Sunday morning dawned to a mountain of washing up, a light hang over and Mexican sand still between Kat's toes. She applied after sun and checked for tan lines from the walk on the beach. Out of the shower and after a coffee she filled the dish washer and turned it on. Kat started on a shopping list for next weekend and sent a message to Angel and her family, her parents and her brother and included his wife and kids, Claire and her parents, and Struan and Peggy, and planned the menu, Vietnamese red rice was top of the list.
Amy and Thea had been perturbed by not getting any gifts from Mexico, so Kat had to promise to bring something back from Cornwall when she went on Monday, and spent half an hour looking for things to buy. She found lots of quaint sea side cottages and sea shanty cd's. While the kids would love the cottage, Kat couldn't justify it to herself, she did eventually find a surf shop on line in Newquay she could hopefully get something for the girls from
.Newque didn't look to far from Tintagel on Google Earth, just to be on the safe side she sent an email to the Knights asking them if they could pick up a couple of bright t shirts and wooly hats for her for Monday and she'd PayPal them the money. While the kids sorted their homework and Kat had rehydrated she went out onto the deck and set a timer for 2 hours and started to meditate trying to find where the next flash point might be, she felt a couple of potential hot spots, zeroing in on the first and finding it in North Korea and a second one that was harder to pin down than a very general somewhere in south eastern Africa.
When the alarm went off and Kat was back in herself, she opened up the pad and pulled up Google Earth and tried to work out roughly where in North Korea the potential rift was and based on the map and impressions from the meditation. It was a place not far from the coast, a village on the side of a hill called Samho, which rang a bell somewhere deep in her memory, but nothing that she could recall right now. She tried to not think about it, hoping that the memory came back on its own. She checked her emails, noticing one from The Knights. Opening it up she read it, 'Will pick up 2 t shirts and 2 wooly hats, you sure in Californian?' and PayPal details which she sent over right away. The rest of the day was spent planning what to cook and checking dietary requirements for everyone coming next weekend.
Shower and bed and for the first time in a very long time Kat remembered a dream, she dreamed about the first time she'd met an American, in the car outside her home and the drive to the beach with the car driving along the dark and quiet road, to the place they had been bundled out of the car and down a footpath to a beach.
Their backs to cliff, her dad and Brea arguing, more Americans dressed in black with an inflatable boat and helicopters in the air in the distance. Kat opened up Google Earth and checked Samho again, following the road from the village, down a dusty road and onto a track down to where they'd got out of the car and walked down to the beach. Behind and above them little An Su had watched the car drive off, focused on the head lights as they headed back up the hill towards the road, clutching the 2 small stuffed cats. The little turning circle was still there, the path to the beach and even the dark rocky cliff on the beach were all visible on the screen in front of her. She'd found her way home. She spent an hour taking in every detail on the screen, the long houses in rectangular gardens, switching between 2d and 3d views and getting stressed that she couldn't get a street view.
She rang a couple of friends at JPL and asked if they had access to any better images of the village and the surrounding area, she had to explain what it was about and got a message back from the night shift asking her to give them a couple of days, it wouldn't take the spy satellite off task as there was a site of interest on the other side of the hill, so any image would be cropped to cut any secret details that she hadn't been cleared for.
She posted a message in the WhatsApp group asking if anyone was into drone flying, and tried to get back to sleep and not go out into the garden and transition to Korea and potentially get arrested for spying or ending up getting executed for defecting all those years ago.
She didn't remember falling back asleep, just waking up with a snort, and drool on the side of her face.
The beach was more crowded at lunch time Monday than it had been at Saturday afternoon. Angel looked around and took in the view, slightly disappointed at the amount of development. A couple of local people detached themselves from a party and walked over to the pair, music blared out from a beach side bbq.
"Kat? Angel?" a young Mexican woman asked looking between them, both nodded, "I'm Araceli, Mateo's cousin. He couldn't make it as he's working, but he did give me his armour," she turned and nodded to a large suit case,"the others want to see how this works before handing over their heirlooms to something unknown."
Kat nodded, "Are you able to use it as it is?" she asked. Angel had snaked off into the party and grabbed a drink, picking up the suit case as she passed it.
"Yes, I can use it, the only reason this suit isn't mine is Mateo is older than me by 3 days," Angel dropped the suitcase by their little group and took a drink, Araceli carried on talking, "and this is Lola. She's related to one of the others, same story; older brother got the family armour. Frankly we are both hoping to get suits from your supplier."
"Fingers crossed for you. We need to go to England first and then to The Tomb," Angel said rolling her shoulder after the weight of the suit case, "one of you needs to hold the bag and hold on to one of us," she finished, putting the empty glass down on a nearby table, she took out the flip phone and thought of Cornwall and the cave and what it could hold, Lola had a hand on her shoulder, Araceli had the suitcase in one hand and had her other hand on Kat's elbow, they transitioned. The transit over the Atlantic was fairly dull once they cleared Cuba. The coast of Ireland being the first thing they saw.
Angel and Lola landed with a splash in the cold North Atlantic, both woman gasping in surprise at the sudden coldness of the water compared to the Caribbean.
They looked around, "Why are we in a cave?" Lola asked in Spanish.
Angel blushed, "That's me, last time I was here I could feel something calling to me from inside, I guess I was thinking about that rather than the hotel we should be outside of." She told Lola in her high school Spanish as they picked there way out of the cave, Araceli and Kat had run into view at the top of the cliff looking down on them, she pointed out the path and bridge to Lola and told her how to get up, she touched the other crystal, "Kat, I'm going to check the cave seeing as I'm down here already, don't forget to ask the guys about the image of the red thing."
Kat waved back, had a word with Araceli who went back to the hotel and Kat headed down the path to meet Lola. Angel went back into the Cave of Merlin, found a dry spot and sat and meditated. She wasn't as good at this as Kat and she'd be the first to admit it, but she relaxed and listened, feeling the distant, quiet song of something. She looked around the cave and noticed an orange glow had appeared towards the rear wall. Angel approached the back wall, seeing the glow formed a doorway. She ran her hands around the glow, seeing it glow brighter where she had touched it. The section of the wall pulled backwards and hinged upwards, Angel was momentarily blinded by a rose gold glow, as her vision returned her breath was taken away by what was in front of her.
It took Angel a while to comprehend what she was looking at.
At the top of the cliff Lola and Kat walked around the hotel following the path, the rugged coast line about as diametrically opposode as it could get from the beach she'd just been on, the most recent building she could see was the red brick Hotel they were walking around. Lola turned the corner and saw Araceli, the suitcase now opened and 7 guys in Roman armour. Araceli was strapping the armour on.
Kat smiled and walked over and made introductions. "And now we're waiting for Angel," She said, she looked at the Knights, "which one of you has the communicater I dropped off?"
One of the Nevills did, Kat gave everyone a brief instruction on how they worked and asked everyone to try it to raise Angel, it worked for everyone, which was a good sign. Kat lead the group in meditation on their armour and weapons and wondered what Angel was doing in the cave as she'd been very cryptic on the flip phone about what she'd found. She let them have about half an hour on the lawn beside the H to meditate in their weapons and armour, with still no sign of Angel, Kat was beginning to get concerned. She hid her worries behind focusing on the task at hand. She lined everyone up on the path, facing out to sea near the cliff edge and asked them to try to access one of the powerful abilities locked in the weapon's memory. She had an idea of the kind of thing the Knights could do and the charged blades and lightning blasts arced out along with various shouts. Araceli had a malachite sword, this was edged by black and purple lightning she was calling out her attacks in Spanish.
"Last thing, there should be a healing ability you can tap into, that can reenergize yourself and can be used to heal a Rift." She pulled out the wand, "Mine is triggered by Amethyst healing heart," the heart glowed with a warm purple light Kat felt herself relax a bit, "so focus and feel what the trigger words could be." She primed them. They sat and focused again, Lola looking a bit forlornly watching everything going on.
Lola heard it first, "Listen!" she called out on Spanish, Kat heard a deep wailing and changed, purple glitter blowing in the breeze, Lola and Araceli giggled a little, Kat smiled. The wailing grew louder, as around the hotel something about the size of a large helicopter came into view, large, red delta wings and large cannards coming from the front, ribbons of material flowed over and around the wings moving all the time . It dropped down, hovering a couple of feet off the grass, a hatch sliding open. Everyone waited weapons ready. After what felt like minutes Angel walked out of the hatch, a huge smile on her face,"Look what I found." She called out, everyone relaxed as much as the unsettling noise would let them.
"He's called Cyhyraeth, it's a flying transport."
"Cyhyraeth?" Phil Nevill asked
"Yes, why?" Angel asked
"Cyhyraeth is the Welsh name for a Banshee." Phil answered.
"Which makes us being the Knights of Ill Omen make a lot more sense if they would be dropped into battle from on high in a wailing transport." Angel disappeared inside, the wailing faded and the machine settled onto the lawn, she came out with a large carnelian in her hand." I'm so going to find out what this thing can do, Do you mind flying back home in this later? "Angel asked Araceli, Lola and Kat, all 3 seemed okay with getting a flight in the Cyhyraeth.
"Okay let's go to the Tomb."
"You're just leaving that red and black thing parked on the lawn?" Micheal asked.
"It took me 20 minutes to work out how to get it out of the cave, and we can park it in the back of the garden centre for now when we get it home."Kat just gave her a mom look, "Fuck you." Angel laughed.
Kat looked at the group, "Hold hands, as this is the first time travelling to the Tomb we'll transition everyone there. It works by thought association, somehow." everyone held each others hands while Kat and Angel got their communicaters out. They reached out and touched the crystals and the green countryside was replaced by The Blackstone Tomb.
The whisp was waiting for them.
" I suggest you unfold yourself, so everyone can see who we're working with," Angel said to it.
The whisp opened out.
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