The Legacy of King Arthur: BOOK I by Philip A Moore

The Rabid Swine Bar was a beat up establishment, not just on the outside. Inside, it looked rough, dirty, and very well worn. The walls were dusty, unpainted wood, on which hung badly done portraits of different former patrons, displayed at odd angles.They appeared to be placed randomly, to cover scars, burn holes, and rude sayings. On the wall also hung a few beat up ogre, deer, boar,and bear heads and even one of a dog. In life it had been the bartenders favorite mongrel. and was the only thing in the room that looked like it had been dusted The dim light came from old candles which had nearly caused the place to burn down more the a few times. The table clothes were scarred by charcoal burns and stains, all hinting of a colorful past of conquest, scandal and violence. The ceiling showed an ominous history as well with dark smokey beams. stained black from the sooty smoke rising from fireplace and Candles. There had been some accidental fires in the past, but luckily the not so bright bartender knew just enough magic to put the flames out and save the building. Incidental fire control was all he knew, magic wise. He could not, however, control his customers. The building, possessed a comfortable, old shoe, ambiance born from the strong smell of sweat, animal hides , burnt wood and booze.

Mordred was at the bar. It was not his favorite, just the most convenient one he knew. He sat contemplating, sipping a lager. Where he was sitting he could see an obese bartender in his unkempt stained white shirt. Nearby was a haggard looking, mousy grey haired, waitress with beat up brown moth wings and only a couple of teeth. A few other patrons were stumbling about. These guys had faces that were so ugly that the only way they would ever get a date or wife was if they paid in gold or if they found a lady overly desperate not to be alone. Their clothes indicated nothing but poverty and hard living.. They stood around lifting their shirts pointing to different scars and telling wild stories about the exploits which had caused them.

They would laugh if a tale told caused the bar maid to blush. She was tough, however and did not blush often. This made it more of a challenge. If he succeeded in getting the blush, the teller would then get a drink on the house. They would make a point to tip the maid for any inconvenience.

Mordred knew he was much better then these sots. He knew he could beat any of them with his stories, even without the scars, but just now he was too miserable to join the game and just would have preferred to be alone. His seat creaked as he shifted his weight and took the hood of the thread bare, brown coat and covered his head. His temples throbbed and his ears rang.He needed a break and a drink. Things were getting difficult for him.

He had left his pet raven back at his room at the inn. It would have made him stand out and he would rather remain in the shadows. The raven was not a friendly creature most of the time. It liked to attack, spontaneously, even when unprovoked! It would go after any dead body it saw, even human but then, this may have been just to tick off Mordred. It resented its current position as a lowly bird Long ago it had succumbed to Mordred’s trickery and now was compelled to spend its miserable life serving as a tool to his schemes. Sometimes Mordred would mind walk. He would close his eyes and see and feel what the raven was experiencing. If the raven was hunting, he had to quickly leave its mind if it tore into a corpse of someone Mordred had killed. Mordred was not a cannibal. Mordred’s raven was with him at the inn under special arrangements, and a healthy bribe paid the innkeeper. The man had agreed because he was afraid of Mordred’s retaliation. Mordred knew the man was afraid of him, a fact he used to his advantage. There was an unfair fairy law prohibiting raven ownership. If he had allowed his bird to roam on its own the fairies had threatened to kill it. As it was, he felt, what they did not know would not hurt them!

Mordred was one of the few humans who had the ability to live in both worlds. No, this wasn’t an imaginary world, like one would find in a book. He was part of the human world and also privileged to be an unwelcome part of the fairy subculture and had been so for over 1000 years.

The fairies liked to think that they were much more powerful than humans. Mordred knew that as long as one pretended to acknowledge this, they would respect you and allow you to visit them. Most humans in modern times liked to think that fairies are purely mythical beings. This attitude never endeared them to the fairy world. It just made the fairies angry. To them it felt like the humans were just playing with them by pretending as if they had no power if they were not believed in, and that they weren’t allowed to exist without human recognition. After all, didn’t one of those noble, brave, writers of fairy secrets insist that the way to heal a dying fairy was if one clapped at them? They all disagreed. All clapping did was hurt their tiny ears. They hated J.M Barry; they also found his suggestions that a tiny little fairies would ever throw dirt (called pixy dust) at children to help them fly demeaning.

Mordred appealed to these, and using the language of common goals, he gained their wary trust enough to acquire assistance in small ways, as long as it would lead to human destruction, of course.

It was shortly after the last battle of Camlann, where his father, and advisory, King Arthur was killed, that the fairies appeared. They came to his assistance as he lay bleeding with grave wounds, on a dirty blood soaked battle field that stank of dead grass, horse manure, and gangrene . Although they did not have an ally in King Arthur, and they weren’t always aligned with each other, a certain faction of them plotted that perhaps a human with Mordred’s weakness of character would be disposed to assist them in their great quest to take othe the human realms. They would guide him and identify his enemies in hopes that by instigating human wars, the world would be left to them, after the mortals killed each other off. Mordred’s fairy connection began that day ruefully,. I the same exact day where his rightful title to the throne was taken from him, a slight which dug at him and seeded his anger. This festered within him like and infected wound, rotting his already pathetic character.

A large percentage of fairydom like to stay out of human affairs, preferring to sit back and just observe, but there was a certain element among them that thought they should rightfully rule earth., in both the fairy and human realms. Mordred appealed to these fairies, and using the language of common goals, he gained their wary trust enough to acquire assistance in small ways, as long as it would lead to human destruction, of course.

The lager did not comfort him. It messed with his head and stiffened his resolve to do something to fix his current situation. He was not moving toward his goal of ultimate world conquest and he was getting impatient. He left the bar deciding on a new approach. He would simply talk to the fairy council, the meeting of those who led the various groups of fairies. He had been to quite a few of their gatherings and even knew the hidden ways to contact them. Straight away, before the booze induced courage waned, he decided to take action.

At some distance, in a wide field, there, in the overgrown grass, he found a large rock, one of those rare places left in the world that provided him access to the fairy council. They preferred the title “fair folk”, so he had to remember this when addressing them. He hated what came next, because it made him waste good booze. He unwrapped a loaf of caraway scented, rye bread that he had bought at the bakery that morning and then poured half a bottle of good quality scotch whiskey over it. He swilled the rest. Why waste all of it? Then he then spoke some words that were so ancient that he did not even know what they meant anymore.

There were some loud, crackling sounds as the boulder broke and opened like a flower forming a stony gateway. Out stumbled a short, fat, balding rather stubby looking green man who was not wearing any shirt. His double D sized “man boobs” had a couple sets of man boobs sagging beneath them and each set had nipple rings. He was smoking a stick, not a cigarette, cigar, or pipe, mind you, a stick!

He was the main delegate to the fairy council. Mordred felt an urge rising within him to kill the guy just for the fun of it but he squelched it. He did not want a good laugh to ruin the opportunity to manipulate the council to his own evil purpose. To his disgust, the thing insisted on speaking to him as if he were a small child. The man picked up the bread and ate, all the while complaining about how cheap the booze was used to make the sop. He used demeaning words like “you people” “those people” and “dent heads”. He referenced Mordred as a “small minded” “fragile natured ” “headless chicken” and a “small pick”.

Mordred ran his hand through his oiled, stringy, black hair. He deceitfully cast a more relaxed appearance than which he actually possessed at the moment and gave the small man an encouraging look. He asked him to get on with it.

“A “small pick” of your diminutive stature and limited power should not expect to be afforded the privilege of appearing before our council” the man haughtily declared.

The green man’s breath smelled like a freshly occupied outhouse festering in the desert sun. The foul scented mist swirled around his head, in an invisible cloud which swung lazy, yet lethal knock out punches at the unsuspecting nose of the one speaking to him. It was hard to be around, even for stinky Mordred. He had to think through his reply carefully.

“Look here, my friend.” he snarled with feigned politeness.

The little man just turned to walk away.

“I will not be spoken to in that tone by human filth!” the little man declared derisively.

“OK. OK. OK.OK!”

Mordred felt his hand creeping for his knife. He quickly regained control of it. He began again, his voice so syrupy sweet and polite he made himself nauseous.

“Most noble sir, I have a proposition for the dear fair folk that they may find of interest.” He gushed. “True it is from a mere human “dent head” and most assuredly it is not as highly imaginative as the lofty thoughts which your people commonly produce. Yet , I believe that with some wise fairy counsel, it may prove of some great benefit.”

“I think not!” the creature spat.” You humans are loathsome, weak, powerless creatures, so why should we be interested in you at all?”

Mordred slapped his left hand with his right and jammed them both into his pockets defiantly. He wanted to cut something badly.

“Because I can give you control of the earth and eliminate the humans completely,” he said very quickly to hide his true emotions “All you have to do is to get the council of the fair folk to agree to a meeting.”

The fat green man grew a bit greener. His nipples jiggled with delight at being groveled to, but his demeanor was set to mask any real interest. With a haughty and dismissive glance he condescendingly agreed to let the fairy elders know what Mordred wanted.

A week later a beautiful white dove dropped two wet, white things on Mordred’s dirty head…. And it also dropped a note granting a meeting with the fairy council. Mordred thought the pretty dove was the most noble and loyal thing he had cooked in a long time. He licked his chops, belched, and spit out a pair of little boots…..fairy boots!

“Stupid changeling!” he thought. But at least it had quenched his itch to cut something!

The council met in a large meadow lined with many log benches and surrounded by a large, lush forest. There were roads going through it, which crossed at the center of the clearing, like the spokes of a wheel. Each road lead to a different section of the fairyland. it had the sweet smell of fresh grass, flowers and the many kinds of food that were to be served afterwards

The delegates ranged in size from tiny little creatures as small as bugs to rather tall, bulky bodied ones with large, bright wings. Like humans, fairies were not all Caucasian. The wealthy of the group wore fancy clothes. in contrast, some of them wore saggy,baggy things which did not fit quite right. There were even some brownies who wore nothing at all. They were there to help with the serving. Mordred always thought it was funny that fairies were almost always drawn or painted with peach skin color with the same kind of wings, but in reality they had as many variations as humans. They came in all different kinds of wing styles like insects, birds, or even small dragons. The odor of bees wax and lamp smoke from hundreds lanterns and the spicy aroma of the cooking feast pervaded the air.

The meeting came to order and following a rather long role call it proceeded. After the important business was addressed, the less important business was discussed…and discussed again for some excruciating length of time. Mordred grew impatient. The fairies took notice of him and in their benevolent graciousness, moved on to discuss the most menial and trivial of things as slowly as they could.

They discussed mundane fairy daily life issues such as Mrs. Willoughby’s insistence on line drying her clothing in one of the neighborhoods in the forest top. Her township and neighborhood association all had ordinances forbidding the hanging of ones clothes outside to dry, in the neighbors view. Mrs. Willoughby, herself, had signed an agreement not to do so as a requirement of moving in. Now, changing her mind, she believed that line drying was safer than magic drying, as too many spells weakened the psychic integrity space of space time continuum. It was of a great concern to all…… except Mordred.

Mordred, being of noble birth, himself, and being accustom to a small amount of priority and privilege, was soon frustrated beyond endurance. He forgot his royal manners and blew his top! He angrily jumped to the center of the sacred tree knot which served as a counsel table and, in a shrill voice, demanded to be heard. There was a lone gasp from behind him. All the fairy governors in attendance looked down at their laps in unison, there was an embarrassing hush. They refused to give him eye contact or acknowledge his presence. Grandstanding did not help his cause and it was working decidedly against him, but he was on a roll and he was too committed to stop now. So, sucking in his breath and puffing his chest to try show a boldness he didn’t really feel, Mordred burst forth with his message.

He started out by trying a little persuasive buttering up . He pointed out that since the fairies were as powerful and as awesome and intelligent as they were, the they, alone, should be in charge of the world! He paused for dramatic effect and then went on. Sadly, at this time fair folk were not in that position. But, he had the answer for them. Since he belonged to the human race, he would be the perfect person to infiltrate the human kingdom. He would lead an army of fairies to take over the earth!

A very prim, traditional, Prime Minister in a pink, white, and light blue dress, who had blond hair and the face of an angry, ugly, older St. Paulli Girl and who looked like she had been a Madonna impersonator before becoming a queen, pinned her iridescent , sparkling butterfly wings angrily together behind her back made a snarly-snarl at Mordred. She hissed beautifully.

“What! You think you could lead US? You are not trustworthy and, small one, you smell like the deaths of a hundred souls, all of which call out for vengeance!”

The tone of her sqeeky voice grated on Mordred’s already raw nerves. He considered starting a ‘coup d’ etat’ and taking over French style then and there! It would be easy to fight each king one on one. He could chop off heads and lead an invasion solo……

“Maybe later,” he thought to himself.

There were just too many fairies in this large group. They could overpower him easily. He had been caught by surprise in past fights with them and had discovered they had quite a few parlor tricks hidden for use in emergencies.

The fairies had good reason not to trust him. They suspected that he had killed quite a number of them through the years. Fairies are pretty much immortal, so they remember old wounds. The deaths of their kin stung forever.

Most in attendance still refused to give him eye contact and studied their hands in their laps. There was some low chatter between the delegates.

“ How about we discuss this later, like in a thousand years.?”

“ We’ve heard this line from this slime bucket before!”

“What makes you think you could win a war with the humans this time,” inquired a prune faced, but rather wise older fairy gentleman who was about the size of Mordred he had bushy eyebrows forming one line across his forehead and a long flowing beard.

Mordred shifted his weight nervously from leg to leg and stomped his feet.

“Tis another generation of humans now since the last time you tried. They no longer believe in you. This makes them vulnerable,” Mordred declared loudly.

He glanced shiftily around the circle. Some of the fairies looked like they were showing a bit of interest, so maybe they would agree to help him. Without them he would not succeed at his diabolical plan. The Fair folk council did not need to know this though. He took out the dagger that he kept in his pocket and tested the blade with his thumb. It was sharp and felt that it should be stabbing something.

“Not yet,” he crooned lovingly to the knife as he sucked the blood from his thumb.

While he may not have love for other creatures, his knife was different. Holding it brought back a lot of deliciously wicked memories He would sometimes take it out and recount tales of his exploits to entertain rogue fairy war parties he encountered, in attempts to impress them and win their favor. He could use these tales for his own diabolical purposes. When telling a story, he especially liked it if he could get the audience to squirm a little. Then he knew they were really being entertained. The fighting fairies especially seemed to enjoy stories involving the murdering of human women and children. These were not your “Tinkerbell” fairies. This group tended not to be pacifists. One quality Mordred never admired was pacifism. He had many ways to provoke these fairies to fight for him and they were always fighting. Their wars took place just outside the human realm. Mordred took advantage of this infighting to gain allies. A rotting person like Mordred had to work over time to gain allies. His highly exaggerated stories, told with dramatic flair while flicking his knife, were a great tool.

Mordred had a bogus reputation as a likable rogue. He was slick and he was coy. He worked hard at presenting false impressions if they served his purposes. He could trick whomever he chose into believing anything he wanted. In reality he hated the fairies as much as he hated the humans who had hurt him and made him bitter. When the fairies weren’t in a group there was nothing to keep the black hearted Mordred from picking off the weak ones and killing them slowly. He then sold off the corpses for magical or medical research. He would usually sell the head for a bounty if he needed last minute beer money.

Mordred lived through what some would call an “immortal guarantee. His mother, who was a witch whose coven was called “The Fey” had showed him how to adsorb the life force of other beings. This meant if he took the life of another being, he then gained the length of their life added on to his own. The Fey hated it that the had chosen them to be the first he practiced it on. He started by killing a witch of their group!

When Mordred grew too old for his own liking, it was time to kill again. He did not use fairies for this diabolical purpose. Even though killing a fairy would add the most time to his life, a whole century, he did not dare risk it. The problem of the immortal guarantee was that each time he killed, a portion of the victims psyche lived on in his mind, constantly tormenting him. Sometimes when he was drunk, they would gang up on him and control his body when he was passed out. The main reason he did not do this magic with fairies was that they possessed enough power that they could reveal his secrets if they lived in his mind. He did not want to risk that kind of wrath. The negative and some times embarrassing publicity didn’t help either. He snuck around and just killed weak fairies for sport and entertainment!

The number one rule of fairies versus mortals was “Do not use magic against fairies!” If you were caught using it to harm the Fair Folk, you lost your power and this included Mordred’s ill gotten life force. The fact was that if he only killed humans, the fairies would follow him to the ends of the earth! Mordred had to work his evil carefully and certainly not get caught!

Mordred was not a good person. The voices in his psyche continually reminded him this in his background thoughts. It was the price he paid for taking a life to live longer. The voices of those he had slain reverberated in his head when he slept and haunted him when he was awake. But this was a small price to pay he reasoned. Even the voices would be worth it when he ruled the planet.

He then had a happy thought. Samhain, or Halloween as the humans called it would be in a few months. He thought of his special way to celebrating. He took out his knife and caressed the blade.

“I wonder who this years' treat will be?” he thought while anticipating more carnage.

Upon remembering different murder victims or treats as the ancient druids called them during there sacrificial rights, the voices he had managed to keep silent during the meeting started howling in pain. Maniacal Mordred almost laughed as he heard them.

-Philip A. Moore