Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Fellowship, the majority of the demons they're fighting (I may be improvising for some of them from here on in), or Malcolm; he's someone from fiction going around under an alias. The plot is mine, and that's it.

Feedback: Is Skinner slightly annoying? Of COURSE I want some!

Funky in Fishnet: Glad to hear you didn't guess earlier; I wouldn't want to think I'd made it obvious. Anyway, hope the story continues to please you; it's about to get VERY interesting…

The Fellowship of Extraordinary Men

"Ouch…" Marcus grunted, as he shook his head, trying to shake off the pain that was currently stabbing through his head. What the hell had happened…?

Then he remembered.

"Malcolm!" he roared, as he tried to leap to his feet and start trying to find the traitor…

Only to realise that he was chained to the wall by his arms a couple of feet off the floor.

"There's no point in straining yourself, my good Marcus," a voice said from off to the side. "These chains have been specially conditioned to resist the efforts of you and any of the Fellowship members should you attempt to escape; Even your remarkable physical prowess cannot break them."

Marcus looked over in the direction of the voice, noting as he did so that the rest of the Fellowship were hanging alongside him, the Prince and Robin looking like they were getting close to waking up. He briefly rejoiced at that image, but then saw the figure standing at the end of the cell.

It was Malcolm, smirking at his with a cockiness that Marcus found exceedingly aggravating. His staff and robe were mostly the same as they had been before, except that now his robes were dark black instead of their original blue, and the ball on the end of his staff was a similar colour. Lying beside him was a large pile of what Marcus recognised as the Fellowship's main weapons; evidently whoever had imprisoned them wanted to rub their failure in their faces.

"Why did you do this, Malcolm?" Marcus asked the supposed occult expert, trying to ignore the pain of his arms being stretched by the chains. "Why did you sell out your kingdom for these… monsters?"

"Sell it out?" Malcolm grinned, looking at Marcus with a wicked glint in his eyes. "You're over four hundred years old, Marcus; surely you've worked it out by now, with all that experience behind you? I was never interested in saving England; I was only ever interested in serving the Demon Master." His grin spread. "Or, as I have always called her, 'Mother'."

"Mother?!" Marcus yelled in surprise and shock; this was getting ridiculous. "The Demon Master is a woman and your mother?! Who are you?!"

"Mordred…" a weak voice gasped from between the two figures. Glancing in the direction of the voice, Marcus was relieved to see the Prince had at last woken up; it wasn't much in the long run, but at least he'd have some company. "He's Mordred… Morgraine LeFay…"

"Oh dear god…" Marcus breathed, as he looked over at Malcolm- Mordred- in horror. He hadn't been active for the fall of Camelot, of course- Viktor had been the active Elder at that time- but he'd received all of his friends' memories at the Awakening, and the fall of Camelot had not been a pretty thing to witness. Vampires generally stayed out of human affairs, but the fall of Camelot had been an occasion where even Viktor had wanted to intervene; it had been a good kingdom, and its fall had decimated Britain for decades.

To be in front of the man who had not only been involved in its fall, but had struck the penultimate blow against Arthur himself…

It was all Marcus could do not to pull his arms out of their sockets to kill this fiend in human form.

"Don't look so surprised, Marcus," Mordred smiled up at the vampire. "You should have guessed that the Demon Master would have to be a person possessed of remarkable dark magics, and there are few who control darker magics than my mother. What, did you think someone with the power needed to control this army would just hide away and not use their powers until now?"

He grinned. "Of course, we're not quite there yet. We need a couple of sacrifices in order to bring through the biggest guns in our potential army- the Old Ones, naturally-otherwise we'd already be running rampant throughout the world. I assume you can guess why we've waited this long?"

Marcus's eyes bulged in horror. So that was why Mordred hadn't just killed them all in their sleep!

He was going to use the powerful life energies of the Fellowship to awaken the most ancient of all demons…

"We'll stop you!" Marcus roared, trying desperately to pull the chains out of the wall and attack the man he had once counted as an ally.

"Oh, be realistic!" Mordred laughed, as he walked forward to look at the Fellowship. "You're all tied up. There are no reinforcements coming to save you. Our army shall walk free. And you, the Fellowship of Extraordinary Men, a team unlike any other that has ever been formed, a team formed for the sole purpose of saving humanity, have walked into our hands, giving us the last pieces we needed to complete our takeover, without complication, without damage, and practically without incident."

"No," the Prince said suddenly, from where he hung on his chains.

"What…." Mordred asked, as he turned to face the foreign figure.

"Not without incident," the Prince said simply.

Then the manacles holding his feet fell apart, and he swung forward in a half-circle, his feet landing on the wall just above his head as the manacles holding his wrists fell apart. Instantly, he tore along the wall, running above all the other members of the Fellowship, and watching as their manacles crumbled into dust as he passed them.

Then, before the still-dazed members had even finished falling, the Prince was below them,

"We're coming," he told Mordred simply.

Then he threw the dagger at the staff. The blue ball on the end of the staff shattered, the staff burst into flames…

And Mordred vanished.

Marcus blinked in surprise, and looked over at the Prince.

"How…?" he asked, not sure what to say next.

"Mordred was an illusion," the Prince explained, as he picked up his dagger and looked over at the hanging form of Marcus. "I realised that when I tried looking at him with what I call my 'time-vision'- a means by which I can see how old and experienced people are when they are in front of me- and the particles comprising him did not age as a human's would. I therefore concluded that he was only a projection of a human, and not a real person as such.

"Regarding the chains…" He shrugged. "It was simple enough. I simply accelerated the passage of time immediately around my wrists and ankles, and they rapidly became too old to support my weight."

"Impressive…" Robin said, as he finally felt coherent enough to speak. "How come… you never told us… you could do that?"

"I couldn't before," the Prince said, as he turned around to face his current leader. "However, I believe that this tower's powerful magics are boosting my own powers to a remarkable degree, thus allowing more control over time than I have possessed up until now."

"Excellent," Marcus smiled, before his face hardened and he jerked his thumb over towards the other Fellowship members. "Now, not meaning to be rude, but could you get them back on their feet already?!"

"Oh, of course," the Prince smiled, as he turned to the other members of the Fellowship. Waving his hands, he watched as the other three Fellowship members glowed briefly, and then Robin sat up as Ivanhoe and the Black Arrow began to stir.

"Uugggh… What hit me?" the Black Arrow grunted, as he looked over at the others. "I feel like…"

Then his eyes shot open and he sat up like he'd been struck by a bolt of lightning.

"MALCOLM!" he roared, looking around the room. "Where is he?!"

"Evidently, he's not here," Ivanhoe grunted as he got to his feet, clutching his head as he winced from a sharp burst of pain. Blinking his eyes open, he looked over at Robin. "Why would he do that?"

"Simple," Robin said, as he got to his feet. "His real name is Mordred, and the Demon Master is his mother, Morgraine LeFay. I assume you two know who they are?"

The shocked expressions on the Black Arrow and Ivanhoe said it all.

"M… Morgraine LeFay?" Ivanhoe asked, sounding as though he wanted to be contradicted. "As in King Arthur's Morgraine LeFay? His half-sister? The witch? The one that destroyed Camelot?"

"Exactly," Marcus said, as he grabbed his daggers from the pile of weapons on the ground and slid them into his belt. "Apparently she's somehow managed to survive all these years since the fall of Camelot, and now she wants to take control of Britain with aid from those demons we've been formed to deal with." He sighed a little as he turned around to face them. "And as if that wasn't bad enough, Malcolm only left us alive so that he could sacrifice us to summon the Old Ones."

"The who?" the Black Arrow asked curiously.

"Demons who were created at the beginning of the world," Marcus explained, as he grabbed various other weapons on the ground and started handing them out to the rest of the Fellowship. "According to prophecy, the world shall end should they ever be awakened and allowed free reign, and they shall be unstoppable when their time comes." His face hardened as he handed Robin his bow. "Our only chance is to kill Morgraine and Mordred before they find someone else to sacrifice in our places, and find some way to destroy all the demons here at once."

"Right," Robin said, as he grabbed the bow from Marcus's hands and slung it over his shoulder. "Ivanhoe, you shall handle Mordred; Marcus, Prince, Black Arrow, you shall be responsible for targeting the attacking demons. Morgraine is mine."

He looked around at the Fellowship, his harsh stare allowing no argument. "We have our mission, our enemy, and we know what's at stake. We cannot fail in this struggle, or all that we know and love shall die."

The Fellowship nodded briefly, and then turned towards the door of their little cell.