The Power of Five Oblivion

first rocks and stones came loose. The vibrations were getting worse, more severe. The blue light was flickering on and off so that there were moments when everyone was plunged into darkness. Richard’s vision was blurred. He had the extraordinary sensation of being sucked into a hole that didn’t exist.
    “Kill him!” the chairman shouted again but the guards weren’t listening, afraid that the ceiling was about to collapse in on them. The audience was panicking, staggering in every direction, making for the exits. To Richard, they were invisible one moment and then seemed frozen in panic and desperation when the light returned. Larger boulders had begun to fall. At the very back of the auditorium, one of the ledges suddenly gave way, sending twenty people plunging to their deaths in a cascade of rubble. The side wall had cracked and, impossibly, Richard saw fire on the other side. But it wasn’t the building that was ablaze. It was the very sky.
    The chairman didn’t seem to have noticed what was happening. All he cared about was Richard. He glanced at the trolley with its array of knives and scalpels and snatched one up, then lumbered forward, meaning to do the job himself. Richard reacted instinctively. If he was going to die, it wasn’t going to be at the hands of this madman. As the chairman swung the knife towards him, he reached up and caught hold of the old man’s wrist, wrenching it aside. He heard the bone break. The chairman howled and reeled back, dropping the knife.
    The two of them stood face-to-face. The lines of spectators had become a sprawling, fighting mass. Richard heard a cracking sound and looked up just as one of the stalactites separated from the ceiling. He saw it shoot down. The chairman looked up and at that same moment the stalactite hit him, the sharpened point piercing his throat just under his chin and continuing all the way through his body, finally pinning him to the boxing ring. The chairman’s hands flailed. His legs kicked out. Then he went still.
    Nobody cared about Richard any more. The walls were falling in, the floor heaving. Everywhere, people were dying, crushed by falling rocks, or trampled, slashed and battered by other people trying to get past them. He ignored them. Somehow he managed to force all the noise out of his head and found himself alone, in a quiet place. He stepped forward and took hold of Matt, trying not to look at the golden tumi that still protruded from his chest. Very gently, he untangled the barbed wire from around his neck. Then he released him from the frame. Matt’s body tumbled forward into his arms. Richard laid him on the ground and, reaching out with one hand, closed his eyes one final time.
    Outside, he heard two words whispered. They seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.
    “The Five…”
    And suddenly he got the sense, without knowing how or why, that this was what Matt had wanted and indeed that he had expected it and that somehow, despite everything, they had won after all.
    Pedro could only watch as the black emptiness that was Chaos walked towards them, one step at a time, the whole world shifting around him. Jamie was kneeling on the snow, holding his brother, with Lohan standing over them. Scarlett was beside the cave. And all around them the human and non-human forces of the Old Ones were poised, waiting for the order that would finally end it all.
    It happened with no warning.
    The two doors at the front of the fortress disintegrated. It wasn’t quite an explosion. It was as if they had somehow chosen to tear themselves apart, turning in an instant from solid planks of wood into a vaporous cloud of splinters. Scarlett opened her eyes and saw a single, open-top vehicle speeding towards them across the ice shelf, one figure driving, another standing beside him.
    Matt and Scott.
    Except it couldn’t be Scott because Scott was here. And how had Matt escaped from the fortress? But even as the jeep burst into the courtyard and skidded to a halt, she saw that it was them. And it seemed to her that the army of the Old Ones hesitated and drew back, and that there was suddenly a sense of uncertainty that began with Chaos and rapidly spread throughout his forces.
    Jamie knew at once. He had met Flint when he had gone back in time to replace Flint’s twin brother, Sapling, who had been killed at the battle of Scathack Hill. Sapling was the earlier version of himself, because – as he had learnt – he had lived twice, ten