them back to the Otherworld, where they formed an Army of Dragons in waiting.
The Great Powers continued to manipulate humans to their ends. The Void controlled many human leaders through the spiders, while gaining power over several gods from other pantheons in Earth's mythologies, amongst them the dual-faced Janus, god of doorways, and Loki, the Norse trickster god.
In Elizabethan times, Janus arranged the capture of many humans to be slaves in the Void's Fortress in the Far Lands. Amongst them were the New World colonists of Roanoke, including the young girl Virginia Dare, the first European to be born in the Americas.
Meanwhile, the Tuatha De Danaan continued their own manipulations. Dian Cecht and the gods of the Court of the Final Word were involved in a desperate attempt to probe the heart of Existence, not only to ensure their survival in the face of the Devourer of All Things, but also to prevent the Golden Ones from being supplanted by Fragile Creatures. In one of their experiments, they inserted a Caraprix inside Jerzy's head, to control him and use him against Church.
In 1851, at Stonehenge, Jerzy mysteriously disappeared from Church's side. He had been kidnapped by the shape-shifting trickster Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow, one of the Oldest Things in the Land, to undisclosed ends.
As Veitch, the Libertarian and the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders continued a campaign to stop Church, they also launched a search for a world-shattering magickal artefact, the Extinction Shears, which could cut through all reality. Locating them, the Void's forces used the Shears to sever the Blue Fire from its source and condemn the world to the Mundane Spell. But after this act, the otherworldly Market of Wishful Spirit reclaimed the supremely powerful artefact, and disappeared with it.
At the Woodstock Festival in 1969, the Libertarian offered a world-weary Church a deal — if he allowed himself to be placed in the Sleep Like Death, and locked for ever in a casket in the Far Lands, Ruth, Shavi and Laura would not be killed. Church believed this was the only way to save his friends.
As Church slept in the casket, events he had previously experienced continued apace. The Fomorii invaded, and his past-self fought them through the Age of Misrule. Tom and Niamh died. The Battle of London took place.
Locked inside his head, Church experienced what he thought was a dream or a hallucination: he met me, and the Daughters of the Night, the true owners of the Extinction Shears, and then he was guided to a cave that housed the Axis of Existence, which he perceived as a great reality-altering machine. Using the Axis, Church changed events in the same way that the Void had done, though not as catastrophically: both Tom and Niamh returned to life. But there was a price to pay, as there always is for these things, and Niamh became an agent of the Void.
Returning to the fray, Ruth, Laura and Shavi rescued Church from the casket in the Far Lands and returned to Earth for a final confrontation with Veitch. In the battle, Veitch was killed, his body taken away by the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders.
But now the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons faced their biggest test: to destroy the Void before it could reshape the world in its image for all time. From the depths of the Blue Fire, Hal told them what they would need: the missing Extinction Shears; and the Two Keys, two humans, one with the power to create life, the other with the power to destroy, hidden by Existence somewhere amongst the world's billions.
Church knew that they could not complete this quest alone, and so he set out to locate Mallory, Sophie, Caitlin and Hunter, still living the fake lives the Void had given them. With Tom once again joining them, they split up into two teams. Mallory, Sophie and Caitlin travelled to the Far Lands in search of the Extinction Shears, under the guidance of a returned Jerzy.
With the Libertarian hounding them at every turn, Church and the others raced to Norway in search of the First Key. But there they discovered why they had encountered only the Celtic gods during the Age of Misrule: each pantheon of gods from Earth's mythologies had their own Great Dominion over which they ruled. For centuries, they had slept, but every time the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons trespassed in a new Great Dominion, they woke the old gods.
In Norway, Church and his team were confronted by gods from the cold northern climes, including Tyr and Freyja. To save the lives of his friends, Tom agreed to an undisclosed but clearly tragic deal with Freyja, who gave him the cursed ring Andvarinaut to help them locate their hearts' desire — in this instance, the Two Keys.
Veitch, meanwhile, had returned to life through a ritual in the Grim Lands, and with the help of the Brothers and Sisters of Spiders, he kidnapped Ruth. Feeling even more betrayed and bitter, Veitch had turned his back on the Void and was now determined to bring all of reality crashing down around him.
In Oslo, Veitch found the First Key before Church — Mallory's former friend from Salisbury, Miller, who was using his Existence-given power to heal the sick. And so the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons set off across the world in pursuit of Veitch, Ruth and Miller, awakening the gods of several Great Dominions in the process.
In the Far Lands, Mallory, Sophie and Caitlin had fallen under the manipulation of Niamh, not realising that she had become an agent of the Void. The influence of the Devourer of All Things was spreading across the Otherworld: its Fortress was growing, the Army of Dragons was missing, as were many of the Tuatha De Danaan, and the Enemy's forces were on the march, destroying everything they encountered. Meanwhile, at the Enemy's Fortress, the Burning Man was being created, a giant, flaming matrix that would contain the essence of the Void on its return.
At the last, Niamh's corruption was exposed and the Army of Dragons and missing gods were discovered, but at a terrible price: Niamh used a magickal artefact to wipe Sophie from Existence, a fate truly worse than death, where the Sister of Dragons would never have existed and therefore be forgotten by everyone who knew her. Niamh escaped, and though Mallory liberated her court, he failed to find the Extinction Shears. Unbeknownst to him, they had been hidden with the Market of Wishful Spirit somewhere in the Grim Lands.
Back on Earth, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons closed in on Veitch, Ruth and Miller. Though Veitch was still bent on revenge, Ruth's influence gradually began to strip away his encysted bitterness, allowing his former heroic nature to surface. In the process, the pair grew closer.
In Egypt, many of the old gods had agreed to help the Void, and were destroyed by the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. Only Seth escaped, vowing revenge.
Soon after, in the Forbidden City in Beijing, the gods revealed to Church a shattering truth: the Libertarian was Church's future self. He was given a vision of the moment when he would transform into the psychopathic killer, thus betraying Existence and ensuring victory for the Void. Church's only hope was that in the fluid nature of time, the future could be altered and his vision would never come to pass.
In China, the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons did claim one great victory: the connection to the source of the Blue Fire was reopened and magic flooded back into the world.
The Second Key was hidden in New York: Jack, Caitlin's former associate, who still carried the vast, destructive force of the Wish-Hex. Here, Veitch finally overcame his hatred and agreed to help his former comrades, though he was still treated with suspicion by all.
Realising it faced defeat, the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders set about remaking the world, in the process closing all the gateways to the Far Lands. With hardly any time to spare, Church and the others escaped Earth on the supernatural Last Train, ready for the final battle with the Void.
And so the pieces move into place for the final battle at the end of the world.
Prologue
'The snake came crawling and struck at none. But Woden took nine glory twigs and struck the adder so it flew into nine parts.' From the Anglo-Saxon 'Nine Herbs Charm'
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