The Eighth Excalibur

by Luke Mitchell

  Nate carefully sank into the nearest recliner, trying to hide his shock as his friends launched into a debate about the whos and hows of why the video might’ve been stripped. Nate just stared at the pixelated image of Link on the TV, barely seeing anything at all.

  You did it.

  He couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t help but immediately question how the Excalibur had done it, and how many more dozens of copies and alternate versions might still be floating out there in the digital ether, waiting to strike.

  I have scrambled copies of the Atherton Street footage from 7,823 various servers and personal mobile devices since you left that sterile excuse for a training facility.

  Wait, you…

  Started purging the footage the moment it became evident just how irrationally horrified you are of this particular scenario running its natural course.

  For one blessed moment, Nate could’ve danced or shouted for joy—probably would have, if doing so wouldn’t have made him look even crazier than he already did that day. The moment passed faster than it should’ve, the blossoming fountain of relief and endless thanks slowing to a trickle as one single question rose to the surface.

  But… why?

  Why an act of mercy now, out of the blue?

  Because you need to understand that I will be your greatest ally, Nathaniel, if only you embrace our mission.

  Nate let out a soft breath and leaned into the recliner’s embrace, gently nodding to himself, reassured. Understanding.

  And because you need to know that I will send that footage and more to everyone you have ever loved and to every central government in the world if you continue to waste our precious time sniveling over your own petty concerns.

  Nate froze mid-nod, vaguely aware that Marty was hassling his roommates to pause the games and get ready to roll, too busy watching the curtains fall on the Excalibur’s chivalrous charade to care.

  Blackmail.

  Duty.

  Goddamn emotional terrorism.

  This planet will be chewed up and used for spare parts if we fail in our mission, and that is to say nothing of the larger galactic consequences. Tell me, Nathaniel, which is the greater evil?

  It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t—

  “Nate?” someone asked—Marty, he thought. “You’re sure you don’t wanna come?”

  “I’m good,” Nate croaked, the words sounding feeble and hollow as he came back to the living room, where his roommates were all watching him again. “Just, uh… Think maybe I’d better lie down for a bit.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Zach said, clearly trying to sound supportive.

  “Action-packed weekend, dude,” Kyle agreed. “You should probably get some rest.”

  Marty just watched him with that concerned look as the others tugged on their shoes, and Kyle went to grab his wallet from his bedroom.

  “Probably just the alien mind control rays, right?” Nate said, trying for a smile.

  “Hey, that reminds me,” Kyle said, emerging from his room with wallet and, “big story on They Walk Among Us this morning, if you’re still interested in checking that out.”

  By the door, Zach and Marty traded one of those oh boy, here he goes again looks.

  “Really?” Nate asked weakly, not sure he could handle any more surprises right then.

  “Yeah, man. Whatever’s been going on these past few weeks seems to have kicked into overdrive this weekend. Sometime yesterday, they’re guesstimating. Reports are going through the roof. Animals acting funny. Bird migrations getting all jacked up. Even some weird navigational failures yesterday in the transatlantic regions.”

  “That is interesting,” Nate heard himself saying past the cotton ball haze permeating his thoughts.

  “Freaking aliens, dude,” Kyle agreed.

  Nate was distantly aware that Marty was shooting him that odd look again, but something else was nagging at his brain now. He looked out the front windows, thinking.

  Sometime yesterday.

  Sometime right around when the Lady had reached down from the alien-riddled heavens to show him brave new worlds and stick a freaking Excalibur in his head?

  Could that really have something to do with all of this? And did it even really matter anymore? It was already all fucked beyond belief. No more bat shit crazy than a bunch of space ogres and who knew what else all raining down on Earth because of—

  The Beacon.

  “Holy shit,” Nate murmured.

  “What, dude?” Kyle said, leaning over to join him in looking out the window. “Hot girl alert?”

  Nate barely heard him at all, over the rush of all the pieces slamming together in his head.

  The Beacon is what draws this conflict to Earth, the Merlin had said. It is the reason the Lady chose you when she did.

  One of the most powerful objects in the known galaxy. One the Merlin wanted him to remove from this planet immediately.

  It was all nonsense. Wizardly gobbledygook. And it sounded exactly like the kind of thing that could be responsible for all of this. Peculiar background radiation. Strange seismic activity. Restless corgis climbing up on porch roofs, cocking their heads like little doggy apocalypse satellite dishes.

  Finally starting to believe, are you?

  “Hey, Earth to Nate!”

  He came back to find Kyle waving his hands in Nate’s face like he was pretty sure his good buddy had just suffered his second stroke of the day. Behind him, Marty looked like he was ready to pounce forward in case of any sudden collapses, despite the fact that Nate was already sitting down.

  “I, uh… I might have to check that out.” This time, Nate managed to force a smile, even if it was mirthless. “Thanks for the heads-up. You guys have fun shopping.”

  “Yeah,” Kyle said, looking every bit as unconvinced as Marty and Zach did behind him. “Sure, buddy. Just, uh, don’t go spacing off too far across the galaxy while we’re gone, okay?”

  18

  Fit for a Wizard

  Over a hundred lightyears away, a long, slender ship emerged from the Golnak Sector relay gate, unannounced by any proper itinerary or clearance code. It was an elegant craft, larger than most corvettes, but smaller than many frigates. There was no manufacturer class or code anywhere on the sleek hull to settle the matter of its classification. Only a single word, etched across one of the port-side armor panels in faded, barely discernible letters: “CAMELOT.”

  On the empty bridge of the Camelot, the Merlin flicked his wizened fingers at the holo controls, freeing his carefully composed messages to spew out into the depths, where they would bounce through who knew how many comm relays on their way to the quantcomm stations of Kalyria, and ultimately to the only two recipients he saw fit to involve in this latest episode of The Divine Drama.

  That done, the Merlin contemplated the massive superstructure of the Golnak relay ring, debating—not for the first time—if maybe he shouldn’t just pop through, all the way over to the Forge at the heart of the galaxy, grab his dear old First Knight by the scruff of his golden neck, and drag the arrogant, immortal manchild back here to deal with this mess, as he’d so clearly failed to do the first time around.

  Sod that. There was good reason the Merlin had left the Alliance behind. Several good reasons. And after several centuries of self-induced exile, his reemergence would likely only cause an uproar on the Forge, and probably light more fires than he’d be putting out by buying them the extra scraps of time. The Alliance was already jumpy enough right now, judging by the seven—no, eight—urgent warning hails that had pinged the Camelot in the sparse minute since he’d entered the system.

  An idle wisp of a memory fluttered in the depths of his mind, of a time when the Merlin—or when anyone aboard a Knight ship—would’ve been met not with tightened sphincters and warnings of protocol, but rather with open wonder and reverence. Respect and gratitude.

  Times had changed.

  Case and point, the ship that was currently mending itself together where it was
moored to Golnak mining installation C-73, looking like it’d nearly been bisected. It was another knight ship, similar to the Camelot but hardly identical, especially not with its blood red hull. Groshna’s ship, then. And something told the Merlin that the Crimson Tide hadn’t simply been sniped unawares in the depths by the lucky magcoil slug of some backwater Knight hunter.

  There’d been a fight here. That much was evident by the messily patched gouges that’d been torn in the sides of the hermetic little mining station he’d colloquially referred to as Beacon Rock ever since its inner treasure had been discovered dormant in the first great troglodan expansion a few thousand years ago. But a fight between whom? And, more importantly, why?

  Clearly, the Golnak Beacon was still in place inside, as evidenced by the fact that the relay had still functioned to jump him to the Golnak sector in the first place. Which suggested either that someone had actually been crazy enough to try to steal a Beacon—and had of course failed—or that the two Knights of this uneasy quadrant had finally come to blows, likely over the matter of how to handle the newly awakened Beacon and Knight, whose ripples they’d no doubt felt this close by.

  That, or the Merlin’s darkest fears had been realized, and he was in fact looking at the aftermath of the clash between Groshna, Dread Sixth Knight, and the one who’d been haunting the Merlin’s daymares ever since the Beacon had awoken on Earth without warning—and since well before that, too, if the truth were told.

  He prayed to the Lady it had simply been a wild pirate.

  Her Eternal Grace was eerily quiet on the matter.

  The swarm of closing corvettes and the pair of distant dreadnoughts training their entire destructive arsenal on the Camelot’s hull to the happy tune of Urgent Warnings Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, on the other hand…

  “Transmit our credentials, would you?” the Merlin grumbled. “Before those twitchy buggers get any bright ideas.”

  The holo displays chimed with the Camelot’s affirmative, and the Merlin focused on flicking open a dedicated comms channel and manually hailing the mending Knight ship on C-73.

  There was a long moment of silence, then the line crackled with the uptake of an unmuting channel on the other side, and the central display filled with the hulking, crimson armored form of Ser Groshna—chieftain of the self-proclaimed Clan Groshna, and Sixth Knight of the Order Excalibur. Even among the troglodans, Groshna was a mountainous beast without rival. And even after a few centuries’ exile to Earth, it was still easy enough to read the shock on the troglodan’s face at seeing his Merlin alive and kicking.

  The Merlin would’ve been lying if he’d said that shock didn’t bring him a spark of enjoyment. It was just about all he had left over here on the far end of the unknowable chasm that had grown between him and the rest of the galaxy.

  “I thought I told you all to play nice with one another.”

  “Honored Merlin,” the Dread Knight boomed, looking rather guilty for a troglodan—which was to say, barely guilty at all. “The Fifth Knight has gone mad.”

  “An affliction common to all of our Order, if one is to believe the word of the times. Do you have a more precise accusation to share?”

  “The bitch tried to kill me and steal the Beacon. We fought. She slagged my ship on the way out. I killed her q-drive.” He turned his boulder of a head elsewhere, as if looking out the viewport. “Racket brought half the Alliance out here to bolster station security.”

  “I noticed.” The Merlin glanced at the other displays, briefly confirming that there were no torpedoes actively closing on the Camelot, and that at least most of the targeting lasers had abated. “So…” he said, turning back to the main display, “a new Beacon rears its shiny head on Terra, and Ser Katanaga loses her jin, so to speak. What do you make of it all, Ser Groshna?”

  Groshna grunted, looking unsettled. “Thought there was only eight.”

  Simple in its eloquence. Unlike Groshna, Clan Groshna.

  “Legend does say there were once ten,” the Merlin pointed out.

  Groshna studied him with beady-eyed suspicion, perfectly aware that, if anyone knew the truth of the old legends, it was most certainly the Merlin, but obviously loathe to debase himself prying for scraps.

  “There is something else,” he finally rumbled, looking grim for a troglodan—which was to say, pretty much the usual. “Something you need to see.”

  In person, the first word that sprang to mind of Groshna, Clan Groshna was intimidating, shortly followed by ones like formidable, and beastly. Overwhelmingly so on all accounts, to be sure. Yet the words rang empty in the Merlin’s head. Groshna would’ve been intimidating to anyone who wasn’t comfortable around a mountain sized troll who might’ve eaten an entire school bus of children without the faintest hint of remorse.

  The Merlin wasn’t intimidated. Or afraid. He was far too ancient for any of that. He merely wondered, as he often had, at the Lady’s wisdom in having ever selected a troglodan Knight to begin with. They were not a particularly civilized people, after all.

  But then, even a savage brute had its merits over a wide-eyed college lad.

  The Merlin strode toward the center of the spacious holding bay of mining installation C-73, feeling the tingling of the Golnak Beacon on its humming dais ahead in his every cell, even if he couldn’t see the gilded sphere hovering there behind Ser Groshna’s crimson bulk. He closed his eyes for a few steps, studying the strange dissonance of the twining voices whispering in his head—that of the eternal companion who never left him, and the infinitude of her pervasive, almost recursive expanse throughout the galaxy.

  It was only when he opened his eyes and focused more carefully on his waiting Knight that he caught a dissonance of another kind completely.

  There was something wrong with Ser Groshna’s Excalibur.

  The Merlin froze, struck by an exceedingly rare moment of surprise and something almost like fear, then he listened to his bucking instincts and flash-stepped straight back to… nowhere.

  Nowhere but a single foot across the rusted deck.

  Return to Earth, he mentally snapped back to the ship within whose bridge he had most decidedly failed to arrive. Go and find the boy. Do you understand?

  There was nothing.

  No affirmative chirp from the Camelot. No Camelot at all, in the scope of his roving mind. Just the flat edge of the endless void that had appeared a mere meter away from him on every side in his senses. An ethereal cage of sorts, sprung around him like a trap of… what, exactly?

  Not an e-dim containment field—not just that, at least. He reached out and tested its shimmering edge with one hand, feeding a trickle of power into its wall, feeling its haunting resonance. This was something more. Something born of the Light itself. Something he’d never seen before.

  For a moment, the intellectual curiosity alone outweighed any alarm at finding himself trapped. Then Groshna spoke, and cold reality came crashing back in.

  “He said it would be this easy.”

  Over the millennia, the list of harrowing tribulations that retained the power to strike true dread in the Merlin’s heart had dwindled so far as to become non-existent. Hearing Groshna utter those words, though…

  “He knew you would never suspect that one of your pathetic little puppets could pose any threat to you,” Groshna continued, stalking closer, a slow, cocky sneer creeping across his lumpy face. “Not to the Great Merlin. Not to the omnipotent wizard who holds an entire galaxy in his frail little palm, yes? Impossible. And yet look how easily you are defeated.”

  The troglodan rapped on the Merlin’s shimmering prison wall with two thick crimson-armored digits. The Merlin paid the fool no mind. A complete idiot, Groshna may not have been, but he was a pathetic little puppet. It was only that he’d found a new master. One who’d cut his so-called strings and introduced some kind of synthient corruption into his Excalibur. One who’d apparently discovered how to conjure a cage capable of holding a Merlin.

  There was only o
ne.

  “Yes,” Groshna said, drawing the word out and leaning closer, like he’d picked up on exactly what the Merlin must be thinking. “I have met him. Who do you think left this cage for you?”

  The Merlin studied the troglodan, his mind adrift in less-than-reliable memories, that foreign hollowing sensation that felt so much like fear threatening to bubble up to the surface from a past millennium. “Whatever he’s promised you… It will only end in pain and suffering. For you. For your people. For everyone. The Synth will—”

  “The Synth is a lie!” the troglodan roared, smacking the shimmering containment field. “A conjuror’s trick you have used to keep the Alliance at your mercy for Lady only knows how long.”

  “Do they look to be at my mercy?” the Merlin asked, gesturing at the bay wall in the general direction of the Alliance armada currently keeping watch over the mining installation. “Do you truly think my position as galactic pariah covetable?”

  “You waste your breath, my honored Merlin,” Groshna said, pulling up a holo to contact his crew. “My fleet went to crusher space months ago. They will reach Terra in mere weeks. Agents are in place, waiting to intercept the messages you sent when you arrived in system.” Groshna smiled. It was a hideous thing to behold. “There is no stopping us now.”

  The Merlin turned without another word and sank cross-legged to the rusty mining station deck, thinking. There was no point in asking what Groshna was hoping to accomplish. The troglodan might not even know himself—couldn’t know for certain, after whatever his new master had done to him and his Excalibur.

  Groshna’s mind was no longer his own.

  The Synth, a lie? Tell that to the trillion-odd lives they’d consumed in the last war, and to the rest of the unspeakable horrors Groshna was too young in his nine-hundred-odd years to even begin to comprehend. Tell that to the entire galaxy of sentience that would be next if the coming flood wasn’t quelled.

  He’d been a fool to come here.