About Will Stanton

[lightbranded]

When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;
Five will return, and one go alone.

Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning, stone out of song;
Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw;
Six Signs the circle, and the grail gone before.

Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold;
Played to wake the Sleepers, oldest of the old;
Power from the green witch, lost beneath the sea;
All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree.

Name: Will Stanton
Canon: Dark is Rising Sequence
Canon Point: Just after the end of SIlver on the Tree.
Age: 13
Species: Old One of the Light
Appearance:

Will  is described as looking completely ordinary and unremarkable. He is short and stocky, with slightly long brown hair that continually falls into his eyes. His eyes are grey, with an odd look of oldness to them. Will's face is round and good-natured, but he maintains a solemn or stoic expression most of the time.

 

Just above his right wrist, on the inside of his arm, Will has a single unusual scar. It looks like a shiny hairless burn scar, but is in the shape of a perfect circle quartered by a cross.

Canon Summary:

Will grew up in a small village called Hunterscoombe in rural England. He was the youngest of nine children. Up until his eleventh birthday Will was very much like an ordinary child. 

 

On the eve of his eleventh birthday Will went to sleep wishing for snow. He awoke into a time several centuries before his own, in the days when all of his village was nothing more than a clearing in a great forest. Feeling almost as if he was in a dream, Will followed a trail through his forest to a set of Great Doors standing alone on a hillside. They opened at his touch. 

 

Inside was a great stone hall and two people waiting for him. Merriman Lyon, once called Merlin, and a birdlike old woman known only as the Lady. The two of them proceeded to tell Will of his heritage, now that he had awoken. They told Will that he was the last of the Old Ones and the first to be born in over 500 years. Will learned that he had a gift, one that the very law of the universe demanded that he serve and one that he could not refuse. And that he was bound by his very nature to fight against the Dark. They told WIll that with his awakening they knew that the time of the last great battle against the Dark was drawing near. 

 

There was a prophecy. Merriman named WIll Signseeker and told him that his first quest would be to reunite six signs of power that had been created by the Light over the ages. One sign WIll had already received as a birthday present. 

 

Before WIll could learn much more they were attacked by the Dark. In the ensuing battle Will’s arm was branded with the Sign of the Light and the Lady sacrificed the greatest part of her strength to drive the Dark away. With the way out freed, Merriman brought Will back to his own time. A few days later Will successfully retrieved the second sign from a man known only as the Walker. 

 

Soon afterwards Will came to visit the village manor. To his surprise Merriman was there, posing as a butler. The two traveled to a Christmas Party in Victorian England. There, Will was brought to the Book of Gramarye. This single book contained all of the accumulated knowledge of the Old Ones. In a single moment of suspended time Will received his training and came into his full power as an Old One.

 

Two other important things happened at that party. Will met a man named Hawkins and he received the Sign of Wood. Hawkins was Merriman's liegeman and adopted son from the twelfth century. He was brought forward in time for that night to help break the spell guarding the Book of Gramarye. But Will also witnessed the beginning of Hawkin's fall from the Light. Furious that Merriman had risked his life to bring Will his education and jealous of the Old One's immortality Hawkins took the first step on his fall to the Dark. He would become the Walker that Will had met in his own time. As they watched the betrayal begin, Merriman told Will that he had made the greatest mistake their kind could make. For Merriman had placed more trust in Hawkins then the man had the strength to take. And with that, the two returned to Will's time. 

 

Over the next few days Will continued to collect the signs even as the weather became colder and colder, bringing down more snow than Buckinghamshire had ever seen before. 

 

A few days after Christmas Will discovered that the cold was a part of the Dark's power. To break the chill and save the lives of his neighbors Will helped Merriman seize the candles of Winter from the Dark. Placed in the candle-ring of the Old Ones, the candles warmed and created a flower of fire with the Sign of Fire in the center. The Sign of Water came to Will resting in the hands of a Viking King on his funeral ship, unburied in the flood that followed the warming weather. The Sign of Stone WIll retrieved from the church in his village. With all six signs reunited, Will called forth Herne the Hunter and the Wild Hunt to chase the Dark to the edges of the Earth. And that was the end of Will's first quest. 

 

His second quest came in the summer, when Will traveled to Trewessick in Cornwall. There, seemingly by coincidence, he assisted Merriman and three human children to recover a stolen Grail and a lost manuscript. Together, the two artifacts allowed Will and Merriman to decipher a coded prophecy in Ogam on the side of the Grail. 

 

From this, Will knew that his next task would be in Wales. But he didn't know to what efforts the Light would go to send him there. Only a few months later he became desperately ill with hepatitis. So ill, that he quite possibly could have died if not for his immortality. He lived, but at the cost of all his memories of his life as an Old One. He was left with only a few scraps of verse, instincts he couldn't understand, and the desperate knowledge that he had lost something more important than his own life. 

 

His family sent him to a sheep farm in Wales to recuperate, and he spent a few days slowly wandering the hills searching for what he had lost. On a hillside he met a white-haired and golden-eyed boy named Bran and remembered everything. Together the two boys would embark on a quest to find a golden harp and wake the seven sleepers. By the end of the adventure Bran's heritage as the son of King Arthur was revealed. And Will acknowledged his own duty to serve Bran just as Merlin had served King Arthur. 

 

A year later Will returned to Wales for his last and greatest quest. Along with Bran and the three children from Trewessick they found the last great object of the Light and fought the Dark in one last battle. They won and the Dark was cast out beyond time. But with the victory came a great cost. The great work of the Old Ones had ended. All of them boarded white ships to sail to the castle behind the north wind for their rest. All save two. Bran was given the choice to come live with his father, Arthur, but he chose to forget and live a mortal life. And Will's last task was to remain in the mortal world as the last watchman for his kind. 

 

As the Old Ones sailed away, Merriman removed all memories of the great battle and magic from everyone's minds. Only Will remembered.