Old Ones (The Power of Five)

The Old Ones are the main antagonists in Anthony Horowitz's fantasy thriller series The Power of Five. They are ancient incarnations of Evil led by the Demon King Chaos, who ruled Earth back ten thousand years in the past but were banished to another universe by the mysterious Five Gatekeepers. They now seek to return to the world and influence events from throughout the story.

The Old Ones are based on the Great Old Ones of the writings of H.P. Lovecraft.

Nature
The name Old Ones refers to each and every demon forming the court of their king Chaos. They are as such the mightiest and most influential demons in existence, implied to be born from the worst aspects of creation. All Demon Gods from all cultures are merely representations of Chaos and the Old Ones.

The Old Ones are Evil given life, who strive to exterminate mankind and claim the world for themselves, to turn it into a nightmarish hellhole fitting Chaos' awful designs. They hate everything beautiful or useful, which they destroy with implacable determination, and want to destroy the world as slowly as possible to feed on suffering.

They are able to control Dark Magic and to empower its practicioners, to shape-shift and to transform things, among others. All worshippers of Evil answer to them and they can bring the worst out of people through manipulation and corrupting influence, by appealing to greed and selfishness. They always influence things from afar, mostly through cupid followers who believe in their promises of eternal wealth, and only take action when they have no other choice.

Although imensely knowledgeable and dangerous, the Old Ones only know about Evil and cannot truly comprehend how mankind function. As such, even when taking a human shape, they are unable to fully pass as a human and people promptly notice that something is amiss. They prove too arrogant to consider defeat, and cannot fathom that some people would chose a seemingly desperate fight over a life of "luxury" that would unfailingly end in horrible demises or even more gruesome transformations.

There are several ranks among the Old Ones, the weakest of them being little more than powerful and dangerous monsters who serves as Chaos' elite troops. The higher the rank, the bigger and more horrible they get. It must be noted that being shape-shifters, what they look like hardly matters, and that humans can only percieve an approximation of the mightiest one's aspects.
 * Demonic Knights: Arguably the least powerful of the Old Ones, they are monstrous humanoid creatures wearing black armours and poisonous spikes all over their weapons and bodies, and even their demonic horses.
 * Fly-Soldiers: Immense swarms of demonic flies (among other winged bugs) sharing a hive mind, who can assemble and shape themselves into mighty soldiers impervious to conventional damage. They are also able to take different forms and blend in their surroundings.
 * Shape-Changers: Horrible hybrids between humans and animals, mostly grotesque mixes between man and beast, insect, bird or fish, with multiple limbs and deformities, defying all logic. They are able as their name imply to alter their appearance, mostly to take a human form. They can talk and interact with humans, serving mostly as field agents and spokepersons, but prove deadly fighters under their regular aspects.
 * Fire Riders: With little doubt the second tier of the Old Ones, they form a squad of thirteen demon knights looking like demonic humanoids clad in black robes and featureless hoods, whose real aspect (should they have one) is never disclosed. It is possible that the robes and hoods are the closest thing a human mind can relate to their aspect. They form Chaos' Praetorian Guard and are able to burn everyone and everything ino ashes through mere contact.
 * Demonic Beasts: The four biggest, mightiest and highest-ranked of the Old Ones, apparently directly under Chaos himself. They are building-sized abominations that a human mind can only process as demonic animals like the Ones represented by the Nazca Lines (one of the Gates sealing the Old Ones). They appear as a Humminbird, a Spider, a Condor and an emaciated Monkey.

Background
The Old Ones bided time in the shadows, watching humanity first develop. Suddenly disaster struck when they arrived on Earth and came down in China, where they immediately took over, killing all the old humans in the region and enslaving the children and able-bodied. They took over business, promising the rich that once they followed them, they'd be rewarded, and they got rich humans to enslave the lower class. Then they set about estabilishing an empire, and warred with human freedom fighters for the next seventy years.

In the middle of the war, Five children were born, all with supernatural abilities. One was named Matt, the other was named Inti, two were named Sapling and Flint, and the final one was Scarlett. Their powers were precognition and telekinesis, healing, telepathy and weather control respectively. Then the Old Ones became aware of their powers and knew of the threat they posed so they hunted them down and cornered them when they became fifteen and escaped from the human threat. The Five played a trick on the Old Ones so that Sapling sacrificed himself, but his future self, Jamie Tyler, was sent back in time to fight the surprised Old Ones and banish them to Hell.

The Five won, and set about restoring the damaged world. Matt and Inti built a gate in the Nazca Lines and another in Yorkshire, England, where the first war ended.

Modern times
The Old Ones were imprisoned, but they were still alive, it was not their end. So, throughout human history, many evil humans fell to evil ways and tried to free the Old Ones. They were dismissed as sorcerors but the evil humans eventually formed an organization known as Nightrise, which, in the present day, sought to free the Old Ones by nuclear and astronomical designs.

An attempt was made by a cult of witches in Yorkshire, headed by Mrs. Deverill, who sought to free the Old Ones by sacrificing Matt, who had been reborn. This attempt failed dramatically, and the Old Ones were again banished.

Return
The Old Ones did manage to return through the efforts of Diego Salamander, an industrialist and businessman, who chased Matt and Pedro, who was Inti reborn, through South America. Eventually Matt faced Salamander and killed him, hoping he had stopped the threat, but Salamander's plan worked and his satellite unlocked the dimensional gate which was the Nazca Desert. Eventually, the Old Ones climbed out of the earth and Chaos himself came. He knocked Matt unconscious and fled. But Matt lived (through Pedro's healing) and he sought to face the Old Ones in Hong Kong.

Matt encountered Scarlett and the Old Ones in Hong Kong and freed Scarlett from their influence. Then, he managed to get all the Five together to face the evil. But Scarlett summoned a typhoon, realizing her power too late, and Hong Kong was destroyed. But the Five escaped in time, but, with no destination, they were seperated, and the Old Ones deemed this a great victory, and started the Apocalypse with signal from their lord Chaos.

Victory
The Old Ones now conquered the Earth, ten years in the future, and because the Five were using dimensional doors built into churches to travel the globe, the Old Ones did a clever trick and locked the doors, meaning the Five were stuck, but they did escape the doors and found themselves in a devastated and war-torn globe. The Old Ones had dropped bombs everywhere in England, had started a war in Egypt, had corrupted governments and turned good men evil. Then the Five reappeared in the height of this new war and managed to meet again, although without the doors.

Many businessmen joined them, hoping the Old Ones would reward them, but the Old Ones' "reward" was for their followers to be first in line in the great battle, and they betrayed their own followers.

The Old Ones seemed to win when they converted Scott (Flint's future form) into their ways and Scott became evil. This seemed to win because there could only be Five Gatekeepers, and with four there was disaster. But the Old Ones had not countered on Scott's repentance, and, when he sold Matt to Chaos and sold his brother and Pedro to the Old Ones, it was too much for Scott and he repented, by opening the doors, at the cost of his life.

So, there were only three living Gatekeepers - Matt having been killed by the Old Ones - and this seemed like the end.

Final downfall
But the Old Ones had forgotten about the trick the Five had used to defeat them before: the Five lived in the past and present simultaneously. So, the past Matt and Flint came out to fight Chaos, and once again, they stabbed Chaos in the heart, and killed him. A third gate opened and sucked in all the Old Ones into the other universe; and at the end several nuclear missiles were fired into the gate too; and presumably these obliterated the Old Ones and ended their threat forever.