Mark Chadbourn
Destroyer of Worlds
I am the Caretaker. I keep a light burning in the darkest night. I serve all who come to me, whether their hearts are filled with hope or tainted by despair.
Here I stand, at the end of the world, where the night is darker than ever, and the lamps have gone out, one by one. What lies ahead is mystery. But the road to the end is clear.
It began one misty morning, close to Albert Bridge in London, where Jack Churchill wandered, lost in the depths of grief for his dead girlfriend, Marianne. Drawn by the sounds of struggle, Jack — an archaeologist known as Church — stepped away from his world and into a stranger and more real one when he encountered one of a race of shape-shifting creatures from the depths of Celtic mythology: the Fomorii, also known as the Nightwalkers. Though the creature fled, Jack met the woman who would become the great love of his life, Ruth Gallagher, and together they uncovered the first signs of an invasion by the Fomorii.
But Church and Ruth were also inducted into a greater and more uplifting mystery, that of the Blue Fire, an energy that ran through the land along leys, its power focused at ancient sacred sites. For more than two thousand years, this force for Life — Existence — had chosen groups of five champions, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, who would fight to protect the land. Bound together by the Pendragon Spirit, Church and Ruth were only the latest members, and they soon met the other three of their team: an Asian mystic, Shavi, the acerbic Laura DuSantiago, and Ryan Veitch, a tough ex-criminal from South London.
The Fomorii were engaged in battle with their ancient race-enemies — the Golden Ones, the Tuatha De Danaan, who had been the gods of the ancient Celts. Many of these golden-skinned gods were contemptuous of humans — Fragile Creatures, as they named them — and manipulated them to their own ends. The Tuatha De Danaan, however, had an odd, symbiotic relationship with their mysterious shape-shifting companions, the Caraprix, which at times appeared to be more powerful than the gods.
With the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons in the middle, this war thrust Britain into an Age of Misrule. Science and reason were overthrown, and magic returned to the world.
Church and his comrades found their abilities honed in the crucible of battle. Ruth became an exponent of the Craft, drawing on the long heritage of wise women tapping into the power of the land. Laura became more nature spirit than human under the guidance of the Celtic god Cernunnos, also known as the Green Man. Veitch found his destiny as a powerful warrior, and lost a hand in the process. Shavi grew into a role as seer and wise man. And Church became the great leader the world needed.
In their quest, they were accompanied by their elderly guide, Tom, who had been kidnapped from his home in the Middle Ages and altered by the gods at the terrifying Court of the Final Word to become the great hero of myth, Thomas the Rhymer, who had the power of prophecy.
He was not the only human to be caught up in the gods' manipulations. Callow, a bitter wanderer, joined forces with the Fomorii and almost caused the downfall of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.
As the war raged across Britain, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons overcame numerous hardships. Shavi was killed, but Veitch journeyed to the Grim Lands, the Land of the Dead, to reclaim his spirit and return him to life. This heroic act, however, had unforeseen and devastating consequences.
Callow was eventually killed, but he was not the only one; Tom, too, gave up his life, as did Niamh, one of the Tuatha De Danaan, who had fallen in love with Church. And in the Battle of London where the Fomorii were finally defeated, Ryan Veitch lost his own life. A tragic figure, Veitch had been manipulated by the gods to betray the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.
In the cataclysmic battle against Balor, the great god of the Fomorii, Church was flung back through the ages, separated by more than two thousand years from Ruth, the woman he loved.
Though victorious, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons had paid a high price. The survivors went their separate ways, and Existence set about forming a new band of Five who could be champions in the devastated world that remained.
But these Brothers and Sisters of Dragons would be different. Veitch's journey to the Grim Lands had broken one of the great rules and thereby attracted the attention of a terrible dark force beyond the edge of the universe: the Void, also known as the Devourer of All Things, the dark reflection of Existence, Anti-Life, the true ruler of the universe. Through the Mundane Spell, it kept humanity in thrall and deflected it from magic and wonder, which could eventually lead to the dark god's rule being usurped. Now that the Void had noticed magic had returned, it was coming back to Earth to ensure the Mundane Spell remained unbroken.
And so Existence needed to find five Brothers and Sisters of Dragons who could operate beyond the attention of the Void. From another reality, it plucked Mallory, who had killed himself in his own world after committing an undisclosed terrible crime. In Salisbury, Mallory joined the ranks of the new Knights Templar and learned to become a warrior. There he met the first Sister of Dragons, Sophie Tallent, who had mastered the Craft, and Miller, whom Existence had gifted with the power to heal.
Meanwhile, rural doctor Caitlin Shepherd also became a Sister of Dragons, after a plague claimed the lives of her husband Grant and son Liam. Caitlin escaped the Void's attention because her consciousness was fragmented: known as the Broken Woman, she developed several distinct personalities and was eventually possessed by the Morrigan, one of the Tuatha De Danaan, the goddess of death and violence, sex and life.
In her travels, Caitlin encountered several helpers, amongst them Carlton, a young boy who was killed during their quest; Jack, who, like Tom, had been kidnapped by the Court of the Final Word and had the destructive force of the Wish-Hex embedded inside him; Jack's sociopathic girlfriend Mahalia; and their guide, the dissolute academic Crowther.
The final two Brothers of Dragons were Hunter, a Government Special Forces officer and trained killer, and Hal, a lowly clerk, so insignificant that he escaped the Void's attentions completely.
The Void eventually realised that the only way it could maintain the Mundane Spell was by completely changing reality back into its familiar form, the age-old ways of money and power, where magic and wonder did not exist. All the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons were locked into fake, mundane lives, forgetting their true heritage — except Hal, who gave up his corporeal existence to become part of the Blue Fire. His mission was to seek out Church, the true 'king', and help bring him back from the past to defeat the Void.
In the Iron Age, Church had been adopted by a Celtic tribe in the village of Carn Euny, in what would become Cornwall. He lived a simple life, but the Void recognised him as a threat and set out to destroy him. Through time, it despatched its agents, the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders; the Libertarian, a sardonic, brutal killer with lidless red eyes; and one other: a rejuvenated Ryan Veitch, corrupted by hatred, who blamed Church for his death and the loss of the woman he truly loved — Ruth.
Time became the battlefield. In different ages, Church fought the Void's agents, while in the modern world, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons began to awake from their fake lives.
Paradoxically, Church established the line of Brothers and Sisters of Dragons in Carn Euny, long before he was chosen to be such a champion. But the first group were killed by Ryan Veitch, and eventually reanimated by the Void as the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders to help Veitch destroy Church.
The paradoxes continued thick and fast. Church was taken to the mysterious Otherworld, also known as the Far Lands, by Niamh, who would fall in love with him over time, and there he also encountered Tom in his younger days. In Niamh's court, Church befriended Jerzy, the Mocker, a surgically altered Fool who would play a large part in what was to come.
The magical Far Lands were timeless, and Church realised that he could while away his days there while centuries passed in the real world, and eventually return home when his own age rolled around again.
On occasional trips back to the real world, under Niamh's control, Church encountered many other Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. In Roman York in AD 306, he met the Dacian barbarian Decebalus, and the Roman Briton Aula Fabricia Candida, both of whom returned with him to the Far Lands when they discovered that Ryan Veitch was systematically killing off the line of champions. Over the centuries, Church rescued many others and brought
