The Ancient Ones is a story twenty years in the making. From the initial idea at fifteen, to the moment I got the courage to finish it in my thirties, the entire process has been an incredible journey. I knew in the back of my mind, I wouldn’t be able to stop with just one book, and no sooner did I finish The Ancient Ones and sent it for editing, did Lucius creep back into my mind.
I was driving through the Cleveland Metroparks, listening to Tool’s new album, when I got a vision of him and Morrigan in the Underworld. I realized that I’d only written a small piece of an epic story. There was an entirely different perspective that needed to be heard. I suppose you can guess whose perspective that is.
Within one year, Book Two and Three were finished, and I am so excited to give readers a completed trilogy that is exactly the type of story I have always wanted to read. I hope that if you were a fan of Book One, that Liminality will not disappoint. We begin the story right at the point where we left off, but in case you need a quick reminder, allow me to assist.
Book One tells the story of an ancient immortal named David, the last of his kind, who is in the midst of an existential crisis. The year is 1857 and David has just bought an old, abandoned house called Lardone Manor, once a countryside cathedral. After a particularly long depressive slump, he heads to his favorite Limehouse pub where he meets a brash, unapologetic lady of the night who is dying of consumption. After taking him along for a taste of her self-destruction, she convinces him to tell her his story.
David reveals he was born in Ancient Gaul, the son of a Druid Elder. Julius Caesar invades their tribe, kidnapping him to be sold as a slave. On the harrowing passage home, he is comforted by a mysterious woman who protects him from harm. After a particularly gruesome arrival at the Roman Port, he realizes she is The Morrigan, a Celtic war goddess who has decided to look after him. In the Roman forum, he finds a young slave girl named Gaia who takes him under her wing and into the forced employ of a winemaker named Eridus. She gives him his Roman name, Davius.
Eventually, Davius falls in love with her, convinced that one day he will earn enough money from his paintings to buy their freedom and get married. But strange things start to occur, including nightmares of a hideous, bloodthirsty dragon. Eventually, he meets a strange man named Lucius, who seems to be a world traveling philosopher. He hires Davius to paint for him and the two become fast friends. He is warned by the apparition of a boar that he should steer clear of Lucius, that he is not all he seems.
Davius learns Eridus wants to marry Gaia and panics. He looks to his new friend for help and finds out he is a reincarnated dark god, brought to the earth flawed, therefore becoming the world’s first immortal blood drinker. Lucius wants Davius to join him, but Davius flees in terror. He returns to the villa to learn Eridus knows he’s been sleeping with Gaia. He sells her off to an abusive slaveowner named Nirus and beats Davius half to death.
Davius wakes up to discover Lucius has rescued him and killed Eridus. Lucius encourages him to use his inherent Druidic power to rescue Gaia. Davius realizes he has command of the wind—he can create windstorms and channel its energy. Unfortunately, Gaia dies and Davius vows to avenge her death. He decides to become a creature like Lucius to do so.
Five years later, in Ancient Greece, the boar that once warned him returns, revealing that he is a liminal being named Libraean. He reveals more about Lucius’s past, including the fact that Gaia was pregnant with Davius’s child at the time of her death. Davius decides it’s time to avenge her death. He decides to summon the Morrigan for help, unknowingly igniting a war between him and Lucius for her attention. She says she will help, but only if they make her one of them. Lucius doesn’t think it will work, but Davius insists it will.
Davius is approached by a strange council of creatures who tell him they want him to bring back Morrigan. He meets Anubis, and they fill him with power to help him. Davius succeeds in killing Nirus and brings Morrigan to life. The problem is, she decided Nirus’s wicked daughter, Delicia, would be her vessel and instead of taking her over, the two souls braid together, making her half-Delicia, half-Morrigan to become an entity called Morgana.
Jump to 15th century Wallachia. Davius (now called David) lives with Lucius and Morgana in a Romanian castle. Lucius has stolen the identity of the Wallachian prince, Vladimir Dracula, and presides over a court of self-created nemorti and revenants. Tension is at an all-time high: David and Lucius are at odds, compounded by Morgana slowly losing her grip on reality and bouncing back between Delicia and the Morrigan. Delicia seems content with Lucius as her lover, but Morrigan and David have a special connection that neither one of them quite understands. She begs Lucius and David to kill her so she can be a free goddess once more, but neither one of them are willing—they love her too much.
At a feast, Lucius brings in a prisoner for entertainment, who turns out to be a hideous lycanthrope. He terrorizes the entire court, forcing David to take Morgana’s blood so he can shapeshift into a wolf and stop him. Her dying wish is for him to follow the wolf to a witch named Hekate. He obeys, discovering a group of otherworldly beings called the Council (the creatures from before), who inform him they are responsible for all magical workings in the world and they need his help to stop Lucius, who is upsetting the balance on earth. He meets Dragos, one half of a pair of healer twins, and he discovers the true identity of the beast, a reincarnated Viking god who goes by the name of Danulf. He learns there is an Insurgence rising up against Lucius made of human subjects and escaped nemorti.
Eventually, Lucius’s knights catch up with David and Danulf in the Carpathian Mountains as they travel to find Hekate. Lucius ties him up outside to die in the sun, but Danulf saves him at the last moment, and delivers him to Hekate, a pregnant healer/witch who holds the secrets to his past.
As she heals his wounds, she reveals that all of them—Lucius, David, Morrigan—were once part of a quartet of Egyptian gods who existed at the beginning of time, reincarnated on earth with no memories of their past lives. She reveals that Lucius and Morrigan were once husband and wife (named Set and Nephthys), but David (Osiris) slept with Morrigan, impregnating her with his sons (gods Anubis and Horus). Morrigan flees, letting her sister, Isis, raise her sons as her own in order to protect them from Set. He still manages to find out, and murders Osiris.
The sisters, Isis and Nephthys, decide to bring back Osiris from the dead. Anubis and Horus, now grown adults, assist, knowing they have to use Set’s blood to revive him. The plan fails—Horus kills Set, but not before Set plucks out Horus’s eye, therefore cursing his reincarnation, and Osiris comes back wrong, biting Nephthys’s neck and forcing Isis to stab him in the heart.
Nephthys and Osiris (Morrigan and David) go to the Upperrealms (heaven), Set (Lucius) is banished to Tartarus (hell) with Anubis guarding him. Isis frees her soul and puts her body and magic in an acadia tree. Horus reincarnates as Libraean.
With this new knowledge, David is ready to end Lucius for good, and freely joins the Insurgence. Anubis and Libraean contact him beforehand and Librean gives him the last bit of power so David is strong enough to defeat him. After a brutal war, which includes the deaths of Dragos, Hekate, and Danulf, and one last embrace with Morrigan in spirit form, David evokes the power of all the elements and slays Lucius, who had become the horrible creature from his dreams.
Throughout the story, David and his companion (the prostitute from the tavern) arrive and talk at Lardone Manor, but towards the end, David learns her death is coming quickly. She still wants to hear his story, and after he finishes, he is content to hold her in his arms until she passes. At the last moment, and with the help of some very ornery crows, he realizes she is the Morrigan incarnated. He runs to find Libraean, who has also been alive this whole time, living in the secret vaults underneath his cemetery. Libraean turns her into a blood drinker and they happily reunite...until there is a knock at the door. It is Danulf, surprisingly still alive, come to tell them Lucius has returned.
Hope you enjoy Book II of The Ancient Ones Trilogy, Liminality.
Dreadfully Yours,
Cassandra L. Thompson