‘Why should we respond? We are the Golden Ones,’ someone said.
‘They mass on our borders,’ Lugh said. ‘Their fortress grows by the day and is now larger than any court. The army swells with stolen Fragile Creatures, and the lesser races who are easily controlled. They have Redcaps, Baobhan Sith, the Gehennis, and more.’
Discussion about the relative powers of both sides ranged back and forth for a while, with the majority of the group unshaken in their belief in their innate superiority under any circumstances. Church grew angry with the arrogance and signalled to Niamh that he wished to speak.
Suspicious eyes fell on him as he stood. ‘You’re seeing the Enemy in the wrong light,’ he began. ‘You consider them lesser because they’re marshalling Fragile Creatures and Redcaps and all the others. But they’re none of those things. They’re not even spiders. Those things are just the surface, symbols representing what lies behind them. And what they will be, very shortly, is you.’
Church looked around at the beautiful faces. ‘They have in their possession a magical artefact – a crystal skull. I don’t know where it came from, but I do know what it is capable of: summoning you against your will. It’s a lure for gods. That in itself is not enough. They have also obtained another weapon, the Anubis Box. With it they can corrupt any captured god and control them.’
A ripple of angry voices ran round the room. Some called out for Church to be expelled.
‘What the Brother of Dragons says is true,’ Lugh interrupted, ‘for I was almost corrupted by those very weapons. And I saw it take another.’
‘Who?’ Math asked.
‘A god from one of the other branches of your family that you pretend doesn’t exist,’ Church said. ‘If you want to survive this, you need to change your thinking. You need to recognise that there were other races here in the Far Lands before you, who may well have been responsible for the creation of the crystal skull and other weapons like it. And you have to accept there are others like you who have been seen as gods across my world throughout our civilisation. And you and they could soon be working for the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders towards your own destruction.’
Church was shouted down by angry gods, some of whom looked as if they were ready to kill him on the spot. Surprisingly it was Math who turned the tide of the debate, speaking through the boar’s-head mask. ‘What the Brother of Dragons says is true.’ The crowd fell silent. ‘In my studies I have become aware of others like us, and some of you know in your hearts that we are not alone.’
‘If we, or others like us, fall to the Enemy, it will become a fight we cannot win,’ Lugh said.
‘There is another matter,’ Niamh began hesitantly. She recounted how the Libertarian had killed her guards and how the Ninth Legion had ‘wiped from Existence’ many of the Court of Peaceful Days. ‘We thought ourselves free of endings,’ she said, ‘but now we know that is not true. We are resilient. It takes much to eradicate us. But in the final reckoning we are no different from Fragile Creatures.’
Her blasphemy stunned the room. Church had never seen so many rocked to the core of their being, but they could not deny the truths that had been delivered by the queen and king of the two courts. It would take them a long time to assimilate the information.
‘Who are the Enemy? Truly?’ one of the Tuatha Dé Danann asked, eager to change the line of conversation.
‘We don’t know,’ Church replied, ‘but they are extremely powerful, and they appear to be fanning out through history to achieve their ends.’
‘And what are those ends?’
‘The Enemy thrives on despair,’ Church said. ‘I think they want to eradicate all hope. That’s what they appear to be doing in their interference in the history of my kind.’
A woman with long blonde hair and silver eyes stood up. Her voice had no trace of arrogance; it quavered. ‘Then what path should we take? To confront them could mean we will all be wiped from Existence.’ A tear sprang to her eye.
‘I fear we have no choice,’ Lugh said.
‘But we could be wiped from Existence,’ the woman repeated desperately.
‘Their forces are already too strong for us to meet them head on,’ Niamh said. ‘Certainly not without the aid of the other courts.’
‘You will not convince the others,’ Math said adamantly through the mask of the fish, and Church could see that Niamh believed this to be true.
‘The first thing we have to do is destroy the crystal skull or the Anubis Box, preferably both,’ Church said. ‘They may have the numbers, but those are their most potent weapons.’