"The past is never dead. It's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity." – William Faulkner

Chapter 1: Knocking Now Upon Your Door

It all started innocently enough with his dreams.

In fact, it began so innocently, Max could honestly not have said that anything had begun in the first place. His life was hectic and weird already, battling aliens and radioactive anteaters every other week, so he'd been dreaming up strange things for years. From the first day he'd been named the Cap-Bearer, Max had dreamed everything from prophetic warnings about Skullmaster to hilariously silly stuff involving Norman and modern dance. He didn't typically take much notice of his dreams when they weren't threatening or came without the familiar sense of destined doom.

So he really had no idea how long he'd been dreaming of a pair of grey eyes.

It wasn't until Bea caught him doodling in the margins of his notebook the last week of school that he even thought about it. She started teasing him about having a secret crush, but Max could honestly tell her he'd never met anybody with eyes like that.

(Well, maybe he had. Max didn't really check the stats on every villain and monster of the week. It was statistically possible that he'd met some with grey eyes — he was just too busy thwarting their evil plans and saving the world to notice.)

But the next morning, as he was putting his homework into his backpack, he spotted the notebook and realized that he had been dreaming about grey eyes.

However, Norman started bellowing through the house that Max was going to be late for school and then his mom started bellowing at Norman to stop bellowing, and then Virgil was bellowing at them both for their lack of decorum, and Max laughed and made his way downstairs, all thoughts of dreams pushed from his head.

And if he realized he'd dreamed of grey eyes again after that, he forgot again just as quickly.

-==OOO==-

"All right, that's it!" Max pushed himself up off the stone floor where he'd slid awkwardly after barely dodging a blast of fire. "I've had it with all this death-by-Ancient-Egypt stuff. Where's the evil plot to take over the world through burger joints?"

"Please do not give the evil genius any more ideas, Mighty One," Virgil said, sighing. He glanced at Norman, who was gamely holding a bronze shield and turning aside yet another jet of flame. "Now, we must neutralize this foe or he will certainly douse the world in fire, torment, and scorpions."

"Yeah, Virg, 'cause of those, scorpions are the worst."

But Virgil was too busy crowding closer to Max to avoid the small plague of those exact scorpions crawling in their direction who seemed particularly fond of his robes.

Max shook his head and straightened his Cap. "Okay. Time to get my Chosen One on!"

He charged at the crowd of insects, stamping them and bouncing away before he could be stung in return. Dodging over to Norman, he glanced around the pilfered shield at the half-man, half...something not man and not scorpion — and not spider because Norman was okay — and started looking for their answer.

There has to be some way to…

The symbols.

"Ha!" Max grinned as his eyes fell on a tablet lying upon the table behind all the flame-throwing action. "Gotcha. Normie, I need a boost!"

"You got it, Mighty One!" Norman shifted the shield to one hand and held out the other like a platform. Max crouched, then jumped onto Norman's hand, pushing off with all his force as Norman threw him upwards.

Max flew through the air straight and true, well clear of the mishmash monster, and caught himself on one of the protruding statues that ringed the Ancient Temple of Whoever Max Was Going To Have To Beat Today. The monster turned to chase him, but Norman charged, yelling. The half-something-icky was forced to focus upon the Guardian and not the Cap-Bearer.

"Please hurry, Mighty One!"

Max looked up to see Virgil huddled under another statue, the scorpions closing in.

"I got this, Virg!" He shimmied down to the ground and ran to the table which was covered with items and ingredients that would not have been out of place in Skullmaster's kitchen. Sitting on one corner of the table, mostly concealed by half of a dead baby crocodile, was the tablet he'd spotted from across the room. It didn't really look any different from any other tablet or set of ominous carvings scattered across the temple, but Max knew it was different nonetheless.

"Hey, Buggy!" he yelled, snatching it up. "Don't you know what we do to insects who try to take over the world?"

The half-something — maybe he was a spiny ant of some kind? — monster turned and shrieked, lunging towards Max with the crazed panic common to all bad guys whose fatal flaw had been exposed. Max grinned and slammed the tablet down into the corner of the table, shattering it.

The monster let out an inhuman screech.

Then, because he knew that particular sound of imminent and violent destruction, Max took shelter behind the legs of a nearby statue just before the monster exploded and covered the whole room with something black and putrid.

A moment later, Virgil made a distressed sound. "I could still use some help over here!"

Max peeked out from behind the statue. Norman was somehow untouched by the splattered ichor that was wildly disproportionate to the bad guy, but Virgil was coated in the goop. And the tips of his crown feathers were a little bit on fire.

Max exchanged a grin with Norman before the pair of them made their way over to Virgil.

"Mom's gonna have to buy you a bird bath, you know," Max told him while he pinched out the tiny flames on the Lemurian's head..

Virgil snorted. "Very amusing, Mighty One."

"I thought it was," Norman put in.

"That was quite clever of you, though, to destroy the anchor tablet that kept that being bound to this world. How did you think of it?" Virgil tried to look prim and, with black stuff thicker than ink all over him, mostly failed.

Max shrugged. "Just a guess."

For a moment, a passing instant, he thought one of the nearby statue's eyes turned grey, but they were back to normal before he could even blink.

Then Virgil slipped and flopped into a puddle, drenching himself even more thoroughly, and Max laughed and forgot that anything seemed strange.

-==OOO==-

Virgil sighed. Then he considered crumpling up the offending scroll like a child.

"Everything okay?" Norman asked.

With the Mighty One's mother away on another expedition and the Mighty One himself at summer diving practice (and having given strict instructions for Norman not to follow him because looming over him at the pool just looked weird and other parents were getting concerned), Virgil had taken the opportunity to carry an armful of his scrolls down from his room to the large front study where the light was better. But even the warmth of sunlight and the summer breeze did not shake the chill from his feathers.

Virgil closed the scroll carefully before he looked up.

"You know that I have had no reliable means to discern danger as I did once before, correct?"

"Sure." Norman shrugged. "The Mighty One reset time, and after that solstice came and went, the wall of destiny was useless." He felt not a little glee about that — that wall had portended his death and he had cheated it. Well, the Mighty One had cheated it on his behalf, anyway.

"Yes. And since then it has required a combination of my unmatched intellect, my ability to predict the hidden meanings of countless ancient Lemurian prophecies, and, at times, social media alerts to know when the world is in peril." Virgil shook his head. "The problem of this method is that the prophecies left by the Elders of Lemuria are incomplete, to say nothing of difficult to comprehend. As with all prophecies, they make far more sense in hindsight than in advance."

Norman raised an eyebrow. "So?"

"There is something troubling me about one of these scrolls. It speaks of things that happened long ago, and it speaks of their return to the world. But there is no definitive timeframe. Nothing useful to plot when such events might take place."

"What kind of events?" Norman asked.

"A resurgence of ancient Lemuria."

Norman blinked. Virgil was avoiding his eyes. "Uh, isn't that a good thing? Your people were the ones who set this all in motion in the first place."

"No." Virgil paused, let out a breath. "No, they foretold all that has come to pass; they did not engineer it. Even the Eldest of Lemuria was as bound by Destiny as the rest of us."

"So what's the problem? They were still your people. They're on our side. Right?"

"Yes, they were mine and they would be, as you say 'on our side' now. But remember that Skullmaster was of Lemuria, too, and he was not alone when he destroyed us." Virgil stared vaguely in the direction of the table, nowhere near Norman's face. "Lemuria is gone, never to rise again. What sort of 'resurgence' might be ahead of us, I cannot imagine."

Norman felt for his friend, but, out of respect, did not move to comfort him. "Whatever it is," he said gently, "we will face it with you." He thought about when he had been locked in combat against Spike to avenge his father, and how much the support of the Mighty One and Virgil had helped him defeat the old enemy. "The Mighty One will see you through."

Virgil looked up and for an instant Norman could see fear in his eyes. "Forgive me, Norman, but I dearly hope you are wrong."

Without another word, Virgil turned and went upstairs, shutting his door behind him.

-==OOO==-

In the endless dark, a pair of grey eyes were opening.

-==OOO==-

Max was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming, but it wasn't the sort of dream he could control.

"It's cool, though," he said to himself. "At least it isn't gross like that thing with the slime pit."

The figure hunched beside him nudged him with a sharp elbow. "Shh!"

They were somewhere shadowed, maybe in a box or behind a cabinet; from inside, it was hard for Max to tell. But there were cracks in the slats of wood before him, and if he pressed close, he could see into the room beyond. The walls were stone and there were thick hides and woven hangings covering the walls. A fire crackled nearby.

"The child is dangerous," came a man's voice from somewhere Max couldn't see.

"How can any child, even one so powerful, be dangerous?" asked another, lighter voice.

"There is an order to things. Destiny cannot be challenged, and that which is Fated must not be prevented. The child strains against such laws, and that insolence is more dangerous than any power."

"What will you do?"

"Whatever is necessary. The world must go on as foretold. There is no other way. And if the child cannot be made to see that, I will take measures."

Max shivered at the threat. Then he heard a tiny sound from the lumpy shape of a person beside him.

"It's you, isn't it?" he asked, turning. "You're who they're talking about."

It was too dark to see through the cloak or blanket or whatever it was that hooded the downturned head beside him, but Max could make out a nod regardless.

"Are they going to hurt you?"

The answer that came was whispered from somewhere far away. "Yes. And I will not let them hurt you in return."

"Me?" Max was startled and jumped, bumping his head on whatever was above him. "Ow!" He rubbed it, then frowned. "I thought you couldn't feel pain in dreams."

"This is no dream," the voice whispered. "It is a memory. And a promise."

The world around Max faded to grey and the dream faded with it.

-==OOO==-

Max had never particularly cared for language classes before, but when the new school year started in September, he loaded his schedule with as many as the teachers would let him take.

"It's cheating!" Bea told him. "You can speak any language you want!"

"Yeah, but I can't really control it," he'd said, "and this is good practice. Besides, they're as much about history and culture as nouns and verbs, and I definitely need to know that stuff."

He was not wrong about that — for every minute his classmates spent struggling to comprehend tenses and memorize irregular constructions, he spent thinking about the information hidden in the language exercises. They were starting on poetry in Spanish and on literature in French, and both gave him a different kind of insight. Maybe he'd never need Latin American poetry to protect the world, but anything he could learn that would help him understand someone different from himself might be the thing that divided defeating an enemy from saving someone in the wrong.

But because he had such an advantage over his classmates in languages, he also had a lot of free time after completing tests and classroom assignments with which to think.

He was staring idly at the blackboard while everyone around him sweated through a French exercise that first week in class when his eyes were drawn to one of the faded posters up beside the window. Some were from French movies or plays, and there were at least three different artful recreations of the Eiffel Tower spread through the room, but this one was different. It was a page from an illuminated manuscript blown up huge with old illustrations partially washed out in the background.

It reminded Max a tiny bit of the Lemurian Arcana, at least as much as any illuminated manuscript could draw near to the ancient and lost powers of the Lemurians, and with a start he realized that he could read it.

Well, obviously. It's a language, so thanks to this new and exciting weirdness of being me, of course I can read it.

But it feels familiar.

I wonder why.

He caught the name Merlin and realized it must be a retelling of one of the old Arthurian legends. But after reading a few lines farther, he felt himself seize up with annoyance from out of nowhere. He was near-furious, frustrated, and ready to throw something — and had no idea why.

Just as quickly, the feeling vanished.

Did I just have a mood swing? Like...one of those things they talked about in health class that comes with puberty?

Ew.

I'm just...not gonna mention that to anybody.

And by the time the teacher was collecting the exercises and beginning the rest of the lesson for the day, Max was thinking about other things and his flash of unexpected emotion was forgotten.

-==OOO==-

Virgil pushed open the door from the bedroom that had become his own. He didn't realize until he saw the darkened hallway and felt the stillness around him that everyone had already gone to bed. Virgil paused and mentally calculated the probabilities, concluding that Norman was likely not watching over the Mighty One tonight. Therefore, he was somewhat less concerned about startling the twitchy, protective Guardian as he made his way along the hall.

He hadn't intended to shut himself in his room all night again. And he knew that he owed the Mighty One both an apology and an explanation. For the better part of a week, Virgil had been absent and distracted as he worked through the problem of the scrolls. Why did the prophecies which were most important have to be those with the least clear interpretation? Simple, comparatively small threats were spelled out beautifully, complete with geographical locations which were easy to pinpoint and times they were applicable explained in detail. But that which was the most critical and the most worrying remained stubbornly opaque.

As he approached the Mighty One's door, Virgil felt a prickle run over his skin, his feathers fluffing up instinctively.

A moment later, the Mighty One himself emerged from his room wearing his pajamas and socks.

"Mighty One?"

But Max did not turn, instead moving away from Virgil and heading down the stairs. Virgil darted after him.

"Mighty One, are you all right?"

Max's breath hissed and there might have been a word in it, but it was too indistinct for Virgil to comprehend. At the bottom of the grand staircase, Max moved haltingly to the front door, eventually unlocking it and pushing it open.

"Mighty One!" Virgil raised his voice deliberately. "You are sleep-walking. You must wake at once!"

Max stepped onto the front porch and continued haltingly down the steps until he stood on the front walk, bathed in the light of a half-moon.

"Mighty One!"

Virgil scrambled after him, hearing a nearby rustling that meant Norman was awake and on his way.

Virgil managed to get around in front of Max, who had stopped to stare up into the sky. He seized one of the boy's hands with his own, surprised at how warm it was. Though the late summer night was mild, Max wore only a thin t-shirt and sleep shorts.

"Virgil, what's happening?" Norman burst into view, sword out and ready for anything.

"The Mighty One appears to be sleepwalking," Virgil said. He began tugging on the boy's hand, shaking him. "Mighty One, please. Awaken."

Max's head tipped down, away from the sky, and there was something in the washed-out color of his wide open eyes that made Virgil shiver. In the dim light cast only by the moon and stars and street lamps, Max's blue eyes were pale and colorless.

Norman sheathed his sword and approached, one hand out as though trying not to frighten a bird. "Mighty One?"

A violent tremor went through Max's body and his knees wobbled.

Virgil threw his arms around the boy and caught him, holding him up as Norman closed the last few feet between them to lend his own support. "Mighty One! Are you with us again?"

Max drew in a sharp breath, as though startled, and shook his head. "Virg? Normie? What's going on?"

Norman steadied Max by the shoulder and Virgil held on until they could tell he was really awake and standing on his own.

"You were sleepwalking," Virgil said, grateful that the boy's eyes looked more normal at last. "Whatever you were dreaming, it must have been a deep dream indeed."

"I don't really remember," Max said. He set a hand on his Cap, then patted Norman's arm. "Thanks for the backup, guys."

"No problem." Norman released him, but stayed close.

Virgil considered his boy for a moment, but saw nothing amiss. "Well, if it had been a prophetic dream, you would recall it now that you are awake. So perhaps it is nothing more than the normal changes to one's sleep cycle while undergoing a growth spurt."

Max smiled. "I could do with getting a little taller. That would be okay with me."

"However," Virgil said, "I don't like the idea of you sleepwalking unguarded. You could end up in serious danger."

"We're not handcuffing me to the bed, guys," Max said very firmly.

"No, not at all. However, I believe that Norman and I will simply keep a closer eye on you until we are certain this phase of your development has passed."

Max gave an enormous yawn. "Sounds good. So, does that mean I can go back to bed?"

"Sure thing," Norman said. And he gave Virgil a slight nod to show that he would spend his night watching over their boy to prevent any further midnight wanderings.

But as they turned back to the house, Virgil felt another shiver run through him.

-==OOO==-

"It wasn't Skullmaster, was it?" Norman asked the next morning.

"I don't believe so," Virgil said. "If Skullmaster were able to exert some kind of control over the Mighty One — waking or sleeping — he'd have done it long before now."

"What about Bran?" And the name grated on Norman's tongue like sandpaper.

Virgil sighed at him. "That's more plausible. The connection between them is routed through evil, and there is little known about Locknarr's true powers. However, I find it unlikely. At the moment, that connection goes only one way: from the Mighty One to Bran. Something would have to occur to open the connection further. And nothing like that has taken place."

"That we know of," Norman said.

"I suppose." Virgil shook his head. "For now, we must trust the Mighty One. If he is in danger or discomfort, he will surely make one or both of us aware of it. And if something is happening that links the Mighty One either to Bran or Skullmaster, it will reveal itself in time."

"What if it's too late by then?" Norman asked.

Virgil, tellingly, had no answer to give.

-==OOO==-

"It's fine, mom," Max said, holding the phone with one hand and lobbing a balled up shirt into his hamper with the other. "I've only done it one other time in the last couple of nights, and Normie keeps me from going very far. I guess two nights ago I went and stared at a bookshelf for a while before he woke me up. They'll keep me safe."

"I know they will, honey, but it's still my job to worry." His mom sighed. "Well. All the parenting books said that teenagers go through all kinds of weird changes, so I guess we'll just have to deal with it."

"That's what Peter said when Virgil asked him about it, too," Max said.

"At least I know you're not wandering off alone."

"Not a chance." Max considered his socks, then pulled them off; he'd ruined a pair last week from sleepwalking into the garden in them. "I've got the best backup guard dog a Cap-Bearer could ask for!"

"All right. Well, I should be gone another three weeks since we got our permit extended. But if you want me to come home sooner, you know I'll be on the next plane."

"I know, but I'm fine. You stay there and show those old dudes up for me!"

"You know I will, honey. Now, don't forget to do your homework. It's a new school year, and I want you to begin on a high note before your world-saving absences start piling up."

He sighed. "I'll do my best."

"You always do, Max. I've got to go. Love you!"

"Love you, too, mom. Bye!"

Max climbed over his bed, pulling the huge pile of blankets up after him. It seemed to help a little if he started the night under a giant mass of covers, or at least it slowed down his escape attempts — that was how Norman described it. It was weird knowing that his body was doing stuff he didn't remember in the middle of the night, but it was also fine because he wasn't alone.

Virgil and Norman had settled into a rotation of coming into his room about an hour after he went to bed, just to keep watch. Norman had always watched over his sleep for as long as he'd been staying at the house, but now he alternated nights with Virgil. Apparently neither of them were too bothered by the interruption to their rest, though Max felt bad about it anyway. He'd asked if they got bored sitting in his room waiting for him to do something, but both just shrugged.

On the other hand, Virgil and Norman were the ones with the patience to walk halfway around the world every week for their adventures before they quit the random global commuting thing, so maybe this was an improvement.

The blankets had a pleasant weight to them, and Max settled into the familiar warmth with a sigh.

Maybe tonight I'll figure out what I've been trying to dream about for the past two weeks.

The thought was barely formed when darkness surrounded Max as abruptly as if he had fallen into a portal.

"Huh," he said. Then, "Well, at least I'm aware of dreaming this time. I guess I could have been dreaming every time and never remembered it. So here's hoping I remember." He glanced around. "Not that there's anything to remember right now."

Something made him turn, and he sighed. "Figures."

The darkness was still dark and mostly empty, but now an amorphous shape had formed in the distance. It appeared to be pale and lumpy, moving steadily towards him. Max reached up to touch the Cap, grateful for its presence even in a dream, before he turned back. He let his arms hang loosely, his hands open and ready.

"Hey there! Is this the right train for Albuquerque?"

As the shape grew closer, Max felt the air around him warming.

"Wow. Did you bring a personal heater with you or what? 'Cause I don't know if that's gonna fit in an overhead bin."

The shape was almost right in front of him, but it was no less hazy. Growing worried, Max took a step backwards and held out his hands.

"Look, I'm all for the whole 'silence is golden' thing, but you're starting to venture into my personal space here."

The shape advanced and Max backed up again.

And then his vision was awash in grey.

As quickly as it happened, it vanished. Max looked at his hands, checked for his Cap on his head, and then peered at his surroundings once more.

"Okay. Well, that was weird."

But, this time, the darkness didn't feel empty.

"Are you...still there?"

Silence. A waiting silence.

"Okay, quit creeping me out. I can tell there's someone somewhere. Wherever here is."

There was a sibilant hiss, as of a deep breath after a long dive underwater, and a voice answered.

"You can perceive me."

The voice was soft, and Max was inclined to guess feminine by the tones.

"Uh, yeah. Hi. I'm Max."

"I know who you are, Mighty One."

Max gulped. "How do you know I'm the Mighty One?"

"I have read it in your mind, and in your dreams."

That ignited every one of Max's survival instincts and he felt himself curl into a defensive stance. There was nothing here, no one to fight, but he felt that he had to be prepared anyway.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"Don't be frightened. I won't harm you."

"Yeah. I've heard that before." And he didn't want the rush of fear to bubble up from the memory of Skullmaster digging around in his head, but he couldn't stop it.

To Max's surprise, he sensed a flash of anger that was not his own.

"What a vile creature! And how dare he violate you so!" The anger warmed with reassurance. "No, Mighty One. I am nothing like that which you fear, though some may think so. I am what your mind tells me you might call 'misunderstood.'"

"Uh, that's usually code for 'sympathetic villain,' you know."

"I am aware. And yet, there are those who name me villain, though I am not."

Max's wariness was undimmed. "I guess I have to take your word for it."

"I suppose you must, yes."

"Hard to take the word of someone when you don't know who they are!" And he didn't feel one bit bad about yelling that as hard as he could into his mindscape.

"I cannot blame you for your caution. But I fear that I shall lose your good opinion once you learn my identity as it is known to you."

"Uh, lady. You're in my head. I don't know how you got here or who you are. I don't know that I'd describe how I feel as a good opinion. It's more like 'not totally freaked out but still thinking of calling in an exorcist.'"

He could sense her reluctance as she spoke. "Very well. Then I greet you, Mighty One, and I hope that you will grant me the opportunity to explain myself. Whatever you believe of me, I assure you it is nothing at all similar to the truth."

A figure coalesced out of the darkness in front of him. Female, wrapped in a heavy hood and cloak, with striking grey eyes that were almost luminous against her thick, dark hair.

Max wasn't sure who was more nervous at that moment.

"I have had many names, but the one you know is Morgan le Fay."