Previously: Europe has been cut off from
the rest of the world by a magical barrier, isolating the continent from the
rest of the planet. Within the Barrier, magic has become common place, and an
unofficial war has broken out between the forces of good and evil to determine
the future direction of Europe. The power of an entity known as the Green
Knight has been channelled by a small army of warriors known as Pendragons to
fight for the forces of good in defense of Great Britain and the magical Avalon.
The Green Knight’s emissary was the recently deceased Lady of the Lake, whose
role was assumed by Dane Whitman, the former Black Knight and former leader of
the Pendragons. The new Lord of the Lake had already shown his methods to be
far different and far more hands on than his predecessor. So far, Whitman has
been known to grant the power of the Green Knight to just one new Pendragon,
the member of the Penance Council known as Toro, who was chosen for reasons yet
to be revealed. However, Whitman’s work has barely begun…
“The Awakening”
By
Gary Halpin
The middle-aged Irish man stared at the small council house in Manchester, and felt his blood run cold at the thought of what he was about to do.
“You have no choice,” the large African American man beside him told him. “Ain’t no point in going over and over it. We got no other options.”
Sean Cassidy stared at the house, and saw the woman they had come to see through the kitchen window, oblivious to their presence.
He took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. “Let’s get this over with.”
Kelsey Leigh tried to banish her thoughts of what could have been as she cooked breakfast for her children.
As she broke eggs into a bowl, her mind went back to those insane but exhilarating days when she had been transformed into Captain Britain. For the second time in her life, she had been given the choice to become her nation’s champion. On that occasion, unlike years previously when her husband had been killed before her eyes, she had not refused what she had known her destiny to be. She had accepted the offer made by the goddess Roma, and been transformed into a warrior capable of defending the Realm. A true champion of Avalon, or so she had thought.
As she pushed her typically unstyled hair out of her eyes – the result of cutting it herself rather than face the stares of other customers in a hair salon – her fingers brushed against the scar that ran across her entire face. Kelsey had never been a woman much concerned by her appearance even as a child, but having her face so permanently disfigured had traumatised her severely. She had never been a confident woman, or felt worthy of any one’s time or attention. She had married her husband because he had chosen her and she was grateful, but she had not been able to keep him. She had never been able to prove it, but she was convinced he was preparing to leave her for a barmaid that worked in the Archer’s Arms pub two miles from their modest house before his death. However, any self-belief she had left was shattered when her face had been mutilated from shrapnel from the car accident, and by the feeling she had rejected her destiny. If it had not been for her children, she would never have left the house afterwards. As it was, she had become a partial recluse, venturing into the outside world only when the responsibilities of motherhood necessitated it. She would have given up after the accident if not for them. It was amazing that Martin, now twelve, and Jenny, now eight, were so well adjusted. They had never been any trouble to her, and god knows it could not have been easy for them. The other children in the neighbourhood called her Mrs. Kreuger after the horror film character, when they didn’t run away screaming at the first sight of her. That was hard for any child to cope with, but her angels never once complained. She was very proud of them. She had never had a moment of trouble from them since their father had died. Sometimes she thought they were too good to be true.
It was only since her brief time as the third Captain Britain that she felt capable of being a proper mother to them. She had learned the truth about herself – that she had been the result of a centuries long breeding project undertaken by Roma and Merlyn to produce someone capable of becoming the King of Otherworld so that Roma could be the power beyond the throne. She had been deemed a failure, but a failure that Roma had used to try to corrupt Avalon after transforming her into the third Captain Britain. Kelsey was not sure how much she had been manipulated before she rejected the power, accepting her weaknesses and returning to her former life. Had Roma forced her parents to marry? Had she somehow coerced Kelsey’s own husband into marrying her? Was Roma the reason why she had been surrounded by loveless relationships her entire life? Were Kelsey’s very children the results of Roma’s incomprehensible scheming? Kelsey had accepted that she would never know.
She was here. Her children were here. That was all that mattered. Part of her would always wonder what would have happened if she had kept the power of Captain Britain and the Sword of Might, but she had no doubt that the most important thing she could do with her life was raise her children. They were her everything.
She heard a knock on the front door, and grabbed a hand towel to dry her hands so she could answer it.
“Don’t get it, Mom,” her son told her, ceasing to tease his sister for a moment to address her.
“Of course I’m going to get it,” Kelsey told her son, tussling his hair before stopping in front of the mirror beside the door to check her own appearance and hide her scars as best she could. “It’s probably nothing, but it could be someone important.”
“Mom!” her daughter Jenny shouted. “Don’t go!”
“What has gotten into you children?” Kelsey chided them gently. “Where are your manners?”
She opened the door to find herself face to face with the men who had been watching her from outside.
“My name is Sean Cassidy,” the Irish man told her, with a sadness she recognised in his voice. “My associate here is Luke Cage. We’ve come for you, Captain Britain. Avalon needs you once more.”
Kelsey did not know how to react. She had never seen these men before. She was sure they were not among the temporary group of Pendragons who were assembled when she had rejected Roma’s manipulations and given up the Sword of Might and the powers that went with it in order to save the magical land of Avalon, yet one look at Cassidy convinced her that they knew every thing that had occurred. “I’m… not Captain Britain any more. I gave up that power, for Avalon.”
“You can’t walk away from this life once you’ve joined it,” Cage told her. “Trust me on that one.”
“Mommy! We’re hungry!” Jenny called from the kitchen.
“Send them away!” Martin joined in.
“I’m sorry,” Kelsey told Cassidy and Cage as a sense of dread filled her. Something terrible was going to happen. She could feel it, deep in her soul. “I can’t help you. You’ve had a wasted journey. I have to go – my children need me.”
She tried to close the door, but Cage effortlessly held it open. Uninvited, Cage and Cassidy walked in. Cassidy took a long look at the children, who were still sitting at the breakfast table, and then back at Kelsey. “You know that’s not true. On some level, you don’t need us to tell you that. I’m sorry, Kelsey. I truly am. But it’s time to stop pretending. The stakes are too high.”
“Get out!” Kelsey screamed. “Get out of my house and leave me and my children alone!”
“Kelsey…” Cassidy started to answer, and then paused. He looked at Cage, who nodded at him to proceed. His voice, when he resumed talking, was kind but firm. “Kelsey, your children are dead.”
Far away yet simultaneously barely a breath away, a trio of women and someone who was once a normal man watched as the scene unfolded.
“That poor woman,” a young woman with an Irish accent and shoulder length red hair commented, vocalising what they were all thinking.
“It’s about to get worse,” the man replied, and all three women knew that he was telling the truth.
“You’re insane!” Kelsey told the intruders, as she pulled her children close. “You’re both insane! My children aren’t dead! They’re right here beside me!”
“Your children died in the same car accident that killed your husband and injured your face,” Cassidy told her. “You were expected to accept the mantle of Captain Britain then. When you refused, Roma and her father weaved magics to make you believe they were still alive, because she knew that you would take your own life otherwise and she knew she might need you again.”
“Mommy, I’m scared,” Jenny told Kelsey, wrapping her arms around her mother.
Cassidy shook his head as he tried to ignore the apparently perfectly normal eight year old girl. “You’ve been living in a fantasy outside your control, Kelsey,” he continued. “You have been trapped in a spell for years, one where Roma gave you enough motivation to want to continue living, but enough challenges to grow strong enough to accept the Sword of Might the next time she came for you, which you did.”
“Roma… Roma hates me!” Kelsey shouted at the Irish man, even as some part of her told her that he was telling the truth as much as she desperately denied it. “Even… even if what you said happened did happen, I rejected Roma! I defied her, and ruined her plans! Why would she let me be happy afterwards after I sided with the Lord of the Lake? It makes no sense! You have to be mistaken! Now take your insane theories and get out of my house!”
“Roma washed her hands of you after you ruined her plans. All this…” Cassidy indicated around the seemingly average council house. “All this was your reward from Dane Whitman. He sensed what Roma had done, and tried to spare you the grief Roma had shielded you from for her own selfish reasons. But he can’t do that any more. The Sword of Might is still bonded to you, and can not be granted to any one else while you live. There is a war coming, and Avalon needs its power. It needs you. That’s why we’re here – to make you realise what’s happened, and accept your destiny as Captain Britain.”
“No…” Kelsey whispered. “No, I don’t believe you. This is real. My children are real!”
“I’m sorry, Kelsey,” Cassidy replied. “They’re not. You have to accept that. Whitman protected you from Roma’s influence, but you can only wake up if you accept what’s happened. You have to believe us. You have to choose reality over this… fantasy.”
“Well, I don’t!” Kelsey shouted. “Leave me alone! Leave us alone!”
Cassidy reluctantly gave Cage the signal. Gently but firmly, Cage pulled Kelsey away from her children. “I’m sorry…” Cage told her.
“What are you – hey! What the hell are you doing?”
As Luke Cage prevented her from standing between Cassidy and her children, the Irish mutant mumbled a final apology to both Kelsey and her ‘children’. He stood directly in front of the boy and girl, and started to scream…
“If only there was some way we could have made this easier for her,” the young Irish woman told her companions.
“I know what its like to have your life revealed to be a lie,” a woman with curly blonde hair and a hint of an Italian accent answered. “Nothing will make this easier for her.”
“Martin! Jenny!” Kelsey screamed, as Cassidy revealed why he was called the Banshee by many as he unleashed the full strength of his sonic scream towards the two children.
Kelsey pulled her right hand free from Cage’s grasp, and instinctively materialised the Sword of Might from nowhere and swung it at Cage to break free.
“Sweet Christmas…” Cage cursed, as he barely managed to release Kelsey quick enough to avoid a killing blow from the sword. As it was, he was bleeding from a passing blow, the first time he had bled in over ten years. What the hell type of sword was that?
Kelsey ignored him, leaping at Cassidy who narrowly avoided being decapitated with one swing of the blade. “Stop it, Kelsey! Look! Look around you!”
Kelsey took her eyes away from Cassidy for a second to look for her children, but paused completely when she saw what Cassidy was looking at. They were in… nothing. Her house was gone. Every thing was gone, even the ground they had been standing on. They were in… a void… His scream had destroyed every thing… except for her two children, who were standing, looking at their mother.
“Every thing we told you was true. You have to let them go,” Cassidy told her gently. “I can eliminate the rest, but you have to be the one who accepts that they’re gone. The spell is too strong. You have to be one to end it. It was the only way Whitman could ensure Roma would never be able to get to you again.”
“My babies…” Kelsey dropped the sword, and held them so close to her that she feared that they would break. And with that thought, she realised that they never would. “Oh, my babies…”
She kissed both of them over and over again as tears flowed freely down her face. “Mommy loves you. Mommy loves you so much…”
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them they were gone. She stared at Cassidy, with a mixture of understanding that he had been telling the truth and with overwhelming hatred that he had done so. Cassidy could not meet her gaze. She blinked, and they were in Avalon, standing in front of Dane Whitman and three women she did not recognise.
“I am truly sorry,” the Lord of the Lake told her. “I tried to spare you the realisation of what Roma had done to you. It was Roma who hid your children’s’ demise from you and gave you seven years of lies. I sought to protect you from that realisation as a reward for saving Avalon once before, but Avalon now has too great a need for you and the Sword of Might for me to allow the charade to continue.”
“I am not Captain Britain!” Kelsey shouted, and then slowly collapsed to her knees as a wave of grief engulfed her seven years later than it should have.
“No…” Dane told her with no satisfaction, as the Irish woman in his company ran to Kelsey to comfort her. “You are more, Kelsey Leigh. Much, much more…”
Almost three months later, a nervous Teresa Rourke knocked on a now familiar door, and waited for the resident to bid her entry.
“Come in, Teresa.”
The woman known as Siryn to many opened the door to a room that had seen countless tears in the almost two months its current resident had resided there, and saw Kelsey Leigh sitting on her bed, looking calm but haunted. The two women had grown exceptionally close over the previous seven weeks, with the former X-Force leader helping the bereaved woman start to come to terms with what had happened. It would be years before Kelsey would fully recover from her loss, if ever, but she had accepted what had happened at least, and no longer was at risk of committing suicide. She had been kept on Avalon for her own protection, and had finally been accompanied back to England yesterday for a necessary visit that had been denied her for seven years. She had visited the graves of her children, where her own name had been erroneously engraved by distant relatives who had believed her to be as dead as her children. In her heart, she would have been, if not for a passion that urged her to carry on – a passion for revenge, and to prevent any one else enduring what she had suffered.
“I’m ready,” she told Siryn. “I have no tears left. It’s time Whitman told me exactly what he wants from me.”
Siryn squeezed Kelsey’s hand in support, and accompanied her to the main hall of Whitman’s castle in Avalon. Siryn already knew, but Kelsey understood that they had been proceeding gently with her rather than throw too much information at her at once. She had endured enough shock to kill a normal person. But she was tired of being protected. She needed to do something to try to make sense of what had happened to her. All she needed to decide now was whether that was with Whitman or without him.
As she walked into the hall, she saw Whitman smile at him, but she ignored him at the first sight of the man standing in front of him. Sean Cassidy. Without hesitation, she materialised the Sword of Might in her hand.
“Nothing would please me more than to see you dead,” she told him.
“I’m sorry. I honestly am,” Cassidy told her. “There was no other way.”
“Of course there had to be!”
“There wasn’t!” Siryn interrupted. “Sean Cassidy is a good man, and he feels terrible about what he had to do.”
“How do you know so much about him?” Kelsey demanded.
“Because he’s my father. I didn’t tell you before because I knew you needed a friend, and you might reject my help if you knew I was related to him. But he is a good man. If my word means anything to you, then believe me about this.”
“My children are dead!”
“I’m so sorry about that,” Cassidy answered sadly. “I couldn’t imagine if anything happened to Teresa. But I didn’t kill your children. I was just the one chosen to tell you about it.”
Kelsey stared at both of them, and then sheathed her sword. “Stay out of my way, Cassidy,” she warned him for the sake of his daughter, before turning to Whitman. “What is going on? Who are these people?”
“You are surrounded by Pendragons, Kelsey. Newly appointed soldiers in a war few realise is being raged.”
Kelsey looked around, at Banshee and Siryn, Luke Cage, and two women she did not recognise. “I read the newspapers… or at least I thought I did. These aren’t any Pendragons I’ve ever heard of.”
“These are new Pendragons that I have called into battle. The existing Pendragons can not be every where, and their number is not sufficient for the challenges that are to be faced in the near future.”
“I thought the Pendragons were supposed to the defenders of England and Europe. Isn’t an American a contradiction?” she asked, pointing to Luke Cage.
“Luke and I… worked together in the past,” Dane explained. “When I looked for suitable candidates to serve as new Pendragons, I sensed his presence in Scotland.”
“Knew I should never have taken that job…” Cage muttered, thinking of the supposed short-term assignment as the bodyguard for a Japanese business man he had taken against his better judgement before the magical Barrier had locked Europe away from the rest of the world.
“He is a good man. I would be proud to go into battle with him by my side.”
“Whatever,” Cage mumbled. “Ain’t no need to sweet talk. Already joined your little army. If I’m stuck here, I might as well make sure your little paradise doesn’t go to hell.”
“And you?” Kelsey asked of the Greek woman dressed in red with two silver sai by her side.
“Why are you here?”
“Redemption… takes many forms,” answered Elektra, a woman once spoken of around the world only in whispers. “Death held no fear for me, and life held no meaning. I have felt the touch of the Green Knight. It is a cause worth fighting for… and living for…”
“As for me,” the final member of there group told Kelsey, “you are not the only person who has lived a lie. Or to have nowhere else to go.” The blonde woman stepped back from Kelsey, and then burst into flames that engulfed her entire body. “You can call me Magma.”
“So you want me to join your motley crew?” Kelsey asked Whitman. “Is that what all this is about?”
“You are a Captain Britain. You wield the Sword of Might. It is bonded to you, and can not be used by another while you live. It’s power will be needed. I’m offering you the chance to use it where it is needed most.”
“And if I refuse?”
“I am not Roma. I’m making an invitation. It is your decision whether you accept.”
Kelsey paused while she considered his words. She had never trusted easily, and would never do so now that the full extent of Roma’s schemes had been revealed, but she wanted to believe him. She stared at the sword. It was hers and would never be taken away from her while there was breath in her body. She could use it any way she chose. But she also knew that there was no way she would know where best to use it alone. If the loss of her children was to mean anything at all, then she had to use her powers to the maximum. She owed them that. That, and revenge against Roma.
She concentrated, and her clothing was replaced by her Captain Britain uniform, identical to how it had last appeared only with the main coloring now black in a mark of respect to those she had lost.
“Keep Cassidy out of my way, and I’m in. But I’m not Captain Britain any more. Roma gave me that name. You can all address me as Captain Avalon, the defender of every thing Roma wanted but will never have while I live.”
“Welcome,” Whitman told her, “Welcome, Captain Avalon.”
“You’re making the right decision, Kelsey,” Siryn smiled, while Banshee looked uncomfortable but resigned.
“So what about the other Pendragons?” Kelsey asked. “How do you think they are going to react to this?”
“My… predecessor had different methods for different challenges. This is a different world, with threats that could not have been imagined previously. An army must have more than one battalion to fight on all fronts. You are all Pendragons… whether the others like it or not. You… are the Knights of Avalon.”
Elsewhere, involuntarily, the goddess known as Roma shuddered.
I did not expect to write the first issue of a new series.
I haven’t been motivated to write for a couple of months, but I’ve been thinking about Kelsey Leigh since Barry introduced her into the Pendragons universe in Pendragons #54-59, and how she could have a continued presence in a universe where Betsy Braddock is so established as Captain Britain. Around the time I started thinking I might have a story, a thread started on the Pendragons mailing list about how she could be the leader of a new team of Pendragons established by Dane Whitman. I took this to be a sign that I needed to write the story, and within days I had the first issue of a new series written.
Expect this to be very different from the other Pendragons titles, but hopefully it will fit in well. This is probably the most eclectic team I’ve ever assembled, but all of the characters have a shared purpose that should keep them together as much as they often dislike each other. I’m hoping to keep the line-up pretty small so I can focus on all the characters, but any one who knows me knows my line-ups have a tendency to grow pretty fast and tend to be pretty fluid. This is where I plan to have fun. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it too. Please let me know what you think.
Gary H.