The Power of Five Oblivion

thousand years apart. Now he realized that, at the very moment Scott had died, Flint had travelled forward in time, repaying the debt. And Matt – the old Matt – had come with him.
    So the Matt he knew in the modern world was dead. Jamie understood that but he wasn’t sad. Perhaps it was because he was beyond sadness, that there was nothing more he could feel. At the same time, he was certain that all this was meant to happen. Impossibly, after being separated and flung all over the world, after enduring so much, the Five had come together again, here, at Oblivion. And it didn’t matter that they were outnumbered by a factor of a thousand to one. There was nothing anyone could do.
    Matt was driving. Both the boys were dressed in the grey tunics with the blue star that was the insignia of the first rebel army that had defeated the Old Ones. As Flint leapt down, Jamie saw that he had two swords – one in his belt, the other in his hand.
    He saw Jamie and hailed him. “Jamie … this is yours!” he shouted and, turning the first sword around, he threw it towards him, the thin blade glittering as it travelled the short distance through the air. Jamie caught it by the hilt and recognized the five-pointed star in the middle of the crosspiece, made out of precious stones. Once again he felt the weight and fine balance of the blade, tapering to a point.
    It was Frost, the sword he had fought with at that first battle. It had been returned to him.
    There was a series of gunshots.
    Everyone had forgotten Holly. But she had been standing at the entrance to the cave, trying to make sense of the insanity around her. She had seen Chaos as he reached the foot of the mountain and swept towards her, and without knowing who he was, without understanding anything really, she had finally found the strength to use her gun and had emptied it into him.
    The bullets passed straight through him. He ignored her. But it was as if the noise of the detonations were a signal for everything to happen at once.
    Matt and Flint ran forward from the jeep. As they went, one of the fire-riders galloped forward, trying to intercept them. Matt swung his sword and the blade sliced through the fluttering black robes, cutting the creature in half. A great cry went up from the battlements as a tangled mass of shape-changers, fly-soldiers and hideous deformities that had once been people surged towards them. Scarlett turned and faced them and at once a blast of wind rushed into them with such force that they were thrown off their feet, sent spinning away. She had never felt like this before and knew that it was because they were all there together. Her powers had multiplied by five.
    Jamie felt the same. It was wonderful having Frost in his hand again, the return of an old friend, but he almost didn’t need it. Nobody could come near him. He only had to think a command and it happened. Two of the knights who were utterly covered in black spikes, fell back, their horses panicking, and collided with a fire rider. All three of them disappeared in flames. A shape-changer with two lizard heads turned its sword on itself. Jamie couldn’t bring himself to look at the body of his brother. As long as he was close to Flint, it was almost as if Scott had come back to him again.
    Pedro snatched up the swords dropped by the two knights that Jamie had just killed. He passed one of them to Scarlett and kept the other himself. He no longer felt the cold. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Everything he had been through, the suffering of his whole life, was worth it for this moment.
    “It’s over!” Matt shouted. “Let’s finish it.”
    They all knew what to do. Chaos was between them, all-powerful and powerless at the same time. He had been in total command. Scott had belonged to him. Matt had been his prisoner. Jamie and Pedro had been thousands of miles away. But somehow, in the space of just a few minutes, everything had changed. Even as he had made his way down the mountain, the Five had finally come together. The fire in the sky was going out. The light was returning.
    Matt was first, plunging his sword into the King of the Old Ones so that it disappeared all the way up to the hilt. Jamie followed, crying out in exaltation as he once again tested the power of Frost. Scarlett, Pedro and finally Flint all struck together and somewhere, deep inside Chaos, the five points touched.
    Chaos screamed, a sound that was heard not just all over the world but to the very