Jagalath, Marukash, Jefferson and Clive

Rarely can a pair of demons have been much more demonic than the fearsome twins, Jagalath and Marukash, two ancient terrors birthed by a belligerent black hole, which spat them spiralling away to wreak havoc across the embryonic stars in the very earliest days of the universe.

And what havoc they wrought, toppling gods and gobbling up galaxies: the Kray twins of Cassiopeia.

But then one day the chaos which they had caused was suddenly brought to an end, as the brothers were trapped by a canny old wraith named Clive under the surface of a planet called Earth in a patch marked out by a field of silver dandelions in the mighty shadow of the Aquamarron Mountains.

Jagalath and Marukash spent several millennia buried away in their underground jail, stewing bitterly and plotting their revenge on the race of wraiths who had devised their downfall.

Yet the two terrors were not without hope, for, when he had imprisoned the demons, Clive had cunningly left a method by which their dungeon might be opened, should any future warrior come up with an ingenious plan by which the dastardly twins might finally be banished from the universe for good.

The key to the prison door (blowing every seed off the head of a dandelion flower picked from the field) was passed down through the generations lest the demons be inadvertently set free before a plan to destroy them had been devised. Thus the dungeon remained closed for thousands and thousands of years...until one day a hapless young buffoon by the name of Jefferson Marlowe blundered in and sprung open the prison door.

With the red carpet rolled out by Jefferson, the twins might both have emerged there and then, but they opted instead to hedge their bets; Jagalath came out first, whilst Marukash lay in wait to see what would befall his brother.

Once Jefferson had atoned for his idiocy by slaying the first demon himself (an experience so traumatic that he immediately forgot all about it), Marukash chose to lurk still beneath the surface in his freshly re-bolted cell, waiting for some fresh imbecile to blow on another dandelion and let him loose to avenge his brother's miserable demise.

A Breath Through the Window

Jefferson Marlowe was settling down to some cross stitch when an unseasonably chilly breeze blew in through his kitchen window. He bristled, wearily rose and flipped the porthole shut.

He dropped back down into his armchair, took a couple of puffs from his pipe and returned to the nascent tapestry. But, just as he had rethreaded the needle, the cool draught wafted through once more, chilling his hands and tickling his patience.

He looked across. The little window was firmly closed and he could not see how the breeze was still getting in. He stood up to inspect the wall, but, as he did so, the flame of his stubby little candle was blown clean out and the bungalow was suddenly as black as can be.

The breeze came again, but now he could hear that it was not simply a breeze but a breath, ushering out a fragile but gently coercing voice.

He listened intently.

"Jefferson...", it drawled sweetly. "Jefferson..."

"Yes."

"Jefferson..."

"Yes, yes, it's me," he answered impatiently. "Who the hell is this?"

"An old friend..."

"An old friend?"

"We need you, Jefferson...We need you...Soon...We will come back for you soon...Marukash is awaking...It is not safe for you just yet but you must be ready...Soon, Jefferson, soon..."

The breeze stopped and the lights flashed back on. Jefferson felt a dull shiver of recognition. He knew not whose voice it had been, but he knew he had heard it before, a faintly familiar murmur from his past, a past which he had almost totally forgotten, but which now he knew was destined to come again.

The Most Important Amnesiac

After six months working for the Quinto Rock Mining Collective, Jefferson Marlowe had become a little restless. Chipping away at a coal face for fifteen hours a day was not wholly unsatisfying, but it was nothing compared to the thrill of rescuing Princess Yolande from the implausibly tall belltower at Stankingham Castle or hunting for diamonds hoarded by the legendary five-eyed giant Lorcando in the Jungle of Chrysling Grub.

But Jefferson knew that such adventures were a thing of the past. Which was fine, for the most part. It was a relief not to be freelance, no longer to have to hunt for work, to have a more straightforward tax return, to be settled in one location with a recently-established regular girlfriend and three flat viewings planned for next weekend.

Jefferson was sure that this current pang of restlessness would pass - it was time, he knew, to resign himself to the fact that he wasn't particularly special, that there wasn't anything extraordinary about him at all. He was just a bloke - an unusually handsome bloke, but a bloke nonetheless - with a straightforward haircut and a modest talent for chiselling.

Yet, at that very moment, less than fifty miles away, just on the other side of the Aquamarron Mountains, a statue of our humble hero was being unveiled by a grateful race of wraiths. It was a monument to the man who had rescued their community, the man whom they desperately needed to come to their aid one final time: Jefferson Marlowe - in truth, a far from ordinary bloke and the most important amnesiac the world had ever known.