it all seem easy. Their ordeal however, was just beginning.

They were met on the runway by the station duty officer, escorted to the officer's mess and given a thorough debriefing, which made it quite clear that something serious had occurred. An unidentified vehicle had approached Britain from the direction of the Soviet Union, evaded the best available defences and made landfall - however unsuccessfully - almost unchallenged. The debriefing continued into the night, so Wescott and his observer didn't get to bed before the early hours of the morning, but they got precious little sleep. They would soon discover that the RAF was attaching a great deal of importance to the incident for hardly had they got to sleep, before they were awakened to face a second debriefing; this time by a special top brass crew who had been dispatched the previous evening. This new team arrived at about nine in the morning and demanded to see the men immediately, and by the time this second debrief was over they had barely managed two hours sleep in the preceding forty-eight.

OF THE SAGE – Circa AD 725:

The sky was heavily overcast and it began to rain. In England of course it rained almost continuously during the winter months, but this particular storm was most welcome. It would serve to cover up the debris of the 'The Struggle', a war that could never be chronicled; if mankind were to emerge a balanced species. Out there among the fields were artefacts and materials that looked like metal but were lighter than parchment, tougher than steel and smoother than the very best silk.

The Sage had always known he was special. His life had already been greatly extended, but the discovery he could look forward to watching almost three millennia of history unfold before him, was still astounding. Soon he would be away, out among the stars, and the stranger’s promise would be fulfilled. He would be the first Merrie Englishman to see the wonders of the universe, the first human to travel the void beyond the sky. He was still awe struck by the size and power of what he affectionately called the sky chariot, a ship of the stars, which operated using arts and devices that one day, mankind might just possibly understand.

That! thought the sage is bound to upset the first man to leave the Earth by human efforts. I wonder if it will be an Englishman.

Casting his mind back to the period nearly twenty years before, he thought of the moment he first came to understand that the very existence of mankind was again under threat, the fulfilment of the prophesy he received from his own mentor - the Egyptian self proclaimed God King Rah. He remembered also, the day the strangers had arrived, for he had seen their chariot descend to earth on a pillar of fire He decided to lay low, and stay out of sight until he knew what they were about, but they found him using an eye, the eye of a Dragon, a perfect crystal orb about the size of a tennis ball with a vague blue tint, which possessed an area of illumination, able to indicate the presence and direction of one such as himself. They arrived with their warnings of doom, echoing those of his own mentor, and he remembered his utter dismay at the thought that Uther and the dynasty he had worked so hard to nurture, in a effort to bring about a unified, homogenised and – hopefully - benign governance for England might well be enslaved, becoming the very thing that he had struggled so hard to avoid. The guardians however, - tall men from the sky - had had not come unprepared, bringing with them designs for armour, powerful magic armour, which they immediately set about providing the means to build. Deep in the bowels of the earth, in immense caves, formed using arts and devices of a kind never seen before or since, they buried an engine of such fiendish design it would have made a dragon turn tail and run, and there it would remain until needed. Then they left, these enigmatic visitors, these guardians, to help others facing the same plight, and for almost a decade nothing happened.

When the enemy arrived they did not show their hand immediately. Instead they used subterfuge to gain the confidence of the people of the land, to persuade them that they were friendly and of good heart. A terrible plague was sweeping the land at the time, killing thousands and holding the entire populace in fear, and when it was at its height, the enemy arose as the saviours of mankind. Shambling into towns and villages like heaven blessed Shaman or Soothsayers, in their strange garb they came from hovels, which seemed to appear overnight. By this means did the enemy gain the trust and confidence of the people, and persuade the simple folk of Breton that they were friendly and of right mind. Indeed, even the sage was taken in at first, finding it hard to accept that these benign visitors were really the slavers and destroyers of cultures, of which he had been warned? And later, when the true nature of their mission was revealed and the people revolted, they quelled the inevitable uprisings with terrible efficiency, using weapons, which could fry a man from a half a league without so much as the telltale whistle of an arrow.

The sage considered himself a man of the world and one not easily put out, but eve he was shocked and overawed when he saw men explode before his eyes as wingless behemoths the size of a castle hovered above. The sage was no shirker and fought bravely using the special skills which only he possessed destroying their engines of destruction whenever he could. His mentor, the great Egyptian god King Rah had shown the way many centuries past, making him aware of his special gifts and how best to use them so that he was prepared and ready for the enemies inevitable return. And he had watched and waited through history, living one lifetime after another watching and waiting as the empires of man rose and fell through history. The sage had witnessed the fall of Egypt and the rise and fall of the Romans, with their expansion across the entire continent of Europe to Britain itself. Indeed he had great hopes for the unifying influence of the Roman Empire, for it promised the possibility of having in place a single Empirical core, from which he could draw the forces needed to face the prophesied threat, but sadly the Latin dynasty had risen, overreached itself and collapsed due to decay from within, before they returned.

The time of the Romans had been an interesting one for the sage as he was entertained at the courts of various Caesar’s, always under a different name or in a different guise, and had watched the promise of democracy rise, flower and fall as the empires internal machinations destroyed its apparent external strength. As his inordinately extended life continued the sage took on many identities, all of them obscure and unimportant. He would select positions of low authority, never greater than that of a community leader. High enough to allow him the power to influence the thinking of the incumbent leaders and their Lords, with enough respect to obtain recognition from whichever conquering chieftain was in charge at the time, but never sufficient to be recognised as a threat to the constantly changing regal or political leadership of the time.

He had been there when Uther Pendragon made the discovery that the unassailable enemy that could see all both day and night was blind in wet weather, and had carefully chosen his time to introduce the magic armour to Uther and the knights of his trusted army. He was there in the last days of the first conflict where Uther triumphed over the forces of external evil, and when he assisted by blasting their castles of the air into oblivion. Of course, back then he had been thoughtless and clumsy in his efforts. The remains of many of those fiendish engines had come crashing out of the skies, killing more civilians than the number of warriors saved, but in those days he dwelt in the luxury of believing that it civilian casualties were less important, so long as enough soldiers remained to continue the fight. It was not all plain sailing however, for not all the efforts of all the weapons given to Arthur and his knights were enough to strike down the castle they sent last. It was impossibly huge with an unbelievable exterior, which bristled with wands of destruction like the spines of a hedgehog from its flanks, and its passage sent tremors through the ground, which made the very soil dance beneath their feet. Indeed they couldn’t even see it, until it was all but on top of them, for its outer walls were brighter than the best polished armour, and mirror bright, they reflected their surroundings with perfection. At a distance the behemoth reflected the sky with such clarity that it was lost to view, but invisibility could not cover up the sound of its arrival, nor could it conceal the effect of its immense bulk once overhead, which cut out the light as though an endless eclipse had arrived; an eclipse which covered the land for ten leagues around.

For seven days and nights it hung there, blotting out the sun during the day and the moon and stars at night, all the time pouring out destruction; raping the very heart of England. And what, or who could destroy something like that. Where was the sage? Like his mentor he had been unprepared for such a monster, he couldn’t believe that a single man, himself, was possessed of enough power to deal with this monstrosity, and convinced that he had not the power to prevail, ran from the battlefield, as much to make peace with himself and god, as to prepare for his inevitable failure in dealing with the infinite power and indestructibility of the fiendish enemy construct, and his own demise.

It was only after seven days of absence, of prayer and contemplation, when Arthur, son of Uther and his noble knights had all but given up hope, that the sage discovered how to channel his power into the sword, allowing Arthur, leader of men to take the weapon and using his own tremendous courage, tap into the power locked within the sage’s insignificant mortal frame. Arthur it was who rent it from the sky, the abomination that was the enemy’s greatest power, and when it finally burst, it shook the very bones of the land, as though the demons from Hades were approaching from below, accompanied by the lord of chaos himself. Indeed, the monster would have crashed to the ground and crushed all there below, but for the sage's new found confidence. For only now, after all these years did he truly realise that he too could wield the real magic, the true magic, the one magic, power of mages. Finally he understood what Rah had told him so far in the past, that he really had the power to wield true magic. This was not the clumsy party trick conjuring seen at every village fair since the dawn of time, this was magic so powerful, that it was all but sorcery, and using it, the sage had tossed the falling behemoth aside like a broken stick, to land in the sea off the coast of Wales, where it boiled the waters for a month, before its evil energies finally dissipated. Save that is for one small part, which flew off like a sparking ember from a blazing hearth, laid fresh with damp logs. The ember rose up clawing for the heavens, and would have escaped had the sage not sent a shaft of actinic lightning after it. Struck hard by his magic it tottered like a drunken lord and struggled north out of sight. It was only weeks later that news came back of the shard’s fate; news that it had plunged deep into the great lake of Ness, and so met its end.

The war was finally over, the enemy vanquished, and his efforts and energies dissipated, and with the end of the enemy, those who helped with mankind’s survival, the guardians left also, leaving to the sage, the task of ensuring the war and its machinations did not destroy the hearts of men, which as it proved was in many ways, the hardest task of all. Persuading the entire population of hamlets, villages, towns and cities, who were witness to or directly involved in the battle for survival; or those who were regaled by the proud returning heroes with their myriad tales of the ferocity of the battles, deeds of derring-do, and the pain of brothers and friends lost to the enemy, to set this knowledge aside, to forget it.

It was a delicate task too, for it was knowledge of the battle and the tremendous victory of the knights and their lord, which raised Arthur's name to such heights and made possible the forging the sovereign nation of England from a land with a hundred warring lordships fiefdoms and tribes. And as the new nation, governed under the laws of a single good king arose it had to be made to forget the truth of how this came about; and so, for a hundred years and a hundred more the sage laboured and toiled, using minstrels, storytellers, rumour, misinformation and increasingly wild claims and exaggerations, to drive the truth into legend. And then for a hundred years more he toiled to dampen the legend till it too had all but died and become myth. After that what little remained of the story was treated as apocryphal at best, but this was not satisfactory either. Nations are held together by the knowledge of the heroes and monarchs from the past, so yet another century of labour was needed to rewrite the story into one of equal gravity but earthbound and of human scale, divorced from the realms of the stars and sky above. And so for mankind it was over, they were safe but for the sage there was more to come, for he had to face his own nemesis.

In the company of his mentors, those he knew as the guardians, the tall dark lords of the sky, who aided the defence of the Earth, he left to journey among the stars; and in their exalted company saw wonders he could not have imagined in his wildest dreams. Quickly, he found himself moving about the void, aiding the guardians in exorcising the scourge of the enemy from other worlds nearby, until they asked him to help them rid the galaxy, the entire vastness of god’s creation, from the very same creatures, and he had baulked. Not at the enemy themselves but at the sheer size of the task. The very thought of trying to divest the yoke of tyranny from a realm so vast, was too much. It was too big, too gigantically enormous; almost infinite in its length and breath. How could a single creature, born under God’s sun on a world as small as the earth had proved to be, hope to take on the behemoth species that had infected an entire galaxy?

The shock of the request was so great it drove him all but mad with despair. It was an impossible task, and in the face of it his resolve collapsed. Even in his failure however the lords of the galaxy were kind to him and recognising their demands were too much, and they allowed him to live in limbo, all but a hermit, their guest, returning him on occasion to observe the Earth in secret, making occasional though ever fewer appearances, until, like the struggle, he too became a faded memory, a legend, and by degrees the minds of the people naturally blurred events, to see even his own great efforts as little more than the exaggerated boasts of old soothsayers, and he too joined the realms of myth. Gradually the memory of his name faded, almost but not quite completely from the minds of men, until one Geoffrey of Monmouth set out to write his somewhat romanticised history of the British monarchy, a treatise which he called ‘Historia Regum Britanniae’. After all, who could believe a story about a Mage who had lived for more than a score and ten normal human lifetimes, and who could look to maybe a score more was anything but a myth? But now it was back and even the dark skinned lords of the galaxy who had favoured him in the past, had been bested by the scourge. In their last defiance they took him home, home to Earth, where he could hide, but the scourge it seemed had finally found him, and was returning to threaten his home-world once more.

OF THE INFANT – AD 2003:

The express train thundered effortlessly down the track at over a hundred miles per hour as various individuals, families and groups of passengers relaxed and enjoyed, or – as was their want - complained about the ride; each in their own unique manner. It was a typical railway journey along a track traversed on a daily basis by thousands of passengers, completed without fuss or excitement, whether commuting to and from work, or for any one of a dozen other reasons. It was an intrinsic element of 20th-century daily life, mere background to all the other more important things which filled their waking hours. The train was on a main line, moving away from the hustle and bustle of the city, towards the quieter and more sedate lifestyles of those who lived in the country. In the third carriage two families were travelling together. The Nicholson’s, with two daughters, Vicki and Bobby were travelling with their close friends, the Andersons, Peter and Vera, and their son Paul. Paul was just three and his parents were taking him to spend the weekend with Peter’s godfather who they had always known as ‘Uncle’.

‘Uncle’ owned a wonderful stone built, thatched cottage in the north of England, situated in an isolated valley, located as far away as one could be from any reasonable sized town. Steve Nicholson, an avid angler, his wife Querida along with their two daughters had a love of the countryside, and Paul’s parents as close friends had invited them along to ‘Uncle’s’ place. Querida thought this was a great idea, and the girls too were enthusiastic, but Steve - who had work commitments – had remained a little uncertain until he heard about the fishing. After that it was a fait accompli that the Nicholson’s would tag along.

Paul’s parents were as excited as their child to be going, for ‘Uncle’ had been part of their lives from the time they met, and beyond that of Peter since birth, for not only was he Peter’s godfather he was also Paul’s. ‘Uncle’ as they all knew him, was one of those people, who for some inexplicable reason hit their mid-fifties at about forty and never appeared to grow any older. He seemed to Peter, no older now than when he knew him as a pre-school tot, but no one ever raised this out of politeness.

Paul’s parents were still full of the pleasures of parenthood, so for them each new day was an exciting adventure, a tableau of discovery and revelation, as their infant son discovered ever more about himself and the world around him. There wasn’t a day when he didn’t do something that would fill them with excitement and pleasure. Wide-eyed and excited himself, Paul was on his first ever train journey, because since his birth, ‘Uncle’ had always come to visit him. This was the very first time Paul was going to see ‘Uncle’s house and he was going on a train, so while it was very ordinary trip for most, for Paul the whole thing was a huge adventure.

It was a little after ten o’clock on a wintry Friday evening, so most of the passengers were on their way home, either from an evening out, a little after work tipple or an evening at the theatre or cinema. There were of course some workaholics on board, heading homeward after a late departure from the office - which would probably earn them severe dressing down when they arrived. The journey therefore was destined to be quiet and uneventful, so the mood amongst the passengers was generally a mixture of light-hearted merriment or relief that another week was over and another weekend approached. Outside however, the sky was heavily overcast, with the type of dark foreboding cloud one associates with rainstorms that result in unexpected flash floods. Indeed the weather was so bad that if fate and bad-luck had been anthropomorphic personifications, they would probably have taken the night off and gone home to sit in front of a roaring fire. The train therefore should have been perfectly safe, but had an observer been travelling atop the locomotive on this particular evening they would have noted that it was not an inviting one. On this particular evening the clouds were so black they barely reflected the street lights, and the city the train was leaving behind, was all but devoid of the halo of light to which any modern metropolis is entitled. It was indeed a very strange sky, because for all the clouds and foreboding, there was not one drop of precipitation. If said observer had chosen that moment to look over their shoulder and back along the track, they would have noticed that what little light there was in the sky was gradually being overwhelmed by small patch of intense brightness as though the moon was peeping through an unexpected gap in the clouds, not odd in itself, unless they had looked slightly to the West where the real moon was doing exactly the same thing. This second patch of brightness however, was moving, and rapidly overtook the train. Notwithstanding the absence of fate and bad luck, on this foreboding evening, there remained those determined to give the absent malevolent forces a hand, and it was they who had just arrived. By now, our mysterious observer would have noted that the eye of the storm seemed to be very localised, and seen it come to a halt some distance ahead of the train, where it hovered over a particular portion of track, in blatant defiance of the westerly wind, which was herding the clouds rapidly across the horizon. The observer would have been hard put to miss the flash of brilliant white light, which shot arrow straight out of the patch of brightness, to strike the track a short distance ahead of the train, or notice - when the eye watering flash subsided – that the arrow straight rails which the train was rapidly approaching, had been turned into a buckled and twisted mess; while high above, the small patch of brightness was already fading.

The crash which followed resulted in thirty four deaths as the first two carriages were catapulted high into the air, barrelling upwards before falling to bury themselves in the soft ground, while the remainder of the train, slowed by the chaos of the first two cars, rolled over onto its back. A news report published the next day, would suggest that an exceptionally powerful lightning strike was responsible for the horrendous mishap, its machinations resulting in a damaged stretch of track acting like a ski jump ramp. In the third carriage – where damage was considerably less - the Nicholson’s pulled themselves out of the mud and found their shocked but none-the-less uninjured children lying dazed on the embankment, while their friends were elsewhere, desperately searching for their baby son. Like everyone else in the third carriage they had been tossed about like dice in a shaker, but were inordinately lucky, because as the carriage ploughed into the preceding cars it had split wide open flinging its contents over a wide area, but miraculously the passengers, all of whom were thrown out, landed on soft ground, avoiding the terrible injuries they would have otherwise received.

On regaining consciousness Paul’s parents discovered they were some distance from of the wreckage, having landed within metres of one another, and lay there for some time as they regained their senses. Peter rose first, and crawled over to his wife, helping her up till they both stood shakily on their feet. For a few moments they hugged one another close in their shared relief, and only then, as they were congratulating themselves on their good fortune did their minds clear sufficiently for them to remember they had been a party of three. The young mother screamed and began searching frantically for her child. It was dark here away from the city lights and a heavy wind was blowing, and as if the weather was not foul enough, the dark clouds, which had conveniently held off until the crash, suddenly unloaded their cargo. Within moments the rain was so heavy that it was impossible to see, but as they stumbled around the debris Paul’s father caught the silhouette of a push chair in a flash of lightning and his heart leapt, as he stumbled his way towards it. He grasped the handles, spun it round and his heart fell. It was empty. Paul’s mother searching in the other direction stumbled over a kitbag and fell to her knees, but as she hit the ground heard the sound of a child crying. She recognised the voice instantly, and knew it was her own son. Turning her head in the direction of the sound which coincided with another flash of lightning, she caught sight of him, under an upturned seat, buried under a mess of debris. The seat had provided a protective cavity over the boy, saving his life. Vera made her way over, but couldn’t quite reach him, and lacking the strength to pull the wreckage free called out to her husband, her voice a mixture of joy and frustration. She felt a presence behind her and turned to find, not her husband, but a creature that appeared to be a mythical centaur stepping out of the wall of water cascading from above. It’s surprisingly human face regarded her contemplatively for a moment, and then it’s right arm hefted a heavy looking spear, which it drove through her chest. She screamed hysterically, but was cut short when the creature stabbed her again. Peter arrived in time to watch with horror as the creature removed its weapon from his dead wife and charged over to take his revenge, but before he could reach it the creature flicked its other hand and he felt a sharp stabbing pain in his neck. It was inertia that kept him going as he fell upon the monster arms pumping like pistons, overwhelming it with blows, and as it raised its own arms to protect itself he grabbed the fallen spear and plunged it through the creature’s neck, once twice, three times he struck, until the other stopped moving, and then totally spent he too died. The pair collapsed and for a few minutes formed a ragged pile next to the already deceased mother, and there they would have remained had not several more of the strange creatures come to collect their fallen comrade. For maybe ten minutes the new arrivals searched the wreckage for the third member of the family, but their efforts were cut short by the arrival on scene of emergency services. The baby, concealed by the upturned seat was found much later, his life saved by the fact that he was so shocked by the whole event he forgot to cry; that and the fact that his mother’s body which had landed awkwardly against the upturned seat concealed his presence. But of the attack and murder of his parents nothing was known, their injuries were assumed to be a result of the crash.

It was several days later that Mervyn (‘Uncle’) heard about the tragedy. He had been a little surprised when his favourite surrogate nephew failed to arrive, and when he failed to receive a phone call explaining the family’s absence, made strenuous efforts to contact them. Unfortunately Mervyn’s relationship with Peter had existed since his birth, so he was more family friend than pal, and even though he knew the family well, he was not well acquainted with any of Peter’s friends. Of course he contacted Peter’s parents immediately, but disappointingly discovered they knew no more than he did. It was only when a news flash on the radio interrupted his efforts to contact the railway company that Mervyn became aware of the crash, and another twenty-four hours were to elapse before he was able to establish that Peter and his friends were on that particular train. It was via the Nicholson’s, that ‘Uncle’ finally discovered the fate of his much loved nephew and protégé. It took the Nicholson’s nearly two days to sort themselves out and get home, and their first action on arrival was to call Peter’s parents with the terrible news. Peter’s mother gave Steven ‘Uncle’s’ number so they could let him know they wouldn’t make it, and the only reason they reached Uncle first, was that Peter’s parents were so shocked by news of the accident, it took them a while to deal with the initial grief. As the child’s godfather, Mervyn was fully entitled to become his guardian and the mandatory investigation by the adoption authorities found no logical reason why he shouldn’t, but Mervyn felt it would be inappropriate, as the boy had both paternal and maternal grandparents, who would also want to care for him. Unfortunately both sets of grandparents were resident abroad, the paternal couple having retired several years before to Spain, while his maternal grandmother had been widowed, married an Australian and emigrated to be with her spouse, so the infant Paul found himself in care while the authorities tried to decide his fate. Paul’s future care was ultimately resolved quite by chance, during a conversation between Stephen Nicholson and uncle, at the funeral where ‘Uncle’ was reminded that Steve’s wife Querida, was the boy’s godmother, and as part of a complete family unit was the logical choice for guardian. With the blessing of his absent grandparents at ‘Uncle’s’ suggestion Paul was thus fostered to the Nicholson’s, on the basis that his situation would be reviewed when he reached five. In view of his closeness to his uncle Mervyn however, the authorities were minded to have him take over as guardian when the boy began school, by then however, Paul was so settled with Nicholson’s that Mervyn himself, recommended they be allowed to adopt him.

Although he declined the privilege of adopting the boy, Mervyn was pleased that the adoption authorities recognised his continued importance as a link to the Paul’s family and past life, and also his value as a role model, on which basis he was granted the right of access to Paul with regular visits and the right to take him away on holiday twice a year. It is true that the Nicholson’s, Stephen and Querida with their two daughters were not totally comfortable with the arrangement and initially at least, harboured some misgivings over the fact that whenever an important decision was to be made about Paul’s future, it was always in consultation with Mervyn, but they quickly discovered that the old man was an easy-going and friendly individual who went out of his way to avoid interfering in the general upbringing of the child, and they were grateful also, for the fact that whenever Paul had bad dreams about the rail crash, from which they could not calm him, a few words from Mervyn - even over the phone - would always put him at his ease. Additionally, Steve was quick to point out whenever Paul was on holiday with his uncle, he had an opportunity to get out from under his wife’s feet, by accompanying the boy to his uncle to spending lazy days fishing the river behind ‘Uncle’s’ cottage

OF GHERHARDT KELDT – AD 2019:

The weather was overcast and miserable, but it suited Professor Gerhardt Keldt. There was nothing worse than going down into the bowels of the Earth when the sun was shining. He enjoyed his pot holing a great deal, but never when the sun was in the sky. He loved the challenge but in his heart, knew that the best part of the experience was the return to the sun. The feeling of warmth on his face, and the knowledge that once-again he had cheated death, made the whole thing worthwhile. Keldt was about to enter a new cave system – new to him at least, and there was therefore some trepidation in his heart, for he was about to enter a fissure known locally as the ‘Forbidden Hole’. Although Glastonbury was not an area traditionally associated with pot holing, it was an area steeped in myth and mystery. Several well-known descenders had gone missing in these caves in the past and it was a well-known local myth that the place was supposed to be where the world last saw the great wizard Merlin. Merlin: the last great wizard, Merlin: the enigmatic figure, who helped Arthur to forge the kingdom of England from a hundred warring tribes. Merlin: The man of myth and mystery, reputed to have ended the realm of magic and opened the way for Christianity.

Professor Keldt looked up suddenly and broke his reverie. He was here now and had no intention of turning back. He was after all a scientist, so his fear was with rampant curiosity. It wasn't that he lacked fear; fear after all is a natural thing, the body's way of reminding one continuously in situations of adversity or danger to be careful in an abnormal or unknown situation. All that adrenaline in one's system meant one was ready at an instant to protect one's self, ready to avoid accidents or mishaps. Fear is a natural thing, to be overcome by courage. No! More than anything else he was feeling an emotion, which is available in vast quantities only to those who face known danger from inanimate nature - the likes of mountaineers and pot-holers - the thrill of anticipation!

The primary access to the cave system was easy to find, located as it was near a well-known, though ancient coal mine, a short distance from a live gravel quarry. The mine was entered via a steep diagonal shaft in the side of a small hillock, which led into an initial working some five metres across. If from here one followed the galleries down, it would be possible to follow all three shafts, and completely miss the diagonal crack to the left of the access shaft in the primary chamber. The crack led into a narrow tunnel which could only be negotiated with great difficulty, and which on several occasions turned so sharply that it gave the impression of a dead-end; which is probably why until now no one had fully explored it. Professor Keldt’s interest in the site was the result of a local rumour, suggesting the area possessed a secret, which is why he persisted, and lined with the predictions Keldt discovered that at its far end the tunnel discharged into a spacious man-made cavern, the druid temple. Keldt was over the Moon for after little more than an hour’s serious effort he and his party were vindicated. The cavern’s floor fell away steeply from the entrance in irregular steps which had been deliberately cambered to throw a stream of water, which issued from just below the point of entry, away from the middle, to ensure firm footing. Evidence of the cavern’s man-made nature was further indicated by the fact that the stream was split into two, trickling around both edges of the camber’s central floor. The walls showed clear signs of being hand worked, probably with copper tools, and if this was not evidence enough, a series of regularly spaced recesses, some one hundred and twenty cm above the floor, bearing soot marks on their upper edges, alluded to their use as candle recesses, to allow the space to be illuminated when in use.

Keldt was elated, he’d arrived as a researcher, looking for a hidden Druid temple and had come up trumps in less than an hour. Immediately he pulled out his camera to record the find, which was sadly devoid of artefacts, but this was more than compensated for by the fact that the walls were covered with ancient faded markings. During the survey Keldt noted two runic markings at high-level which appeared more recent than the rest, suggesting that the chamber had been entered at some point in the more recent past? Keldt and his guides carefully photographed every inch the cave from varying angles so they would be able to reconstruct the find electronically, and then they surveyed the space using a combination of measuring tapes, a small level and a laser theodolite.

The rear of the chamber was marked by a shallow cone shaped depression, punctuated by a dark aperture into which the rejoined water streams disappeared. The aperture, a little over a metre high, and more than wide enough for a man to enter, was an invitation the intrepid explorers could not resist. After all, it might lead to some inner sanctum which did contain artefacts, allowing the find to be dated. Disappointingly, the floor of the tunnel beyond the aperture, had the appearance of being formed by the natural flow of subterranean water, with a convenient if uneven stepping, the result of the varying hardness of successive layers of strata. The tunnel itself varied widely in both height and width so that some areas could be traversed at a comfortable walk, while others forced one to stoop or crawl. Because the cave system had not been previously encountered by modern explorers with electric lights it had never been properly seen, but as the intrepid explorers followed the still descending tunnel it began to become clear that it was as unnatural as the cavern which preceded it. For one thing it followed a doglegged route reminiscent of a staircase, although as each change of direction was some one hundred & twenty degrees it had a triangular spiral plan-form. When they realised this, the explorers suffered a distinct feeling of being observed, for it was inescapably clear, that this staircase had been carved from the rock with deliberate purpose, and as they descended Keldt realised that it was probably the discovery of the staircases man-made nature, which had resulted in the rumours and taboo circulating locally about this particular cave system.

Initially discovered several centuries in the past, and linked to the historical rumours regarding druids - with their reputation for human sacrifice - it would readily generate sufficient fear and disquiet to keep the local people away. Such taboos were easily generated when one allowed for the fact that smuggling was rife in the area in the middle ages, and a canny smuggler would not have required much imagination to see the benefit of fuelling those fears. The odd nature of the caves and existence of a staircase could easily be turned into a local legend so as to keep the unwelcome away. If the mine had been used as a smugglers secret warehouse, anyone discovering it would probably have been killed to keep the secret, and the enigmatic disappearances, coupled with rumours spread deliberately would make keeping people away simple. It now made sense why everyone who had ever decided to explore the system and find whatever was at the other end had never been seen again. All that coupled with the fact that no one had attempted to enter for over a hundred years, at a time when smuggling in southwest England was still common was probably more than enough to explain the myths surrounding the system.

The staircase doglegged down in its triangular fashion, for a considerable distance, but after roughly ten levels started to change direction randomly, following a switchback route in which not every turn was in a different direction. The original triangular spiral had been clockwise, but now the staircase turned randomly, although the changes of direction were small enough to ensure it followed a lateral course as well. Indeed, on three occasions they encountered horizontal tunnels, of considerable length, and Keldt – who was wearing a pedometer – gauged the distance covered to be some five kilometres, and they had no idea of how far they had descended. Even though the steps looked like they were formed by natural erosion, the fact that there were approximately one hundred in each flight, dispelled that possibility, and after following the gently descending tunnel continually for another hour, the explorers found themselves entering another large a large cavern. As he prepared to enter Keldt’s potholer senses made him stop and carefully play his lamp around the space, and as he looked down he discovered there was at six metre drop to the floor. To his right however was a ramp hewn into the wall, and by following this they were led gently to the chamber floor. The chamber looked like another medieval mine but the drop at the entrance suggested a deliberate trap for anyone not aware of it, and this discovery generated a little disquiet among Keldt’s fellow descenders.

Up to that point, there had been eight of them, all locals except for Keldt, and all of whom were sceptical about the local superstition, but when they reached this new cavern with its treacherous booby-trap, five - including their guide – who had become gradually more uncomfortable as the staircase revealed its secrets, used the existence of a trap as a good excuse to pack up and return to the surface. The effect of the discovery on the remaining three however, was to deepen their curiosity and for half an hour they examined the cave walls taking geological samples and dozens of photographs.

It was now clear that the original mine had been far more extensive than previously assumed and the Druid temple was a later creation, opened up within the workings of the original mine. This however meant that the mine predated medieval times and was more likely to be of Iron Age origin. For Keldt the trip had already justified his time and effort, for the discovery of an Iron Age excavation was a coup in itself, significantly enhanced by the discovery of a Druid temple apparently constructed after the demise of the Druid religion. The geological samples would allow them to ascertain what mineral was being extracted here, and they could now return to the surface happy in the knowledge that their time had been well spent, but their adventure was not over.

They discovered the continuation of the subterranean staircase by accident, for the entrance only became visible when one was returning along the passageway which entered the mine. Indeed, the side tunnel diverged at such an acute angle that it only became apparent when viewed from within the mine, and then only in good lighting. It was as they were leaving by the tunnel from which they had entered, that one of Keldt’s companions noted what looked like a collapsed side tunnel, and as it wasn’t yet teatime they felt they had time to do a little extra exploring. So they set themselves two hours in which to remove the rubble blocking this new tunnel and explore beyond.

After removing a wall of loose rubble they found themselves faced with a huge boulder which filled almost the entire opening, balanced precariously on a much smaller one, and it was immediately clear they would need some heavy equipment to remove it. One of the party however, suggested that they might be able to remove the small boulder causing the larger one to drop so they could climbed over the top of it, and after just twenty minutes of effort the small boulder was released but annoyingly the large one stayed in place. Their efforts however, did result in the opening of a man sized aperture, and Keldt, ever curious got down on his belly to peer through. What he saw had him speechless for several minutes, as he took in the unbelievable sight beyond. It was a small chamber about twice the width of the tunnel’s linking the staircases, with the walls decorated with a series of ancient glyphs, set out in repeating patterns, and these had to be man-made. It was clear that they would be unable to move the large boulder without the aid of some seriously heavy equipment, for it was so large that Keldt estimated its weight to be at least three tonnes, but he thought he might just able to squeeze through the aperture with a little help from his colleagues. The floor of the tunnel was dry here, comprising sandy gravel, and by scooping this away with their hands, they were able to enlarge the opening sufficiently to allow Keldt to pass through. One by one they followed him and spent a good twenty minutes recording on camera every aspect of this new chamber, at the far end of which Keldt noted another small hole. He would not have been human if he didn’t squeeze himself through for a look. Beyond the obstruction the tunnel continued, suggesting that the end wall had been deliberately built to disguise it, and once again his colleagues followed him, driven by the insatiable curiosity so characteristic of the human species. They followed this new tunnel for maybe two more kilometres as it gently descended into the bowels of the earth, before they were stopped short by another cavern. This time however the cavern was so large, that was not so much seen as heard. It was the sudden and unexpected change in the ambient acoustics that gave it away, and when he heard the sudden change in the sound of their footfalls, Keldt immediately brought them to a halt.

This third cavern was so large that they were unable to see its walls even with their powerful modern spot lamps, even the ceiling was out of view, but as experienced potholers they knew that the torchlight reflecting on the walls from which they had just emerged, had impaired their night vision, so they shut off of the torches and closed their eyes for a few minutes, to reacclimatise before looking again. By agreement only Keldt switched on lamp initially, sweeping in a horizontal semicircular arc ahead, and by this expedient they were able to see, not the end of the cave, but