and that it has cost him everything, but that the Microcosm was very valuable and all Breeze needed to do was to strike him down and it would be his. The thief did so without a second's hesitation, hitting the old man with his crowbar. But now he had a problem – the device now showed the old man dead at his feet and his own figure standing over the body. This would be damning evidence and make it impossible for Breeze to sell the Microcosm. But the solution came to him... all he need do was reach into the box and remove his own figure from the scene. He did so, crushing its head as he did. As above, so below. The police found his body the next morning. They said it looked as if a giant hand had reached out from above and ground him into bits. Known relatives Throughout the books, Rune has been recorded as having at least two children - Cornelius Murphy, the hero of the Cornelius Murphy Trilogy, who rescues Rune from the 'Forbidden Zones' and helps to defeat the secret rulers of the world, and the Campbell, the villain in The Book of Ultimate Truths and the grandson of the secret king of the world, who was conceived as a result of Rune's attempts to become a prince only for him to be killed at the conclusion of the novel - although his active sexual lifestyle would suggest the possibility that there are other children out there. In The Witches of Chiswick he summoned his descendants from the 25th century, Will Starling and Tim McGregor, into the Victorian Age, but exactly how they are related to Rune was never expressly stated. The fate of Rune's parents and other immediate ancestors and siblings, if he has any, are unknown; the only even vague references to his upbringing to date include his comment that his father was in the brewery trade, and even that was later proven to be false, and another claim that he comes from a Highlander background with his ancestors among the Rankins (which, while still questionable, is slightly more plausible when Rankin's decision to set Biblical events in Britain is taken into account). In The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived, having learned the secret of perpetual reincarnation- allowing himself to be reborn over and over again on his original birth