Mark Chadbourn - Darkest hour

The wind blows harshly through the cloisters; to my fancy, it brings with it the distant cries of anguish and despair that echo now around our land. These are indeed dark times. Here, beneath the magnificent vaulted roof of Salisbury Cathedral, a few of us struggle to keep the candle of humanity's faith alight; the last outpost of Christianity in a world grown Godless through too many gods. Sometimes even my own faith grows dim, though I joined the church more than thirty years ago. The old certainties have been blown away by that cold wind. Simply to believe in the one, pure thing in a time of everyday wonders and miracles is almost too much. For why should anyone believe in one thing when it is possible to believe in everything? But I struggle and I strive, and I continue the ministry that I have held all my adult life. Now, more than ever, I have a purpose. The Lord, perhaps, will grant me the strength to see Him clearly once more and permit me to spread His word across the land as my antecedents did in the first Dark Age.

It seems that in my blackest moments I draw most comfort not from contemplation of the divine, but through an examination of humanity. And in those times I like to turn my thoughts to the five who set out to be the saviours of our race, not through any desire for glory, but simply to serve the greater good; in their example we see humanity in its most glorious essence, forged through hardship and conflict.

The first of the five was Jack Churchill, an archaeologist, known to his friends as Church. A good man in many ways, but one damaged by life. For two years he had struggled with the blackest of emotions that accompanied the suicide of his girlfriend Marianne: grief, certainly, but mainly guilt that he had somehow been complicit in his inability to recognize whatever internal turmoil she had been experiencing that had driven her to such a terrible act. The second of the five was Ruth Gallagher, a lawyer, introspective and intelligent, given to controlling her emotions. She felt trapped in a career she found soulless, but which had been the wish of her father who had died of a heart attack soon after his brother had been murdered.

The two of them met one misty February morning just before dawn, underneath Albert Bridge on the banks of the Thames in London, where they witnessed an act of terrible ferocity: the murder of Maurice Gibbons, a Ministry of Defence civil servant, by a giant of a man whose face seemed to melt and change. Whatever it became was too awful for their minds to comprehend and they both fell unconscious.

Over the following days, the repressed memory of the sight assailed their subconscious, driving them to the edge of despair, forcing them to join forces to uncover the truth of what they had seen. And what they found when they probed into the hidden areas of their minds was at first too much to believe: it appeared that the figure had transformed into a monstrous, demonic being. Yet when they encountered Kraicow, an elderly, bedridden artist, their worst fears were confirmed, for Kraicow, too, had seen the creature.

During this period of personal upheaval, the world seemed to have been turned on its head. From all over the country came reports of bizarre supernatural acts, spontaneous miracles, wonders and terrors, discounted or jeered at by the cynical media. If only we all could have recognized those first signs then, we might have been able to prepare ourselves for what was to come. The culmination of this outbreak of the unknown, for Church at least, was the manifestation late one night of his dead girlfriend's spirit.

It was a turning point for this young man who was filled with so much darkness: a chance, possibly, to find the answer to all the questions that had tormented him. When he received a message over the Internet with a cryptic comment about "Marianne" from a woman purporting to have an insight into the strange events, he felt driven to investigate further. And so the external crisis and his own personal troubles converged.

A meeting was arranged with the woman, Laura DuSantiago, in the west of the land, and Ruth accompanied him. Yet they had barely passed beyond London's city limits when the dark forces moved against them. At a service station an attempt was made to kidnap Ruth by another face-changing creature much like the one they had seen that night they came together. With the help of a mysterious, elderly wanderer named Tom, Ruth was rescued, but by then it was impossible to deny that they had become targets, although they knew not of whom-or what.

Tom joined them on their journey. He was a fellow who kept his secrets hard inside him, and although he was not one of the five, his role in the epochal events that were fast approaching was pivotal.

As night fell, the Evil abroad increased its attempt to prevent the five from coming together. While heading west along the M4, a Fabulous Beast soared down from the black sky, its scaled body glittering in the headlights, blasting fire from its mouth. The motorway became the scene of a terrible conflagration; many died. It was the first of the great slaughters. There was no Saint George to slay the creature; Church, Ruth, and Tom could only flee.

Tom, in his wisdom, took them to Stonehenge, which proved a remarkable sanctuary against the attack; there, Church and Ruth were initiated into the ancient mysteries. Tom told of the lifeblood of the earth, the blue fire, long dormant but slowly awakening after the great change that had overtaken us all. Rejuvenating, powerful, the source of all magic, it seared along the lines of force; the age-old sacred sited marked the areas where it was most intense. The Fabulous Beasts were both its symbols and its guardians; the one that attacked them had been briefly corrupted by the power of the forces raised against them. And there, too, Ruth and Church first began to learn of their true destiny as the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, the spiritual bond that was linked to that earth energy.

They underwent a night of revelation as Tom told of the return of a race of tremendous power and evil which had terrorized the land in the near-forgotten past. The seasons had turned; dark days had come around again.

Deep in the night while they slumbered among those ancient stones, Church woke to discover the spirit of Marianne hovering in the shadows beyond the henge. Though terrible to look upon, she did not talk and she retreated when he approached, but she left behind a mysterious gift-a black rose, known by its Gaelic name, the Roisin Dubh. Church's decision to take it as a nieniento nmori would prove devastating.

In the light of their experiences, plans were changed and Laura DuSantiago agreed to meet them here, in Salisbury. While they waited for her arrival the great powers grew closer. In the cloisters of this very cathedral, Church encountered the demonic black dog known as Old Shuck; it heralded the unrelenting onset of the Wild Hunt. At the same time, Ruth was haunted by a figure which seemed to change from hag to middle-aged woman to young girl. Any student of folklore would have recognized the archetypes, the mother-maiden-crone of the old religion, but Ruth was unaware it was her destiny calling. And that night in a local pub they crossed paths with a seemingly harmless wanderer by the name of Callow. Loose lips ensured one of the companions would pay a terrible price for that fateful meeting.

The following day they were introduced to Laura DuSantiago, the third of the five, and a woman both secretive and deeply troubled. Scarred on the inside as much as her body was marked by a mother who used her religion to mask her madness, Laura still exhibited a remarkable tenacity and fire but the death of her mother, which she believed to have occurred by her own hand, was the defining aspect of her character.