Avalon Codex

About the Author

Andrew Mutter is a pensions specialist from Swindon. He is an avid reader of fantasy, science fiction, crime, and general fiction literature. Always enthusiastic about original story lines and ideas, which is evident in the content of his own stories.

Since 2006 he has worked for the National Trust and is currently their Pensions Manager, working at their Swindon headquarters. He has been a Fellow of the Pensions Management Institute (FPMI) for the last four years.

Dedication

For Harry Mutter. I did it Grandad.

Copyright Information ©

Andrew Mutter 2024

The right of Andrew Mutter to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035862924 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035862931 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781035862955 (ePub e-book)

ISBN 9781035862948 (Audiobook)

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First Published 2024

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Acknowledgement

Austin Macauley for reading my book and finding it of worth.

Stephen Tuffin of Swindon New College for his creative writing tips.

Dark Visitors

Night had come for the race of man. For Axel Starborn, the threat was as real as violence. A terrible claim had been made which could result in bondage to the darkest forces imaginable. The emissary sat at the table with his head in his hands. Thick black hair framed stern features, which were used to a more relaxed demeanour. His piercing hazel eyes remained fixed upon the entrance, as he waited for his three fellow emissaries to arrive. A breeze caused the tent flap to flutter as the light outside began to darken, reflecting his mood as he waited in the advancing gloom. The dying embers of the evening’s fire cast dark illuminations as shadows danced and flickered around him. Like dark spirits sent to taunt him.

Axel and a contingent from the Alliance of Man were camped on a hill a mile’s distance from the great temple called the Gates of the Fall. On a balmy summer’s night he waited for the sound which would announce the beginning of the Council of the Five Races. At the council the true nature of the threat would be revealed in front of the leaders of all five races.

Suddenly, the tent flap opened wide as three men entered. They were all wearing the same deep blue robes with silver trim, the state garb for an emissary of the Alliance of Man.

‘Are you ready, Axel? It’s nearly time.’

The question came from the first of the three newcomers, a blond-haired giant of a man, standing nearly seven feet tall. His name was Toth Valar, the emissary for the Northern State of the Alliance of Man.

‘Ready, are you kidding me? I’ll never be ready for this,’ Axel replied, his quiet tone dripping with dark sarcasm.

Toth, who stood a full foot in height above Axel, smiled down at him with compassionate empathy shining in his blue eyes.

‘You know what I mean, Axel. Has the king made a decision?’ Toth asked gently.

Axel grimaced in response to Toth’s smile and looked questioningly at the other two men.

Redgar Silverheels, a slim man with jet black hair highlighted by strange blue flecks, who represented the Western State of the Alliance of Men, stood quietly waiting for a response.

Lorn Zeen, the eastern state envoy, was not much shorter than Toth and completely bald. He stared at Axel through eyes which anyone might question belonging to a man of the Alliance, in that they were the sheen of purest gold. Aside from this peculiarity, his main other distinguishing feature was his skin, which had the texture of a snake and was the colour of black obsidian.

‘Has the king decided a response to the demand made by the Covenant of Nine?’ Lorn asked.

‘He has,’ Axel replied.

‘Does he believe their claim is legitimate?’ Redgar asked.

‘Until four weeks ago, most of us believed it was just a story made up to scare little children. Can it be real?’ Lorn said.

Axel felt perplexed, infuriated, and overwhelmed by the events that had begun just four weeks ago. He was a man who was being forced to believe the unbelievable. He looked at Lorn through the eyes of a man who was expecting to wake from the most surreal dream.

‘I was there, Lorn,’ he whispered disbelievingly. ‘I was there in the Golden Hall of King Dane four weeks ago this very night when the Covenant of Nine made their claim. There were seven fallen seraphim who arrived that night and their presence chilled the blood of every man and woman present.’

He remembered the events of that night vividly. Each one of them stood no less than 8 feet tall, dressed in full black steel battle armour forged in the depths of hell itself. Their great black wings were covered in rips and scars from some terrible past offence. This created the visage of a wounded creature. Something all the more dangerous and ferocious because it is damaged. For some reason, their faces seemed to have escaped any of the maiming inflicted on their wings. They all had perfect complexions like carved alabaster, having no blemish.

But it was their eyes which were the most sinister, full of the most awful hatred and perversion, like black holes, which seemed to scream out into the very soul of any who would look into them.

‘I take it you have read the transcripts from that night?’ Axel asked solemnly.

All three men nodded their heads in acknowledgement.

‘So you all know the claim made by the head of their Order, the one called Brond?’

Axel would never forget the sight of the black lord who led the demonic contingent. He was the tallest of the fallen seraphim, standing nine feet high with jet black hair to match the colour of his soul.

After surveying his surroundings in the Golden Hall, Brond had approached the golden throne of King Dane. The king was an old man with a balding head of wispy white hair that framed a proud and wizened old face. His boyish good looks from his youth had all but gone and his once powerful frame had seen better days. However, as the dark lord had walked towards the dais in front of the golden throne, Axel had seen something which had surprised him and made him rather proud of the old man.

The old king was smiling at the demon who approached his throne. In that moment, Axel remembered a saying from his past: Death smiles at all men. All a man can do is smile back. Well, death was smiling at King Dane that day and he returned the look as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Brond was halfway up the dais before the throne when he introduced himself.

‘Listen to me old man. My name is Brond, Lord of the House of Ashes. You may not know of me, but I know of you and your kind. We have been watching you for a very long time. In the past, it has suited us to keep our distance for the most part. That’s changed. Now we want something, so I have come to claim a debt. A debt owed by your ancestral bloodline. A debt of service from a very long time ago.’

Brond looked around the room, stretched his arms above his head and yawned. He was pleased to see he had the attention of everyone present. Lords and ladies, ministers, guards, soldiers, and even children stood spellbound. Every eye was on his demonic form and every ear was open to his foul benediction.

‘Listen up,’ he purred.

‘When the first male and female of your species walked the earth 6,000 years ago, we came to you in your hour of greatest need. The woman, named Sun, was heavily pregnant with child and her suffering was great, yet the time of birth was many weeks away. The man, named Clay, was filled with a terrible foreboding and dread for Sun and the unborn child. He cried out in the night in desperation and woe for succour and aid.’

Brond paused, his eyes moving around the throne room, staring down every open eye.

‘None came,’ he whispered with malicious glee.

‘Abandoned and alone, the founder of our race came across them and saved them from their fate. In return for this great service, Clay made a blood oath in return for the lives of Sun and the child.’

After he had delivered his omen, Brond looked round at the court of the king, surveying the faces of all those present. The smile on his face was bestial, as if the growing horror in the room was like some kind of potent elixir for his black soul. Then slowly he moved towards the throne with an insidious smile fixed on a face which dripped malice. As he reached the foot of the throne, he looked up at King Dane and said just three words.

‘You owe us.’

That was when he produced it, the thing which had been hanging from his belt hook since he had begun to address the king. The thing which changed this whole scene from some kind of nightmarish dream to a reality. A reality which brings the Alliance of Man to the doors of damnation. It is the hour of gravest peril for the souls of all men.

Axel looked at his three compatriots, who had all heard this message countless times over the last few weeks. He took some comfort that their faces seemed to mirror the surreal glaze that haunted his own features at the memory of those words.

‘So he produced the Avalon Codex?’ Lorn asked.

‘Yes, the Avalon Codex, which I and everyone else had assumed to be nothing more than a myth until now.’

‘But how do we know that the tome is genuine?’ Redgar interrupted. ‘I mean, how do we know that it isn’t just some clever forgery created to fool us into believing that it is real?’

Axel smiled sadly at Redgar. ‘You know what the legend says about the Avalon Codex. The tale passed down by our forefathers and written in the Scrolls of the Archive of Time. It is said in the scrolls that the Avalon Codex was given to the first man and woman at the dawn of creation. According to the legend, the Avalon Codex has something to do with the ownership of the race of man,’ Axel explained.

‘But how can you have ownership over a race?’ Toth asked.

‘I’m not sure. However, the fact that the Codex is in the possession of the Covenant of Nine does not bode well, I think,’ Axel replied. ‘As to whether it is a forgery or not, there are two things that made me believe it may be genuine. The first was the Codex itself, which I examined after Brond handed it to the king. It looks like no other book I have ever seen. This may sound strange but it looked like it was alive.’

‘The Codex appears as a book the colour of the most perfect blue but the cover actually appeared to be moving, as if the Codex was breathing very slowly. Also, the book had what I could only describe as what felt like a presence. Holding it in my hands, I felt such a strong sense of all the things that the word home brings to mind, such as safety and love or peace and joy. It may sound silly but it felt like all the whispered secrets of the human heart might be found inside its contents. The second reason was what Brond said to King Dane, whilst I was looking at the volume.’

‘You mean the witness?’ Lorn asked.

That night, Axel was in the process of opening the first page, whilst Brond continued to assail the king with bad news. As Brond finished, Axel’s attention was broken by something he heard the demon say just before he departed.

‘I understand that you may require a little more proof of your debt of service than the Codex. Therefore, I offer you a witness to the event itself 6,000 years ago when your race bound itself to ours. In four weeks’ time, a council will be held in the temple you call the Gates of the Fall. You will send four ambassadors to represent the four states of the Alliance of Man. There, they will hear testimony from this witness and discover what service is required by the Covenant of Nine.’

Axel looked at his three fellow ambassadors with raised eyebrows.

‘Yes, the witness.’

‘It doesn’t sound good, does it?’ Toth said.

‘You think…’ Redgar said, looking much paler than when he had entered.

‘Do we have any idea who this witness is? If it’s one of the Covenant, they will hardly be reliable,’ Lorn said.

‘Somehow I don’t think we’re going to get the chance to find out until it’s too late to do anything but listen,’ Redgar said in a mournful tone.

Axel moved to the entrance of the tent and slowly lifted the tent flap to take a peek at their surroundings. It was now fully dark outside and a bitter wind was whipping the flap back into the tent. The sounds of murmured conversations could be heard all over the camp from the four hundred men who had accompanied the emissaries on this journey. They could be found clustered in small groups around campfires, where they gathered together to exchange stories, laughter and words of concern about the council to be held this very night. At that moment, the sound of horns pierced the night from the direction of the temple.

Axel turned to his three fellow emissaries with the look of a man marching to the scaffold and said, ‘Well, gentlemen, let’s get this over with.’

The Children of September

In a cave overlooking the great temple named the Gates of the Fall, guttural grunts and whispers could be heard all around. Thousands of shadows moved in the darkness as the Children of September waited for the start of the council.

Creed, the leader of the Fifth tribe of the Children of September, stood on a ledge which overshadowed his brethren amassed on the floor of the cave below. There were nine known tribes of the Children, but the Fifth was renowned for being more pragmatic and less prone to violence than the others. It was considered to be the scientific branch of the Children and Creed had a reputation not only for being one of the most revered leaders of the Children but also one of their greatest scientific minds.

‘My brethren.’ Creed breathed in, his high-pitched voice, full of emotion. ‘Now is the time for us to take our fate back into our own hands.’

A multitude of applause and grunting signalling passionate agreement could be heard from the cave floor.

Although the light was dim, you could still make out the shape and form of the Children by the phosphorous glow of the red fungi which lined the walls of the cave. They were quite diminutive creatures, standing no more than four feet tall with spindly limbs as black as midnight. Their facial features comprised of big child-like eyes and a large wide mouth but their nose was completely absent.

Some of them, such as Creed, wore some small raiments or pieces of armour, but this was the only thing that distinguished any of their number as having some kind of tribal position or rank. Creed himself wore a set of green leather body armour across his torso. It was imbued with ancient magics that rendered it as hard as steel but light as a feather.

‘In the council this night, each race has come for a different reason,’ Creed continued. ‘The Covenant of Nine to claim a debt of service. The Alliance of Man as slaves. The Silver Host in conflict with themselves, changing between the role of peacemaker and accuser as their misplaced sense of conscience dictates.’

‘But what about us, my friends, my beautiful children of the night. What about our reason. It is this. We come to ask a question. The same question we have been asking for 20 years now, as we have all watched our brethren fall to the ageing sickness.’

‘Who stole the original genetic codes for the creation of our race? We know it happened 20 years ago and we know it was one of the other four races. There have been rumours over the years but no clear answers. We must take advantage of recent events, gather our spies and offer favours in return for knowledge. It may just be that this council can start us back on the path to locating what was stolen. Giving us a chance at vengeance and an end to this plague that is destroying us!’

‘What say you my kin? Is it time for answers?’ Creed cried to the assembled crowd below.

At this, the chamber filled with the roars and cheers of thousands of Children thronged below. As the cheers subsided, a solitary figure could be seen to step out from the crowd and approach the speaker.

‘And what of the Valerian?’ The stranger asked.

Creed gave the new speaker a sneering look of disdain with just a hint of uncertainty regarding the question.

‘What of them, Core? You seem to know more about them than most,’ Creed replied, to the sound of muffled laughter from the crowd.

‘The Valerian have come to this council because their queen loves Axel Starborn. She will strike down anything or anyone who threatens him.’

‘Maybe, but why should this concern us?’ Creed asked, his uncertainty clearly showing now.

‘Because,’ Core replied, ‘the last time we took on the Valerian is when the ageing disease started.’

The Gates of the Fall

As the last remnants of sunset slowly faded into the gloom of dusk, four lone figures made their way towards the Gates of the Fall. Their battle armour and weapons had been discarded in favour of more ceremonial attire, as agreed by all five parties under the terms of the council.

They walked in silence along the narrow dirt path, which led through a sparse forest of fir trees. Above them, the stars could be seen clearly in a cloudless dark sky, amongst patches of scarlet and amethyst hues. The smell of fresh pine lingered on the air.

Suddenly, an inhuman cry ripped across the night and was instantly silenced, followed by the sound of drums, deep and malevolent as they beat their rhythm.

‘It’s begun,’ Axel declared as he continued to walk unfazed along the footpath.

‘That’s a very depressing sound. Who’s the drummer?’ Redgar asked.

‘Those must be the war drums of the Grave Diggers, the standard bearers of the Covenant of Nine. I don’t believe they know any more upbeat numbers, but feel free to ask when you see them. It looks likely the founder of this particular feast has arrived,’ Axel explained.

After another five minutes of walking, the drums were silenced and the narrow path opened up in front of them to reveal the first sight of their destination. As the trees cleared, the dirt path disappeared and was replaced by a smooth stone pathway, which they ascended up a slow incline towards a most magnificent sight.

The Gates of the Fall stood stark and foreboding in the half-light as the structure towered six hundred feet above the