The World to Come

by Eildon Rhymer

What if the Dark had won at the end of Silver on the Tree? The world is sliding into darkness, and only tattered remnants of the Light remain. Will, Bran and the Drews grow to adulthood, and each to their own destiny in this World to Come.

This story has around 50 parts, but most of them are pretty short. I hope to post at least one part a day, and get the whole story up within a few weeks.

This story covers 24 years. In a way, each chapter is a short story or vignette within this AU world. Some will read like fragments; others as longer stories. Taken together, they tell the story, but the scenes don't lead directly from one to the other, as in conventional storytelling.

The Dark has won. In other words, expect angst and darkness, with little light relief.

Part one has 13 parts, and covers about 5 or 6 years.

Part one: chapter one

Undone

The sky did not yet know that the world had ended. It was blue and beautiful, like the rising of a midsummer morning in an age of endless Light.

Moaning, Will rolled onto his stomach, and pushed himself onto his hands and knees. "I'm going back." Breathlessness and exhaustion made his voice into a tiny, broken thing.

No-one heard him. Panic fluttered in his chest. Were they… gone? He stood up, looked around his place they had fled to, so anguished, so wild, so desperate. A dozen Old Ones lay scattered in a meadow of pale flowers, driven to the end of their endurance, and beyond.

"I have to go back," Will told them. "Bran… He's…"

His throat felt scarred. His legs could hardly hold him. His hand hurt, and he realised that he had burnt it, but how and where, he did not know. He remembered a sword coming down, and hatred in the eyes of a friend. There had been screaming, and darkness, and Merriman shouting to him to flee, to go, to run.

"He didn't mean it. We can change it."

"No." And Merriman was there, stern and tall, with a face like etched stone.

"Please." Will felt his face crumple, like the boy he still was, and would be for only minutes longer. "It can't finish like this. Bran…"

"Bran made his choice." Merriman's face was expressionless.

"No!" Will cried. "He didn't… He was just… We can change his mind. Then none of this will have happened. Everything will end as it's supposed to end."

"No," Merriman commanded. "It is done now. I cannot be undone, not by you, and not by anyone."

"But Bran…" Will was crying, sobbing like a child. "He looked at me… He said… He thinks we…"

"That does not matter, Old One." Cold and hard as the mountains, cruel as the Dark.

"But it does!" Will cried. "It does to me. Bran…"

Merriman slapped him. "You forget yourself, Old One."

Will was too weak to stand up to such a blow. He fell sideways, and struck his shoulder when landing. Merriman stood over him, his shadow falling on Will's face. It was suddenly incredibly cold.

"But the Dark has won," Will sobbed. "Bran… They must have tricked him. I just want to…"

"You will not." Merriman was not even looking at Will, cowering at his feet like a broken enemy. "This is your place."

Will crawled to his knees, and managed to stand again. He pressed his hand to his throbbing cheek, and felt his tears trickle through his fingers. "I don't want to give up. That's all. There must be something…"

Merriman grabbed his chin, long fingers squeezing painfully tight. "Four thousand years I have waited, Will Stanton. Four thousand years, and you have had just one. Four thousand years I have worked for this and waited for this. Believe me, Will Stanton, you feel nothing."

Will could not speak. His legs sagged, and he was held up only by Merriman's steel grip at his throat.

"A thousand Old Ones were blasted out of time today, boy," Merriman hissed. "I witnessed them all coming into their powers. I guided them as I guided you. All gone, ripped away, and I'm still here, and everything's lost."

He cast Will away, and Will sprawled to the ground, gasping for breath. He had felt them ripped out time, too. Their absence was a bleeding emptiness in his heart. The air felt thinner, and he was alone and tiny in the chambers of his mind.

"It cannot be undone, Will," Merriman said, a little softer. "This was the final Rising, the final battleground. The Dark has won. It is the end."

The end, Will thought. He looked at the flowers, still blooming. He looked at Jane and Simon and Barney, smiling and peaceful in their unnatural sleep. He looked at the sky above, where a silver aeroplane breathed a delicate line of white across the blue.

"No," he said, pushing himself to his feet once more. "It is not the end." The Dark would seek to rule mankind and tempt them to turn against each other, but the remnants of the Light would still fight them. The Dark was victorious, but it still remained to be determined quite how terrible a world they would make between them.

"Yes," Merriman said, nodding once. "And so you see why you cannot go back."

Because if he went back, he would be defeated. Bran was in the hands of the Dark now, and the only way to talk to him would be to go into the very heart of Darkness in all its new-found power. If he went back, he would be sent out of time forever, and there would be one less Old One to protect the people of the world from the worst excesses of the Dark.

But, Bran, he whispered to himself. I'm so sorry. He wiped his tears away with a hand that did not tremble. But I will find you one day, he vowed.

"You understand why I had to," Merriman said, touching Will on his bruised cheek.

Will nodded. The last of the tears had gone, and the child had died forever. He was an Old One, and the world was in the hands of the Dark. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else could ever matter.

"It would do no good to seek out Bran," Merriman said. "All it would do is make things worse."

He blames me, Will thought. It's my fault. Because I was the one who was supposed to befriend Bran. I was Bran's Merlin, and he was my Arthur, and I failed. I lost him.

But he stood tall, an Old One facing the future. "What about the children?"

They were beginning to stir, moaning and yawning in their enchanted sleep. No mortal could have travelled the way the Old Ones had travelled in their desperate flight, not without losing their minds forever.

"You know what we need to do, Will," Merriman said gently.

Jane woke first, tearing from sleep with a wild cry, but then her eyes widened, and she stared at the flowers and her brothers on either side of her. "Oh…" She slumped forward, breathing heavily. "It was a dream."

Will crouched down beside her. "It was not a dream, Jane."

Simon rolled over, his face a mask of horror. "Bran betrayed us. The Dark…"

"The Dark has won, yes," Will told him. "It cannot be undone. Bran made his choice."

"But it can't be true!" Jane cried. She kept looking beyond Will to Merriman, as if nothing was true until she had heard it from him. "It can't be!"

Merriman said nothing. It was the first time ever that Will had almost hated him. "It is true," he said. "The world is in the hands of the Dark. Things will change, but life will carry on."

"Shut up!" Simon screamed. He threw himself at Will and grappled him to the ground, and knelt over him, hands digging into his shoulders. "I hate you!" he spat. "Saying it as if it doesn't matter. Don't you ever care about anything?"

Will could not say what he wanted to say. He could not even think it. "We will make you forget all this," he said, looking Simon full in the face. "You will be targets for the Dark, if you remember. You will still have to live with what the world is going to become, but it will be more bearable for you, if you don't know how it happened, and how close it came to never happening."

"You…!" Simon shrieked, but Will brought up his hand, and steadily spoke the word. Behind him, he heard Merriman speak his own spell. Sleep, and forget. Sleep, and forget, and wake, but not to morning.

Minutes passed. He felt Merriman gently lift Simon from on top of him, and he heard the other Old Ones stirring. Words were said. Will was not the only one to weep on waking.

"Will," Merriman said eventually, so softly beside him.

Will sat up, blinking.

"There is one more thing you need to do."

Will closed his eyes. He knew what it was. The boy would have wept and begged, but that boy was dead now. Drowned, he thought. I will say that I was drowned, and Bran with me, on a beach where the sunlight never dies.

"Yes." But he was still human enough to say sorrowingly, "You're taking everything from me."

Merriman touched his cheek, and gave a smile of infinite sadness.

end of part one