Reel One

It was supposed to be a well-earned rest in Bermuda.

Daniel Taylor looked up from his hammock and sighed. He flipped a lever on his red lens goggles, swapping the color to something closer to sunglasses. The glass of mimosa resting next to him was empty.

With a sigh, he pulled his blue jacket back over his undershirt, slung his backpack on, and started making his way off the beach. He didn’t stick out too much. With dark hair and light skin, he could be mistaken for any of the other tourists lolling about. Daniel should be enjoying himself. This wasn’t the kind of vacation a college professor got to take often. Or at all. But it was how he’d gotten that vacation that made him nervous. Especially with a certain book weighing heavily in his pack.

No, what stuck out to him was the old man with one hand kneeling on the coast. He was the oldest thing Daniel had ever seen, and he had come face to face with mummies. Whoever he was he was poorly dressed for the weather in what looked like thickly packed-together scraps of fabric. The man was speaking to a raven-haired woman in the water, who gestured to Daniel. Daniel saw the man see him and decided to move a little faster to the bar.

The bar itself was a tourist trap located a little too far from the tourists. Especially in the off-season. The lack of other people in the bar juxtaposed with the advertisements for beer brands hanging on the wall made the place feel a bit too big. Daniel did not find it hard to get another drink added to his tab.

A television was hanging from the ceiling showing a news channel mid-commercial. The bartender looked happy to have someone to talk to. “Did you hear about this woman they found? Went overboard on a cruise ship weeks ago, shows up fit as a fiddle two blocks from here! I can’t believe it. How do you think she survived?”

Daniel knew all too well. But he also knew better than tell people that story again. “Bermuda Triangle’s crazy. Things do get lost, you know.”

The commercial on the television ended, and the words ‘BREAKING’ streaked across the screen.

“Great Britain continues to be overwhelmed by riots for the third straight day. Tensions exploded after a still-unexplained explosion at Buckingham Palace took the lives of the King and his extended family during a gathering. Enough members of the royal family were present that genealogists are now scrambling to identify who the rightful heir to the throne….”

Daniel started sipping from his next mimosa. “Keep ‘em coming, please.”

“One second. What about you, sir?”

Daniel saw the ancient man from the beach had joined him at the bar. “A water with ice, please.” His accent was unmistakably English.

“Comin’ up.”

The bartender slid the glass down the bar slow enough for the man to catch it with his remaining hand. The man was looking at Daniel again, eyebrow raised.

Daniel didn’t appreciate the attention. “What do you want?”

“Your service is required. You are the man I have been waiting for, doctor.”

“I’m not that kind of doctor.” Daniel was used to giving that line before. Just because he had earned the right to the title…

“You are in a way no other doctor is,” claimed the old man. “I have been watching you.”

Daniel’s hand wandered down to his belt. He still had his trusty revolver in case things got too hairy. “Have you?”

“I need you to come with me, doctor.”

That was enough. He didn’t care if the man was talking about the book in his pack or the plants growing in the back of his plane. Daniel’s hand slipped to the holster carrying his revolver and started pulling it out.

But the old man’s remaining hand was faster and socked Daniel in the jaw. Daniel spun off his seat at the bar and went face first into the floor.

----

The seaplane’s alarm made Daniel jerk himself awake.

Daniel Taylor looked through the cockpit window in shock. He had a million questions. How the hell was he airborne? Where had the storm come from? Why was he tied into the passenger’s seat? Wait a moment, if he was in the passenger’s seat, who was piloting?!

“My apologies for my brusque manner.” The old man from the bar was piloting his plane. “But it was of the utmost importance I retrieve you with haste. Nimue claimed that if I did not claim your talents, there were others on their way.” He looked over at the struggling Daniel with a resigned look. “Please stop struggling. The Atlas is on your lap and it took me a while to find the right page.”

The Atlas of Anomalies. A mysterious book he’d acquired before his ill-fated vacation. Filled with maps depicting places of myth that shouldn’t exist, and suffused with the power to go to those places.

Daniel looked down on his lap at the opened Atlas. His eyes widened when he saw the name on the marked page. “You want to go to –”

Lightning flashed outside the cockpit and the ocean on the horizon was gone. Now there was an island with a great hill topped by a church with a tower. The land was dotted with castles and fortifications from a bygone age.

It caught Daniel’s eye enough that he didn’t notice the seaplane coming in for a gentle landing. Not until it hit the water and came to a stop.

“Okay. I need you to listen carefully.” The voice coming from the pilot’s seat was different. Younger.

Daniel looked to see the old man was gone. Or rather, he was changed. The man sitting there now had a boyish face and flowing blonde hair. It struck Daniel how handsome the man was, sitting there in shining armor over his body. Even his missing hand was done up, now hidden by a prosthetic gauntlet.

“How?” Daniel glanced back at the book to confirm what he’d read and then back to the old man turned young. “Why here? Why Avalon?”

The man was starting to loosen Daniel’s restraints. “I have come here for England’s time of greatest need.”

Daniel found his head nodding gently. “The Matter of Britain.” He squirmed his way free once he was loose enough. He threw the Atlas back into his pack and climbed out of the seaplane and onto the shore. “The legend of King Arthur.”

“The King was taken here after the Battle of Camlann,” said his captor. He knelt to the ground and touched it with his working hand with a smile. “The last gasp of Logres, the death knell of Camelot and the Round Table. With his last breath before he was taken here, my King commanded me to hurl his sword into the water and to wait for the day of his return.”

That made no sense. “You’re talking about it like you were there.”

“But I was.” The man rose to his feet once more and bowed politely. “I am Bedivere. The Last Knight of the Round Table. And you, good doctor, are here to help prepare for the return of King Arthur.”

----

Bedivere’s introduction knocked Daniel for a loop. He had a million questions but was told that there was no time to waste. He needed Daniel’s ‘doctor elixirs’.

It was still a shock to Daniel regardless. Bedivere! One of the first Knights of the Round Table, loyal to the end!

Daniel went to the back of the plane and pulled out a trio of bottles with a familiar green fluid sloshing around inside. He’d been experimenting with the plants growing back there concerning their healing properties. The three that he added to his pack should have the proper ingredient mix.

“How did you know,” he asked, “that I had these?”

“Nimue told me.”

Nimue. The Lady of the Lake, the one who gave Arthur his legendary sword. “And how did she know that these are healing potions?”

Bedivere was uncertain. But given that she was a fairy or something akin to it depending on the telling of the legend, Daniel did not question it too much.

“We must not linger here,” Bedivere warned again. “This is a place not meant for the living.”

Bedivere stiffened at the sound of a wailing moan from somewhere in the fog. Daniel could see a human-like figure shuffling closer.

“Are you armed?” asked the knight. With a wave of his hand, a sword appeared in Bedivere’s hand.

“Something like that.” Daniel pulled out his revolver and loaded it. “Where to?”

“I will know it when I see it,” warned Bedivere. “But if we are to revive the King, we must retrieve Excalibur. It must be somewhere on this island.”

Daniel’s heart stopped. Excalibur. The sword of legend. Its scabbard was said to give the holder the ability to cling to life regardless of the wound. Legend said Arthur commanded Bedivere to throw the blade into a nearby lake. But then how could it be here?

Lurching through the fog was the corpse of a fallen knight. And then a second. And a third, fourth, fifth, Daniel was quickly losing count.

Bedivere bade Daniel to follow him, slicing a path through these fallen warriors. Daniel saved his rounds for any creature that threatened to flank Bedivere from the side. Six in the chamber meant he had to be judicious with his shot selection.

---

Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve.

Daniel fired off a trio of shots and emptied the metal casings out of his revolver before shoving another set of six inside. “Bedivere, I’m running close to empty here!”

The undead knights all reacted to Daniel’s calling of Bedivere’s name. They all halted in place in the middle of swinging their weapons. After a fraught pause, they began shuffling back and parting the way. The fog lifted enough for the men to see a castle resting stop a plateau, looking down on most of Avalon.

The sight of it caught Daniel off guard. In his heart he knew what he was looking at, even if he did not understand how it was there. “My god. Camelot.” Daniel could not help it. Even with the Atlas, he never dreamed he would see the castle of King Arthur himself.

“I can sense the sword inside,” said Bedivere. His face then grew flushed. “As well as someone else coming towards us.”

Walking through the split mob of the undead was a man just as youthful as Bedivere. His armor was scorched black and in his hand was an ornate ceremonial sword with a matching blade. His dark brown hair had been tied up in a ponytail.

Bedivere took a deep breath. “You’re still the spitting image of your father, Mordred.”

“The Mordred?!” Daniel was astounded. “Arthur’s only son. The one who helped bring about the downfall of Logres, fatally wounded at the Battle of Camlann, that Mordred?”

Mordred did not look pleased to have his deeds recounted by a stranger. “It was not by my hand that Camelot’s ruin was drawn. Its destruction is the fault of my father and Sir Bedivere.”

Daniel knew the chain of events from the Arthurian legend. Arthur took Guinevere to be his Queen, only for her to fall in love with Sir Lancelot. Mordred exposed their affair, leading to the disaster at Camlann that destroyed all Arthur had built. It was that battle that led to Arthur’s fatal wounds and his being spirited away to Avalon. Why Bedivere was to blame was beyond Daniel’s understanding.

Mordred seemed to recognize Daniel’s confusion. “Did ‘Sir’ Bedivere not mention why my father trusted him above all others? Took his word above that of all others?”

“Mordred,” a horrified Bedivere pleaded. “Please, not again –”

“Guinevere took comfort in Lancelot’s arms,” Mordred continued, “because she was my father’s beard. The true conspiracy I exposed, the reason Bedivere is here at all, was the blasphemy between my father and Sir Bedivere himself.”