"His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning."
- Oscar Wilde
At the four corners of New Camelot, four of the five Proudwalkers stood, with Vortigen in the middle of his former kingdom, and they focused their magic to prevent the place from being destroyed. Somehow there were dark powers afoot and there was unearthly lightning and winds. New Camelot was on the verge of being ripped apart by the elemental forces that ravaged it and the Walkers were holding on to the city with everything they possessed, pitting their mystical might against the forces that threatened to overwhelm them and destroy the place.
Even Elisabeth Braddock was working with her advisors to find out what had happened, but something had clearly gone wrong and the disruptions to New Camelot were slowly starting to destabilise Otherworld as well, with the barriers between Otherworld and the Netherworld slowly starting to corrode, much as the barriers between Otherworld and Limbo had done. She had been talking with Kate Pryde-Rasputin when the first disruptions had been felt and it was something to do with the Time War , she knew it. Kate had been dispatched to Earth to gather the Dragon’s Claws and with them, they all hope that there would be a way of preventing New Camelot from falling, but it was going to require efforts on the parts of New Camelot, Otherworld and the heroes and a spell of summoning brought the Claws to New Camelot and Pen Dragon looked in horror at what was going on.
“This should not be happening,” Pen said. “New Camelot can’t fall; it has a purpose, a destiny.” He and Jessica had been to New Camelot just before they had destroyed the temporal rift that allowed the Martians access to this timeline, and it was a pivotal area for those who were fighting the Time War. If New Camelot was to be destroyed, then it wouldn’t have been there and if it hadn’t been there then there was no way that they could have destroyed the portal and without that the Martians would still be coming through. “Kate?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t have access to the machinery of Limbo, I can’t tell you what is going on here, but it’s a battle between magic and the temporal forces. The five Walkers are doing their best…”
“Five?” Pen interrupted her. “Did you say five?”
“Of course,” she answered. “The Five Proudwalkers.”
“There are six,” said Pen, taking hold of her shoulders. “Guys, help me out.”
“There are five,” Kylun said. “There have only ever been five.”
“I know the legends well enough,” Elsa said. “They only mentioned five walkers, the five who stayed loyal of the original eleven.”
“Meggan?” said Pen, imploring her for help. “Tell me you know there were six.”
“I know that there are five, but I sense that there were once six,” she said. “I don’t know what is happening here, but I think that we are all right.” They looked at Pen, waiting for an answer.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I know there are six walkers, because there were twelve and now… now there aren’t. It doesn’t make sense, but this is what is wrong with time. This is what’s causing my headache. This… all started when the Neanderthals came to London.”
“Some died,” Elsa said, following what Pen was thinking. “What if one of those that died was the ancestor of one of the Walkers?”
“Oh crap,” said Pen, his eyes going wide at that thought.
“We’re helpless against that kind of problem,” said Kate. “New Camelot will fall, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“The Walkers are Vortigen, Herne, Bran, Gael, Gamael, and Gwend,” said Pen. “Who is missing?”
“I don’t know of Gamael,” Kylun answered, “but if you are right and his ancestor was killed, then there is no way of bringing him back. All of the history of New Camelot, of Otherworld, will be changed.”
“Without Gamael, New Camelot was never brought to Otherworld and it was destroyed,” Meggan said, in her true form, communing with the forces at work. “The balance is to be restored and New Camelot wiped from existence.”
“It makes no sense,” Pen said, “it should mean that it stays here, because of the negative paradox with time as it is. It shouldn’t be on the verge of erasure.”
“Otherworld is not bound by the same principles as the rest of the Omniverse,” Kate answered. “It stays constant, existing in and out of time. This is the last place where paradox can occur.”
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Pen growled. “So Otherworld can go to hell in a hand basket while the rest of the Omniverse stays unaffected? Which pillock made those rules?”
“The ones who came before,” said Merlyn, looking at him, accompanied by Roma. “There are limits to the powers of even the Omniversal Guardians. The Time Variance Authority,” he continued with a sneer, “the Time Lords, the Time Keepers, there are many who have power over time and we each have tolls and checks upon each other.”
“That’s gotta suck,” said Pen, with little sympathy for the old wizard.
“We endure,” Roma replied. “However the consequences of the disruption to Time have had more fundamental shifts than just Earth. The multiverse itself is threatened by the things that are to come, for the battle being fought in the present is the first of the present. There are others being fought in the past and the future.”
“Wonderful,” said Kylun. “What about the situation now? Can we stop New Camelot from falling?”
“Yes,” said Meggan.
“How?” Elsa said.
“Null Point,” said Pen. “We have to transport New Camelot to Null Point, that’s how… this is how it gets there.”
“It will create a path from Otherworld to the Null Point and to Earth as well,” said Merlyn. “The first line of defence.”
“If New Camelot falls so will the Omniverse,” said Pen. “Okay, we know what needs to be done, we just have to make it happen. Ideas?”
“To transport a city to another dimension?” asked Elsa. “I’m a monster hunter, and this is a bit too cosmic for me.”
“It will take an incredible amount of power,” said Merlyn, “power that we would need from the Walkers, added to my own and Roma’s and possibly Elisabeth’s as well.”
“What about the energy matrix?” Meggan asked. “Can we tap in to it somehow?”
“Not without destabilising Otherworld,” said Pen, looking at Merlyn who well remembered what had happened when he alone had tired to subvert the natural order in attempting to save his wife. “Not for something like this anyway.”
“Plus the Walkers cannot divert power from protecting the city,” said Kate. “If they help us move the city, the city will be destroyed.”
“And if the city isn’t moved we lose everything,” Pen said.
“We can destroy realities in a moment,” said Roma, “how can we not do this?”
“There may be a way,” said Merlyn. “These phenomena are being caused by time attempting to bring order. If we focus it on another temporal anomaly…” They all turned and looked at Pen, who looked behind him, wondering what they were looking at before he realised what they meant.
“Oh, come on,” he pleaded, but it was a half-hearted plea at best. “What are you going to do? Suspend me in the sky and let me get hit by the storm instead of the city getting hit by the storm?”
“Yes,” Merlyn answered, with a slight smile. “That’s exactly what I intend.” He stared at Pen Dragon and Pen hated the way he could do this to him. “You should be safe enough from any permanent damage with the immunity to temporal forces that I granted you. There is only a slight chance of the forces being too great and tearing you to pieces.”
“I bloody hate the lot of you,” said Dragon, a tone of unhappy resignation in his voice, knowing the flaw in this plan, but there was no other choice. “If I die doing this, I’ll come back and haunt you all.”
“Haven’t you already done that once?” Elsa quipped and Pen sighed. This wasn’t going to be fun at all.
New Camelot was already being evacuated, but now there were more people to lend a hand, to help the inhabitants try and outrun the oncoming storm. People were being swept up in to the sky, consumed by the temporal storm and absorbed in to the chaos that was being created as Time sought to reclaim the once area of stability in which it could, but the scene was horrific in it’s way – a unnatural disaster of epic proportions and one that the warriors and mages could do nothing against. This was not a villain they could slay with a sword, or a demon they could banish with a spell – this was a fundamental force of nature that was showing unbridled anger and New Camelot was paying the price for the disobedience of those who sought to tame it.
Pen Dragon stood in the centre of New Camelot, and looked at the sky. That was where he was going – up, and once there he would let the storm take it’s anger out on him. He had been given one item to help him do this, a suit from a Captain Britain. It wouldn’t make him a Captain and give him the full range of powers, but it would protect him and allow him to fly and get up there.
“Good luck,” Kylun said, handing him the Swords of Zz’ria. The lightning seemed to have the same properties as normal lightning, so with luck the words would make good additional conductors for the lightning and Pen nodded and he lifted up in to the sky.
“You think he’ll be okay?” Elsa asked and Kylun closed his eyes.
“I have no idea,” he said. “This kind of thing is out of my league. I fight monsters, not deal in abstract cosmic theory.” He sighed. “I hit things with swords, and I’m good at it.”
“Familiar story,” said Elsa. “I fight monsters, vampires mostly, I deal in some arcane stuff and the Bloodstone attracts a decent share of weirdoes, but it’s a life I was born in to, my dad started this, I continue his work. I fight monsters, I kill monsters, that’s my job.” She looked at him and he looked at her. “What are we doing here? The old version of Dragon’s Claws fought Martians, this version fights a Time War. We’re more suited to the first version that this one.”
“I know,” said Kylun, “but there’s something else about it too. You can feel it as much as I can – we’re part of something larger. I get the feeling we’ll get to show how good we both are soon enough.” She shrugged and the two of them went to aid in the evacuation. In the background Merlyn smiled, looked at the two statuettes of Elsa Bloodstone and Kylun that he possessed and put them back in to his pockets. The game continued, as it always did…
Meggan watched as her friend ascended in to the eye of the storm. He would be targeted by the forces of the storm as a temporal anomaly, but it was up to her to ensure the storm could see him as a bigger problem than that of New Camelot. Pen Dragon was a man who should not be here, he should not exist within this timeline, he belonged to a world that was gone and was never coming back. He had the ability to go to the world that had replaced it, if he chose and maybe he would, but within this place he should not truly exist – he had been altered by Merlyn on a fundamental level so that he could remain here and he was… a blind spot in reality. She could see him through the Alshra and where everything was a multicoloured wonderland, he was a void, an emptiness in the world and she could see sense his loneliness. He had lost so much, a world, the love of a woman he adored, family and more. He had spent lifetimes trying to recapture what he had lost, but it was not something he could do again and deep down he knew it. His life was mapped out before him and he was trapped by events and was endeavouring to make the best of things that he could.
But he was still alone.
A tear trickled down her face as her thoughts turned to Brian, and to the child they had never been able to have and as she did so, she felt the warm and reassuring presence surround her as it always did on Otherworld when she felt this way. There was nothing there she could sense, nothing that any of them could detect but it touched her through her empathic abilities and she knew that it was Brian, the last little aspect of him that was still part of Otherworld. He was dead, and she would never be able to hold him again, but here, where he had lived up to the destiny he had always had, there was a sense of him and she suspected that when you became King, Queen, Protector, Lord or whatever title you claimed, there was always going to be a part of yourself within Otherworld, and she drew on that strength and focused her powers, coaxing the storm to see Pen Dragon as the problem he was and strike at him with all it’s unbridled fury. While this was happening, the combined powers of Elisabeth, Merlyn, Roma and the Walkers would begin to call upon the powers of Otherworld to take the city outside of Time and place it in the Null Point.
Intense waves of physical pain were rolling of Pen and Meggan used her powers to try and sooth him as best she could, but she knew that no matter what happened, he had to take the bulk of it himself. He was still alone, and unlike her, he had nobody to give him the feeling of someone holding his hand and she wept on his behalf.
The only one of them who had specialised knowledge of Null Point was Kate, and it was through her that the wizard, druids and sorceresses were focusing. Using the images of Null Point in her mind and the location of it within the time stream, Elisabeth was able to reach out and create a temporary link between Null Point and Otherworld, a task that was difficult and tricky for she did not want to provide any would be conquerors from attacking Otherworld while they did this. The link was established and she would focus on keeping it in place, leaving Merlyn, Roma and the Walkers to begin the incantations. The intimate knowledge that the Walkers possessed of leylines and the forging of the pathways between the Earth and Otherworld meaning they were the ones who could do most of the work in transporting the city, while Merlyn and Roma held the city in a state of grace so that the transportation did not damage it any more than necessary. The downside of the plan was obvious, that they would be taken along the path with New Camelot, but Elisabeth would be able to bring them back.
There were a number of citizens still within the city walls and to them it would simply seem as if the city were one place and then it would be somewhere else, never knowing of what the task of moving the city was going to cost those that were doing this. It would require days of rest and recharging before they were able to use even the simplest of spells and only Elisabeth would be ok after it was all over. There was one other problem as well, one that they hadn’t discussed and the mortals hadn’t realised either – that while New Camelot would be gone the temporal storm would still be raging and it’s target would still be Pen Dragon, and it would be something to somehow deal with later.
Merlyn suspected Pen had known this, but had chosen to do it anyway and he was proud of him, even though he would never admit it. There was much he disliked about the man, but he was a man of honour and courage and he had proven his worth time and again. Merlyn had often wished that Wynter had been more like Pen Dragon, for while he was a great man, he was not as proud of his son as he would have liked and he knew that was not what he had planned, the way he had plotted it to be, and he was hoping that Pen Dragon would influence Wynter in ways Merlyn had been unable to. He had spent a long time putting together this new Dragon’s Claws, as he had done when he had used Kate to create a new Excalibur using the heroes throughout the realities, and as he had used Excalibur, he would make use of Dragon’s Claws.
Then he wondered why he was thinking like this, it was very strange and out of character and he realised what was going on. Kate Pryde-Rasputin was taking advantage of the strain he was under keeping New Camelot in a state of grace, and she was using the mental link to look in to his mind, and what she was seeing, so were the others as they were all connected and Merlyn was angered, but not so much that he could not see this task through. Then he would deal with this little insurrection and undo the damage that the woman had done.
Outside the place where New Camelot had been, Kylun and Elsa looked at the empty space, having seen the city fade and vanish and they knew it was on the way and the plan was being accomplished.
“That seemed almost too easy,” said Elsa, looking at her new friend. “What are we missing?”
“Why is the storm still here?” he wondered out loud. “Why isn’t it dissipating, New Camelot is gone.”
Realisation dawned on Elsa. “Because it wasn’t directed at New Camelot, rather the temporal anomaly, and Pen is still here.”
“MEGGAN!” shouted Kylun running over to her. “Can you dispel the storm, like you did the temporal portal in London?”
“No,” said Meggan, looking anxious. “It’s too big, and I don’t have the powers here I did back home.” They looked up at him, being assaulted again and again by the full fury of the temporal storm. “He’s trapped, and the storm won’t let him go until he’s dead…”
