That night Ruth encountered the goddess again, who asked Ruth to look for the missing other half of the nature deity. Ruth fled in terror, but not before the goddess gifted her a familiar in the form of an owl.
The next day they were forced to rush the now-comatose Marianne to hospital. She had been living for months with a blood clot close to her brain. Before, it had been too dangerous to operate, but now only a touch-and-go op could save her. Not long after she went into the theatre, another technology failure struck and the hospital was plunged into darkness and chaos.
But then a remarkable thing happened. Somehow Marianne made her way from the operating theatre to cure an entire cancer ward with some power from within her. It manifested as a brilliant white luminescence, like a lightbulb burning itself out. She died immediately afterwards. It was almost as if she had wanted to commit some last act of goodness before moving on. This affected Church deeply. It showed that the change wasn't all bad; miraculous, wonderful things could happen too. He kept her locket as a reminder of that day.
They followed the lantern south until they came to an inn in the centre of Dartmoor where they planned to stay the night. But as they rested, the terrible, otherworldly Wild Hunt attacked. This shadowy troupe on horseback was led by the goblin-like Erl-King and was accompanied by a pack of devilish hounds. Many people at the inn were slaughtered by the Hunt's cruel weapons. Church fled across Dartmoor on a motorbike to try to draw the Hunt away, while Ruth and Laura drove off in the opposite direction, but Church hadn't gone far before he plunged into one of the abandoned mineshafts that dot the moor.
Not long after, Ruth and Laura encountered Shavi for the first time, and the three of them embarked on a desperate race across the countryside, with the Hunt in hot pursuit. They escaped only with the coming of the dawn, eventually winding up in Glastonbury.
Meanwhile, Church found himself imprisoned in a Fomorii den, deep beneath Dartmoor. His cellmate was Ryan Veitch, who had been captured earlier, and soon Tom was brought into the cells too; he had suffered greatly at the hands of the Fomorii since his capture in Salisbury. It wasn't long before Church met Calatin, the Fomorii half-breed and leader of one of the main factions, or tribes, in the Fomorii hierarchy. If you can attribute any human abstract to the Fomorii, it would be Evil, but Calatin was worse than the others, somehow. Perhaps it was just the fact he looked less twisted on the surface, so that whatever lay beneath was amplified. He put Church through appalling torture in search of information, but Church gave nothing away.
There seemed little hope for them until Niamh appeared in the cells, identifying herself firmly as Church's patron. She helped them to break out into a maze of tunnels with the Fomorii hot on their heels, and finally they made their way out across Dartmoor. Soon after, Church made the shocking discovery that his girlfriend, Marianne, had not committed suicide; she had been murdered. He vowed to find her killer.
Glastonbury turned out to be the location of another talisman, so Ruth, Laura, and Shavi continued the search. In the grounds of the Chalice Well, they encountered a man of the cloth named James, who doubled up his job with the Christian Church as a member of a secret society called Watchmen. The group had existed for centuries, perhaps millennia, with members drawn from various religious orders, generally operating independently of each other. Their role, I suppose, was as some kind of body to organize a defence against the supernatural powers represented by the Fomorii and the Tuatha De Danann, if they ever decided to return to our world. They were keepers of vital information that could be used in any coming fight, while at the same time overseeing important sites in the landscape, particularly areas where the Blue Fire was strongest; they all characterized that energy as their own religion's spiritual vitality. Perhaps it is.
James told them of the mysteries surrounding Glastonbury and of how the Grail was hidden beneath the Tor; not in an earthly space, but through some gateway into another place: T'ir n'a n'Og.
While this was happening, Church, Tom, and Veitch were trekking across Cornwall to Tintagel, the legendary home of King Arthur. There they found the mystical Sword Caledfwlch, but before they could get away, they were trapped on a cliff top by a Fomorii force led by Mollecht, the leader of another tribe. Mollecht was a sorcerer, but his experiments to gain greater power had done something terrible to him. His body had completely disappeared and the only thing preventing his life force from dissipating was a murder of crows constantly flying in a tight, ritual pattern around it. A figure made up of swirling crows must have been frightening enough, but then the crows parted to allow a burst of that awesome power. With no way to turn, Tom dragged the other two over the cliff into the churning sea below.
On top of Glastonbury Tor, Ruth, Laura, and Shavi were shocked to see Church and the others fall out of the sky, heaving up sea water at the highest point in the surrounding landscape. In a last desperate act, Tom had summoned up all his power and knowledge and moved the three of them along the lines of earth energy between two potent nodes, Tintagel and Glastonbury. It showed the potential of what they all could achieve if they learned to master the Blue Fire, but even Tom said he didn't know if he could repeat the act without the pressure of death at his back.
Introductions made, they opened the doorway and crossed over to T'ir n'a n'Og, where they recovered the cauldron-the Grail-from a mysterious structure.
Their next destination was South Wales, where they found the last of the artifacts, the Spear of Lugh. With all four talismans, victory was within their grasp, but they still had to face up to the awful threat of the Wild Hunt. After a terrifying confrontation on a storm-swept night, it was Ruth who saved the day, showing a depth of character she hadn't before exhibited. She plunged the Spear into the chest of the Erl-King, the two of them rolling down a hillside out of sight. There Ruth witnessed an astonishing transformation as the Erl-King became Cernunnos, another nature deity; this was the "other half' for which the triple Goddess had been searching. Like all of the gods, Cernunnos had different aspects, and he had been trapped as the Erl-King by the Wish-Hex, becoming a tool of the Fomorii. He thanked Ruth for freeing him by burning his brand into her hand and promising to aid her if she ever needed him.
With the Wild Hunt departed, everything was in place for the return of the exiled Tuatha lle Danann and the defeat of the Fomorii. But the next morning, while Laura guarded the talismans, she was attacked by Callow, who had been secretly stalking them since Salisbury. He had thrown in his lot with the Fomorii for the promise of greater power. He took the artifacts, but not before leaving Laura at death's door, one side of her face carved up by his razor.
After getting her barely adequate hospital treatment, they raced across country in pursuit of Callow and the talismans, eventually ending up in the Lake District. Here Tom revealed himself as an unwitting Fomorii tool, giving the group up to Calatin and Callow. While in the Dartmoor cells, the Fomorii had inserted a Caraprix into his head, one of the small, shape-shifting, symbiotic creatures which all the Fomorii and Tuatha De Danann carry. The Caraprix allowed Tom to continue his normal actions while subtly bending him to the Fomorii will and preventing him from revealing the truth about what had happened to him.
Escaping capture, Ruth hid in the house of a woman who showed her the potential of the powers promised by the Mother-Maiden-Crone. Ruth led the way in freeing the others from the Fomorii, aided unconsciously by Mollecht, whose desire for supremacy in the Fomorii hierarchy led to conflict amongst the opposing powers. Callow was left behind to pay the price of his failure.