| “ | The power of the Five has been defeated… One of you has been trapped far from here and another of you has been killed. He died painfully. Now lay down your arms and I will give you a quick death. The rest of you I will allow to serve me. There is no need for this battle. You know it has already been won. | „ |
| ~ Chaos challenging Matt before his first defeat. |
| “ | Two of the Five! But not enough! Three of the Five… but not enough, still not enough!… Four of you! | „ |
| ~ Chaos' last words before his first defeat and imprisonment. |
The King of the Old Ones, known by humanity as Chaos, is the main villain in Anthony Horowitz's novel series The Power of Five (also known as The Gatekeepers in the US), the spiritual successor of his unfinished (and more lighthearted) series Pentagram.
He is the God of Evil imprisoned at the dawn of time, who strives to return, take over and remake the world to his liking. He and his servants, the Old Ones, are based on Howard Phillips Lovecraft's eponymous Eldritch Abominations.
Appearance[]
Chaos is described as a mountain-tall abomination, far too huge to be fully seen, far too horrifying to be fully conceived. (Much like Cthulhu, of whom he is inspired.)
He is entirely black, shrouded in darkness, without defined shape though he appears somehow humanoid, and he can manifest as a titanic, ever-changing fog cloud. Details like horns, nails taller than a man, yellow reptilian eyes and scaly skin are noted, yet he is too unfathomable even for people in his presence to be sure whether he really has them.
The graphic novel depicts him as a featureless, pitch-black, humanoid titan without legs, sporting clawed fingers and huge glowing eyes.
Chaos favours the aspect of a faceless, featureless, dark silhouette akin to a living black hole or a void open in the very fabric of space, cutting itself a path through existence, distorting and absorbing his surroundings with his every move. His words flow out and echo ominously all around him, and he seems to grow bigger as people die in his presence. He wields a sword and rides a hellish horse with red eyes and horns, always breathing steam.
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Chaos' humanoid aspect as seen in the graphic novel.
The graphic novel depicts him as a tall, dark humanoid in a spiked suit of armour, sporting a helmet shaped like a monster's head open on a void akin to a black hole, riding a demonic unicorn with glowing eyes.
Personality[]
Chaos is unspeakably cruel, merciless and sadistic; horribly killing and torturing his enemies, killing or awfully mutating his servants as soon as they outlive their usefulness and forgiving no mistake. He does grant his worthiest servants the wealth they crave – as long as he needs them – and promises a painless demise to his enemies should they surrender. Yet he hardly veils his loathing for humanity, which he intends to obliterate after his enemies are gone, followers included. Though he wants to do it slowly to feed from pain and turn the world into a hellhole in his image.
He is a deceitful shape-shifter and a highly skilled manipulator, able to corrupt people into serving him by calling on greed and selfishness or twisting any craving for a better life, and he knows how to bait targets and devise traps.
However, being pure evil, Chaos knows only about the ugliest aspects of the world, and is absolutely unable to fully grasp the way humanity behaves. He is so arrogant that he fails to consider that even hardened criminals could cast greed aside to rise against him, or that the Five could defeat him a second time. His blinding lust for revenge and his utter inability to learn from his mistakes would ultimately spell his doom. As such, he makes a fine example of how evil, while terrifying and horribly dangerous, is shallow, sterile, meaningless and despicable.
Powers And Abilities[]
As the God of Evil, Chaos is frighteningly powerful, being able to influence the world using relays even from his jail. He is connected to the Old Ones and they exude an aura of cold malice. He rules over all monsters and everything evil, and is the source of all Dark Magic whose followers worship him. He can warp reality, reshape his surroundings, alter people's perceptions, and trigger natural or magical disasters. He can command animals to go against their instincts, influence, corrupt, and transform things and people, seal or tamper magic artefacts, block powers, grant abilities, animate undeads, and even warp time to an extent.
Biography[]
Origins[]
Chaos is the incarnation of Evil and the direct source of every woe befalling the world. It is stated that he was created along the Earth, has existed for billions of years, and that Demon Gods from every culture are based on him. The Old Ones appeared like the nightmares of the world bought into daylight, in what would become China, during the first great civilisation – now forgotten by History. They set out to cleanse the Earth of humanity, but as slowly as possible to feed on misery.
Chaos ruled for decades, destroying everything beautiful and reducing the population to a few thousands. He gained fealty of the greediest elite, with false promises of power, but he later showed his true intentions by hideously warping them and using them as cannon fodder. Chaos bloated sunlight with black and purple clouds; and poisoned the rivers and oceans so life would not grow. As such, the Earth was slowly dying. It is possible that all the mass extinctions throughout history empowered him, as he and his Old Ones feed on pain and suffering. He is connected to the Old Ones and they all exude an aura of cold malice.
The last humans rose against him in a war that lasted fifty years. Near the end, Five children with immense powers able to communicate through the Dream World were born: The Five Gatekeepers who when together could defeat the Old Ones. They were called Matt (preferring his modern name, Matthew Freeman), Inti, Sapling, Flint, and Scarlett (called Scar by everyone), were born in what would later become England, Peru, America and China respectively. As centuries went by, they were incorporated into their respective Mythologies as central deities.
Chaos thought he had won when Matt played a trick on him by sending Sapling to his death – In fact, Sapling knew that he was fated to die and willingly sacrificed himself – but little did Chaos know that the Five would be reborn in the distant future. Sapling's death sent his future self (called Jamie) through time to complete his mission. Jamie was found by Scar and joined the decisive battle, remaining hidden until the other Gatekeepers were united. They stabbed Chaos' heart, dispersing him into black smoke screaming all over the universe, "a sort of living night that was at last being torn apart by the coming of the day". A gate then opened up and sucked the Old Ones into Hell.
Matt and the other Five created two Gates, one where they led the decisive battle in Past England and the other in Past Peru, to keep the Old Ones from resurfacing. Indeed, they knew that they would one day return.
Modern times[]
Raven's Gate[]
Ten thousand years later, the dark mages populating the village of Lesser Malling in Yorkshire, United Kingdom, worked to free the Old Ones. Their leader, Sir Michael Marsh, had built a now abandoned nuclear plant over one Gate location, reactivating it in secret. The witch Jayne Deverill got custody of Matt's reincarnation after his troubles with the law, to sacrifice him in a ritual and open the Gate by combining dark magic with a nuclear meltdown.
Matt escaped and came across the Nexus, the secret society devoted to help and protect the Five, but the Old Ones animated all fossils in a museum to capture him. Right as he was sacrificed, his telekinetic power awakened, enabling him to escape. Since only a drop of blood was shed, Chaos could only partially resurface (and crush the now useless Sir Michael), before being sucked back into the Abyss, with his worshippers dying in the meltdown.
Evil Star[]
Learning of a second gate in Peru, Matt travelled there to prevent it from being opened. Helped by the Inca, who had kept their empire hidden, he befriended Inti, now named Pedro.
Diego Salamanda a very influential businessman follower of the Old Ones, stole the diary written by Saint Joseph of Cordoba, compiling everything about the Old Ones and the Five. He learnt that the Gate was the Desert of Nazca itself, only opening when the map of the stars drawn in the lines matched the stars' alignment. With one star missing to prevent its opening, he sent a satellite as a substitute.
Matt's and Pedro's combined might repels the Old Ones. For now...
the Gate opened and the Old Ones emerged from Earth. Matt knew he could not defeat them, and Chaos laughed off his challenge. Fortunately, he wounded Chaos by combining his power with Pedro's, forcing the demons to vanish into the night. This nearly drained his life, but Pedro healed him.
Nightrise[]
Chaos gathered all his followers, and corrupted many of the greediest world leaders and wealthy elite, who joined the powerful multinational trust Nightrise Corporation based in Hong Kong: In fact a front for worshippers of the Old Ones and tasked to secretly open the way for their rise into power.
Now empowered and guided by the Old Ones, Nightrise set out to abduct children gifted with supernatural powers and discovered two Gatekeepers: the mind-reading Native-Americans twins Jamie and Scott Tyler. Their executive Susan Mortlake abducted Scott, shattering his spirit through unspeakable tortures and turning him into a vegetative puppet. Wanting to have Charles Baker, one of Nightrise followers, elected President of the United States, she had Scott mind-control a bodyguard to kill his opponent Senator John Trelawney (an Expy of Barack Obama).
Helped by Trelawney and his aide, Jamie infiltrated Nightrise' prison for special children. He was shot escaping, but saved by a Native American shaman and travelled to the past to banish the Old Ones. He saved his brother and killed Susan Mortlake. Alas Scott was badly traumatized, and Nightrise rigged the elections to control the USA.
Necropolis[]
Through Nightrise, the Old Ones took complete control of Hong Kong. While Chaos started to expand his influence all over the world, killing anyone who knew of his existence, he spread a poisonous fog over Hong Kong to slowly kill its denizens and turn it into a city of the dead. Chaos had Nightrise's executive Paul Adams bring his adopted daughter Scarlett, the last Gatekeeper, in town to get rid of her and lure her comrades into a trap.
Chaos had Saint Joseph's diary sent to Matt, for it tells the location of the twenty-five sacred doors the Five can use to teleport all over the world. He sent a horde of undeads destroy the Gatekeepers' shelter and killed their host, professor Joanna Chambers, forcing them to hide with the Incas. Chaos expected the Gatekeepers to travel by door to Hong Kong, setting a trap at its destination. But Matt figured it out and infiltrated Hong Kong with Jamie, escaping a Shape Changer. Matt let himself get caught to reach Scarlett, whose power over weather went out of control and triggered a typhoon. The White Lotus triad help them flee, but Scarlett got shot and severely wounded by a Nightrise agent. Without her, the typhoon destroyed all of Hong Kong, killing the Chairman of Nightrise.
Since the door collapsed when the Gatekeepers were using it, it scattered them all over the world. Worse, Chaos had rigged it to send them ten years into the future, unable to stop him. The Old Ones left Hong Kong which no longer interested them and returned to their true headquarters, an immense ice palace in Antarctica called Oblivion. However, Chaos was still suffering from the wounds inflicted by Matt and Pedro and craved for revenge.
Oblivion[]
With all opposition gone, Chaos sealed the sacred doors and revealed himself. When the Gatekeepers resurfaced, the Earth was reduced to a gloomy hellhole under Chaos’ control: civilization had collapsed and what was left of it had become dictatorships or police states. Technology was now a rare luxury, cities were either razed or reduced to crime-ridden ruins, the world was plagued with pandemics, wars, terrorism, disasters and monsters attacks, the Earth was growing increasingly sterile, and over half of humanity was dead. The greedy elite who joined Nightrise were awfully mutated, and even the resistance against the Old Ones fell prone to pointless violence and cruelty.
The Gatekeepers reappeared in different countries, with Nightrise having put bounties on their heads. Matt and the triad leader Lohan Shan-Tung were in Brazil pursued by slavers. Scarlett and Matt's guardian Richard Cole were in Egypt and found the freedom fighter Tarik just as ruthless as the Sheik following the Old Ones. Pedro and Scott got caught by Nightrise in Italy. Jamie escaped cannibals alone in England, befriending Holly, a teenage girl, and a traveller called Graham Fletcher. Fortunately, the Nexus was still active and reached out to help them.
Nightrise' executive Jonas Mortlake exploited Scott's trauma and insecurities, convincing him that evil came from humanity and tempting him with the life of luxury he always craved, having him betray Pedro who barely escaped. Helped by the Nexus, Matt, Scarlett and their friends reached Antarctica, where the united World Army opposing the Old Ones was about to strike. They bombarded the Oblivion Palace to open the way for their troops, but it was a trap. Chaos shielded the palace and faked all destruction with illusions, before sending his forces to crush them. Survivors only escaped thanks to Scarlet stirring a blizzard and Matt rending the icy land to lead them away.
Chaos used Scott as a bait to lure and capture Matt, to torture him for the rest of his life as a petty revenge for his wounds. However, Matt had learnt of his fate in the Mystical Library inside the Dream World, compiling all the past and present, and let himself get captured on purpose. Doing so, he told Scott that he would be the one to save the day. Nightrise' second Chairman planned to kill Richard Cole before his eyes, leaving him no choice but to mercy kill Matt with a magic Incan dagger only he could see, to bring his past self to the present. Wracked with guilt, Scott sacrificed his life to unseal the doors and enable the remaining Gatekeepers and their friends to reach Oblivion.
The Gatekeepers killed Jonas and the Chairman, before Chaos appeared, effortlessly withstanding Holly's gunfire. But Matt's and Scott's past selves barged in and the reunited Gatekeepers stabbed Chaos through the heart with swords, forming a Pentagram (their symbol), killing him for good and banishing the Old Ones once more. Before the Gate closed, the World Army sent nuclear missiles into the Old Ones' dimension, obliterating them.
The reunited Gatekeepers chose to depart forever to the Dream World. The World Army and the Nexus set out to rebuilt the world and the Earth started healing. Decades later, Holly and Richard would still drink toasts to the Five.