Live and Let Drood

cloudless summer sky. Great open lawns surrounding the castle were covered with gleaming white tents and colourful pavilions, and the golden figures strolling back and forth had the aspect of knights from medieval legends. Winged unicorns flew back and forth above the castle, and golden-armoured figures waltzed happily on the air among them.
    “The Hall as Camelot,” I said, pausing for a longer look. “The best of us, perhaps…”
    “The Pendragon, King Arthur, has returned to Castle Inconnu and the London Knights,” said the Regent. “I shall be most interested to see what happens next.”
    “Boys and their knights,” said Molly. “I’ll never be a maid-in-waiting.”
    “Camelot lasted only a few decades,” I said. “The Droods have endured for centuries. We might wear armour, but we were never chivalric.”
    I followed the compass and the remote, which had waited obligingly, and Magic Hall disappeared, lost in the shuffle of so many realities, so many variations on the Drood family.
    And then the world turned, there was a blinding flash of light and the compass and remote dropped out of the air to land at my feet. I quickly stooped down to pick them up and stuff them in my pocket. And only then looked around me. The Merlin Glass had already shut itself down, zipping back to hide in my pocket dimension, as though it didn’t care for its new surroundings. I didn’t blame it.
    “Can the remote get us out of here?” said Molly.
    “Almost certainly not,” I said. “All it possessed were the arrivalcoordinates. We need the Hall and Alpha Red Alpha to get home again.”
    “Now you tell me,” said Molly.
    She armoured up, taking on the exaggeratedly feminine aspect of Moxton’s Mistake. And the more I looked around me, the more I missed my armour. Patrick and Diana were already standing back-to-back, guns tracking this way and that in search of a target. The Regent of Shadows just beamed happily around him as though he were on holiday and determined to enjoy every moment of it. I took a firm hold on Oath Breaker.
    We were standing in the middle of what I decided to call a jungle, because I had to call it something. There were no trees, no vegetation; instead, massive gnarled and whorled growths erupted out of the ground, rising, twisting and turning as though they had been forced molten from the ground and then hardened in the air. They rose high above us, hundreds of feet tall, sprouting branches here and there, twisted and knotted things that thrust out to challenge and interlock with one another. A tiny sun shone fiercely in what we could see of a sick green sky, the light forcing its way down through the canopy overhead. The gravity was distinctly heavier than I was used to and the light had a strained, sour quality. The air was so thick and wet I had to struggle to breathe the stuff. There were things moving in the shadows surrounding us on all sides, and none of them looked pleased to see us.
    It took me only a few moments to realise there were loud noises, roars and screams and explosions, off to one side, and not far off at all. We all looked in that direction.
    “I say we go that way,” said Molly.
    “It does sound like my family,” I admitted.
    Molly strode off in the direction of the destructive noises, smashing her way through the alien growths in her rogue armour. She didn’t look for a path or an opening, just forced her way through with brute strength. The gnarled and knotty growths were no match for Moxton’s Mistake. I knew how it felt to wear armour—like you’re walking througha world made of paper—so why go around when it’s so much easier to go through? You have to learn to treat the world with respect, because it can always surprise you. Molly hadn’t had the armour long. I just hoped it hadn’t gone to her head. Molly was dangerous enough in her own right.
    I made a point of walking right behind her in the trail she’d opened up. Ready to watch her back, because in her current mood she probably thought she didn’t need to. Patrick and Diana hurried close behind, guns constantly moving, ready to target anything that looked threatening or even overcurious. And the Regent just strolled along behind like a retired gentleman on his day out, enjoying the sights.
    We’d barely been moving a few minutes before really unpleasant-looking creatures emerged from the alien jungle to attack us. Hopping insectoid things came first, with glowing green carapaces and dark faces