Camelot 2050: Dark Magic

By David Cartwright

Camelot 2050: Dark Magic is the Final instalment in the Camelot 2050 Trilogy that rewrites the ending of the classic legend of King Arthur, and transports the reader to a near-future England ruled over by the ancestral line of Pendragon and the Knights of the Round Table.Three months since her 'banishment'

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Cartwright
• Release date: Apr 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781527238565

Book preview

Prologue: The le Fay Campaign - Winter.

It has been three months since Rosalyn Pendragon and her team slew Morgana’s dragon. The death of the monstrous techno-organic construct echoes across the battlelines, and the coalition forces of Camelot and its European allies ride the wave of morale it brings and gain considerable ground.

To the north, the rebel Jarls of the Nordic countries have been crushed, imprisoned or have fled. The remains of their forces retreat to the east in an effort to regroup with Morgana’s forces proper, and the Finnish border becomes the front line. The raiders strike out of St Petersburg toward Lappeenranta and Kingisepp, but their position is untenable. The coalition holds Veliky Novgorod and has made gains toward Tikhvin leaving only the narrowest of avenues for their escape. With winter advancing, it looks as if St Petersburg will soon be under siege.

To the south, in Central Russia, the situation is similar. The cities of Tver, Vyazma and Kaluga are now in coalition possession, but winter is on the way and preparations for the march into Moscow must wait for the turn of the season. Further south, coalition efforts succeed in retaking the sovereign territories of the Ukraine. Poltava, Kharkiv and Luhansk fall in quick succession, and the armies use their momentum to drive as far as Volgodonsk, pushing toward Volgograd in an effort to sever the Southern and Caucasus districts entirely, but troubles soon start to emerge.

The soldiers have borne witness to monsters and even the dread threat of a dragon, but they have never faced the likes of what follows in its wake. Morgana’s curse starts to take a toll.

First observed in the native population, the malaise begins to infect the invading forces. Gaining local support is impossible. The locals go about their daily routines, ignoring relief stations and the efforts of the coalition to gain favour with established settlements and civic leaders.

They do not oppose the invaders, but their automata-like behaviour is detrimental to morale. There are some places, isolated farms and villages, where some headway is made, but they are few and far-between. After little more than a month, the effects are felt internally. Troops have to be rotated out constantly as their spirits fall and their enthusiasm fails. The curse attacks higher emotions, and the longer the soldiers are exposed to the subtle, sinister energies the sorceress Queen has laid within the land itself, the more lethargic and unresponsive to commands they become.

Efforts to counteract the effects are hampered, as more evidence relating to the Tunguska disaster is brought to light by the Court Wizard Cassandra Cussler. Since the departure of Merlin, Cassandra has become a lynchpin figure in the command structure, despite her youth and inexperience, but her investigations have revealed a threat of dire proportions.

Any effort to tamper with the stones that focus the energies of the curse, many located at the epicentre of populated locations, may result in explosions measuring in the megatons. The risk to the populace is too great for any meaningful experimentation to take place. Without the counsel of Merlin, she must rely upon the technical and theoretical expertise of Master Nicholaeos Westbrook, de-facto head of the Guild of Medical and Genetic Engineers, the Cult of Merlin or M.A.G.E.s as they are often called.

With the onset of winter, the campaign becomes one of attrition. The forces of Camelot and its allies must hold the ground they have gained and attempt to deny the forces of Queen Morgana while their lines of supply are pushed to breaking point, transporting fresh soldiers and supplies into the mist-shrouded lands of the Purple Dragon.

The reports out of Europe itself are more positive. After months of chaos, the civil authorities have finally started to quell the efforts of Morgana’s terrorist cells. Counter-terrorist operations throughout the cities of Britain, Germany, France and the other allied nations see rising levels of success, and the attentions of the general populace turn toward the efforts of the armed forces.

Increasingly cynical public scrutiny could not come at a worse time for the stressed military commanders. With less and less progress or success to report, and in the face of rising casualty figures and rising evidence of ‘the le Fay effect’ as the symptoms of the curse become known, the media campaign in support of the ongoing effort falters. The soldiers of the Coalition believe what they see; it is harder to convince the civilian population of the existence of monsters and magic.

Among the list of the fallen, one name stands out. Sir Geoffrey Mayland, knight in service to the House of Stafford, MIA. The only known prisoner of war, taken from the Camelot taskforce and suspected to be in the personal care of Queen Morgana le Fay herself.

Chapter 1

Rosalyn ran, legs pumping and chest heaving. Her vest was sodden with the sweat of her flight. She wasn’t driven by fear, nor anger, but sheer frustration. In the golden morning light of autumn she pounded along the running track at the great, white edifice of Castle Camelot, stirring up fallen gold and rust-coloured leaves that scattered the track and the field.

It had been three months since King Anthony Pendragon had exiled her from the Camelot advanced forces in Morgana’s territories in Russia. Her service record, alongside the merits for bravery, now bore a citation for ‘recklessness in the field’. It was a big step down from ‘treason’ but it was enough to see her removed from active operations.

Upon her arrival, she had first been submitted to a full physical fitness assessment which had led to some surgery and weeks of physiotherapy. She had adopted the routine and expanded it to become her strict, everyday training regimen. She lapped the track at Camelot again and again. The Essex, her regiment, were back at the Dubois estate garrison, re-equipped, reinforced with fresh recruits and training in preparation for the day when they were recalled to the front. Ros had tried going back there, but the big house had seemed empty without the presence of Sir Phillip, her liege knight, murdered in the first hours of the conflict.

Despite the efforts of his wife Samantha to welcome her, Rosalyn couldn’t bring herself to stay. She had spent most of the time trying to watch old videos of her time spent there as a child and some, even older, of her with her ‘parents,’ but so much had changed she couldn’t bring herself to sit through them. Now knowing the truth about her origins, how she had been cloned from the genetic material of Mordred le Fay taken from the blade of Excalibur itself, she hadn’t yet reconciled the knowledge of her ‘birth’ with her feelings about her adoptive mother and father.

Watching those films from when she was blissfully ignorant of her true nature, when she was certain about so many simple things, jarred her. She wasn’t quite sure yet who or what she was supposed to be, and she certainly wasn’t sure as to where ‘home’ truly was.

The one place she had to visit was the Squires’ residence. Brandon Squires had been a technician who travelled with her team to recover Merlin the Magician from Avalon. He had been a brave soul, and the first person to die under her command. It hadn’t been her fault, hadn’t been anyone's fault except for the man who had killed him. Morgana’s Black Knight, Launde. Still, she hadn’t been able to face his parents at the memorial service, and that was a debt of honour she had been determined to repay.

The house had been modest. The plaque that recognised his posthumous knighthood sat in pride of place on the mantelpiece amidst pictures of Brandon and his extended family, some of whom had been there. His parents had thanked her for coming and introduced her to Brandon’s sister, brother, brother-in-law, and a pair of nephews Brandon himself had never met.

The family hadn’t been told the details of his death or the particulars of the mission, and Rosalyn herself wasn’t about to enlighten them, beyond saying it had been a matter of national importance and that their son had acquitted himself in a manner befitting a Knight. She had made her excuses and left shortly after, feeling wretched. She had returned to Camelot, where days had become weeks and weeks had become months.

She reported to Sir Padraig Hassard to bolster civil security. She studied the logistics reports that came in for news of the invasion’s progress and reported once every two weeks for psychiatric evaluation. Apparently her return to full service was ‘pending the doctor’s approval’, and conditional upon her attendance of the sessions. Anthony could hardly throw the knight who slew the dragon into the Castle of London, even if she had stolen Excalibur to achieve the deed. With the rest of her time, she fought her frustration the only way she could; routine.

Her alarm sounded at oh-five-hundred. She rose, showered and ate. Then she hit the Camelot track and did five sequential minute-miles. After that she went into the gym, five sets of fifty kilo dumbbell curls and bench-pressed two-hundred, and then she did a number of other exercises to suit her augmetic enhancements. After that, she swam to cool down.

All this ran through her head as she ran around the track, despite her attempts to quiet her mind. She hit the finish line for the last time and jogged back to where she had left her towel and water bottle, the cold air raising goose bumps on her skin. She took a long pull on the bottle and dabbed at the cooling sweat on her neck and arms.

You’ll wear that track out, the way you’re going, a gruff voice declared.

Sidney Carter, the Master at Arms and chief technician of Camelot ambled over from beside the stands that overlooked the running track. A short, burly man with a bald pate and rough beard, he wore his usual stained vest and leather apron. Tools poked from the front pocket, hung from his belt and glittered in the brass-rimmed cuffs on his forearms.

Late night or early morning? Ros asked the tech. He smiled and shook his head.

A little from column A, and a little from column B, he offered in reply. Lighting a fat cigar, he puffed it a few times until the end glowed brightly and blew out a stream of blue smoke. I get to set the rosters, he spoke around the stogie. Doesn’t mean they apply to me, he grinned sardonically. So, how’re you doing?

Same old, same old, Ros shrugged. I want to get back and do my bit. Instead I’m stuck, held at the pleasure of the doctor’s approval.

And how’s that going? Sidney huffed through his fingers, warming his hands.

Rosalyn looked out into the bright morning sky.

I don’t know what he wants to hear. She watched her breath misting in the air. I’ve told him everything, about the campaign, the mission... about the nightmares, she admitted.

Sidney crossed his arms and looked up at her sternly. Being a psychoanalyst is a lot like being an engineer, he said. Just because I have all the ‘facts’ doesn’t mean I can fix the problem, he declared. Have you told the shrink how you feel?

She cast a sidelong glance at the tech’. Is this one of your famous mechanical allegories? she asked flatly.

Might be, he sucked his teeth and took another pull on his cigar.

I’ve told Doctor Harker that I feel ready to return to duty.

Do you? Sidney eyed her from under bushy brows.

Ros eyed the chief right back. I don’t know, she admitted. But I know that I can’t stay here, not while Morgana does God alone knows what to Geoffrey.

You realise that admitting your insecurity might get you further than faking confidence, Sidney waved the glowing cigar stub airily.

Yes, and I could get my fitness for service pushed back another six months, Ros challenged angrily.

Honesty will serve you better than bluster at this point. You need to show self-awareness and progress.

So, now you’re a psychologist? Rosalyn shot back, sarcastically.

Sidney dipped his head. When you’ve been in my position for as long as I have, you learn a few things, he said thoughtfully. A lot of my staff come a long way from home at a young age to learn their craft. I end up being a surrogate dad, mum, big brother, sister, doctor, lawyer, advocate and shrink. They talk to me like family and I encourage that. I want my people happy and healthy and, when they aren’t, it falls to me to do what I can. Sometimes all you can do, all you need to do, is listen, but someone’s got to be doing the talking, he raised an eyebrow playfully.

I talk, Ros protested. I talk all through the sessions, she said reproachfully.

You can ‘talk’ all you want, doesn’t mean you’re ‘saying’ anything. He bit down on the last couple of inches of the cigar and chewed it aggressively.

I don’t even know what that means, Rosalyn sighed. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get the rest of my set done. I’ve got another appearance to do later this morning.

Think about what I said; just mull it over, okay? Sidney urged her.

Rosalyn nodded, threw her towel over her shoulder and jogged off toward the gym. It was quiet in the mornings, just a handful of guards and staff either finishing or about to start their shifts. She accessed her playlist and went to the weights. She could hear the dumbbells clinking over the beat of the music, the combined rhythm muting the thoughts rolling around in her head, but one remained, insistently nagging at her mind.

There had been some reports coming back, prisoners taken from the enemy. Alongside the tactical intelligence that had been revealed by the captives, there were occasional mentions of ‘the prisoner’. Geoffrey was alive, but for how long, and what was Morgana’s plan for him? From her own experiences at the sharp end of the sorceress Queen’s campaign, Rosalyn knew that Morgana’s strategies bore little resemblance to the established military doctrine that she, herself, had been trained in. It was true that the forces she had under her were unconventional, but in many ways, her tactics seemed impulsive, mercurial and almost impossible to predict.

The thought stayed with her as she moved on to the castle pool. Stretching out her long limbs in the cool water, she ploughed up and down the lengths with powerful strokes. It was only with the water around her that she finally quietened her mind, concentrating fully on her breathing and movement.

After nearly an hour she hauled herself out and went to the showers. On the way she caught sight of herself in a full-length mirror and stopped. She stripped the straps of her swimsuit off her shoulders and pushed the one-piece down to her waist and examined herself critically.

It had been less than a year since the Betrayal. In that time, she had experienced and witnessed things she had never dreamed possible. She was more than a foot taller than she had been then, the augmentation procedure had seen to that, and glistening, highly polished metal plates over her limbs stood out as evidence of it. Her pale skin was still youthful but, just above her waist was the scar where a high calibre machine gun round had pierced her armour, still vivid and red.

Numerous fading marks attested to lacerations by blade or shrapnel, and some older ones by scalpel. Compared to many knights, she had only a few visible mechanical augmentations. Crescent shaped silver plates on either side of her waist reminded her of the in-advisability of hip-firing artillery pieces. More visible bracing at the shoulder and collarbone of her sword-arm would be a lasting souvenir of the dragon trying to tear it off of her.

It was in her face, though, where the changes were most visible to her. More scars sure, faint but there, but that wasn’t the difference she saw. She had grown her hair over the past few months, but that wasn’t it either. It was her eyes. She still had the flush of youth in her cheeks, but in her eyes she saw decades of age, accrued in a few short months, witness to horrors and wonders alike.

She could see the ghost of Mordred in her eyes; the ‘monster’ who had tried to destroy Camelot, and from whose genetic material she had been cloned. Looking at her reflection, she thought back on that revelation. Sidney Carter had said she had been envisaged as a peace envoy. Jerome Grayson, traitor and monster, had claimed she was an ‘ultimate weapon’, immune to Morgana’s magic.

Plans and plots conceived before she was, but, when confronted with it, King Anthony Pendragon had spoken sincerely of how he couldn’t go through with it, how he had decided to let her live free of the burden of responsibility that had been envisioned for her. She wouldn’t have known herself, but for Merlin the magician, who outed her to the whole Table at once. She turned away from her reflection and went to shower. She had just cleared her mind and now here she was, cluttering it again.

She felt adrift. Was she a weapon of war or a herald of peace? Was she what others would have her be, or what she would make of herself? Questions upon questions cascaded over her like the warm jets of the shower as it washed the chlorine water of the pool from her skin.

She dressed in a burgundy hoodie and track pants embossed with the three golden seaxes of Essex, and padded through the quiet corridors of the castle back to her apartments to change.

Camelot had changed in the time since Morgana played her hand too. The King's Tournament had seen the castle alive with visiting dignitaries, knights and their families. Now she mostly passed guards and essential staff. Administrative officers hurried around with files, going from department to department. Aside from the odd glance caused by her unnatural stature, they paid Rosalyn little heed.

She opened the heavy, oak door to her apartments and stepped inside.

Good morning! came an upbeat greeting that scraped across her psyche like nails on a chalkboard. Coffee? the voice asked cheerfully.

Jesus, you don’t get any easier to live with, do you Bobbi? Ros sighed.

Except that I don’t ‘live’ with you, no, the slight figure replied, pushing stylish, thin-framed glasses back up their nose and setting a kettle to boil.

Bobbi cut a slender profile, hair dyed an almost fire engine red and cut in the modern style, mid-length with a sharp angle to the fringe. Always stylishly dressed, today Bobbi wore an immaculately tailored suit of deep blue. Brown, highly polished leather brogues matched an equally polished briefcase in a manner that Rosalyn found immensely and irrationally infuriating. Everything about the administrative officer was crisp, clean and styled toward a professional, welcoming and non-threatening appearance. Rosalyn had taken an immediate disliking to Bobbi... with an ‘i’.

Except that nearly the first and last thing I see every day is you? Rosalyn shot back tersely. It was almost true. Since assignment to her service, Bobbi would meet with her everyday and, except for matters of the highest security, stayed at her side until she retired for the evening.

I do wish you wouldn’t treat me like I’m some form of demon, Bobbi sighed, placing a steaming mug, on a coaster, in front of Rosalyn. Really, you’re just being overly dramatic. I’m just your press agent.

Yes, well, Ros sniffed. Press agent, demon, you say ‘potato’ etcetera, etcetera...

I don’t know what I’ve done to engender this animosity. Bobbi tapped the spoon on the edge of each of the coffee cups in turn, a habit Rosalyn was now familiar with, and the gentle ringing of silver on porcelain made Ros want to scream.

It was another habit that irked her, like the use of the word ‘animosity’, who really spoke like that? In a rare moment of privacy she had tried to identify what it was about her new agent that got under her skin. It wasn’t anything specific, no one trait or habit was especially offensive to her. Bobbi had never been anything but professional, and went out of the way to provide anything and everything she could need. The agent had learned her routines and preferences by heart.

Was it the pre-packed, plastic-wrapped, carefully crafted appearance? Was it the uncrackable, upbeat personality? Maybe it was the fact that Camelot, and ergo Anthony, had given Bobbi authority to arrange her schedule day to day to frustrating day, or maybe, just maybe, it was simply that Bobbi was occupying time in her life that she would preferred to have spent with someone else, someone far away and beyond her reach.

She took a sip from her mug. It was just as she liked it and she ground her teeth in frustration. If only it could taste as bitter as she currently felt.

Chapter 2

Geoffrey was in hell. He didn’t have any other word for it. For two weeks after his capture, Morgana herself had play-acted as his nurse and convinced him to take her along when he made his escape attempt. The conniving bitch had led him on and watched him beat the hell out of a string of guards until they reached the carpool, then she had personally and gleefully laid down the kind of injuries upon him that he would expect to get from a major vehicle collision, not a slight redhead half his size.

See you in your dreams, she had sneered to him as he passed out on the cold cobble stones of the courtyard. Sleep, sleep was some kind of sick joke to him now. Morgana would spend days depriving him of sleep, food and water until he entered a delirium state. She manipulated the fever-dreams he had then, tormenting his mind whilst torturing his body. When he weakened, they used drugs to induce sleep, allowing him to recuperate physically, and she visited him then too.

See you in your dreams. She was true to her word. Dreams of Rosalyn, intimate dreams, would be infiltrated by ‘Elizaveta’, the identity she had used to make a fool out of him. She would join them, even as Geoffrey’s dream-self protested, but was powerless to stop and then, then things would get really bad as Morgana herself took the wheel. Sometimes she was another figure who entered the scene just to watch. Sometimes Rosalyn and Elizaveta would melt, flow and merge over his terrified body and Morgana would form from the two combined. Sometimes it was like wax melting and reforming, sometimes it was infinitely more visceral.

The two women would tear each other apart and Morgana would build herself out of the gory pieces. She could do things to him in his mind that she couldn’t do in reality without killing him, though she might try, but the really torturous thing about the situation was that, as days stretched into weeks, Geoffrey was losing the ability to tell the difference between dream and reality. He was stuck in a perpetual nightmare with no escape.

He returned to consciousness slowly. Chains bound his wrists behind his back, his elbows had been looped over a T-bar and his ankles were chained to the bottom of the heavy ironwork. As he became more aware of his surroundings, he found himself suspended over Morgana’s throne room. The pain in his shoulders from his pseudo-crucifixion had roused him, though his vision was still clouded. Next came a feeling of uncomfortable, cloying warmth, like a room filled with too many people. The smell of sweat, old and new, reached his nostrils. He could feel it running over his naked body, down his chest, arms, legs and back.

Underneath that was the taint of something else, like the smell of sickness or fouled meat. Sounds came to his ears, familiar but twisted. Moans, grunts and cries. Eventually his eyes cleared sufficiently and he slipped from one twisted vision and into another. Beneath him the floor was a carpet of slick, pulsing flesh. Bodies writhed and intertwined in fevered congress. Faces turned upward, eyes wide but unseeing, backs arched and bowed in frantic effort. The sounds washed over him anew, causing a chill to run down his aching spine, through his stiff, protesting hips.

How long he had hung there he couldn’t say, but his shoulders burned like the wall sconces and chandeliers that had been lit in favour over the electric lights of the room. The flames cast the scene in nightmarish shadow and vivid orange hues. They also added to the heat of the room, and the scent of burning paraffin, alongside the smell of sweat, spent passion and other things, hit him again like a body blow and he gagged.

He shuddered as much as his position and the stress on his body would allow as new details revealed themselves to him amongst the mass below. Some of the bodies in the writhing, undulating carpet were young and virile individuals, but the participants weren’t exclusively so. He saw young and fit and old and feeble, those who had been fed to excess and those who might have been starved, and a whole selection of body types amongst the orgy’s participants. Some of them, his mind tried to rebel at the thought, some of the bodies weren’t moving at all. Once or twice he caught sight of figures simply carried along by the current of animalistic rutting and he coughed and dry-heaved again.

As if that were some kind of sick cue, the carpet of flesh heaved and spread. There was Morgana, suddenly exposed at the centre, arms wide in a mocking reflection of Geoffrey’s bondage. The ‘floor’ heaved again and she started to rise toward him. The thought of all those tortured people crawling together to thrust her upward like that on an altar of their bodies was simply too much for him, and he let out a choking sob at the sickening thought.

As the pile shuddered to a halt, Morgana clapped her hands and Geoffrey himself was lowered. The clank of chains over pulleys sounded through the room and, when he stopped mere inches from the dark queen, the urgent exultations of the mound of humanity beneath had dropped to rasping, breathy sighs. As he drew closer to his tormentor, he was dimly aware of shadows pulling at the edges of his mind, the influence of Morgana’s magic that drove the ill-fated mob beneath him.

So, my favourite ornament is awake? she asked brightly. Geoffrey stared at her a moment. Make-up smeared her face, run to ruin by the press of lips and the various fluids that covered her body. Her hair was likewise dishevelled and run through with the combined excretions of her ‘toys’.

Mindlessly Geoffrey screamed in her face and shook against his bonds, unable to give coherent words to his fear and outrage. He rattled the chains with what little strength he had and yelled desperately until his voice strained to silence.

What? No pithy comeback? she queried softly, playfully, her lilting Scottish accent soothing and completely at odds with the horror of the scene beyond her. She reached upward, trailing a soft hand along his inner thigh and he whimpered as his body, despite the pain, reacted to the unbidden contact. Her breath caressed the skin of his cheek, her lips lightly touching his ear as her hand found him.

Save your breath, she whispered to him and flicked her tongue to his flesh. There’ll be plenty of time for screaming later.

Another unspoken signal, and the altar descended, taking Morgana down with it, but Geoffrey’s relief was short-lived. As the sighs became louder, moans and cries of passion once more, the clank of the chains started up and Geoffrey was lowered toward the outstretched arms of Morgana and the grasping hands of her ‘playthings’. As he dropped inexorably closer, the shadows of Morgana’s face deepened until her eyes were nothing more than black pits, her fingers extended with claws of the same black shadow, and she reached for him as he struggled.

Again Morgana was true to her word. Geoffrey had plenty of time for screaming.

Cassandra Cussler, Court Magician of Camelot, paced around a table laden with data-slates, scribbled notes and diagrams, drawn on acetate and laid over maps of the terrain. For months, she had studied and wrestled with this particular problem, Morgana’s Curse, how to counteract or combat it, and she had yet to make any real headway.

Running her fingers through her tousled black hair, she blew out a frustrated breath and started again.

Okay, so... The energy that fuels the curse runs along ‘conduits’. She used the term to affect an air of professionalism. In reality she could employ the term ‘ley lines’ more accurately, since the energy paths had no physical structure encasing them. Between relay ‘constructs’ located in every significant population centre. Again, the ‘constructs’ were monoliths. No discernable technology that they could identify. Simple, upright stones that received, split and redirected the energy. From there, the signal is diverted and radiated to influence the populace but... she scratched her neck thoughtfully. The energy also radiates from the conduits, spreading the effects further into the countryside. She stopped pacing finally and threw herself into a camp chair.

The large green, canvas tent housed a number of blinking, clicking banks of scientific instruments, and a number of M.A.G.E.s to serve as Cassie’s assistants and sounding boards. Chief amongst them was Nicholaeos Westbrook, tall and spare, with an increasingly severe look to his sharp features. Cassie considered her erstwhile ‘master’ one of her closest friends, and as a twin project to trying to combat the curse, the two of them would study her use of magic, granted to her by Merlin shortly before the eccentric old druid had taken his leave of the campaign. Nicholaeos looked up from a sheaf of printouts he had been studying and cocked a dark eyebrow.

In response, he spoke slowly, clipping his consonants as he was wont to do. You have devised a rather ingenious little ‘incantation’ that, upon being inscribed upon walls, fences, tent canvas and more encompassing armours, acts as a Faraday cage and insulates those within from the spell’s effects. Nicholaeos took no small amount of joy in using mystical terms around Cassie. He had once thought he might succeed Merlin, and had been sorely disappointed when Cassandra had assumed the mantle of Court Magician. The ‘incantation’, as he put it, was actually a line of programming code. In line with her history as a hacker, Cassie accessed her powers through the language she knew best.

Yes, but we can’t spend the rest of the war scribbling on walls, Cassie bit back, lurching back out of her chair and resuming her pacing.

Alright, he said calmly. If we’re revisiting the basics. Magic, as we have learned, is a transition of energy, influenced by will. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, merely changed... so?

So... Cassie rubbed at her temples. The energy of the curse bleeds out to create the effect and, according to our experiments and basic physics, it can’t be self-sustaining. A closed loop would have a finite life and, without additional input, the curse would’ve petered out or, at least, shown a decrease in output so....

So where is Morgana getting the power for her spell? Nicholaeos finished for her.

Because it we can’t attack the spell directly... Cassie started, her enthusiasm growing.

We might be able to attack the power source, the senior M.A.G.E. concluded.

I swear, watching the two of you converse like that grows more and more unsettling, came a tinny, precise voice from the roof struts of the tent. Eric, Cassandra’s cyber-raven familiar, dropped from the supports and fluttered down to the table.

Aw, feeling left out? Cassie chided him, gently ruffling the synthetic feathers of his head.

Not in the least. The more you do between you, the less I have to do for you, the raven ‘cawed’ sarcastically. I simply wished to inform you that your scheduled communications window is approaching and I know how you hate to miss it. He cocked his head.

Alright, Cassie nodded. Nick, can I leave this with you for a bit? We’ll need to put together a briefing package for the King and we need to gather any intel we might have missed in what we have.

Leave it with me, Nicholaeos smiled, softening the sharp lines of his features. Go, talk to Teresa. Get all the latest gossip, he chuckled.

You know I hate gossip, Cassie grinned back, and shuffled out of the tent and into the snow, headed for the communications tent where the Camelot personnel could make and receive calls from friends, family and their loved ones.

The camp was dusted in white, but the continual movement of vehicles and heavy equipment had churned the ground into a patchwork of dirty brown tracks with only a few spots of virgin white snow.

Cassie edged along those tracks, staying on the still frozen edges. Soldiers waved to her and called greetings as she passed. She had been met with some trepidation when she had officially been accepted as the new Court Magician. The absence of Merlin had been seen initially as a deep blow to the cause but, as Anthony had explained, the presence of the legendary wizard risked drawing Morgana herself out to face him. The results of such a meeting could prove disastrous to anyone caught in a radius that stretched for miles.

To Cassie, the old man had said simply that he was so out of touch with modern life, having observed for centuries but been apart from humanity, that a new perspective was required. He had gauged her actions and found her worthy to receive the gift of ‘magic’, but he wouldn’t stay to train