The Seal of Solomon

by Jeffrey Ellis

  “Sure, boss. I told him the Master wanted privacy and he could take a break,” said Trish who then looked at Boudicca and added, “You’re the aggressor? Yea, right!”

  She walked over to a shelf and told Sebastian, “Fuel cells are here until Frank gets everything put up and organized.”

  She looked at Boudicca and laughed then at Sebastian. “She’s the aggressor. That’s a good one.”

  #

  “Are you certain you can control them, Senator?” asked Mordred.

  The man sitting opposite him replied, “There's no need for titles. I'm not here on behalf of UniGov and of course, I can. They’re my people and they follow me without question. They’re easy to rile up and fanatical if I need them to be. They’ll do as I say as long as you continue to make it worth my time and effort.

  “Mr. Atkins, working for me is both profitable and pleasurable,” Mordred told him and clapped his hands.

  Two beautiful women came out carrying small chests filled with gold and jewels. One lit a hookah and put the pipe in the man’s mouth and the other kneeled between his legs and started to perform fellatio.

  “If you prefer modern currency to the more traditional methods, I can provide you a wealth in credits,” Mordred told him.

  “Mr. Mordred, I think we’ll be good friends,” said the man between moans.

  “It’s just Mordred, there is no Mr. on it and I will be happy to keep you as a friend. All you have now, and more is yours just make sure the ALF does what I want when I want,” he told him as the first woman took a draw from the hookah began to undress.

  “And Mr. Atkins, one more thing. Do not ever disappoint me or betray. I can be as dangerous as an enemy as I am generous as a friend,” Mordred told him.

  #

  Sebastian and Chelsea went running through the room at full speed towards the command center with Bruce and Xavier right behind them. Trish, still showing Boudicca around had stopped by the commissary for something to drink when she got the message on her comm. She turned to the table where Ra and Nefertiti were at. “We have an emergency, follow me,” she said and ran in the direction of the room that now served as their command and control.

  Sebastian was at a monitor with Chelsea sitting at the table and motioned everyone else to sit down.

  Chelsea asked, “Has anyone seen Merlin?”

  “Not since we returned from Stonehenge,” Xavier said.

  “We’ll have to proceed without him. Effective immediately, fortress protocols and full lockdown are in effect for all Warden facilities including Camelot. I’ll be brief. For those of you new to the table, the world unified a long time ago. When we did, a few groups didn’t like it and banded together. They formed a terrorist organization called the Allied Liberation Front which we shorten to ALF. They incite riots, murder government officials and bomb federal facilities. So far, they’ve been at worst a minor inconvenience to the government and have ignored us all together. That seems to have changed. The government and military are preoccupied with recovery, so ALF has gotten bold. However, their latest target isn’t the unified government, it’s us. We received this a short time ago,” Sebastian said and turned on the monitor and a video played.

  The video was of a man silhouetted in shadow and his voice altered. The ALF’s logo was behind him.

  “Wardens we place you on notice. The shattering of the world is your fault. You promised to protect us from the magical monstrosities of the world and now you failed and brought dread upon the world. We now realize the plague of mankind is not the Unified Global Government, but it is the Wardens and as you visited dread upon the world then we will be the hand by which even more dread is brought down on you. The Allied Liberation Front is the method by which more dread will destroy the Wardens. More dread. More dread. MORE DREAD!”

  The voice trailed off into laughter and the video cut out and the word’s MORE DREAD in a font that looked like blood flashed on the screen.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? Is this a bloody joke?” Bruce said.

  Sebastian shook his head. “This is no joke. This video was sent just after our training facility at Brisbane was attacked less than an hour ago. A group of well-armed people stormed it. Both sides suffered heavy losses but ours were worse. We were not prepared to be a target of terrorists. The High Lord has called all the Directors in for an emergency planning meeting. All facilities, including Camelot, are now on high alert. However, that’s not the reason we’re discussing this right now. The Directors and High Lord will handle the ALF. Our focus is a bit different. The message was heavy handed but then subtlety is not the ALF’s strong suit. They infer that Mordred is alive and they now work for him. The question is, do we believe them?” Sebastian said.

  Ra and Nefertiti looked at each other.

  “We do. We spoke with Merlin and he believes the unknown wizard is his son, Mordred, somehow alive,” Ra said.

  “Why the Hell wasn’t this mentioned?” said Chelsea.

  “Because we did not know for certain and we trusted in Merlin and should not have. He is keeping secrets and we don’t know why he is,” Ra continued.

  “Any other secrets Merlin is keeping from us?” asked Chelsea.

  “He also thinks that you Sebastian and you Chelsea, you are not what you seem. He thinks you’re natural Masters like me or Boudicca and Merlin,” Ra continued.

  “Natural Master? I am not familiar with that term,” said Sebastian.

  Boudicca spoke up. “Magic is a part of the essence of every living thing, but some have a stronger connection to it and can learn to wield it. Others, rarely mind you, have a connection strong enough they can be trained to be a Master and gain great magic like Nefertiti or Alexander and even ascend past death. Sometimes, an occurrence of utmost rarity, a person’s connection to the arcane is so strong they ascend to the level of Master naturally. There have probably been a few thousand Masters throughout the entire course of history making them rare but the natural talent, that is something rarer still.”

  “I am sorry for keeping secrets from you. Nefertiti and I have talked, and we do not like how Merlin is behaving. He is also hiding the fact that he is nearly at full power. There will be no more secrets between us,” Ra said.

  “We need to discuss this further but not now. Simple question for you Ra and you Nefertiti. Do you agree with Merlin? Do think Mordred is our unknown wizard?” said Sebastian.

  “We do. Sebastian and Chelsea and the Masters have already shown there were ways to survive the passage of time. I don’t know if he slumbered like us or was reborn like you or something entirely different but it’s not that hard to believe a powerful wizard would find his own way to survive. He didn’t have as much time to plan it as we did with our sleep but it’s possible he found a way and recent events would seem to indicate he has certainly managed to survive,” Ra told the group.

  “Right or wrong, we’ll run with that so let’s assume until we have better intel that Mordred is alive, and the ALF is working for him. It changes little anyway. We were always working under the assumption it was a dark wizard or wizards and now we just put a name on that wizard,” Sebastian said.

  “Now the question is what do we do about it?” Chelsea asked.

  “He has been quiet until now. If he’s ready to make his presence known, then we won’t have to wait long to find out what he intends. He is like this ALF in that subtlety is not his strong suit,” Nefertiti said.

  “He has a flair for the dramatic. He could have destroyed Giza and simply killed the people but instead, he took extra time and power to strip the land of its life and turn the Sphinx to a statue. He acts a child and as such, we should expect his actions to be childish,” Ra added. “He likes grand gestures and he likes his name to be whispered with fear. The way you describe this ALF, I would think they are similar and that is why he is using them.”

  “Mordred is mentioned often but never specifics. How did the child of Merlin and Morgana become the nightmare he was?” ask
ed Sebastian.

  “As you forget we do not know your world, we forget you do not have your full memories from those times and assume you know much you have forgotten. Many of you were not even there the first time around. For us, we went to sleep and woke up and it feels as if a good night’s rest occurred not a sleep of hundreds of years so let me tell you about him,” Nefertiti said.

  “Mordred had great natural talent. He was the child of two Masters and was a wizard without equal. By the time he was fifteen, he could have defeated any single Master. He was petty and jealous though. He hated Arthur, Guinevere, and Alexander because his father taught them and thought Merlin should only focus on his training. He hated the Masters because he didn’t feel they gave him the respect he deserved. He hated his mother and father for trying to control his actions as parents should for their child. As he grew older, his attitude became worse. Then he left and vanished for years. His mother was heartbroken and his father distraught. They blamed themselves for pushing their child away,” Nefertiti told him.

  She continued. “Then he surfaced again. He had been missing for nearly five years with not a word. The first we heard of his return was a magical fortress in China being destroyed. A friend, an elder wizard and Master who resided at a sacred temple in the mountains near Mongolia came to us in terror. His temple was destroyed, and his students murdered. His description of the attacker was a young man of barely twenty with long black hair and deep blue eyes with powers that dwarfed his own. We heard scattered reports like this for nearly twenty years. We suspected it was him but had no proof though Morgana and Merlin were sure of it. It was always small, fast attacks on isolated places and almost every time he attacked a Master died. Most of the time we didn’t even hear of them until long after when they went out of contact for a while. Then...then came Japan. He attacked a stronghold in Japan and managed to kill two Masters but this time, instead of hiding, an envoy was dispatched to us with their heads and a message. He told us he was coming for us.”

  She looked dismayed but continued. “By the time he attacked us directly, there were a few dozen Masters left alive and Merlin began to form the Council. Until that point, there were informal gatherings often called councils where Masters would meet, share stories, discuss magic and things like that. Mordred was bitter that as a child he wasn’t invited but their nature was sometimes more...personal…than would be appropriate for a child.”

  Boudicca jumped in. “The Council as you know it was formed in response to the attacks and its sole purpose was to stop Mordred. Merlin's place of power was here at Camelot and my henges were close. We had known each other hundreds of years and always been on good terms if not friends. I was as dismayed as he at the loss of my friends but didn’t join immediately because I felt safe and invulnerable in my henges. A group of dark fey attacked us and while we held our own, they were wearing us down. Merlin has great skill with divination and had sensed the fight coming and dispatched Arthur, Guinevere and his knights. They, you, rode into battle and turned the tide and I realized I was not safe alone and I joined Merlin. Even then the two of you fought as one as if you shared one mind,” she said.

  “His pupil Alexander joined as well and then others and then by the time we had recruited all we could there were the eight you know of and we were the world’s defense against Mordred. Four others were left alive by that time, but those remaining Masters refused to join us and one by one they were killed,” Ra added.

  “He then razed our strongholds. Socrates and Greece were the first to feel his attack. Socrates had a great library on an island off the coast and Mordred left nothing of it. Socrates only escaped because he was at Camelot with us and after that, we all remained in Camelot most of the time. His next target was the great library of Alexander at Alexandria then Solomon’s repository of wisdom,” Boudicca said solemnly.

  Boudicca was dismayed at the story but continued.

  She sighed. “We tried to fight back. We started to use our spells solely for locating him and eventually we did. We found a pattern. He was attacking and destroying libraries and any other repositories of arcane knowledge and we still don’t know why. Knowledge is power and with Mordred’s lust for power, it seemed contradictory to his nature. Alexander’s knowledge of military strategy came in very handy and he was able to predict his moves to some degree. The next likely target based on his attacks so far was an ancient site in the Carpathian Mountains and we set a trap. Solomon, Socrates, and Alexander and I went there. We were confident because we had numbers on our side and four Masters vs one child, how could we lose? I have never seen power like his. We fought valiantly and held him at bay for a time, but he was unrelenting, and we barely escaped with our lives because he did not fight alone. Beyond his own power, he had an army of fey.”

  “This is when Solomon suggested we bind magic and at first, no one took the idea to heart and we laughed it off. We lost again and again and more of us started considering it. We would bind magic, sleep for a while and hopefully wake up in some distant future with no Mordred and regain our status and all would be well. That’s when Merlin set in motion the creation of the Wardens.”

  She was obviously saddened by the story but continued anyway. “We suffered defeat after defeat and after Giza, Ra and Nefertiti finally agreed so we started preparations. It took months of work to create the spells. Fortunately, Mordred was still not willing to take on the entire Council at once even with his power so for the time, Camelot was safe. That changed when Mordred discovered our plans. How he found out we never knew but he did and sent an envoy demanding we cease.“

  “When we did not, he created the Tormentor. It was first seen in Greece and began to work its way towards us. It moved with the speed of a fast horse, so we had a little time to prepare. We tried numerous times to intercept it and always had to retreat. We had never seen the likes of it and didn’t know how to fight it. Divine light would slow it for a moment but that was all. It took several weeks to reach us and, in that time, it destroyed everything in its path.”

  She took a deep breath. “Then the time came, and Merlin was the one to cast the final spells. One of the drawbacks to being a Master and ascending to our level of power is that we require that connection to live. It becomes as much a part of us as blood and breath. The one who would cast the final spell would die when that link was severed while the rest slept. We had created the crystal tombs as a sort of store of energy. It kept us in a sleep, a stasis if you will and would persist until the stores of power were severed which we thought would happen when magic returned but we were wrong in our calculations. Socrates was a great wizard, but his designs had a flaw. I went to mine and know of nothing else until I saw you in the henge. Even now, I haven’t regained the ability to use my power again, but it flows into me, I can feel it. How Mordred survived without that connection is beyond my knowledge.”

  Sebastian finished the story. “Then the Tormentor reached Camelot. My knights and I did all we could, but we could do little more than slow it and only for a moment. That moment ended with half of my ranks dead and myself and many more injured as it brushed us aside. As Merlin cast the final spells, the Tormentor attacked him. The spells completed but were weakened and flawed due to the monster’s actions and the Seal was flawed but we didn’t know it.”

  Sebastian was getting visibly agitated. “Arthur and Guinevere survived and were asked to lead to help fill the power vacuum left when the Masters fled to hide and sleep while we were left to clean up their mess. The world was broken and in turmoil and chaos reigned followed by a dark age of man that would last for centuries. Disease, warfare, and fanatics caused the death of untold numbers and tyrants would rule by fear and oppression for a long time. The world would recover and after many, many more centuries would eventually unify and find peace.”

  He stood up and looked coldly around the table and continued. “Then it would start all over again thanks to the irresponsible actions of the same group of cowards. The Seal would be sh
attered and once again death and disease and fear would ravage mankind,” Sebastian said as anger rose within him then walked out and slammed the door behind him.

  Chelsea, doing her best to suppress her own anger was initially shocked at Sebastian’s sudden departure because it was out of character for him to react so emotionally. She forced herself to regain her own composure. She jumped up and rushed to the door, opened it and ran after him.

  “I understand why he’s upset. There has been a lot of death and suffering because of the actions of Mordred,” said Ra.

  “I don’t think that’s it,” said Nefertiti.

  “They have a unique perspective having lived during both events and having many lives in between. We haven’t directly been impacted by the events at all. For us, once we went to sleep, time passed in an instant and I awoke feeling as if only a night had passed. For them, they lived through every impact, every death, every war, every plague that would come after the Seal was formed. No others can say that. Others throughout history might have lived through one event or the other and they might have witnessed a plague or war but those two, they saw it all and from what Merlin has told me, their nature draws them to those events so they not only saw them but they fought in the wars, battled the plagues, challenged those tyrants and as more of their memories return, they’re going to feel more of the pain, more of the suffering, more of the Hell that was visited upon this world at our hands. Even if they don't remember it all directly, it's still there. It's not at the forefront of their thoughts but it's there, hidden and it shapes them and their actions,” Nefertiti told them.

  “We deserve their animosity. We could have faced Mordred directly, the eight of us combined could potentially have beaten him but we were afraid,” said Ra.