Tales of the Wheeler Family - Chapter 19 - theMandalorianterminator (2024)

Chapter Text

"You have no enemies, you say?

Alas, my friend, the boast is poor.

He who has mingled in the fray,

Of duty, that the brave endure

must have made some foes! If you have none,

Small is the work that you have done.

You've hit no traitor on the hip,

You've dashed no cup from perjured lip,

You've never turned the wrong to right,

You've been a coward in the fight."

-Charles Mackay

Earth

Year: 2037

Month: 17thof August

Country:United States of America

Location: Spaceport Five Undertown, Undercity

The old and derelict streets of Spaceport Five Undertown spread out a kilometre or so beneath him, illuminated only by the light filtering down from between the towers. As usual, the stench of rot and decay rising from moss-strewn buildings, fungus-coated walls and water-filled alleys made his eyes itch and his stomach heave. Moisture dripped constantly from the bottoms of the buildings. Fires burned in the distance, as did strings of fluorescent lamps, bio-lights and rad-globes. Anything that the underdwellers could beg, steal or borrow. Especially steal.

Tiny rafts and boats navigated the canals that once, before the Overcity was built, had been broad thoroughfares and ornately decorated streets. Their navigators punted past gaping windows and carved ledges, past the walkways that had been strung alongside the canals and the precarious bridges that linked rooftops and windows, past the heads of drowned statues and the ruined architecture of a once proud city. How quickly things could change.

Second Tracker Reynald Yesti had been a child when the first of the floating buildings was constructed above the cities of Earth, using the same propulsion technology that had been used for the historic space mission to Mars. At the time the floating cities had been seen as another great breakthrough for Mankind, a way to solve the ongoing Immigration Crisis and Climate Crisis that was plaguing so many governments and countries around the world. Of course as with everything new, it didn't take long for those with wealth and power to occupy a prime position within such cities and now half the population lived in Overcities, heedless of the havoc wrecked on the climate below them. Except by the underdwellers.

The underwellers: a fermenting scum of outcasts, criminals and malcontents who, since they either couldn't afford to live in one of the Overcities or didn't want to, had chosen to stay living in the cities below. As far as Yesti was concerned, they were untrustworthy and unsanitary, and deserved everything that happened to them.

Yesti cast his eyes heavenward as he descended down into the depths of the city. He had to admit it was an impressive sight. More than anything else the Overcities resembled monstrous flying umbrella, each with a curved dish ridged with tubes and fins – pumping and storage equipment for the coolant that helped keep the dishes and the citizens inside safe from the wrath of the earth's climate. Where the umbrellas handles would have been were thick cylindrical pylons, reaching half as far back as the umbrella dishes were wide, their far ends bristling with huge radiator fins. In the center of the pylons, looking almost like an afterthought, were the Overcities towers. Supported by intangible beams of gravity, they hovered like regular, pendulous clouds over the water-sodden landscape beneath. Somewhere, thousands of feet above his head, there were parks and playgrounds and a rose-hued sky. Down here it was always dark and it was always raining.

Not since the early days of the colonisation of Mars had any one came down to the Undercities anymore, with the exception of troopers like himself or the occasional scientist checking the earth's temperature. Travelling back and forth from the floating cities down to the spaceports below used to be easy with the development of spacecrafts but with the worsening climate, null-gravity beams had been created to send down people from the Overcities to certain world cities beneath.

The corporations that hadn't set up shop in the Overcities were regularly lauded on the television as "pioneers" and "bold thinkers" that those living in the Undercities should look up to and aspire to be. Yesti recalled the government sponsored jingle that said "Say No to Crime, Say Yes to Greed" that was played on TV. The damn thing had been repeated so much it had taken him a week to get the jingle out of his head.

Hell, Yesti had even seen a tribute last month for some big-shot CEO in Detroit who had fallen to his death from the boardroom after getting shot multiple times by the famous "Robocop".Wish I could have seen the look on the poor bastard's face, Yesti thought and the idea brought a brief smile to his face if only momentarily.

The null-grav beam deposited him in front of an irregular complex of plasticrete buildings. Homeless scavengers moved among piles of rubbish and puddles of brackish water. He pulled out a stun pistol, just in case any of the underdwellers were around, but the place was silent apart from the hiss of the rain and the very faint, teeth-jarring whine of the null-grav generators.

Walking quickly, Yesti made his way up the broad flight of stairs to the entrance of the main building designated "Operations Room". Inside the large Spartan white room were flickering banks of equipment around the walls which monitored the state of the air, the water and the people. Strolling up to the reception area, Yesti gave a quick salute before presenting his paper form to the attendee who, after confirming his identity, informed him that his unit would be departing on their assignment in the morning.

"The Spinward Corporation thanks you for your service, trooper," the receptionist said in what Yesti assumed was supposed to be a cherry voice. It wasn't.

"Sure," He grumbled.Not like I have much choose, Yesti thought bitterly. He had once been a university student until the cost of his student debt had become a burden he could no longer afford. With half of his term left to go and desperately short of money, Yesti had enlisted in the US Army and been contracted to work for the Spinward Corporation.

It was supposed to have been a time of idealism and innovation: the breakout to the stars, primitive ships full of brave adventurers guided by pioneering astronauts.But nothing changes, Yesti thought.It's always the same motivations: fear and greed. Not brave adventurers, but desperate nobodies; not pioneering astronauts, but the faceless executives of a corporation.

People read their news from the corporation data-net, they go shopping at the corporation store, and they think they're doing well because they can buy a brand-new airspeeder every year. They don't talk about politics, at least not in public, because if they do the corporation can always arrange to have them transferred to a less congenial posting.

His first tour of combat had been the Thousand Day War – the ongoing war on Mars against the Ingenious Ice Warriors (1) of the planet. The war had been going on now for 5 years, with neither side apparently ready to surround. There were now even Martianspacifists, protesting for an end to the war and for humans to establish relations with the Martians.A ridiculous notion, Yesti thought. He'd like to see those goddamn protesters go to Mars and endure being hunkered in a bunker with the troops starving and down to radishes while the Ice Warriors rained a bombardment down onto them as he had done.

Now he had been summoned to participate in a highly classified mission to track down a high profile target who had time travelled into the past. No information was given on the identity of the target yet nor how he had managed to actual time travel, only that apparently both the Corporation and even the President herself considered it the utmost importance to find this target. All Yesti had been told was that Agent Isabelle Defries, the ice queen herself, would be leading the expedition.Lucky me,he thought dryly.

Leaving those thoughts for a moment, Yesti gave a curt nod to the receptionist as she gestured for the trooper to head to the bunks.

Everyone else was just yelling, laughing, or breaking furniture. The decibel level was dangerous. A whole troopship load of auxiliaries were celebrating their last night before embarkation and warp. The space station's canteen wasn't big enough to hold them, but they were determined to soak up every drop of alcohol they wouldn't be able to smuggle aboard ship.

There wasn't room to lift a plastic beaker without losing half of its contents. Yesti elbowed his way through the shifting jungle of bodies. He quickly collected four cans of Triple-Z, and he was determined that most of the liquid should go down his throat and not down the front of his shirt. He barged towards the exit.

The corridor was scarcely less crowded. To the left, a couple was kissing. Yesti felt a pang of envy and looked away. In the other direction the corridor was passable, because a lot of the bodies were horizontal. Yesti stepped over outstretched legs and arms. The four cans were still almost full.

He reached a man-sized piece of wall. It was clean; there was no blood or vomit on the floor here, and only a little beer. He put his back against the paintwork and slid down until the seat of his pants rested on the short-pile carpet. One by one, the four cans were arranged in a neat row between his knees. He picked up the first, and began to drink.

After a while, when the roof of his mouth felt comfortably numb and a tingling vibration had reached his extremities, Yesti looked around. On one side of him, a trooper named Tragg was snoring. Someone had painted a lipstick kiss on the metal plate in his forehead. Yesti turned his head. He could still do that, and the world didn't spin. He needed another Triple-Z.

On his other side, he could see over the rim of the second can, was a more attractive prospect than Tragg. This trooper was awake, female, and quite a looker. Yesti was a sucker for dolls with big brown eyes.

She noticed him. "Have I got two heads?" she said.

Yesti considered this for a moment – a moment too long.

"So stop staring. I didn't ask for company."

Yesti liked a challenge. "Don't mope, kid. You didn't get to go tomorrow, right?"

She looked at her boots, ran a hand through her long dark hair. She had a wide mouth, and full lips. She was sort of pouting, and Yesti thought it suited her. He wanted to see her smile, too, and then he started to wonder what those lips would be like to kiss. He took another gulp from the can. She seemed to have forgotten him.

"You good with your mouth?" he said.

"What did you say?"

He grinned. He had a grin that could charm the ladies, he knew that. He waved the can. "The booze talking. Ignore it. Listen, doll, we can't all get picked for this trip. Some you win, some you lose. I've seen you around, but I don't know you, do I?"

She turned to face him. Now she was holding a stun-gun in her right hand. "You don't know me, creep, and you're not going to get the chance – unless..."

It was as if she had only just seen him. Her big eyes widened, and adopted a puzzled expression. Yesti smiled and winked; he had that effect on women, sometimes, when they looked him in the eye for the first time.

"Are you going, tomorrow?" she asked. Her voice was softer.

"Sure. No better Tracker than Reynald Yesti. They can't do without me."

"A Tracker? Hey, that's something. You must be a clever guy."

Play this very cool, Yesti told himself.No more Triple-Z. I'm going into warp tomorrow, and I want so badly to get lucky tonight. What do I do next? Think! Wow, those lips. Yeah, got it – be interested in her. "And so what do you do in this bunch, pretty girl like you?" he said.

It looked like she was giggling. Maybe she was on something. All the better.

"Explosives," she said. "Special Weapons."

"You're kidding." No, she wasn't.Don't get her angry.

"Well, that's great, doll. Because I like a big bang myself." He winked again.

"I bet you do," she said. "And you're really on the ship tomorrow?"

He fumbled in his breast pocket. "I got the papers, see? Signed by ice-queen Defries herself."

She took the document, looked at it, handed it back, and gazed at him. "They say the mission's going to go into the past or some sh*t like that. This could be your last night of fun, soldier."

"I guess so." It didn't worry him. But she seemed pretty worked up about it. She wanted him, he could see that. There was something in her eyes – something feral, a deep hunger.

"This place stinks," she said. "Let's go to my cabin."

It took a while to register. He took a gulp of Triple-Z.

"Now?"

"Now. Come on, soldier. I need you."

She needs me. You're a clever bastard, Yesti. You're going to get yourself one hell of a send-off tonight.

The dark-haired doll had disappeared into the wash cubicle to freshen up. Yesti could hear running water, and splashing. He liked a woman who took care about personal hygiene.

The cabin was exactly the same as all the others on the station. Just about the same as all the others on every other station and every ship, too. As much character as a plastic cup, and room for two people if they didn't mind being very intimate. Yesti didn't mind at all.

He sat on the bunk, angled his head, and pulled open the overhead locker. Empty. He reached down and tugged at the drawer units under the bunk. Nothing but trousers and shirts and vests, old but clean and carefully folded.This baby travels light, he thought. Then he saw the photograph tapped to the top of the bunk. A young girl, very neatly dressed up, was beaming in her mother's arms. The girl's father, sister and brother also stood there in the photograph.

He was staring at it as she emerged from the cubicle to stand next to him.

"This your family?" he said, and then looked up. The first thing he saw was that she wasn't wearing anything except a towel; then he noticed that she wasn't looking friendly.

"Put it back," she said, with a smile that didn't reassure him.

"Just looking, ok?" He made a grab for the towel. She let him take it. He watched her body as she pushed it against him and folded her arms around his neck.

"You know," she said, ruffling the spiky hair on the back of his head, "until now I really hadn't decided about you."

"But you're sure now, right?" he said thickly, into her damp and sweet-smelling hair.

"Oh, I'm sure now," she said.

He felt a sharp pain on his right shoulder. "What's happening?" he said. His legs felt unsteady. He dropped to the bunk. Looking up was difficult. The girl was still there, in front of him.

She held her hand in front of his face. There was something in the palm. He couldn't see clearly.

"Injector pad," she said. "Just a local anaesthetic. But on top of a can of Triple-Z– I don't think you'll be going anywhere for a few days, Romeo."

He tried to stand. Nothing happened. He couldn't even feel his legs.

"Bitch!" he said. He could hardly hear his own voice. She had something else in her hand now. Something shiny.

"Keep still," she said brightly. "Not that you've got any choice. You won't feel a thing, and I mean that most sincerely."

It was a knife! He tried to shout, but heard himself croaking. This was worse than a nightmare. This was worse than a horror-holo.

"Don't panic, soldier. I won't damage your manhood, although God knows someone ought to. I just want your ID implant."

She worked with the knife, close to his chest. He hoped she was only cutting through his shirt. He felt nothing, not even when she pulled her hand away and he could see, between her finger and thumb, the small, pink plastic square that had been buried under layers of skin.

He could breathe. He could hear. He could open and close his eyes. He could feel his heart beating.

The woman didn't move away. She was squatting next to the bunk. She wanted him to see what she was doing. She was using the knife to remove her own ID chip, slicing through the epidermis between her breasts, slowly and carefully making tiny incisions that would free the implant without drawing blood. She took her time, glancing up at him from time to time, smiling lasciviously.

"That's it," she said. "And now you become me." She pressed her ID chip against his chest, and sprayed the area with an atomizer. "Plastigraft," she said. "You already look as good as new. And now I become..."

She took the papers from his shirt pocket. "I become Reynald Yesti. Second Tracker – what a come-down. Never mind, eh? It's only temporary. Just until I get on board that troopship and we go into the past." She fondled the atomizer and licked her lips as she squirted artificial skin into her cleavage.

"Well. That was wonderful, darling. How was it for you?"

He fell sideways on to the bunk. "Who?" he managed to say.

She smiled down at him, grabbed the photograph and a pair of trousers, a shirt and vest from her bunk.

"I'm you, of course. But– for a while, anyway – my real name was Jane. And now I'm going to go on your mission into the past. This high profile target you're being sent after? I'm going tokillhim. Sleep well."

Now

Hawkins-2005

Who did the Mayor think Greg was, some kind of ordinary citizen?

Greg Adams told himself to calm down. The Mayor had arrived here in the Adams corporate offices, after all, even if it had been hours after he had been summoned. And, Greg reminded himself, he had to be pleasant to this windbag politician, at least until the Mayor gave him what he wanted.

"I feel almost vulgar," he said with a nod and a smile, "about mentioning the new power plant." Greg paused to palm his fist into his open hand. "But if we're going to break ground when we've got to break ground, I need permits, variances, tax incentives – " He paused again to shrug apologetically. "– that kind of pesky nonsense."

Mayor Gwendolyn "Winnie" Williams looked at Greg as if she had never heard of the power plant. Which, of course, she hadn't. But Greg Adams never let a detail like that get in his way.

She was wearing a smart but modest trouser suit, the only nod to her famed flamboyance a brooch made of sparkling blue sapphire. Yet the same gossip tabloids that spent so much time pairing thesingleMayor with every eligible socialite also worked themselves into a frenzy over what outfit she would wear at certain events and functions.

The Mayor had plans for many Great Works, extending from infrastructure to culture – the Hawkins Fair coming in 2006, the ongoing facelift on the town's dam, and investments in improving and expanding communications, health care, housing, and education. The Hawkins arts scene had flourished as the construction of movie theatres, art gallerias, and concert halls boomed.

Mayor Williams' Hawkins wasn't perfect–no government was or ever could be–but it was a town that gave people room to dream. No, even better. It encouraged dreams, big and small. The spirit of optimism and hope and possibility was the cornerstone of her government and indeed, flowed onto the town itself. Hawkins had its flaws, but really, things could be a hell of a lot worse.

"Power plant?" Mayor Williams objected. "Mr Adams, our studies show Hawkins has enough energy to sustain growth into the next century."

Greg responded with a hearty laugh. "Your analysts are talking growth at one percent per annum. That's not growth, that's a mild swelling. I'm planning ahead for a revitalized Hawkins!" He opened all ten of his fingers before the Mayor's face. "Imagine a Hawkins of the future lit up like a blanket of stars." He closed his fists, then opened and closed them again. "But blinking, on and off?" He shook his head. "Embarrassingly low on juice? Frankly, I cringe, Madam Mayor."

"Sorry," Mayor Williams replied dismissively before Greg could add another word. "You'll have to submit reports, blueprints and plans through the usual committees, through the usual channels."

Greg almost lost his smile. Who did this two-bit politician think she was talking to? But he couldn't let the Mayor go now, not when he was so close. It was, after all,hisdepartment stores that were so important to Hawkins's economy, not the so-called "Compassionate Conservative" Mayor's socialistic Great Works that she had forced onto an unsuspecting Hawkins. When Adam's prospered, the town prospered too. The Mayor knew that already and yet didn't want to sign off on his power plant. Did she want Hawkins to end up like California with the energy crisis that state had faced? There had to be some way to make Winnie see the error of her ways.

He fixed the Mayor with his winning smile – the same smile that had helped him build his chain of department stores that now spread across several states and had thousands of employees. Sure there were growing pains, as he referred to them, with certain employees attempting to unionize and demanding "entitlements" they seemed to think they deserved to have like sick pay and higher wages but Adams Enterprises had moved quickly by first announcing that it would deny wage and benefit increases to workers in stores with union activity and then providing new, better benefits and quicker raises to non-union stores and sending text messages and mailers to employees warning them of the downfalls of unions, offering bonuses to employees who quit before the union election, and even accessing the drop box that employees used to mail their ballots. (2)

Adams Enterprises was the symbol of everything Greg stood for, and maybe, a sign of even greater things to come. Hehadto have the Mayor's okay and he wanted it now. "I have enough signatures," he said, still smiling, "from my employees alone to warrant a recall of a Mayor who isn't doing her job."

"That's not a threat," he added. "Just simple math."

But Winnie smiled back at him. "Maybe," she replied as she rose from her seat at the conference table and made her way towards the door. "But you don't have an issue, Greg. Nor do you have a candidate."

And with that, Mayor Williams left the conference room without another word, leaving a fuming Greg Adams alone to craft a plan.

If the Mayor wouldn't give it to him the easy way, he'd just have to take it any way he could.

Gwendolyn "Winnie" Williams threw open the large wooden doors to the Mayor's Mansion at the exact time the butler reached for the doorknobs.

"Honey, I'm home!"

She waited for the answering silence before finishing the joke.

"Oh, I forgot. I'm not married.Anymore."

It was an old joke, but it was her joke. Herformerhusband had been arrested following the fire at Starcourt Mall in '85 and, once the evidence had come out he had been working with andfinancinga Russian operation taking place on American soil right under the nose of the CIA, FBI, hell President Reagan himself, Larry Kline had quietly been given the death penalty.

Winnie had claimed ignorance, given she didn't know the full extent of her husband's finance of Starcourt as the Mayor andcertainlyhad no idea Larry had been working with Russians, and given the benefit of the doubt by the U.S. Government. She had immediately filed for divorce, not wanting to be associated inanyway with a man who committed treason, and claimed a large amount from the divorce. After all, a dead man needs no money. Once the divorce had been finalised, Winnie had been free to set out on her own journey.

She did not dwell on her ex-husband much anymore. With the benefit of time and hindsight, Winnie had realised what a charade their marriage had been. She was no aristocrat: born in 1954 her father, an alcoholic Irishman, had abandoned his family when Winnie was eight; her mother, a priest who was reserved and genteel and encouraged her daughter. Her mother taught Winnie that alcoholism was a disease and urged her not to blame her father for succumbing to it.

Throughout the 60s and early 70s,Winnie did odd jobs and briefly worked in a cousin's law office in 1972, where she meet a 35 year old lawyer named Larry Kline, who had recently graduated from the University of Indiana and a member of a wealthy family. In 1975 at the age of 22, she had married the now 38 year old Larry. Looking back now, Winnie reflected that Larry had fallen hard for her looks and personality and that she had been young and naive to marry him but it was what it was.

No point dwelling on the past, she thought.

After slipping into more comfortable evening wear – sweatpants and a cozy white thermal – the mayor proceeded up to the private residence. Everything on the first floor, and only the first floor, was open to the public on weekends only, but she found herself more comfortable on the second and third floor. They felt more secluded and secure somehow.

Maybe it had something to do with how the house was built. Standing three stories tall, to which the high ceilings inside could attest, the mayor's residence was both welcoming and intimidating upon approaching it from any side. It was a large, sprawling, and imposing construction, but it was also very elegant, with its large marble staircase, grand ballroom, and ornate chandelier in the foyer gifted to one of the town's mayors by Vice President Thomas R. Marshall in the 1910s. With a detailed façade and slated roofs that spread out from the tower rising out on the left end of the structure, the building was of late Victorian design. It sat on a sprawling 10 acres that featured well-kept lawns, marble fountains (turned off during times of drought, of course), and a long but not-too-winding main driveway. The land was practically a perfect location for a fort.

The mansion was actually the third iteration of the town mayor's official residence. The first was a simple brick house assembled a year after the town decided to finally start having a mayor; it was destroyed by Confederate sympathizers in 1863. The second version was a larger establishment in the English Tudor style; it was burned to the ground during an anti-tax revolt in 1887.

Winnie cared not for the conditions of the first two, though, for she was quite satisfied enjoying the third iteration, first as the "First Lady of Hawkins" and now as its mayor. She savoured the 19th-century building's 20th-century features, such as the giant 60-inch "Electrohome" Console TV, and the top-notch wine cellar, for all they were. Though, she would admit if one asked her, its older amenities – the golden bathroom fixtures modelled off the ones found in the governor's mansion, the porcelain gifts from last yesteryear's ambassadorial drop-ins lining the hallways, the lacy floral motifs donning much of the master bedroom – were not without their charm.

In fact, as the mayor sat down in the second-floor library to enjoy some peppermint schnapps while reviewing the annual budget requests from various town departments, she couldn't help but appreciate the lack of a draft in the room despite the wide window facing the north, from where Canada's winds battered the town every winter. There was something odd about that lack of –

"Will that be all, ma'am," the head butler tapped on the door and slowly entered the private library.

"Yes, thank you," the mayor replied, "have a nice night."

The butler nodded, politely as always. "I'll see you in the morning." He paused. "Is something the matter, ma'am? You looked troubled."

"What politician doesn't?"

"City council giving you more headaches?"

"No, nothing like that," she pondered for a moment. "I'm just thinking about this mansion. How strong and sturdy it is."

"Oh, indeed, ma'am. This old girl has certainly held up over the years. It has barely taken a beating from the worst of this century's cruellest blizzards."

"They probably didn't want this place razed again," Winnie said. "When they built this baby, it was built to last."

"Indeed, ma'am," the butler nodded.

Winnie thought for a moment about the first-floor dining room, sun porch, kitchen, pantry and event spaces. She compared their open feel to the closer-knit warmth of a mahogany surrounding the "family living area", floors 2 and up.

"Like, take the windows – the bottom floor has these large floor-to-ceiling windows, but here they're very tall but strangely narrow."

"Yes, they let in sunlight and keep out all but the skinniest people from slipping through the pane," the butler answered coolly.

"Really?"

"Or so I've been told."

"Hm. And the walls are so thick, first floor too."

"Why not? Thick walls protect you from the winter chills."

"And also from enemy fire," the mayor said jokingly.

"If you say so, ma'am," the butler replied more seriously before biding her goodnight and leaving.

With the budget requested organized by level of urgency and just enough schnapps gulped down to get a buzz without getting tipsy, Winnie proceeded to check on her son. "He must be home, it's school night," she said to herself.

Winnie ignored the edgy "keep out" sign and swung open the door to Mason's private quarters, a generous corner bedroom with a balcony, skylight, walk-in closet, and recessed – but seldom used – study nook on the side. Clothes were tossed about in a shambolic matter that made sense only to the designer of the dishevelled display.

Who, it quickly became apparent, was absent.

Winnie cursed loudly. This was not the first time her son had snuck away at night, to go drinking or partying. He had had a wild side to him almost since childhood and seemed to relish deifying her authority. Oh she had tried to be patient with him, even sending him to a boarding school in Europe. But nothing,nothinghad worked to curb his arrogance. He would smile and act as polite as possible towards her as if nothing was wrong.

Exactly like his father, thought Winnie bitterly.

There would be no point in waiting for Mason to arrive home; assuming he even did this time. Closing her son's bedroom door behind her, Winnie proceeded down the corridor to her own bedroom, eager to turn in for the night.

The Wolfe Club

If there was one certainty in Mason Williams' life, it was that he could always bet on himself. Quite literally. Deep in the back room of the Wolfe Club, Mason was one of five players hunched over a roulette wheel that the proprietor of the gambling den had created as a true game of chance. Illuminated by a low-hanging lamp, the chrome-and-gold pit spun, and each player tossed their chips into the fray. Mason kept his eyes trained on the shimmering carapace of his chip. He'd chosen the violet-and-emerald one because they were his family's colours, and since he was gambling with his family fortune, the correlation seemed apt.

As the spinning slowed and each tiny sphere rattled into one of the forty slots, several players threw up their hands in disgust and disappointment. Mason squeezed his trembling knee as his chip teetered on the rusty line between two divots. He'd bet his last stack of cash, plus the chit the owner herself had backed him, on account of him being such a good regular and all.

The chip finally tumbled into the golden jackpot.

Mason blinked sleep-deprived eyes.

He'd won.

He'd finally won and it had only taken—Mason glanced at his watch. Damn it all to hell, had he really been here for ten hours?

One losing player smacked the lamp overhead, causing it to swing and strike the dealer. Two hulking enforcers removed the poor loser, leaving those accusing the owner of fixing the games utterly silent. Mason eased back into his seat. His fingers had come away sticky from the armrest. He didn't want to know what the secretion was, but he was certain it hadn't come from him

Reaching into his pocket, Mason took out a small silver flask, unscrewed the top and took a quick sip. Smoky whiskey burned pleasantly all the way down as he carefully watched the patrons of the gambling hall thin out. Some headed to find better fortunes in the rat-infested dens lining the pleasure district. Others might clean up and head out for the start of the workday.

Mason gave no sign of moving, and neither did the African-American woman or a tipsy older man who tapped a credit card on the lip of the table.

"What?" the African-American woman sitting beside him all night asked. He'd rather liked the black diamond marks on her cheeks, and she'd rather liked taking his cash. Until now. "The cheap stuff's not good enough for you?"

The old man chortled, and Mason drank again, a drop landing on his thousand-thread-count suit.

"How do you know this isn't the cheap stuff?" he asked.

"Don't mind him." The owner of the Wolfe Club – Emily – spoke in her scratchy, whistling voice. "Hawkins's little prince doesn't trust anyone to pour him a drink, isn't that right?"

Emily was a short, toad-like woman with a wrinkled, pinched mouth that gave her the appearance of sucking on a sourdrop. Her large protruding eyes were affixed on Mason as she slipped between the roulette and blackjack tables. She relieved the dealer and plunked into his seat. A glass of red wine appeared at her side from the bartender.

"Emily, darling, I mean no offense," Mason said, taking another sip of his French whiskey, a gift from his now former girlfriend on his last visit. "But this was a very good year."

And it was true. That batch was a thousand dollars a bottle. A tragic shipping accident had made it the rarest batch in France, with only three hundred bottles left in existence. But what Mason Williams wasn't saying was that he'd seen far too many people poisoned in his day to trust a drink from a dank hole in the wall, even one as—nice—as the Wolfe Club.

The exact date of the foundation of the Wolfe Club is uncertain. The second half of the eighteenth century saw the opening of many coffee houses and gaming rooms, the premises and proprietors shifted often with changing fashions and fortunes. It had started out as a men's only club in Hawkins, famous for its food and wine being deducted at the end of each weekpro ratafrom the profits of the winners. It wasn't until the late 60's that the club allowed women to enter and gamble.

"Why would I poison you, my best, most handsome customer?" Emily asked slyly. "Besides, you owe me too much money. If anyone wants you dead, it's that French politician's daughter. What's her name?"

"Mariette Beaulieu," he answered. Even going to the Wolfe Club wasn't enough to get away from the gossip of his very public split from the daughter of a French politician. They had met when Mason had been sent by his mother to attend Ecole des Roches, one of the most expensive boarding schools in northern France, as an exchange student. (No doubt to get rid of me, Mason thought bitterly.)

In his first term, Mason had felt like a fish out of water. Everything seemed impressive to him: the old buildings, the beautiful Normandy countryside and the houses that the students were divided into, each with its own coat of arms. The 60-hectare campus was so vast that some students had to take a bus to get to class. There were tennis courts, a swimming pool, a theatre and even a go-kart track.

Most of the students there had the same issues as kids from poor families: neglectful parents, drug problems and depression. The difference was the students of Ecole des Roches had their bank accounts to make up for it. In year eight, several of Mason's friends had come close to overdosing after downing a dozen antidepressants. The staff had found out about this after someone became unconscious in class. Mason recalled hearing from a teacher that if the students hadn't had their stomachs pumped, they would've been dead.

Mariette Beaulieu did not have to worry about drugs and overdosing, she had always been carefully. And elegant. And gorgeous. And she certainly knew how to make an entrance; on the first day of school she had hopped out of a helicopter that landed on the lawn of the sports stadium as if it were the most normal thing in the world, Louis Vuitton suitcase in hand.

Mariette had been captain of the lacrosse team and she and Mason had hit it off immediately, not just thanks to thehugeamounts of sexual chemistry the pair had with each other but also that, unlike other students, she wasn't some insufferable, unlikeable snob. Sure she was an overachiever but over time Mason had grown to care what she thought about him. "And don't believe everything you read in the tabloids."

Emily reset the roulette table and re-stacked the selection of casino chips. "So you didn't break up with her by standing her up at the airport?"

"No, that's right," he admitted. "There's just more to the story." Mason bit down on his back teeth and frowned at his warped reflection on the side of the lamp. The yellow overhead light made his complexion sallow, and emphasized dark circles that hadn't been there three days before. His dark hair was rumpled, and his eyes were bleary, but he had looked worse.

In his pocket, his phone buzzed. Likely his mother. Again. He silenced it because he knew what she wanted. His mother wanted what everyone else did: an answer as to why he'd done what he'd done. Instead of making the decision to settle down, start to get serious, he'd taken his favourite car and a stack of cash, and wound up at whatever gambling den, club, or cantina would give him entry. He didn't need to explain himself. Why bother? The tabloids, his "friends," and his mother had already made up their minds. The only place to hide from another one of his mother's interventions was at the Wolfe Club. Which was why he was determined to let his good luck take him as far as it would go. His talent for silencing any voice of doubt allowed him to ignore his phone.

"Besides, you're all much better company," Mason said, never letting his smile falter. A lifetime of the very best schooling, from private tutors to Ecole des Roches, had given him pretty manners. Emily ate it up. "And because you've been so good to me and extended me a chip to keep playing, I'd never leave you in the lurch."

"'Cause you don't want to end up in a ditch," the African-American woman murmured.

He leaned forward on his elbow and grinned. "Darling, don't threaten me with a good time."

"Losing to you is not my idea of a good time," she purred before she stacked her winnings into neat towers. The two of them had been trading the same cash back and forth for hours.

"You keep having your fun, little prince. The rest of us must go earn our fortunes." She raised her hand to caress his face, but he leaned away.

What bores, he thought. He wasn't going to let her or anyone ruin his new streak. He sat up and reached for the tray of cues.

The old man snatched a drink off a passing serving girl's tray. He knocked it back and then left himself.

"You too," Emily added, gesturing at him. "Go home, Williams. I al ready run the risk of angering your mother."

"Leave my mother out of this," Mason said, a hard edge clipping his voice, one he did his best to keep buried.

Stragglers in the club turned to glare at him, to see if he'd cause a scene, if he'd join the unfortunate folks tossed out into the gutter out side. He couldn't help but feel he'd done the very thing Emily had wanted him to do: let himself be baited. Because of his mother, the admirable, glorious, magnanimous Mayor Williams, he had been denied entry into most of the clubs in Hawkins, but not here.

This was a place where he could have fun, forget. A place of shadows where he didn't have to be Mason Williams, son of the most important woman in the town. He could just be his wretched self.

An unearthly grinding and howling sound could be heard echoing throughout the highway – as if ancient and rusting machinery were being forced back into life. The shriek of tortured machinery grew to a shrill climax and a faint light began to faintly materialize as it blinked above the rectangular hollow. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the hideous noise ceased, the yellow light went out and a scruffy blue police box now stood on the road.

The doors swung open and a slightly old-looking man with wisps of white hair stepped out, his keen eyes scanning the surroundings before fixing on the sign in front of him that read "Entering Hawkins". He was at least in his late sixties and perhaps early seventies with a nearly white beard combed back in a dignified fashion.

"We're here!" He said.

A dark-skinned middle-aged woman emerged from the police box behind him. She had black hair and wore a frock coat of navy tweed with seven silver buttons on the left side and one on the right. She wore a kente shirt with frilled stand collar and cuffs under a double-breasted waistcoat of Prussian blue tweed with sixteen bronze buttons. She also had on black combat trousers tucked into black Doc Marten shoes. (3)

The woman-the Doctor-gazed around disinterested at their location. "Not much to look at," she remarked. "Honestly I've gotnoidea why you'd want to come back to Earth. It's such a boring, backwater little planet. Hardly of any interest in my opinion."

Noticing a small purple flower on the side grass next to where they had landed, the old man bent down and gently picked it up. "As someone who has lived on this planet for hundreds of years I take offense to you calling it "boring", Doctor," he replied, his eyes twinkling with possibilities. "There is great beauty to be found here." He handed the Doctor the flower, who examined it

"The same can be said ofanyplanet, Flint," The Doctor said, unceremoniously tossing the flower onto the ground.

"Trust me, Earth is different;special. Who knows," Flint gave a quick smile, "you may one day end up on Earth without your Tardis."

The Doctor snorted. "I highly doubt that. I couldn't imagine being stuck on one insignificant planet like Earthever," she dismissed.

Flint's eyebrows rose and he shrugged. Despite his own misgivings, he had actually come to like the Doctor a bit. The many missions the two had been sent on had certainly helped bring them closer as friends. The pair had just now come back from a mission on the planet Draconia and Flint had been rather surprised how much he'd enjoyed this particular assignment from Division. A group of isolationist Draconians had protested the ongoing deliberations over whether or not Draconia should become a permanent member of the emerging Galactic Federation. The Time Lords, through the Matrix, had discovered how important a member Draconia would be to the Galactic Federation in the future and had witnessed, via the Matrix, that the isolationist Draconians would attempt an assassination to prevent Draconia from joining the Galactic Federation and had, via Division, sent the Doctor and Flint to stop the assassination and insure that Draconia became a member of the Federation. That adventure had turned into a whirlwind of spies, political double crossing and an overnight race to get away from a group of heavily armed mercenaries, which the Doctor had enjoyed a lot more than Flint had.

Still, the Doctorhadsaved his life by hypnotizing the lead mercenary to fire on his own men instead of Flint. The mission had ended up a success with the Draconian Empire voting to join the Galactic Federation, exactly as the Time Lords had wanted. However, it was once they had left the planet that Flint had all of a sudden asked the Doctor to drop him off on Earth, specifically a town in America called Hawkins.

It had certainly come as a surprise request to the Doctor but, nevertheless, she had complied with her friend's ask. Now as they stood on the dirt road, the building sense of goodbye seemed to be inevitable.

Perhaps sensing how uncomfortable the Doctor was with the prospect at them parting ways, Flint turned to face his friend. "Perhaps you'd consider coming with me. I could use your help," he implored.

The Doctor shook her head reluctantly. "YouknowI can't. We've had this conversation before and I'll keep giving you the same reason why: Division has a tracker built in my TARDIS. I have searched multiple times throughout the TARDIS and cannot find the damn thing. Division is becoming more and more amoral in their actions and the missions they've sent us on. And I hate it. I hate the entire organisation and I want nothing more than to tear it down to ash. But I know I can't. Even if I wanted to leave them, they'd just recall me and my TARDIS back to Gallifry. Ican'tescape them."

"So that's it then? Just admit defeat? You're not even going toattemptto leave?" Flint asked. "I never took you for a coward, Doctor."

The Doctor gave a hard glare at Flint. "You're fortune tonothave to work for Division," She replied, perhaps more harshly than intended. "You're a freelancer. Youhavea choice."

"Some choice," Flint said gruffly. "Plucked from my own planet and time, forced to work for them in exchange for the chance, thechance, of being returned to earth! From my perspective this will be the first time I have stepped foot on Earth in decades!" Flint let out a great sigh. For a brief moment he felt his age, felt like the ancient being he was. He seemed to look both old and young at the same time. "The price of immortality."

The Doctor gave a solemn nod. She knew, perhaps even more than Flint, how lonely and unspeakablyboringliving forever was. She had already experienced a lot as a forced agent of the Division, and as a result her personality would sometimes range from being cold and harsh to bored and withdrawn. Human life, on the other hand, was fixed – they started with a birth, then passed through many stages of life, before definitely ending in death.

The Doctor had been one of the Division's first operatives, and had began going on assignments aimed at giving advanced science and ideas to other growing races while the Time Lords used the Time Vortex to impose their order on the universe. Many thousands of years passed, and the Doctor lived on, regenerating time and time again while acting on Division's behalf. The Doctor eventually bonded to a Type 40 TARDIS, and the TARDIS likewise thought differently to her sister's past and future.

Now Flint looked sad. "So this is goodbye, old friend?" he held out his hand to shake. The Doctor shook it.

"You do realise that the Time Lords will be wondering where you are once I return by myself? What will I tell them?"

Flint looked thoughtful, then shrugged. "Just say I stayed behind on Draconia," he suggested. "They'll come after me I'm sure but I shall be long gone by the time they come to Earth."

The Doctor nodded. With nothing else to say, she stepped back into the blue box and with a wheezing groaning sound the TARDIS disappeared from the spot where it had so briefly materialised. A small shaggy dog, ambling down the tree-lined road on some business of its own, pricked up its ears in astonishment, and barked suspiciously.

Now alone, Flint turned and began his walk down the long road towards Hawkins, the weight of all too many years pressing heavily across his shoulders. Too many years, too many battles, too many defeats. He had not shared the true reason he had requested the Doctor suddenly bring him to Hawkins. Part of him was still debating whether he should have told the Doctor or not. Hehadmeant it when he had asked for her help – the task he would face would not be an easy one.

Flint had been born as Akharin in Mesopotamia in 383 BC. From what he could remember, his early years in Mesopotamia were that of a fool and a bully. Young and full of arrogance, Akharin had joined up to be part of a Sumerian military force. At the age of 30 he had been put in charge of a large expedition to invade and attack the neighbour to the far end, Eridu, who had refused to pay taxes. It was a stupid reason to go to war if you asked Akharin but being young at the time all he had cared about was the thrill and excitement for the upcoming battle.

What Akharin thought would be straightforward tax collecting turned out to be a massacre. He and his troops had arrived in Eridu in the early hours of the night (the trek from Mesopotamia to Eridu had taken them three days and exhausted his men) demanding that the King's taxes be paid or they would take the monies by force. In response, a single horn had suddenly sounded and on cue hundreds of armed men came charging out from the depths of the city's gates to attack Akharin and his men.

The Eridu militia outnumbered Akharin's forces 8,000 to 4,000 men. Leading them was the handsome, six-foot figure of the powerfully-built Taribatum, who claimed to be a descendant of the Mesopotamia figure Gilgamesh (4). The militia deployed slings and bows and arrows that caught Akharin's forces off guard. Their bronze armour allowed them to hold off the bows and arrows at first but the relentless assault quickly whittled Akharin's men down.

The ambush was ended when Taribatum charged at Akharin in battle and stabbed him thrice, once in the arm, once in the shoulder, and finally in the chest. He staggered backwards; his eyes closed with the torpor of approaching death and breathed his last breath.

There wasn't anything after death. No heaven, no hell. At least, not that Akharin could remember, because he felt the sudden, painful rush of air enter his lungs as if he were breathing for the first time, the only sign to him that any time at all had passed were the emptied husks of his men, sprawled out in all directions from him, mirroring the dunes in the distances.

The fresh corpses stretched far and wide; their swords and shields, once powerful tools for preserving the lives of his men during battle, lay about motionless, catching and bouncing off the light of the moon. Their armor sparkled dimly like the distant stars above them. The glimmering sea of the fallen, though, nearly overwhelmed Akharin with its worsening stench; rotting flesh and the tangy sting of fresh blood seeping into the sands seemed to envelope the air. The wind forced the whiff of the night up his nostrils as if to compel him to acknowledge the putrid demise of his brothers in arms.

They were just mounds of bone and skin now; the only movement they emanated was from the winds pushing on them, tossing about their trinkets – locks of hair, bits of clothing, loose weapons and unsuccessful good luck charms all caught in the breeze – like erosion shifting the sand.

Akharin turned to see what few survivors had risen from the piles. Only a handful had managed to survive by hiding in the sand itself or under the bodies of the fallen. Despite his surviving fighters being nearby, he spoke his thoughts aloud. Perhaps he was speaking to his diseased brethren before him. Whether they could hear his promise or not, he promised them, "Two things must and will be now done. A reason for this massacre will be found and vengeance will be had."

"Move Sourfire over here," Akharin ordered a duo of survivors.

"We tried him there, he won't fit." Hours had passed since Akharin and a dozen of his soldiers had survived the bloody confrontation. Tired, weary, and shell-shocked, they could not rest for the night until after their deceased brethren had been laid to rest. Akharin joined his men in digging a mass grave a few feet from where they had perished.

The aftermath of the battle seemed to be more exhausting than the battle itself. Jrakwell, whose survival may have had more to do with sheer dumb luck that infantry prowess, complained as he pressed down on Sourfire, the large soldier poking out of the pile, "There's no more room."

"We'll have to make some, then," Akharin concurred.

"Right," Jrakwell agreed.

As Akharin grabbed a shovel, Jrakwell grabbed Sourfire's armour.

"What are you going?" They accidentally asked in unison.

Jrakwell explained, "Well, I'd be easier to strip 'em down to make room. We can recycle the armour or sell it or – "

Akharin took offense and bellowed, "A soldier must be buried in uniform if he is killed in battle with it on. It is a matter of dignity and honour."

"But I'm so tired. And besides, I'm a soldier, not a gravedigger," Jrakwell protested, more out of desperation to retire, heal and get some rest than to oppose his commander's orders.

Before the soldier could say more though, Akharin's sword was already drawn and pointed at his neck. "Tonight, we are all both," the leader uttered. Akharin tossed him a shovel and grabbed one for himself.

Expanding the mass grave to accommodate the remaining figures took up almost the rest of the night. After only a few hours rest, Akharin and his men rose with the dawn creeping over the dunes, casting a reddish hue across the cleared spot of the massacre and highlighting a spilled blood still visible in the send. Akharin and his men left the grim scene behind them, the mass grave signalled only by the symbol of a Lion(carved in emblem ripped from one of the shields) to represent Ishtar - the goddess of fertility, love and war - secured by a pile of rocks, to watch over the fallen.

Akharin and the men travelled the rest of the morning and into the hours of the late afternoon before they had finally arrived back at Mesopotamia, the Land Between Two Rivers. Their arrival at the city of Babylon received little fanfare as the men had no time for any accolades – they simply made their way across bazaar and up to the grand palace, an impressive building in its own right that was best known for being festooned with terraced vegetation from across the known world. Some called it a stunning combination of architecture and landscape, of modernity and nature; Akharin thought the gardens made the palace look abandoned and unkempt, as they covered the hard work that laborers and sculptors had put into the building's over-elaborate construction.

When the Palace Guard recognized Akharin, they bowed out of respect, understanding with solemnity what it meant for so few men to return. Once inside the Palace, their presence was announced. Akharin and his men entered the grand room, an impressive location with high ceiling, allowing even mid-day sun to illuminate the area. Several servants lingered in the corners. In the room's center, atop a lavish throne of blue and gold, the city's colors, sat their leader, The King. A heavily obese man, the King was known to be an incredibly corrupt, vain, and slovenly individual who over the years had become paranoid that the people of Mesopotamia may try to overthrow him.

"Akharin," The King remarked with a jolt as he sat upright. After a split second he smiled, "I'm so glad to see you have returned. Your presence is confirmation that you were victorious!"

"Think again, my king," Akharin skipped the pleasantries. "This is all that remains of my men. Do you remember how many I left with?"

"Of course," acknowledged the King, narrowing his eyes studying Akharin. The dead silence spoke louder than a reprimand for Akharin's indiscrete questioning of the King's intelligence. "And I must say that that this is a terrible development." The King descended from his throne to walk over to Akharin's side. "But if it was necessary, then they did not perish in vain."

With a snap of his fingers, the King dismissed the servants from the room. Only the Captain of the Palace Guards remained. "Come, you must relax after a tiring day." He escorted Akharin over to the side of the room, and the men followed. The King led the men to the long table displaying numerous delicacies and poured Akharin a drink and handed it to him. "Here. Enjoy some fruit."

"It was an ambush, your king. Though we fought as hard as we could, the enemy overwhelmed us," Akharin continued as he nursed the drink in his hand, too focused on finding answers to take a sip. "We were outnumbered out there."

"Oh, surely you could have defeated them regardless of their size!"

"We were outflanked and surrounded!" Jrakwell protested.

"Never interrupt the king!" The Captain of the Palace Guards snapped, glaring at Jrakwell.

Akharin ignored the Captain's threat. "The speed and intensity in which Taribatum attacked us leads me to believe there could be a traitor within the palace. With your blessing I would like to request to investigate who this potential spy may be," He suggested his suspicion growing as he eyed the King distrustfully.

The King scoffed at the idea. "You claim there is a spy in my court based on what? Because that fool Taribatum possessed bows and arrows that you did not?"

Wionby, one of Akharin's men, asked, "Wait, when did the commander say they used bows and arrows against us?"

"Good question," Akharin noted as he handed his drink over to Jrakwell, who was standing next to him. Akharin approached the King. With his eyes widened, he made the accusation, "You knew they were going to attack us, my King?"

The King took on a much calmer demeanour as he ceased feigning innocence. "To be honest, I'm surprised to see survivors at all." Calmer and with more confidence, or perhaps condemnation of his inferiors, the King proceeded to reveal why he had purposely sent Akharin and his men to perish at the hands of the enemy: the massacre would allow him to justify an invasion against the alleged progeny of Gilgamesh and to finally bring the city of Eridu under his rule.

"You betrayed us?!" Akharin yelled. Rage and anger was close to overwhelming him as he glared at this so-called king.

"I did what needed to be done. Taribatum is a splinter in my toe. He has been for years. If I do not extract him now, it could become infected. I secretly had the royal army supply his militia with the bows and arrows necessary to defend themselves. A small amount, to be sure. But enough that if, shall we say, certaintax collectorscame they would easily be overwhelmed."

"This was never about glory or about Mesopotamia. This was all about you."

"I am the King. I AM Mesopotamia."

Akharin was enraged, "This was all about lining your coffers with blood from conquests. About touting your name and title just for the sake of it. It was never about the people!"

"Akharin's right," Wionby said to the rest of the soldiers. "The King's betrayed us! He's betrayed his country and its people!" With a rising murmur giving way to a clamour of protests, Akharin locked eyes with Wionby. Akharin glanced at the King and back, then nodded. Wionby understood.

Watching the whole event unfold, the Captain of the Guard stepped toward the group while the King stepped back from them. "One more step and I'll call for the Imperial Guards!" The King threatened as he turned around but found that route blocked; same for any possible path to his left and right.

"Captain!" He beckoned.

"Sir?"

"Arrest these men!"

"Now why would I follow the orders of a traitor?"

It was now the King's turn for widening eyes. Before he could finish shouting "traitors!" Akharin and the soldiers had readied their swords and were descending upon the King. With a series of thrusts, steel sliced through ornate garments and wrinkly flesh.

When the regicide had concluded, the Captain of the Guard sighed, "The King is dead. Long live the King."

"No," suggested Wionby, "Long live Akharin!" The rest of the men agreed as they cheered for their leader. They were certain that Flint would make for a better leader of Mesopotamia.

Akharin, not wanting to argue or disappoint his men, sent many of them to assemble his other supporters in communities across the region. If Flint was going to take over the Land Between Two Rivers, having support across both rivers seemed like a good idea.

Unsurprisingly, Eridu refused to support a "devil" as they referred to Akharin as and Taribatum would tell his men that if Akharin were to attempt to impose his will on the city of Eridu he would send that "devil" back to hell. Exactly as Akharin had intended. It was time to finish what he had started.

Not everyone on Akharin's new court agreed however.

"There's no other way," Akharin announced.

Wionby asked, "Are you certain?"

Yuthren the scout commented, "You heard the messengers. They confirmed what we already knew. Taribatum has full control over the city, him and his informants and his bribers. The locals do not care for the declaration of Akharin as the new ruler. Merchants from Eridu are already refusing to recognize the new rule. What must be done will be done."

Akharin held much contempt for Eridu, the city known for its flat roofs, its narrow alleys, and its network of lengthy water canals linking it to the Tigris. The city government was on Taribatum's payroll, and the children were taught in school and at home to honour him above all others. Songs and parades celebrated his greatness, and the city guards quietly and quickly silenced any dissenters. Local merchants swore allegiance to Taribatum in exchange for low taxes; revenue instead poured into the city from the north, as merchants upstream paid heavy tolls to ensure their wares passed by the City on The River Tigris without incident.

"The heathens," Akharin sneered as he gazed out at Eridu, its lights flickering in the desert night like the foreboding fire of an enemy's base camp. "Anyone who praises a man like that is either too corrupted in the mind to know any better or too corrupt in the soul to care."

"I know, Akharin," Wionby hesitated, "But…even the children?"

Akharin sighed, "They will live by Taribatum's whim and die by his whim. That's a fate worse than death. We must end their suffering."

"So, when do we attack, Akharin?" Wionby asked as the pair peered at the city in the distance.

"Tomorrow night, once our friends from the north join us." Akharin declared.

"It'll be a massacre," Wionby bemoaned.

"It'll be a liberation," Yuthren countered.

"It'll be retribution," said Akharin.

The clouds made all the difference. Without a moon and stars, the city guards failed to spot the army approach the city. An ad hoc coalition of mercenaries, Akharin loyalists, and northerners assembled 5 miles out to train and plan the attack. Akharin mentored his growing followers as much as he could before the assault. Akharin was proud of his men and his men were devoted to him. And all it took was ensuring their families back home were provided for should they fall in battle.

As the collection of soldiers snuck across the desert landscape, they eyed the city's defences. Most buildings were a distribution of man-made tan cubes hugging fertile pieces of greenery surrounded by semi-arid desert. The mass of assassins silently took out the City Guards at the east and south gates, where there were fewer guards due to Taribatum believing an attack would come from the west. The soldiers descended upon cube-shaped structures, the narrow streets, and the tiny shops. They indiscriminately purged the city of human habitation one slice or stab at a time.

But the city did not stay silent for long. One civilian awakened to the sound her husband gasping for hair. Letting out a scream before sharing his fate aroused the suspicion of their neighbours. Within minutes, panic gripped the street. A canopy tore and clay pots shattered as a mercenary tumbled with a hefty resident next door. A child running away from the bloodied scene in his family's home accidentally knocked over a lamp, starting a small fire.

Pandemonium gathered momentum as the army abandoned the silent treatment and overwhelmed the district in a thunderous roar of armoured feet and murderous hollers. Hiding on the flat city rooftops proved futile, delaying demises by merely minutes.

The cacophonous chaos awoke the son of Gilgamesh. He was not fully certain what the chaos meant, but he was not a betting man and sought to flee just in case. He grabbed his war hammer of cruel black iron, exited his main quarters, and hurried as fast as his stubby legs could carry him. As Taribatum entered the main hall, he discovered his Vizier slaughtered; Akharin's men already had the palace surrounded. Akharin made his way through the group to approach his killer, longsword drawn and at the ready.

"I don't understand," the shocked ruler admitted. "I killed you."

"Youdid," Akharin admitted. "The Gods saw fit to bring me back."

"Then I will see to it thatthis timethere is nothing left of you to bring back!" Taribatum exclaimed as he charged with his hammer. The two men clashed in the centre of the room, thrusting and swinging their weapons in a back-and-forth of defensive and offensive manoeuvres. Akharin's thrust was batted aside. Roaring, he stabbed yet again, looking for an opening. Denied. He tried once more, to no avail.

Again and again.

The battle had become a flurry of sword and hammer. The combatants danced to a deadly tune, each looking for blood. With a flash of steel, Akharin lifted the sword upwards as Taribatum raised his warhammer and with a roar charged at Akharin. He felt the blade meet flesh. Taribatum yelled out in pain, the sword cut to the very bone. Red blood splattered onto the floor. He fell to his knees in pain. The wound only served to enrage Taribatum. The thrill of battle still shone bright in Taribatum's eyes as he rose to his feet, bringing his mighty warhammer down in a deadly arc. The agile Akharin stepped back, the warhammer swinging mere inches from his face. His swings and wild blows became increasingly desperate. His breathing became increasingly heavy and his thrashing with the warhammer more sluggish.

Akharin weaved in and out of the son of Gilgamesh's reach. A slash there, a stab here. Taribatum gave a last thunderous swing with his iron hammer, throwing all of his weight into the blow. The hammer swung uselessly in the air. The son of Gilgamesh lost his balance, the hammer fell, landing a meter away from the two. Akharin suddenly saw his chance. Rushing in close, in one lightning-swift motion, Akharin ran his blade through Taribatum's chest.

For one brief moment, their eyes met. Akharin was close enough to see the light leave Taribatum's eyes. Taribatum cursed him one last time in vain, his mouth bloody. The immortal man removed the blade from his chest, and Taribatum's body fell before him.

The extent of the debauchery of the subsequent pillaging was ineffable, as the victors to full advantage of their conquering of Eridu and reaped in its spoils.

"Tell the allies of The Strong One," Akharin told two messengers, "His name's been changed to The Dead One. If they do not wish to follow suit, they will join us in creating a new and better Mesopotamia!"

While most men returned to the capital of Babylon with numerous souvenirs – keepsakes ranging from practical, like preserves and new weapons, to grotesque, like the severed appendages of their victims – Akharin took just one item back to the palace. Outside the main door, the entryway for visitors, Akharin mounted Taribatum's head atop a spike. Beside it rested another spike holding up the decaying head of the treacherous former king.

But that had been a different time; a different age and he had been amuchdifferent man.

Flint trudged up the dark, deserted lane until finally the town came into view. All the while his thoughts dwelled on the mysterious telepathic summons he had received while on Draconia. A deep, gravelly voice had spoken to him out of nowhere, demanding he come to Hawkins, Indiana in America at once. Flint had not recognised the voice but a name had stood out to him:

Aemon Targaryen (4)

Could it really be his old friend?

Thinking of Aemon brought back memories of his long service as a member of the Kingsguard, known back then asSer Flint the Brave. He reflected how, before he had become part of the Kingsguard, his life at that point had been largely directionless. In 539 BC, the Neo-Babylonian Empire fell to Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, with a military engagement known as Battle of Opis. Babylon's walls were considered impenetrable. The only way into the city was through one of its many gates or through the Euphrates River. Metal grates were installed underwater, allowing the river to flow through the city walls while preventing intrusion. The Persians devised a plan to enter the city via the river. During a Babylonian national feast, Cyrus' troops upstream diverted the Euphrates River, allowing Cyrus' soldiers to enter the city through the lowered water. The Persian army conquered the outlying areas of the city while the majority of Babylonians at the city center were unaware of the breach.

Akharin had fought bravely against Cyrus' soldier's onslaught in a desperate defence of his home but had been overrun and was forced to flee and go into hiding. After that, wracked with guilt and shame, now going by the name Flint, he spent his days travelling the regions gambling, drinking heavily, and attending pleasure houses with no care in the world. He had largely ignored the events in Celtic Briton and the rest of Europe, though he had heard about King Aegon's conquest of the continent with the use of his dragons. It wasn't until Jaehaerys I became King after the chaotic reign of his uncle Maegor the Cruel in 48 AC (referred to in Celtic Briton as After the Conquest) that Flint's outlook began to change. From the first moments of his reign, Jaehaerys the Conciliator, as he became known, evoked a spirit of idealism that inspired Flint to abandon his old lifestyle, travel to the capital King's Landing and to become a knight.

The saying "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there" was certainly true for Flint once he arrived in Briton. He distinctively remembered the first time he encountered an elf warrior. He had neither seen a dwarf nor a goblin whilst living in Sumer. Indeed; his first moments stepped foot in King's Landing (the capital city of the now united Briton) his eyes gazed up towards the sky to see a gigantic dragon fly past. At that very moment, an intense and crushing feeling of terror at such a sight overtook Flint. Coming face to face with an elf, dwarf and goblin was one thing but a dragon? A colossal beast, with vast wings that could breathe flame...it was a sight that, to this day, Flint never forgot.

He learned that, after Aegon's conquest, most of the elves and dwarves went underground, preferring to continue living as they had done before the conquest. Other hobbits, elves and dwarves made the journey to the new capital King's Landing and bent the knee to Aegon shortly after his coronation, proclaiming their loyalty to the now King. Aegon, in return, allowed them to continue their way of life and declared that the crown was to have peace and goodwill with each of the creatures.

During his time training as a knight, he continuously strove to excel, working himself hard to achieve better results than his peers and always striving to remain within the boundaries of the rules set by his teachers. Flint therefore distanced himself from the other would-be knights rather than try to befriend them. His talents made him clash with fellow squires, who Flint remembered frequently insulting him, calling him 'His Excellency' due to his imperious and somewhat aristocratic manner.

By the early reign of King Jaehaerys I Flint had become somewhat of a superstar of the tournament circuit, and had grown very rich as a consequence. With a combination of his physical strength, horsemanship, prowess with lance, sword and mace, leadership skills and sheer cunning, Flint had literarily fought his way to the very top of his profession!

But with his fame came many rivals, eager to best Flint once and for all. It was during the Tourney of the Field of Roses, held by House Tyrell that Flint came face to face with his most frequent rival: Ser Roderick of House Tully, known as the Scourge of Riverrun for his agile abilities with a lance and brutality towards his opponents at tournaments. Ser Roderick was the younger brother of Lord Prentys Tully, who served as Master of Laws to the King and who happened to have come in attendance to this tourney along with King Jaehaerys himself. Unlike his more learned brother however, Ser Roderick was boastful, arrogant and vain, preferring to settle arguments with a sword rather than reasoned thought as Lord Prentys did.

Their joust was considered by historians to be the quickest and indeed shortest of the famed Tourney. They met each other roughly with tourney lances, and Flint's lance pierced the face guard of Ser Roderick's helmet, sending splinters into his face, eye, and brain. Ser Roderick died of his injuries 10 days later. The anguished Lord Prentys begged the King to have Flint's hand and head cut off, but King Jaehaerys refused. Instead, impressed by how efficiently Flint had dispatched Ser Roderick (whom Jaehaerys would privately tell his wife he had no love lose for) the King bestowed a knighthood onto him.

To this day, Flint still considered Jaehaerys I to be the finest king he ever served and, after the king's death, had had a crisis of confidence in himself about whether or not to leave this life of chivalry behind. In the end, he ignored his doubts and chose to remain as a knight into the reign of Viserys I.

During the beginning of the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons (5), Flint chose to side with Viserys's daughter Rhaenyra Targaryen's Black council in opposition to King Aegon II's Green council. Over the two years of struggle, a terrible toll was taken on the highborn and smallfolk alike.

The Dance was a war unlike any other ever fought before or afterwards: armies met in savage battles, but much of the slaughter took place on water, and especially in the air, as dragons fought dragons. It was a war marked by stealth, murder and betrayal as well, a war fought in shadows and stairwells, council chambers and castle yards with knives and lies and poison.

Queen Rhaenyra had granted Flint the position of Master of laws (6) as soon as the Blacks took King's Landing which he served as until the end of the war. As Master of laws his first act was to suspend the writ of the Books of Law to give members of the City Watch the necessary power to silence dissenters and rebels. Under this order, knights could arrest and detain individuals who were deemed prisoners of war, spies, and traitors. (A controversial decision, indeed, for even decades after the Dance of the Dragons maesters in the Citadel would debate whether or not, as Master of laws, Flint had the authority to suspend the Books of Law.)

Following the Battle Above the Gods Eye and the deaths of Aemond, the dragons Craxes and Vhagar and the suicide of Queen Helena, a riot rose in King's Landing. The people of King's Landing no longer believed Rhaenyra could protect them. A crazed prophet known as the Shepherd led an even larger mob to kill the dragons.

There were four dragons housed in the Dragonpit that night. By the time the first of the attackers came pouring in, all four were roused awake and angry. Nobody knew how many men and women died that night. Trapped within the Pit the dragons could not fly instead they fought with horns, claws, teeth and fire. For every man who died ten more appeared, shouting that the dragons must die. One by one they did.

Finally the last remaining dragon broke her chains, spread her wings and flew straight up at the Great Dome trying to flee. Already weakened by dragon flame, the dome cracked under the force of impact and then tumbled down; crushing both dragon slayers and dragon itself.

With every vestige of authority gone, Queen Rhaenyra was forced to leave King's Landing, being turned away in town after town until she reached Dragonstone. And there she found that this was where Aegon II had gone when she had captured King's Landing six months earlier and had taken control of the castle. Rhaenyra was fed to Aegon's dragon and Aegon plotted his triumphant return to King's Landing. The Greens thought that they had finally won.

King's Landing, though, was in disarray. No one ruled it or rather three different people claimed to: the Shepherd from the Dragonpit atop Reynesis hill, a squire named Trystane Truefyre sat in the Red Keep claiming to be an illegitimate son of King Viserys I whose death had started the civil war and Gaemon Palehair, a four year old sex worker's son who, it was claimed, was Aegon II's illegitimate son and ruled from Viserys's Hill. This confusion lasted a month before Lord Baratheon restored some control on behalf of Aegon II.

Flint, for his part, had argued against Queen Rhaenyra leaving for Dragonstone and, though he had been unable to convince her to stay, hadn't gone with her. Instead he had gathered what loyal members of the City Watch he could and attempted to take back control of the city. It failed miserably. The Shepherd and his followers easily butchered the little army Flint had managed to build and, seeing that Flint would not die while the others would, had declared that Flint was now the "great source of evil". The angry peasant army believed the Shepherd and stripped Flint naked, before building a large cross and nailing the immortal man to it by his hands. He remained on that cross for the whole month before Lord Baratheon restored control and freed Flint from his crucifixion.

Upon the mysterious poisoning of Aegon II and the accession to the throne of Aegon III, Rhaenyra's ten year old last surviving son and his prompt marriage to Jaehaera Targaryen, the daughter of his rival and predecessor Aegon II (this was done in a bid to unite the warring sides) Flint was summoned to the throne room where he was given a full pardon by the new Hand of the King Cregan Stark and allowed to maintain his position in the regency's new small council as Master of Laws.

Flint swore fealty to Aegon III and watched with glee as the Shepherd and two hundred forty-one of his most dedicated followers, while chained to poles amongst the heads of the dead dragons, suffered a burning death, set alight by the king himself.

Over the next several decades, Flint would serve in many positions throughout the reigns of Kings Aegon III, Daeron I, Baelor I, Viserys II, Aegon IV, Daeron II, Aerys I, Maekar I, Aegon V and Jaehaerys II, rising in status only to fall due to the machinations of rivals at court who were envious of him or by the unfortunate whims of the king at the time. A delicate balancing act indeed, but Flint had an advantage his political enemies could only dream of: he could outlive them.

Few in the court knew of Flint's immortality. Aware of his non-aging body, Flint had grown his facial hair out to hide his youthfulness. Indeed, he was slower, more contemplative, more cautious and quieter than he had been during the Dance of the Dragons. He would have constant night terrors where the glorious memories of slaughter on the battlefield evolved into ghoulish presentations of inglorious and shameful carnage more stomach-churning than reality. These night terrors cost him sleep in the months leading up to him stepping as Master of Laws. Even after dialling back his workload, Flint continued to wake mid-slumber in a cold sweat. He had taken to sleeping with a dagger under his pillow. He kept mistaking things for soldiers or assassins, anything from fabric flapping in the breeze to a child playing in the street.

The roles he served on the Small Council varied, from Master of Whispers under King Daeron I as a reward by the fourteen-year old king for his skills shown during the conquest of Dorne (By the end of the conquest, Flint had sustained three broken limbs, a shattered collarbone, a dozen smashed fingers and more cuts, sprains and bruises than anyone cared to count) to Lord Commander of the City Watch under King Baelor I (Flint considered this a demotion after having occupied such a coveted position as Master of Whispers) to then Master of Coin under both kings Viserys (he worked with the King in establishing the royal mint) and Aegon IV to Master of Ships during the First Blackfyre Rebellion under Daeron II (where, unusual for the Master of ships, he spent most of that war trying to ensure House Greyjoy did not side with the Blackfyres nor lend their ships to the rebels). Normally such a task would have been handled by the Hand of the King but the current Hand, Lord Hayford, preferred his role as a military commander and so the King tasked Flint with ensuring the Greyjoy fleet did not join the Blackfyres.

Torwyn Greyjoy had met Flint before the war and considered him a "vapouring, blustering ignorant man" who might provoke the Iron Island just to provide a distraction from the Blackfyre rebellion. The Greyjoys recognised Blackfyre belligerency by royal proclamation, only realistically acknowledging, as they saw it, that there was already widespread military hostilities between the Crown and the Blackfyre Pretenders. But Torwyn Greyjoy insisted that the iron Islands remain neutral in the conflict, and held off on actually recognizing the Blackfyres or supplying any of their ships to them.

Once the rebellion had been crushed, Flint continued in his position as Master of Ships but this time would face his most persistent rival to date: the King's own son Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen as the new Hand of the King. The two men disliked each other almost immediately and, throughout the rest of Daeron II's reign, would each establish their own power base to bring the other down. This battle mostly took place within Daeron II's court, as both Baelor and Flint's newly formed factions battled against the other while trying to gain the King's favour. On one occasion it was remarked by the Grand Maester to a visiting priest at court that the enmity between the two men was so intense and deep-seated that "it could fill the pages of a book".

Indeed, while the reminder of Daeron II's reign was peaceful (with the exception of the Spring Sickness in that would claim the king's life and his two most immediate heirs, Princes Valarr and Matarys) the unseen battle of wits that had gone on between Baelor and Flint would end with a death. Baelor would die in 209 at the Tourney at Ashford Meadow, receiving a mortal blow to the head from the mace of his own brother, Maekar. Baelor was cremated at Ashford, per House Targaryen funeral traditions.

During the reign of King Aerys I Targaryen, Flint was once again made Master of Coin and ordered by the new king to help the struggling economy of the kingdom recover from the Spring Sickness. In his role he cut taxes and tariffs in order to balance the national budget, reduced spending on armaments and provided money to build new houses.

Impressed by his results and as a reward for the decades of service to the Targaryen family, King Aerys appointed Flint to be a member of the Kinsguard, a position he had long dreamed of having. Even now, Flint remembered how proud he had felt as he knelt before Aerys in the throne room and spoke his vows while the white cloak of the Kingsguard was placed on his shoulders by Lord Brynden Rivers, the Hand of the King.

He had hoped the Kingsguard duties would distract his mind from the paranoia and pain that continued to haunt his mind. Instead, Flint became the most solemn and distant member of the Kingsguard.

As a member of the Kingsguard, Flint fought in the next two Blackfyre Rebellions, often sustaining injuries in battle that would have killed other people had it not been for his immortality. The common occurrence of watching his fellow Kingsguard members die either of age or wounds while he remained unhurt often brought gloom to his heart. To distract himself from feelings of grief, Flint would often train young squires and knights, eager to pass on his many skills to able learners.

His most frustrating student was a young knight called Mace Windy who, already at the age of twenty-eight years, was the youngest knight Flint had trained. At first, he had maintained a cold demeanour with him. It was not because Mace did anything to offend Flint, other than by being a hopelessly frustrating lacklustre student. There was potential within him, Flint did not doubt or refute that. However, Mace completely lacked discipline and focus. His mind wandered more than a fallen leaf on the wind. Flint fluctuated between frustration and disapproval during their sparing sessions.

Mace, for his part, was insatiable, learning everything he could with startling swiftness and always wanting to know more. He studied sword fighting tirelessly, and over the decade he and Flint developed a strong paternal bond, Flint coming to see Mace as like a son.

A bookish, quiet sort, King Aerys perhaps was the member of the Targaryen dynasty who least desired to rule. Focused intently on ancient and esoteric lore, Aerys was known to prefer the company of books to people, and considered people and rule to be secondary matters of little interest. For the entirety of his reign, Aerys saw the acts of rule second to his personal desires, and made little effort to rule Briton, let alone rule well.

His refusal to sire an heir with his wife and queen Aelinor Penrose further strained the monarchy. With the new king noted to be devoted to intellectual pursuits, more and more of the business of running the actual kingdom was given to his bastard uncle Brynden Rivers, the new – and notorious – Hand of the King. Widely despised for his studies of the "higher mysteries", marked as a kinslayer for his killing of Daemon Blackyre, and feared for his physical attributes, Brynden (known by his nickname Bloodraven) had wide powers and generous sanction from his ruling nephew and, while his conduct during the Great Spring Sickness was already know, his political skills would be omnipresent during Aerys I's reign. Like his grandfather Viserys, Bloodraven would cultivate a reputation as an effective if charmless Hand, devoted to the effective running of government.

Infamously, Bloodraven would build up his 'thousand eyes and one' persona. He built an information network that any opponent would have turned green with envy. None knew who Bloodraven's informants were, and any whispered word of discontent could be carried by a neighbour, friend or lover to Bloodraven, where the speaker would be convicted and executed for treason. This spy network was certainly unpopular but undoubtedly effective, especially during the two Blackfyre Rebellions.

When King Aerys died, his brother Maekar Targaryen, fourth son, war hero and long-suffering in the shadows of others, ascended the throne. Often overlooked by historians in favour of his more popular brother Baelor or the more intimidating Bloodraven, Maekar proved decisive battlefield leadership both for himself and for his children. As Prince of Dragonstone and heir apparent, Maekar had everything King Aerys lacked. He already had four sons, proved willing and able to lead troops against royal enemies and did not suffer from Bloodraven's mysticism and rule-through-fear mentality.

Maekar was an energetic king and a warrior of note, but also a harsh man, quick to judge and to condemn. He had never possessed his brother Baelor's gifts that made friends and allies come easily, and after his brother's death at his hands—however inadvertent—he became even more stern and unforgiving.

The nobles and even Flint himself had anticipated a conflict between Maekar and Bloodraven, since Bloodraven enjoyed powers uncommon even among strong Hands. Yet this speculative conflict never materialized, and Bloodraven was the Hand at Maekar's death.

Such was his desire to split from the past that he had a new crown made—a warlike crown with black iron points in a band of red gold, since Aegon the Conqueror's crown had been lost after Daeron I's death in Dorne.

Yet Maekar ruled in a time of relative peace, between two of the Blackfyre Rebellions, and what turmoil there was in his reign was largely sparked by his own sons.

An amusing contradiction,Flint thought,a warlike man finding himself ruling over an era of peace.

King Maekar had had a number of sons and daughters, but there were those who had reason to doubt their fitness to rule. His eldest son Daeron was a drunk and wastrel, while his second son Aerion was an accomplished warrior but also prone to bouts of cruelty and insanity.

Maekar's third son, Aemon, was a bookish boy who Flint had been ordered to serve as his sworn sword (7). Flint fondly recalled the hours he had spent with young Aemon at Dragonstone reading books, discussing history, politics. The young prince quickly formed a friendship with the older kingsguard member. Unlike Aemon's father, Flint had been pleased when the prince shared the news he had made the decision to study as a maester and, before he left Dragonstone to begin his study at the Citadel, Aemon confided how he wished Flint was his father.

Unfortunately these words made their way to the King who, already furious with his son's decision, demanded an audience with Flint. The kingsguard member, upon his return to King's Landing, was berated by the irate King who accused Flint of being responsible for his son's sudden decision to become a maester and suggested he had been "whispering in Aemon's ear" all this time.

Flint refuted the King's accusations and attempted to persuade the monarch that the prince's choice was his own and he didn't influence it in any way. If King Maekar believed Flint, he never said and while he kept Flint as a member of the Kingsguard throughout his reign, their relationship would never be close afterwards.

By the time Aemon returned from the Citadel to Dragonstone he was no longer the shy boy Flint had once known but now a sworn and chained maester.

Youngest of the king's sons was Prince Aegon, who had served as squire to a hedge knight—the same hedge knight who had participated in the same trial of seven that Baelor Breakspear died in—whilst a boy, and earned the name "Egg."

"Daeron is a jape and Aerion is a fright, but Aegon is more than half a peasant," one court wit was heard to remark.

Daeron the Drunkard, as he was unkindly named, died from a pox caught from a prostitute. In 232 Aerion, in one of the more infamous examples of Targaryen madness, became convinced he would be reborn as a dragon if he drank wildfire. Instead, it transformed him into a corpse. Both left behind children, but Daeron's daughter Vaella was simple-minded and Aerion's son Maegor was young and, it was feared, may have inherited his father's madness.

In 233, House Peake of Starpike rose in rebellion against the King. Longstanding supporters of the Blackfyres, the Peakes finally grew tired of waiting for their return and tried to take matters into their own hands. King Maekar mustered troops to handle the Peake Uprising, but his hopes of yet another war victory would be dashed as he was slain during the final assault on Starpike, his head crushed by a rock, along with Lord Robert Reyne and Ser Tywald Lannister. Roger Reyne, Robert's son, executed several Peake captives in furious vengeance before being restrained on the order of Prince Aegon Targaryen.

Maekar's death left the succession in doubt: Aerion's son Maegor was an infant just a year of age and his ascension would mean a long regency, Daeron's daughter Vaella was a simpleton and whose claim was therefore immediately dismissed. Bloodraven, still serving as King's Hand, called a Great Council in King's Landing to debate the matter.

Prince Aegon's claim seemed as the obvious choice, but due to the prince's wanderings in his youth, there were enough lords who hated him, and thus, an effort was made to offer the throne, quietly, to Aemon. Flint had been the leading voice in rallying support for Aemon to succeed as king. Aemon had shocked everyone by turning down the offer.

Flint recalled the tense hours he spent trying in vain to convince his friend to reconsider taking the crown but Aemon refused to change his mind.

Surprisingly, another claim was put forward: Aenys Blackfyre, the fifth of Daemon's seven sons, wrote from Tyrosh asking to present his case with words and diplomacy. Bloodraven, surprisingly, agreed and allowed him safe passage. But no sooner had Aenys entered King's Landing then he was arrested and executed.

The Great Council declared Aegon V Targaryen as the King. As the fourth son of a fourth son, he was dubbed Aegon the Unlikely. Taking the throne, his first act was to order the arrest of Bloodraven for betraying his oath and bringing dishonour to House Targaryen. Bloodraven accepted the judgment, saying he had sacrificed his honour to help the throne. Bloodraven was sentenced to death, but offered the chance to take the black to atone for his dishonour. Bloodraven had agreed and departed for the Wall. With him into exile went two hundred of his personal guard, the Raven's Teeth. Aemon also decided to absent himself from the toxic poison of court politics and decided to go with them to Castle Black.

It was the last time Flint had seen either Bloodraven or Aemon.

Mace would be appointed to the Kingsguard on the same day King Aegon V Targaryen named Flint as his Hand in 233 AC. Flint was now finally at the height of power. After decades of losing out to (in his view) lesser men, he now stood as Hand of the King with all the influence the position came with. True, his protégé Mace hadn't been named Lord Commander of the Kingsguard (that honour had gone to Ser Duncan the Tall) but Flint had great respect for Ser Duncan and the two men worked well in their roles together.

During his time as Hand of the King, Aegon V's reign was marked by great prosperity. Though beloved by the smallfolk, King Aegon made many enemies amongst the lords of the realm, whose powers he wished to curtail. He enacted numerous reforms and granted rights and protections to the commons that they had never known before, but each of these measures provoked fierce opposition and sometimes open defiance amongst the lords. The most outspoken of his foes went so far as to denounce Aegon V as a "bloodyhanded tyrant intent on depriving us of our gods-given rights and liberties."

Aegon V would spend much of his reign fighting rebellions. Even Egg's children were rebellious. Egg and his wife Betha arranged marriages for their kids that would help build alliances with other powerful houses, but their sons refused these arranged marriages.

Egg's eldest son and heir Prince Duncan fell in love with a mysterious common woman called Jenny of Oldstones, whom some said was a witch. He broke his betrothal with the daughter of Lord Lyonel Baratheon, the Laughing Storm who had taken Ser Duncan the Tall's side during the Ashford Tourney, to wed Jenny in 239.

Lord Lyonel was incensed by the insult of his daughter being passed over for a peasant and rebelled against the Iron Throne, declaring himself the Storm King. Ser Duncan the Tall challenged his old comrade to single combat to settle the matter without bloodshed. Noted for his chivalry, Lord Lyonel agreed. After a furious battle, Ser Duncan emerged victorious but chose not to kill the self-styled Storm King. Prince Duncan apologised by abdicating his position as heir to the Iron Throne, and King Aegon offered his daughter Rhaelle in marriage to Lyonel's son Ormund. Lyonel pronounced that honour was satisfied and returned to the King's Peace.

In 240 Prince Jaehaerys, now heir to the Iron Throne, married his sister Shaera in secret. Aegon had developed a belief that it was incestuous unions of the Targaryen's which contributed to the occasional bout of madness seen in the line, but Jaehaerys and Shaera did not share this belief. Shaera had been betrothed to Luthor Tyrell of Highgarden and Jaehaerys to Celia Tully of Riverrun, and both houses were again sorely insulted. In 244 Jaehaerys and Shaera had their first son, Aerys, and then a daughter, Rhaella, two years later. Jaehaerys determined to have them marry one another when they came of age, to Aegon's frustration.

Aegon hoped his youngest son Daeron would keep to his betrothal to Lady Olenna Redwyne of the Arbor, but even in this he was thwarted. Daeron repudiated the match in 246, apparently preferring the company of dashing young knights, and died in 251 crushing a minor rebellion.

King Aegon's reign continued to be blighted by arguments, defiance and dissent. Aegon was often said to complain bitterly that he had no dragons, for with dragons he could forge new laws and force the reluctant lords to obey them, as Aegon I and Jaehaerys I had done. The last dragons had left behind several eggs when they died a century earlier and Aegon now demanded that the maesters and other learned men find how to hatch them.

Eventually Aegon concluded that the eggs could only hatch if they were placed in a great fire. He gathered the blood of the dragon together at Summerhall (8) in 259, along with seven dragon eggs, and the fire was lit. But it got out of control. The great Targaryen palace caught fire and was destroyed. Duncan the Tall, now Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and still hale in his sixties, helped several people escape, but he was unable to save his king and best friend, nor his son and namesake. King Aegon V, Prince Duncan and Lord Commander Duncan were all killed, along with several other courtiers and lords of note.

If the ashes of the great fire had heralded the passing of one generation, it also announced the birth of the next. Princess Rhaella, the teenage daughter of the newly-inherited King Jaehaerys II Targaryen, had given birth to her son during the chaos of the night. She and Aerys decided to name him Rhaegar.

The deaths that occurred at Summerhall were mourned throughout the realm. Flint himself, as Hand of the King, had not been at Summerhall. Instead, the day before the fire, he had been sent by King Aegon to Casterly Rock, the seat of House Lannister, to resolve the ongoing "nullification crisis". House Lannister, outraged over the many reforms that King Aegon and Flint had enacted, asserted that the Great Houses had the right to decide on and to reject royal laws within their borders, therefore, the Houses had the right to act in their own best interests, even if that meant superseding royal assent.

King Aegon told his Master of Ships, "We must be prepared to act with promptness and crush this monster in its cradle before it matures to manhood. We must be prepared for the crisis." At the same time, the Lord of Casterly Rock Tytos Lannister was mobilizing men and swords to defend his House's sovereignty. During these war preparations, Aegon engaged in a national public relations campaign to discredit nullification in the mind of his subjects, giving multiple speeches that vehemently denounced House Lannister and promoted unionism.

Despite these preparations, Aegon did not desire civil war, but rather hoped the nullifiers would back down against his threats. Flint had managed to convince his king to allow him to travel to Casterly Rock in a last-ditch attempt to solve the crisis. Flint had been welcomed into Casterly Rock by Tytos and the two had gone back and forth in their discussions over how to peacefully end the threat of nullification when his aid interrupted their meeting with a letter informing the Hand that the King had died.

Flint had immediately headed back to King's Landing just in time for the crowning of the new king Jaehaerys II Targaryen, the tenth Targaryen King Flint had served and the last. Wanting to end the bitterness that had plagued his father's reign, Jaehaerys's first act as king was to reshape the Small Council he had inherited: dismissing Flint as Hand and replacing him with his brother-in-law, Lord Ormund Baratheon, bringing Lord Edric Martell, the grandson of Maron Martell and current Prince of Dorne into court as his Master of Whispers and appointing Ser Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, as the new Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

Flint, meanwhile, would fill the role as Master of Ships. He had not had long to adjust to the new reality however.

A year earlier word had come that nine notable lords of Essos had joined forces to assist one another in claiming thrones they could not take themselves. Prince Duncan had japed at the time that thrones were being sold "nine a penny", and the name stuck. Just weeks after the Tragedy at Summerhall, word came that the so-called Band of Nine, the Ninepenny Kings, had conquered Tyrosh and invaded the Stepstones. Their commander was Maelys Blackfyre, the last surviving descendant of House Blackfyre in the male line. Maelys, a huge and ugly man said to have swallowed his twin in the womb (he had a vestigial second head growing out of his shoulder) had seized command of the company by tearing the head of his cousin Daemon from his shoulders and had a reputation for savagery and bloodlust and he intended to seize the Iron Throne.

Jaehaerys II immediately made a great call to arms. He would not sit idly by and let these upstarts invade his kingdom. His plan was to launch a pre-emptive assault on the Stepstones and destroy the Ninepenny Kings before they could regroup for an invasion of Westeros.

He planned to lead the assault himself, but he was the least militarily-minded of Aegon's children. His Hand, Ormund Baratheon, dissuaded him of the idea. Instead, Ormund assumed command of the mission and began raising a great army.

Ormund summoned troops from across Westeros, from the Westerlands, the Riverlands and the Vale of Arryn, as well as his own host from the Stormlands and many more besides. The size of the host was in the tens of thousands: eleven thousand men marched from the Westerlands alone, under the command of Ser Jason Lannister (Lord Gerold's youngest son), and thousands more came from the other regions. Lord Quellon Greyjoy was commanded to provide a fleet of one hundred longships from the Iron Islands to support the attack and large transport ships were sourced from the Royal Fleet and elsewhere.

The Greyjoy longships and other vessels swept through the Stepstones, engaging and destroying most of the Band's ships. Then the united forces landed on three of the islands, including Prince Daemon Targaryen's old stronghold of Bloodstone, and engaged the enemy.

The son of the Laughing Storm, who had always believed in leading from the front, Ormund Baratheon was one of the first off the ships and onto the beaches, leading the storming of the fortified defences where Maelys the Monstrous held the command. This proved to be unwise, as he was killed almost immediately. Ormund perished in the arms of his young son, Ser Steffon of Storm's End. Lord Commander Gerold Hightower quickly assumed command and restored the momentum of the attack.

In the bitter fighting that followed a new generation of knights and captains won renown and honour: Ser Tywin Lannister, the young son of Lord Tytos, and his brothers Kevan and Tygett; Ser Brynden Tully, who became known as the Blackfish; his elder brother Ser Hoster Tully, heir to Riverrun; Lord Baelish of a modest smallholding on the Fingers, who fought alongside Ser Hoster and earned his respect; and Prince Aerys Targaryen, not a noted warrior but he distinguished himself ably on the battlefield.

However, the most famous hero of the war was one who was already fast becoming a legend. Having fought his first tourney at the age of ten and won his spurs at sixteen, the twenty-three-year-old Ser Barristan Selmy cut a bloody path through several of the greatest warriors of the Golden Company and engaged Maelys the Monstrous in combat. The huge and overpowering Maelys was slain there and then, the mad dreams of Bittersteel and the hopes of House Blackfyre dying with him.

The War of the Ninepenny Kings raged on for another half a year. The Westerosi forces cleared the rest of the three islands they had landed on and made sure that the other Ninepenny Kings had been routed before returning home. The other Free Cities finished off the pretensions of the remaining claimants, but it wasn't until 266 that Alequo Adarys was finally poisoned to death by his wife and the Archon of Tyrosh restored.

Ser Barristan Selmy, Barristan the Bold, was inducted into the ranks of the Kingsguard shortly after the war. Lord Commander Gerold Hightower hung the white cloak from his shoulders and King Jaehaerys II named him to his position from the Iron Throne. It was all the young warrior had ever wanted, and he gave up his claim to Harvest Hall and his planned betrothal for it.

But the end of the War of the Ninepenny Kings also claimed its causalities as well. Mace Windy, while an exceptional swordsman in his own right, had been no much for the brute force Maelys the Monstrous possessed. As Flint had galloped towards him on horseback across the battlefield desperate to reach his friend and protégé in time, Mace had been worn down from Maelys's raw strength and was stabbed in the chest. Succumbing to his wound on the battlefield, Mace died in Flint's arms.

Mace's death was the straw that broke the camel's back. Immediately after the war, Flint resigned as Master of War. Despite pleas from Jaehaerys II, Gerold Hightower and Barristan Selmy to stay, Flint left King's Landing and with that his more than a century service to the Targaryen dynasty had ended.

But Flint's service to a higher master had not ended. No sooner had the immortal left King's Landing, he began to feel a strange experience. Walking along the King's Road, Flint felt a dizzy feeling come over him. His feet began to stumble. The next thing he knew, he was waking up in a deathly dim holding cell with black metal walls and a high ceiling overhead.

The cell had been designed to maximize a prisoner's feelings of helplessness, and this it achieved well. So much so that Flint started tensely as a hum came from one end of the chamber. The metal door which began moving aside was as thick as his body – as if, he had mused bitterly, they were afraid he might break through anything less massive with his bare hands.

Straining to see outside, Flint saw several armed guards assume positions just outside the doorway. Eyeing them defiantly, Flint backed up against the wall.

Two strange looking men with long collared uniforms entered the cell. They explained to Flint that they were Time Lords from the planet Gallifry who had, after watching Flint for a long time, decided to recruit him into their new organization called Division.

Naturally Flint had refused and demanded he be returned home. The Time Lords laughed at the request and informed him that, unless he did as they commanded, Flint would remain a prisoner of theirs. And so began Flint's second life of servitude – this time with Division. Gradually he became older, more from loss than from years. Loss of illusions, loss of dependency. Loss of friends, to deadly missions on Division's behalf. Loss of sleep, to stress. Loss of laughter. Loss of his freedom.

It was a simple premise: if the missions were a failure, the Time Lords would lock him in a cell for months on end. Food would be denied to him. Torture regularly inflected on him.

If he succeeded however, the Time Lords would show him the briefest glimpse into what was happening on Earth in his absence. He learned of, via the Time Lord's Matrix, the destruction of the Targaryen dynasty and the ascendance of Robert and Stannis Baratheon as Kings. He saw the unfolding of European history, the rise and fall of great monarchies, the flourish of democratic republicans and the building of weapons more fierce than Flint had seen as a cold war divided the world.

It was extraordinary how fast human history could unfold; Flint recalled thinking at that time. For an immortal it was if it had happened in the blink of an eye. And now, as he walked along the road, he felt a sense of delight that he was finally back on Earth for the first time.

Flint strode up the driveway, hardly slackening his pace. Finally he stopped at his destination: the Creel House. Or rather what remained of it. Already damp, derelict and long since unoccupied, the house had a grimy, foreboding façade that was not at all welcoming; broken windows, titles missing from its roof and ivy spread unchecked over its face. But what stood out to Flint the most was that the house had a large crack running through the top all the way to the bottom as if a large gash had erupted from within the manor.

Not exactly pleasant, the old warrior thought as he walked up the worn stone steps, noticing the door's stain glass window had been smashed long ago. Flint gently pushed on the door and, to his relief, it creaked open. Clearly he had been expected.

Flint stepped over the threshold into the almost total darkness of the hall. He could smell damp, dust and a sweetish, rooting smell; it was as if he had just entered the house of a dying person. Squinting his eyes through the dark, he could make out the peeling wallpaper and threadbare carpet of a long gloomy hallway, where a cobwebby chandelier glimmered overhead and a dark staircase led upstairs.

The stairs creaked as he climbed them up to the next floor. On the landing, Flint turned and came face to face with a thin, dark girl wearing combat blacks, her eyes resting on Flint. Next to her a man, also wearing combat blacks, a gun pointed at him. Flint could hear footsteps behind him and spun around to see a medium-height, medium-build, totally nondescript-looking man. The kind of man no-one would really notice; the kind who could blend invisibly into almost any surroundings. He, too, held a gun out in front of him.

"Who are you? How did you find this place?" The man in front of Flint demanded. He was of average height with dark hair.

"My name is Flint. I received a telepathic message telling me to come here," Flint said calmly.

"You'rethe great warrior we've been told to expect?" The girl asked incredulously.

"Impossible," the man snapped. He pointed a finger at Flint. "This old man cannot be the warrior we were told about! Look at him, Yesti. I doubt he'd be able to fend off a horde of Dusters." (9)

"Careful son," warned Flint, his voice fairly steady. He was not accustomed to being threatened. "I could cut through all of you like a sword through cheese."

And to prove his point, Flint's leg shot out and kicked the gun from his hand. The man lunged desperately towards him. Flint dodged, reached out, and the man found himself gripped by long steely fingers. Somehow he was spun, twisted and sent crashing into the wall. He slid to the floor half dazed.

The man with the gun aimed at Flint's back made a move towards Flint but he was too quick. Pressing a button on the futuristic looking metal utility belt around his waist, a small compartment slid open, a hilt popped out and suddenly a flaming sword was pointed at the neck of the other man. It had all happened so fast that the girl could hardly believe it.

Flint's eyes seemed almost to glint from the heat coming from the blade. He had acquired the sword after accidentally ending up shipwrecked upon a Viking island called New Berk.(10) The sword itself had once belong to the island chief Hiccup, who according to tales spoken by the island's residents, had once been a proud warrior who had saved Berk many times. However the man Flint had meet now was a bed-ridden, decrepit old man. His daughter, son and wife were immediately distrustfully of Flint and urged Hiccup to expel him from the island but the old chief had a kind heart and offered Flint sanctuary.

Flint had intended to stay only until his boat was repaired but once he had seen the sword…. Hehadto have it. Flint would not normally consider himself a thief and besides, Chief Hiccup certainly wasn't using it. So on the night he was supposed to leave New Berk Flint had snuck into the chief's hut, taken the sword and, with his boat repaired, left the island. It wasn't something he was proud of. But the weapon had served him well in many battles, so much so that Flint almost considered it an extension of himself now.

"It's you," the girl– Yesti –whispered. "The Warrior with the Flaming Sword…you're who we were told was coming."

"Told by who?" Flint asked, his grip still tight on the hilt of the sword.

"Aemon Targaryen."

Itwashim who sent the message. Flint lowered the sword, its fiery blade retracting back into the hilt.

"Apologies for holding you at gun point," Yesti said as she helped her college to his feet. "I'm Yesti, Tracker. Hothead here is Arax. And the men you pointed the sword at is Daryl," she introduced.

"Pleasure to meet you all," Flint said, inclining his head to each of them.

"Come," Yesti said, "I will take you to see Aemon."

Flint followed the girl down the damp hallway towards a door at the far end. "May I ask why you're here?" Flint inquired.

The girl studied his face thoughtfully as if weighing up whether or not to tell him. She apparently decided she could because she leaned in close and whispered, "We were assigned to participate on a mission."

"What mission?" Flint asked, his interest piqued.

"That's up to Defries to decide to share," Yesti responded as the pair reached the door. She flung the door wide open and Flint crossed over the threshold.

The fire was the only source of light in the room; it was casting long, spidery shadows upon the wall. An ancient armchair stood before the fire, its back to the door.

A woman stood next to the armchair and, upon the door opening, immediately turned to face this stranger. She was slim, and she was wearing similar combat blacks to Yesti. Her hair was tiger-striped and her eyes were pale blue, scanning Flint's face.

"Agent Defries, this is –"

"Our guest," said the person in the armchair, his voice quiet but with menace beneath it. "I have been expecting him and he came just as I said he would."

Defries's eyes shifted momentarily, before her face set in an expressionless mask. "You promised me a warrior." For an instant she looked tired, hunted, bitter. "Not an old man."

Flint noticed that Defries had unconsciously allowed her fingers to stray to the holster at her belt.

"And I delivered," the voice replied. "Ser Flint is as skilled a warrior as they come. Aren't you?"

"Aemon? Is that you?" Flint asked, staring at the back of the armchair.

"It is indeed, my friend," the voice answered but did not move from the armchair. "The Gods have seen fit to reunite us at a critical time. If they be good, we will win the battle that is to come. I pray they be good."

Defries scoffed at this remark. "Men win battles, not Gods. Need I remind you of my mission here and of the helpyoupromised," she reminded, glowering at the figure in the armchair.

"Our partnership will continue. Of that you can have no doubt," the voice said.

"And what exactly is this mission you're on?" Flint interrupted. "Or do you intent to keep me in the dark so long as I am useful to you?"

"You are correct as ever, my friend," the voice answered. "Rest assured you will receive the answers you seek and more."

The figure rose from the chair and approached Flint. He was tall and thin, with unkempt gray hair and a beard that reached almost to the middle of his chest. He was dressed in an old brown robe, with a glittering medallion of some sort half hidden behind his beard. His face was dark and lined and regal to the point of arrogance. His clouded, milk-white eyes moved to Flint's face.

"Leave us, Agent Defries," The man ordered. "I would speak to Ser Flint alone."

For a second, Defries looked like she would argue against this command but the moment passed and she spun on her heels and left the room, Yesti following close behind her.

Once the door was shut and the two men were finally alone, Aemon Targaryen learned in close to Flint, a small crossing the old man's face.

"Welcome my friend," he said graciously. "It's been a long time. We have much to discuss."

After dismissing Yesti, Isabelle Defries made her way to the adjoined room on the far end of the second floor. What had once been a child's bedroom (a girl's Defries had surmised) had now been converted into temporary office space for her.

A massive terminal stood at the end of the room, taking up most of the wall. Defries had brought it with her as a means to make reports with her superiors regarding the mission.

Defries sat watching the blank screen of her terminal. It remained blank for half a minute.

Fastline, she thought. About as fast as a decommissioned refuelling tub. She stood up and paced back and forth across the three-metre width of her cabin. She glanced at the screen.

Still blank. She ordered a coffee from the dispenser, drumming her fingers on the plastic fascia as the brown liquid hissed into a cup. She took a sip, stopped herself from looking back at the terminal, and took another sip. She lingered over the five steps it took to re-cross the room. Earth Central's identifier code was flashing on the screen, along with a request for her password.

Settling back into her chair, she said her name and her identity code, and then leaned forward for the retina scan. The screen stopped flashing. More seconds passed. At last, an image began to form in the air above the desk. The floating pixels coalesced into the barely identifiable face of No-Go Joe.

Joe was the holographic face of the Director's security software.

"I'm sorry," Joe said, insincerely and indistinctly, "you have connected with an unauthorized party. Please disconnect immediately."

"Cut it out, Joe. This is Agent Defries. Get me the Director. And I don't care what time of night it is wherever on Earth he is right now. This is clearance double zero."

Joe's face registered sardonic surprise before fading. Defries grinned; the guys in the programming department were getting good.

An even grainier image collected itself together: the round, pale-eyed face of the Director of External Operations. The face's mouth opened and closed. A few seconds later, the Director's voice arrived.

"Agent Defries. Considerate of you to call between the hors d'oevres and the entrée. How's it going, Belle?"

"Your digestion is my prime concern as always, boss. Since when did you forget how to lip-sync?"

Another pause while the Director's words caught up with his facial movements. "You look pretty stupid too, Belle. And I can see at least three of you."

"And this is supposed to be the pinnacle of human technological achievement?"

"Even radio was rough when it was first invented, Belle. You're in the year 2005 with limited technology and we're talking as if we're in adjacent rooms – well, almost. They'll fix the lip-sync."

Repetition of a key word was the signal. Defries pressed the palm of her hand on the box she'd plugged into her terminal. The Director's face froze while the system ran the handprint scan.

Almost as immobile as the Director's face, Defries waited. The scrambler hook-up was old technology, but this one had modifications and it hadn't been tested. If it were to malfunction...

The static hologram suddenly dissolved, and then reformed. The Director appeared to be sitting in a blizzard. His voice sounded as if he was whispering to her in a gale-force wind. "Belle? Can you hear me?"

"Just about. This may not confuse the enemy, but it surely confuses me."

"Never mind that. You and your team arrived safely then?"

"We did."

"Is the crystal still secured?"

Defries turned her eyes away from the screen and fixed them to her workstation. Lying on the station was a small rectangular wooden box. The box contained one of the few Time Crystals (11) that Humanity had in their possession.

Defries looked back at the Director's face. "It's never left my side Sir. Not since you gave it to me."

"Good. Remember that crystal is the only way you and your team can get back from the past. If it were to be destroyed or stolen..."

The Director's voice trailed off. There was no need to remind Defries.Without the Time Crystal, we can't go home.

"Have you established contact with Aemon Targaryen?" The Director continued, his windswept voice now louder and more urgent.

"Yes sir." Defries braced herself. "Director... I have to tell you that I'm not convinced dealing with this Targaryen is a good idea. To be perfectly honest, I don't think he's entirely sane."

The Director co*cked an eyebrow. "Of course he's not sane. But heispowerful in magic, Belle. You'll need his abilities, especially up against the target you're pursuing."

"Magic," Defries sneered. "Don't try to frighten me with that sorcerer's ways, boss. The sad devotion the old man has to that ancient mythology is enough to make one laugh. I don't believe we should trust him so blindly, sir. He's a clever old man, full of simple tricks and mischief. He might be using us for his own ends."

"At the moment, we are united in our objectives. You will treat him with respect. Besides, Aemon Targaryen is predictable enough," The Director assured her. "And for those times when he isn't–" He gestured towards Defries. "Surely someone as highly skilled as you are can handle even a blind Dark Wizard?"

Defries grimaced. "I still don't like it, Director. My team can hardly protect themselves from a Dark Wizard while also chasing after our target."

The Director gave a half shrug in response. "There is a degree of risk involved," He agreed. "But risk has always been an inescapable part of warfare. In this case, the potential benefits far outweigh the potential dangers."

Reluctantly, Defries nodded. She didn't like it – was fairly certain she would never like it – but it was clear that the Director had made up his mind. "Yes, sir," she muttered. "Speaking of, how are things going since we left?"

The Director scoffed. "You're kidding me, Belle? It's a sh*tshow as usual. The President has instructed Attorney General Mark Levin to open an investigation into the recent death of Dick Jones." (12)

"I remember hearing about him before this mission came up. Didn't he fall out a window?"

The Director nodded. "Shot several times by the Robocop. Mr. Jones was the Senior President of Omni Consumer Products and a big donator to the President's campaigns, so naturally she wants justice. The Speaker of the House Charlie Kirk even had a minute's silence in honour of his life. That man's little more than a puppet for the President. Every time his lips move, out comes the President's voice." The Director gave a humourless laugh. "What, does the President think a damn cyborg is going to testify in court? The whole thing is ridiculous. But then what do you expect when the woman who said Jewish Space Lasers were going to shoot down Santa becomes President of the United States."

"Sorry I asked, boss," Defries grimily remarked.

"Anyway, good luck, Belle. When the data transmission ceases, this fastline will go down. You'll be on your own. Find and either neutralize or apprehendNyarlathotep, recover the stolen Time Crystal from him and then get the hell back here. And if you succeed, we can both look forward to a promotion at the end."

The indistinct hologram faded. The screen was blank.

"Do you recall after my father died, the Great Council discussing who should be his successor?" Aemon asked.

Flint paused. It certainly wasn't the first question he expected Aemon to ask him if they ever reunited. "I do," he said. "The crown was offered to you and you turned it down."

"A foolish decision of mine," Aemon snapped. "Especially given what happened to my family."

"And what happened toyou? My friend it has been so long since we last saw each one. And you clearly look the worst for wear." He waved a hand towards Aemon's eyes.

"Yes," Aemon agreed in a slow voice. "I may have the body of a decrepit man but I assure you, my mind has never been sharper." He resumed his seat on the armchair, the light from the fire bathing his face in an unnatural glow.

"Then tell me, what happened after you went to Castle Black?" implored Flint as he took his own seat in a second armchair opposite him.

"I must warn you, Flint it is not a particularly pleasant tale," Aemon began before he composed himself and spoke.

"It began at Castle Black. Brynden Rivers, as you can imagine, took to the rigors and harsh disciple of the Nights Watch much more than I did. In fact by the end of the year, he had been named Lord Commander. Then during the middle of the year while out on a ranging, a snowstorm descended upon him and his group and Ser Brynden Rivers disappeared. He was never seen from again and I was left alone. I prayed to the Old Gods that he would return but they went unanswered. I feel as though my faith died the day Brynden disappeared."

"Faith can grow again," Flint argued. "It is not like a spring flower that loses its bloom and withers away. Faith is a bulb… it may sleep in the dark of winter but with the spring it will burst from the ground again. One needs only to find the right way to make it flower."

Aemon sighed. "I have endured so much change…gone through one of the most traumatic things a person could suffer through…all without anyone to help guide me. And then the voices started."

"Voices?" Flint interrupted, surprised.

Aemon's eyebrows narrowed in annoyance. "Do me the courtesy of not interrupting if possible," he warned.

"Sorry," Flint apologized. "Go on."

"The voices were quiet in the beginning. But as the days went past and the longer I stayed at Castle Black, the louder the voices grew," Aemon went on, raising his hands as if to cover his ears. "I tried to ignore them but they would not stop. Every waking hour I heard them, whispering to me, calling to me.Driving me mad!"

"Ten years I endured these voices in my head," Aemon continued, his voice rising to hysteria levels from the quiet tone he had began with. "Try as I might I could not silence them. And then on the night of the twelfth anniversary of Ser Brynden's disappearance, the voices spoke to me!

"They told me to go down into the castle's crypt. I foolishly obeyed. The crypt was a dark, cold place where the frigid grip of snow had never lifted. I should never have gone down there," He gasped, full of emotion.

"As I walked down the crypt's stairs I began to hear something altogether different. Echoing down the crypt, soft and quiet as a mouse's squeaks – a ghostly song. It was as if a bard had been trapped in the stone walls and was singing to try and get attention to his plight." Aemon had suddenly became pale-faced as he recounted this part of his tale. "The voices, they seemed to cut in and out, making it hard to understand what they were saying. I only managed to hear snippets of the song: "…can't stop…deep inside of…when you hold…everything all". And then upon the surface of the wall behind me glowing runes started to appear.

"They formed a great arch as they flashed in time with the chanting. Every second more runes glowered, the light becoming more intense with each flash! And then the singing stopped, the chanting went silent and the lights were dead. For a brief second I thought it was over. Then the runes flared to life and a beam of light formed from the wall and latched onto me as the runes seemed to give way to a swirling pool of light. I screamed and tried to run away but the archway flared and I was sucked into it, like a boat caught into in a whirlpool. I continued to scream but the runes disappeared, the light faded and I was gone."

"I'm…I'm so sorry," Flint said, shaking his head. "I had no idea. If I had been there with you, perhaps I could have saved you."

"I doubt it," Aemon conceded with only a touch of sarcasm. "No one could have stopped it from happening. I awoke in a dark, cold unfamiliar place. I must have spent days,weekseven wandering around, trying to findsomeway to return home. I was alone with no food and no one to help me. Or so I thought.

"For you see, I was not the only one in this strange new world. Just as I had been searching for food, so too had another. A…acreature, huge and fast, found me and started chasing after me. It saw me as its prey and would not let me go. Try as I might, I could never elude the beast for long. Every time I would hide, it would find me. It became a game of survival for me. I was desperate to escape from the creature. Finally it corned me and with a swipe from its claws, took my sight from me. Now blinded, I prepared for the end. But it never came.Someoneintervened and my life was spared."

"Who?" Flint questioned. "Who saved you?"

Aemon smiled. "Afriend. It is thanks to him that I stand before you now. I may have lost my sight but I have gainedtrueforesight. My saviour shared that I am a greenseer and under his tutelage I have not only harnessed my abilities but gained perspective."

"What perspective?" Flinted asked.

"I saw what became of my family during my absence for starters, my friend. And do you know what caused the Targaryen dynasty to collapse?Madness. Madness, stupidity andrebellion," Aemon replied, a hint of anger in his voice.

"I assume you're referring to Robert's Rebellion?" Flint inquired.

"That scum!" An enraged Aemon spat. "Rhaegar should have finished him off at the Battle of the Trident when he had the chance! Robert twisted his love and loss for Lyanna Stark into a vendetta that cost my family everything!"

"Technically the Targaryens and Baratheons are related," Flint noted, perhaps more to himself than Aemon. "Robert's paternal grandmother was Rhaelle Targaryen who was the sister to Jaehaerys II and Shaera Targaryen, Rhaegar's grandparents therefore making Robert and Rhaegar second cousins."

"I do not find such information amusing," a sullen Aemon snapped. "I realise now that I should have taken the crown when it was presented to me.Ishould have been king, not my foolish brother Aegon."

"I served as your brother's Hand and I can say with confidence he was anythingbutfoolish," Flint argued curtly. "He was a good, decent king who cared deeply for the welfare of his subjects."

"How progressive of him," Aemon remarked, his tone one of dismissal. "His actions split the nobles against him which led to his obsession with hatching dragons which, of course, led to the Tragedy of Summerhall! The Crown was right in front of me, I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN IT! I could have stopped it all from falling apart. Instead I was young with foolish notions in my head. But I know better now. I understand those things that I did not understand before. I understand, for instance, the roleHehas played in undermining my family."

"He?" Flint asked.

"Yes…the grand puppet master who has worked to sow chaos and discord throughout the Targaryen family since Aegon the Conqueror first united the seven kingdoms into one and established our dynasty! Always hiding in the shadows. Once I learnt how to control and understand my greensight I was able to see for myself the scale of his manipulations. The Dance of the Dragons, the Great Spring Sickness, the Blackfyre Rebellions, the fire at Summerhall, the War of the Ninepenny Kings – he was behind them all! Even Robert's Rebellion he had a hand in," Aemon said, his voice rising in intensity as he spoke.

"Why? Why cause all those tragedies? What purpose would it serve?"

"Isn't it obvious, Ser Flint?" Aemon replied, smiling faintly. "To bring down the Targaryens once and for all. Why? Because he was afraid. Afraid of the dragons we once flew across the sky on. Afraid of the power and authority we once commanded. And so he planned and plotted; manipulated lives and destinies. Each event fell into place as he nudged it with subtlety. I see now how blind we were. And in the end his design came true. I am thelastmale Targaryen left. Therefore it rests upon my shoulders to regain my family's honour. And now that opportunity is at hand.

"Thisis why I reached out to you, my friend. The monster that destroyed my family isherein this very town. I finally have the chance to avenge House Targaryen bykillinghim once and for all! But alas, I can't do it alone. Ineedyour help, my friend."

Aemon stretched out a hand. "You served my family in the past. Now I ask you to serve us one last time so that together, you and I canfinallyslay this demon. Will you accept?"

Flint paused and, after absorbing everything Aemon had told him, uttered a single world reply: "No."

Clearly this was not the answer Aemon had intended to hear as his face contorted in rage. "You will not help the Targaryens in their hour of need?"

"I came here to see my friend. Instead I find a bitter man ranting about the past and who is unwilling to let go. Who is the person standing before me claiming to be my friend?"

"I am Aemon of House Targaryen! The house you once swore an oath to obey!" Aemon shouted.

"I will not be your assassin! House Targaryen is no more!" Flint retorted as he crossed to the door. "The Mad King saw to that. Let it die with the past."

"No," hissed Aemon. "My blood is the blood of old Valyria, the blood of dragons and gods." He raised his empty hands in front of him, palms upward. "House Targaryen survives through me!"

Without warning, blue lightning bolts flashed from his fingertips. His back turned to the oncoming attack; Flint immediately took out his sword, ignited it and held it up against him like a shield. It all happened so quickly. The electricity stuck the flaming sword and for a moment there was a standoff.

Flint tightened his grip on the sword's handle as he felt the intensity of more and more bolts pouring into the flaming point of his weapon. "Greensight is not the only thing I learned!" Aemon shouted, his voice almost swallowed up by the crack of more lighting. "I have become proficient in wandless magic. Now all this power is at my command!"

It had become too much for Flint. He felt himself being pushed back by the might of the lightning. His sword suddenly came loose from his hands and the blinding bolts of energy coursed over and into him, and Flint could only shriek before them, convulsed in pain, his knees buckling.

Flint's body slowed, wilted, and finally crumpled under the hideous barrage. The lighting ceased and Aemon approached him.

"I wish you had not rejected my offer. I would have spared you from this," The old man said regretfully. When he spoke again, his voice boomed and echoed throughout the room. "I am Aemon Targaryen. You will serve me now as you served my family before."

"I…I…will…serve…you," Flint repeated in a slow almost hypnotic tone. "As I served your family before."

"Good,good. Now, rise my friend," Aemon ordered.

Flint obeyed.

"You and I have much to do," Aemon instructed. "A great calamity will soon befall Hawkins. For now, I want you to infiltrate the town and learn all you can from its population. Do you understand?"

Flint nodded. "And what of Agent Defries and her team?"

"They are useful allies who share the same goal as I do. I will work with them." Aemon paused. "Fornow."

Aemon stroked his fingers through his long white beard, forcing himself to concentrate. There had been a stranger flicker of magic.

He'd felt it before, this flicker. Or at least he thought he had. Threads to the past were always so hard to follow, so easy lost in the mists and the hurrying of the present. Even his own past he had only glimpses of memory, scenes as if from a history record. He rather thought he remembered someone trying to explain the reasons to him once, but the explanation was long gone in the darkness of the past.

It didn't matter anyway. Memory wasn't important; concentration wasn't important; his own past wasn't important. The Targaryen legacy, however,wasimportant. Being able to call upon magic when he wanted towasimportant. As long as he could do that, no-one could ever hurt him or take away what he had.

Aemon's fingers slipped away from his beard, to the medallion nestled against the skin of his chest. Squeezing the warm metal against his palm, he fought against the mists of the past, trying to see beyond them. Yes. Yes, he was not mistaken. These same flickers had come three times before in the past months. Had come and then gone dormant. Like someone unknowingly tapping into magic for a time, but then withdrawing.

An obscurial.

He would find whoever this person was and remake them in his own image, and together with Flint by his side he would slay thedemonand deliver justice to his family.

And that was only the beginning.

"I will rain fire and blood down upon all those who would be my enemy. This town will serve as a kingdom for the new Targaryen dynasty and the world will witness the might of the dragon returned," Aemon prophesied as he grabbed hold of the arms of his chair, a king on the throne of his own imagination.

And Flint stood by his side, an unwilling servant once more.