Callan was still in shock. That had to all have been a dream born of nightmarish madness. He felt the last twelve hours of the two day head start slipping like sand through a shattered hour glass. He barely recalled the frantic flight from the castle let alone the flight back to San Francisco. He had been back just over half a day and all he had really succeeded in was getting horribly terrifically drunk. He already figured they had to have a way to track the money they “paid” him. Callan hadn’t bothered to go back home, he knew there had to be trap waiting with that scary old yet not old lady.

Callan had instead ditched everything but his wallet and bought new clothes and slept at a campground for a few restless hours. Now he found himself back at the Excalibur bar. Hoping to see an old friend. If he hadn’t committed suicide yet. Arty was a deeply depressed man for reasons Callan had never discovered. Honest and every inch the defender of the people that he was he was a broken man who threw himself at death like a drunk man at a beautiful woman. Maybe more aptly a moth to the flame.

The bar was mostly quiet and uncrowded being close to mid day but not quite the booming evening. Subtle murmurs of hushed conversations eddies along the flow of soft rock music and the burble of clinking glasses in various states of use. It was a rathe soothing atmosphere that dulled Callan’s sense of impending doom.

Callan thought “well she was very beautiful, maybe she was like a bored housewife and wanted special service?”. He knew that was just an extremely hopeful lie he had used again and again. He knew in his bones the uses she had for him were far from pleasant. Callan sighed with another thought tripping through his drunk mind “I watch too much porn.”.

Callan brightened as he thought he saw Arty walk in but felt deceived as it was just someone who dresses like him. Sighing yet again Callan set his head down on the table where he sat. Tears threatened his vision as the horror of being a hunted man set in once again through his drunken haze. Callan had never felt so alone in his life.

A hand gently seized Callan’s collar and began to pull him from the chair, heedless of the squawk of Callan’s protest. Finding his feet Callan found himself face to face with a man he didn’t know. Fear churned like molten lead in his bowels. The man had eyes completely black and a smile that was filled with teeth filed to points. Callan tried to struggle and break the mans grip with futile effort. The man laughed like stones rasping together. “You forgot about time difference boy, I won my bet because of you so I’ll be nice if you stop this flailing about”, the mans voice hissed like iron being quenched. Callan shuddered head going down in abject defeat.

The crack of a gunshot erupted and shattered the tranquil atmosphere of the bar. Amazingly no one seemed to care as nothing changed but the mans head disintegrating in a boil of blood, bone and tissue. Nearly headless the man crumpled but the dead mans grip on Callan’s collar refuse to relent and dragged him down along with the rest of the body. Callan retched as he stared helplessly at the ruination of a living being’s head. He could feel the blood spatter painting the back of his head begin to drip. Retching became vomiting as the disturbing sight and feeling set home fully.

“Finally see that this is nothing like those games you play huh Cal? You seem to have found yourself in quite a shitty place. It was bound to happen eventually.” The smooth baritone voice sounded hollow and dead but still attempting friendliness. Callan knew that voice anywhere. It was Arty. The familiar form of Callan’s name drew distant memories forward. Memories of shared stories at campfires, of desperate escapes from the law, of both of them fighting to survive war.

The last thought struck Callan like hammer. He had never served in the military. Why did he remember being at war?

“Either shock tore it loose or something did but you are actually starting to remember. Give it a go ‘Lin. Tell me what you said on the tower before I married.” If a dead thing could be mirthful then it would encapsulate Arty’s tone too completely.

Callan rose on unsteady feet and disentangled himself from the dead mans grip. Resuming his place at the table he sat. He couldn’t take his eyes off the body even as he spoke to his friend. “Art, you never married you dated Gwen but she ditched you for that Lake dude.” Pain flooded Callan’s mind, as did sharp and vivid memory. Banners on towers of gleaming white stone smooth as glass snapped in a playful wind. A bearded man stood next to him. Going grey at the temples while a streak of it traced a scar on his cheek that he had acquired as a young squire. The same exact man stood before him as he opened eyes he had realized he closed.

“You remember, you can’t hide any longer, not from yourself at least. That fellow over there proves you have some hiding to do still. What now Merlin? Any wise counsel for your King?” Arty looked down with a sad smile. “Will history just repeat itself again? Doomed to fire and destruction? What is the point of any of this?” Tears fell from both of them at remembered pain and loss.

“For all that you are the Common Man’s King, you are an insufferably thorny prick who is marrying a Lady less than half your age when you yourself are near sixty years. She will love you but her heart will find another. That is what I had said. Soon after Gwenivere found love with Lancelot Du Lac and your heart turned to stone. Still is even if it is breaking like shale. Arthur, I loved you as a student and later as a King but now, now is all too different. Merlin and Callan can’t coexist the way Arty and Arthur do. Callan will have all the memories of Merlin but he isn’t the same person. I bid you farewell, the son I never had. Do not despair. Here is the mark of a new time a new way where hope yet lives rather than the onslaught of destruction we know so well. Goodbye my King. Look after this boy. You must be a mentor and leader once again.”

Callan shook hard and Arthur thought he might be having a seizure but he stilled after a moment and looked deep into his eyes. “You remember that don’t you. Merlin could have taken over and I would have had back a man dead for more than a millennium. He chose a new way, you. Can you remember anything of his skill, anything of his knowledge or alchemy?”

Callan shook his head slowly. The entire experience had left him in a state of deep shock and horrified disbelief. “How do I know any of this is real. This could be a drunk dream and I’m passed out on the table and none of this is happening......” Arty’s hand lashed out viciously across Callan’s cheek. Nearly sending him back to the floor next to an all to real dead body whose blood left a remarkably wide pool. “Ok ok real I get it. Not really but I could do without being hit again.”

Cold eyes regarded Callan from Arty’s face. “Don’t be glib boy. This is real as it gets, and you stumbled feet first into shit so deep you are a hair’s breadth from drowning. All my knights of the round are dead. I lead them to battle against a foe beyond mortal means. We went with everything we could manage, swords knives axes guns you name it. They all died. I am just waiting for mine to catch up to me. Lancelot is the only one still kicking but he is in Hollywood and refused to join us. I am a King of nothing and no one. I will get you out of here, it seems my half sister has resumed her perverse interest in you. I mean who hasn’t stumbled into that Venus man trap now? Just tell me you didn’t fuck her and leave her? She is still my sister after all.”

It was difficult for Callan to get a read on Arty, more so than usual. He seemed as if his entire being was in a state of flux. “Thankfully no but your son wanted to either eat me alive or after roasting me alive but definitely the eating bit. I saw her father. She used me to contact his soul. And insinuated multiple forms of rape and or intercourse but nothing happened.” Callan felt his composure returning slowly as he said the situation aloud. Amazing how a failed abduction and a murder could sober one up so quickly. “About getting me out of here. Where did you intend for me to go? And how do you plan to get me out unnoticed?”

“I have had this plan in place for about a decade and you will find leaving more simple than you would think. I know they will be tracking your account activity so fork over any means of spending money you have right now.” Callan did as requested and handed over his wallet to Arty’s waiting hand. “Good, you just became part owner of Excalibur bar and will be in the area, according to your account, for the foreseeable future. You will have room here, meals will be charged to you and all the other signatures of someone holing up to hide while being ignorant of big brother’s reach or in this case big sister’s reach. She will show up here eventually to flush you out or intimidate me and she will get nothing. You will have disappeared. A vanishing act worthy of the mystical Merlin.”

Callan sighed deeply. “That’s all very well but still no idea as to how, when, or where. Please have someone take the body at least, it’s starting to reek of shit and bile and I feel sick enough as it is.”

Arty nodded and whistled sharply waiving for one of his barkeeps to clear the mess away. “His name was Devon Dunnigan, he worked for the NSA as a mole in the FBI. He was a regular here. This place is a sanctuary for those who know the truth of things in this world. It is precisely so because I kill anyone who lays hands on another regardless of the who or why. Consent is everything here. Anyways you are going on a pleasure cruise via stowaway on a military craft to an island in the Caribbean that is uncharted and paid to stay that way. There are tunnels under the building here that lead to the old network of shore defense batteries and their attendant tunnels. We will get you to Kirby Cove where a small sailboat will be waiting to get you onto a destroyer headed for the east coast by way of Panama Canal. This seems like movie or book shit but that is how it will go. All the right hands have been greased including the destroyer captain’s. I will go pick out some clothes and Ivar over there will get you to the tunnels and out of here. See you at the cove.”

With that Arty walked off as a man began dragging the body away. A very tall man walked up to Callan easily a half a foot taller than himself, nodded in greeting and spun on his heel to lead the way without a word. “This is great I hope he isn’t an illiterate mute or can’t speak English. Things have been far too cliche as it is. Cloak and dagger is too plain a description.” Callan followed, wary of this Disappearing Act and what the unstable future would bring.