"The Legend of the Black Armor"
Chap. 01: Enter the companions.
Attention this is meant as a second part of my first QfC fic "Highlander". If you didn't read it, this story will not make much sense.
Some say one's fate is tied to the land, as much a part of us as we are of it.
Others say fate is woven together like the threads of a tapestry, so that one's fate intertwines with many others.
It is a force that drives Kings and vassals equally; an unavoidable, potent power that decides the future of many, settling it on stone.
Or does it?
But when a single soul fights against this singular force, pursuing to cut the sturdy threads of this tapestry, the very course of History can be altered forever.
And not always for the better.
The High Lands.
Despite all these years listening to the low whispers back in Camelot's Court about hostile territory surrounded by harsh mountain ranges, a heart of ice even in the warmest summers and a persistent invisible web of arcane energies that acted as a protective carapace against any attempt King Arthur's army had done in the past to retain a land with a mind of its own since its last Lord, the fearsome renegade known as "The Red Knight", had fallen in disgrace; Lucius couldn't help but notice that the said land was… astoundingly beautiful.
True that the cold, mostly in the many nights he had spent sleeping in the wilderness, was a constant, relentless remainder about how resistance and brute strength were two essential, necessary qualities to endure successfully the impact this wild land did even in the most valiant of hearts.
But that didn't diminish the beauty of this fertile, lush soil even in the slightest.
Eyeing first the small bonfire they had prepared in order to roast the meager, skinny rabbits they had encountered in the mountains while searching for something that could make a good dinner, then his companion by his side, Lucius noticed just how sharp the sword's blade was becoming under the experienced ministrations with the hand whetstone.
- Where did you learn how to sharpen a blade?
The said companion, green eyes and a pale serious face behind a wild mass of curly, bright red hair, stopped their movements briefly to immediately continue with the task. The still black steed with red ruby eyes by their right side showed briefly its sharp fangs. Were not for its constant presence by its rightful owner, Lucius would have felt… rather intimidated by that unnatural thing.
- I've grown amidst soldiers and magic practitioners. – the voice, a rough yet feminine voice answered – Whatever task regarding combat, swordsmanship and maintenance of the armor and weapons I don't know, it doesn't exist.
- Bit boasting, are we? – Lucius joked raising playfully an almost white eyebrow.
His companion's red brow, the brow of a girl, furrowed while her green serpentine eyes shone with amused malevolence.
- Boasting, you say? – she repeated, a twisted yet charming smile upon her pale lips – Care to test my blade and its sharpness against yours to prove your point, Knight-Boy?
"Knight-Boy". That had been her sort of pet name she had given to Lucius the second day of their shared journey towards the North, discovering new places and sharing suspicious glances in the dark around the fire.
They didn't trust completely each other, but they seemed to share a common unspoken sympathy for each other that lead, more often than originally expected, to amicable verbal banter.
She could be a girl, but talking with her was like talking to another boy, a dark, pensive, arrogant, yet somehow funny boy.
He could see with pristine clarity why so many had sworn their blades and their loyalties to this strange soldier girl.
Her aura, if a bit unsettling, had something so potent in its very essence that it screamed to the winds protection, victory… power.
For someone so young, she was powerful. Lucius had never encountered before someone with a soul so indomitable… except for his own mother.
Feeling a pang of sadness and nostalgia, Lucius still wore his mother's memory close to his coward heart. He remembered many evenings in his parents' chambers where his mother, the brave Lady Kayleigh, would teach him how to strike a pose and defend his flanks at the tender age of six while his father, the skeptical Sir Garrett, would laugh and lift him over his broad shoulders like a potato sack saying that it was Sleeping Time and no "no-no's" like to trench between their bed's covers and cushions or begging repeatedly and untiringly to the point of being annoying from a very rebel Lucius who asked for more time and a tale about warriors and dragons before unwillingly going grunting to his bed where he would dream to be knight one day just like his parents.
But that dream, as he grew up, was lost somewhere within him as he witnessed how dark and miserable the kingdom under Arthur's rule was becoming. Because he saw how many of the knights at the Round Table were look upon as the last hope for that diseased land that awaited for its sovereign to cure himself from his invisible illness.
And those high standards were held with the utmost rigidness, not a place for doubt or disobedience. Were you a knight at the Round Table, it was expected from you to literally die for your King.
And such a sacrifice for someone who had never instigated hope or even the minimum respect in the young man's heart was a sacrifice Lucius wasn't willing to do.
He now knew, deep in his heart, that without Perceval finding the Holy Grail and thus reawakening Arthur from his depression, Lucius eventually would have sworn loyalty to the bold Mordred, now sitting by his side as a girl and being, to his knowledge, the closest resemblance of a friend he had had in many months since Galahad's disappearance.
And he still didn't know anything about the fate of his childhood friend. It was disheartening.
However, as these thoughts reflected on his visage while an absent look put his eyes over the shadows around the bonfire dancing around him as a sort of spell, suddenly a hard nut collided with his cranium eliciting an unwilling moan of pain.
- What's with the long face, Knight-Boy? – the rough feminine voice, her voice, asked – We're not so brave when talking about crossing blades, eh?
- I wasn't…! – but noticing the almost impish smile full of sharp teeth she gave him, Lucius rolled his eyes – My thoughts drifted to my mother for a moment. I wonder if she's okay or if she even lives.
Mordred… or Medraut as it was how she preferred to be called, looked at him with an odd mixture of feelings collected within her green irises that Lucius was unable to interpret at first.
- Sometimes I myself do wonder about my own mother's whereabouts when she doesn't appear before me to say what she needs to say to, immediately, morph into some weird animal and leave as soon as she comes. – she snorted, but something told Lucius that snort wasn't reflecting any type of amusement by her part – She always does the same trick. Like those old hags she hangs with: you will never find them by your own means, they always find you, whenever you want it or not. That's the way of true witches, they never meddle with mortal affairs or mortals themselves unless they want to achieve something.
- Your mother is a witch? – asked Lucius while throwing more dry wooden sticks to the fire and rotating the almost cooked rabbits.
- Sure she is. – Medraut answered gazing with those green eyes of hers the blazes in front of her, a sudden seriousness settled all over her knife-sharp features – Ever heard about Morgan Le Fay?
He had heard that name while hiding in Arthur's last moments conversing with the girl by his side… but he had never related that name to anything remotely close to sorcery.
True that name had been synonym, as long as he could remember, of bad augury and many blamed a somehow mythic figure of a woman clad in black as the source of the darkness that had been surrounding the land for so many years.
But nobody related that to a witch's doing. The whispers about this Morgan Le Fay were something more of a pagan legend than anything else. Perhaps an angry spirit or a spectral apparition whose sight was a sign of incoming death or something like that.
Until that very moment when Medraut had spoken this name in Arthur's presence, Lucius had always thought that this woman wasn't even real.
It had been just an unholy name, never to be spoken in his grandmother's presence, for it always brought a dark look on her gentle features. Lady Julianna had never been a keen enthusiast of local legends about spirits, and that one in particular had been always an unspoken "no-no" within Lucius' family.
Now he wondered why.
- So she's real then? – the young man asked again, clearly intrigued – Her name had been always a sort of ill omen for many peasants, but I've never thought said woman actually existed.
- That's another witch thing: to weave their presence among local legends, never confirm their true identity, neither their very existence. – Medraut said with a dark look while picking one skewered rabbit that looked crunchy enough and risked a bite – Learned that long ago, when I started to ask questions whose answers aren't meant for child's ears.
With a pensive look, Lucius took the other roasted rabbit and, mimicking her, took a bite from the meat to, a second later, regret it dearly.
- Holy sh…! – he exclaimed as his tongue and lips burned with the heated meat – How in the Hell did you manage to eat that so nonchalantly?!
Medraut laughed. And her laugh made Lucius forgot his pain for a brief moment. When she laughed he forgot the boy-notion he had towards her and saw the girl she truly was.
And he was unsure why that notion made him blush.
- The trick is to tear the meat with your teeth without using your lips. – she explained while taking another bite – The tongue thing is something you build up with time and many uncomfortable blisters 'till the muscle gets hard enough.
- Urgh… - Lucius grunted – And that's not bad for your taste sense? Y mean, if you charred your tongue…
- Nah, it just gets you a sturdy, rough tongue. Nothing more. – she said between munches, offering a piece of her roasted rabbit to the monstrous black beast at her right side, his own dapple horse munching grass a few paces away nonchalantly – Try eating some roots: the rougher you got your tongue, the easier is to palate and swallow them.
- Roots? – he asked with a slight grimace of repulsion – Why in the Heavens would you want to eat roots?
- Awwwww, the Knight-Boy doesn't like roots for supper. – she mocked with a feigned sugary tone – Does your momma know how spoiled you are, princess? - she emphasized.
Blushing furiously, Lucius attempted to strike her with his rabbit on a stick, but she swiftly counterattacked with hers.
- Ha! Rabbit-on-a-stick duel, is it? – she exclaimed pleased as a malicious grin spreaded all along her face while both struggled with their unsuspected weapons intertwined – Challenge accepted.
So this way, Lucius found himself rabbit-on-a-stick-playing in a clumsy and caricaturized representation of a sword duel against an eager opponent who proved herself to be quite inventive even with such an unusual and ridiculous weapon at her disposition.
They'd got their duel, their meal discarded by the grass and, after such a strange display, their roaring laughs echoing through the dense, dark foliage of that mountain grove they were in.
And neither of them thought about their absent parents and their own loneliness when they went to sleep, tired and happy of having someone to laugh with.
After their evening prayers, the loyal congregation of Christian believers guided by the once dashing ex-knight Lancelot du Lac settled their camp near the swamp that had been the mute witness of Uryens' demise few weeks ago.
Lancelot felt unable to abandon that place, ashamed of his inaction towards such an injustice, paralyzed of what his old eyes had saw days before word ran around the kingdom about Arthur's death.
This black knight, this Mordred, had killed him.
But still nobody had claimed Camelot's Throne yet and many whispered about the sudden disappearance of Excalibur.
A King without a sword… the land without a King!
What will become of us now? – he thought, scared; still shocked of so many events unwrapped in so little time, still in denial about Arthur's death – My Lord, give me strength and enlightenment for my people, for they need hope where I cannot find it.
Futile attempt after another, for the Christian God wasn't a merciful one but rather this kind of deity that needed proof of your faith and repentance before showing you the light.
And Lancelot had been so many years wandering in the dark that he wouldn't recognize light even if it stabbed him between his ribs.
Pretty much like an unknown blade had just done with his midsection.
Feeling the pain with a slight delay until it reached his brains, the coppery taste of blood flowed within his mouth as his battered form fell limp right into the swamp mud.
He felt then a metallic sole of an armor's boot in his lower spine pry off with the sword that had gone through his lungs until the owner of said sword managed to unlock it from his body.
Knowing his strength was abandoning him quickly as the blood smeared the mud under him, Lancelot made a last effort to turn his weak body around until he was face to face to his killer.
And the eyes he found looking at him with disgust and hatred under a dark hood were like his own crystal blue eyes.
Then, a sudden spittle pearled his brow.
- Look at you, the mighty Sir Lancelot du Lac! – exclaimed a soft masculine voice so full of venom that gave the dying man some pause, trying to discern his attacker's features under that hood while searching for something he couldn't place yet – Now a pitiful, battered old man. How low your pride has befallen, you froggy* bastard.
- Who… who are you…? – asked Lancelot, still unsure of what his instinct screamed crystal clear while his eyes were unable to tell about.
The face above him, the face of an angel of death, hardened its features while a thin thread of green glow ignited their eyes.
- You…! – Lancelot exclaimed while choking with his own blood and bile – You are… a warlock!
Then a sudden, cruel smile plastered upon those perfect, cruel lips.
- Yes, magic is strong within our bloodline. – the other said with a tone cold as ice, metallic, unnatural – But what should really trouble you is who are you looking at: do you recognize me? – he asked before removing his hood.
Then after a quick examination, the pieces finally fit and a look of pure horror froze the ex-knight's features, leaving his corpse still with that same petrified expression after life had abandoned him.
- May you never find the peace in your rest, you bastard. – the soft masculine voice hissed amidst the swamp fog around their still forms – For everything you have done to me, I curse your pitiful carcass to raise at my command. Raise, Lancelot du Lac, raise!
As the battered body covered in blood and mud got up to behold its Master with empty, dead eyes, the warlock smiled cruelly at such sight.
- Come, my servant. – he said while evaporating amidst the growing dense fog – For there's still much to be done.
- C'mon, Knight-Boy! – her voice teased him from several meters fore him and his mount – A snail would prove quicker given your progress through the thickness of these woods!
- Says the one who mounts a thrice-damned demon horse! – he indignantly exclaimed, tired of zigzagging between a foliage so dense he barely saw a few palms beyond his nose – I'm still wondering why in the blazes you've chosen this cursed path!
Her laughter echoed in the middle of morning birds' chirping.
- Because the prize of taking hard paths is always more rewarding than following the marked roads!
What was that supposed to mean? It was some kind of dark joke? Given her twisted sense of humor he wouldn't be so surprised if that were the case…
Grunting, hissing, cussing and making almost any kind of complain, verbal or not, known by him, Lucius fought a while with the annoying lower branches of the huge trees he kept on colliding with, gaining indignant whinnies from his dapple horse until they reached (at long last!) a sort of glade where a gigantic natural wall made of sharp rocks like pointed teeth emerging from the earth's gum gifted them with the powerful sight of a waterfall which start were at least one kilometer above their heads.
The rumbling noise of the water precipitating over the crystal clear surface of an emerald green lake was deafening, powerful, and a pleasant sensation of freedom engulfed both youngsters atop of their horses.
- Wow. – said Lucius, speechless.
- Yeah. – agreed Medraut dismounting while still gazing at the imposing show in front of their eyes – Wondrous sight, huh? Wait 'till we climb atop of the Crone's Tooth. – she added while pointing to a tall yet thin rock that reached few meters below the falls' start, like a very long finger pointing to the sky - Sight gets better from above.
- Wait, wha…? – Lucius did a quick check, measured by eye the said rock's height and went white as parchment.
In all these weeks being Medraut's companion he had had not a single reason to remember how coward he was.
Now he remembered it like a hard slap in the face.
But she was already running around the lake, stomping over the tiny rocks at the shore like a swamp boar, finding the perfect spot to start wade the emerald waters until she'd reach the bottom of the said Crone's Tooth to start climbing it.
And all of this still embedded in that black armor of hers.
She was fucking insane.
But Lucius soon found himself getting rid of his own armor without a second thought, swimming out of breath like a fish towards her on his breeches and barefoot, observing her metallic silhouette gaining height by each step she took climbing that perilous rock.
Swallowing noisily, the young man grabbed unsurely a handful of moistened rock and, with trembling limbs, he started to follow her blindly, terrified but curious about what was all this about.
The cursed rock slide treacherously each time he tried to gain height and he was getting behind.
- C'mon, Knight-Boy, c'mon! – she goaded him from above – Give those wiry limbs some good use and climb as a salamander would do!
During all this time, Lucius had worked up a good sweat and he was starting to feel a bit delirious because of the many little stabs and involuntary muscular tics his entire anatomy was experiencing under such a tiresome exercise.
- C'mon, you're almost there!
Panting, with dry tongue and weak fingers, Lucius grabbed the next rocky ledge with a tremulous arm that, for a second, lost its strength and send the young man backwards.
But then, an iron grip grabbed him by the wrist and lifted his entire weight until his knees and toes were touching solid ground.
Panting hard, trembling from head to toes and sweating like a horse, once he squared his blurry sight he saw Medraut's face a few inches of his, her green eyes going through him, flesh, bone and soul.
But then, almost immediately, a hard clap over his right shoulder returned him to the real world.
- Good golly, Sir Folly! – she exclaimed happily – You did it! You've just did it!
Raising an inquiring brow, Lucius were still panting. His throat dry as a desert.
- C'mere, Knight-Boy. – she said while taking him by the wrist again – You've earned it.
And before he could formulate any half-coherent question, he found a sudden chill prickling on his naked palms as the force of the water precipitated right on his tender skin.
- Drink. – he heard among the watery roar.
And so he did. But in the very moment the moist freshness invaded his mouth, he was looking for more avidly.
Medraut observed him smiling, knowing by experience how it felt the first time.
- Refreshing, eh? – she said as if she were talking about the weather.
- Oh my God! – he exclaimed, air not enough to fill his lungs – This is… this is the most delicious water I've ever tasted!
- Of course it is. – she said with a feigned indifferent tone – You're drinking from the mighty Fire Falls atop of Crone's Tooth. Only the ancient Kings of old were brave enough to climb it and taste the purest of waters.
Astonished, the young man first eyed the crispy water sliding between his fingers, then the fiery redhead with the impish smile in front of him, her messy mane like actual fire against the morning sun.
Then that was when he decided to look around him and, despite the insane height they were at, he got on his feet and admired the wild landscape that opened before his eyes.
Inhaling the chilly wind that brought scent of pines, moistened earth and wild roses, he felt like he could fly if he just tried.
- See? I was right. – she said after a while.
Lucius turned around.
- Huh?
- Told you that the prize of taking hard paths is always more rewarding than following the marked roads. Remember?
- Yeah. – Lucius turned again so he could continue admiring and feeling that peerless sensation.
- Well, this is the prize. – she said matter-of-factly – Enjoy yourself.
So he did, closing his eyes and savoring that moment… until he heard something.
- What… what are you doing? – he asked, baffled, as he saw how her strong form under the armor started to descend again.
Amidst the watery roar, he detected her laugh as a part of the very ambient noise surrounding them.
- I've already tasted the water and smelled my well-deserved freedom, now's time to return to solid ground. Or do you plan to live there forever?
Eyeing first her fiery mane getting distant and distant below… suddenly Lucius realized how fucking far away the ground was.
And he felt… dizzy.
How in the Hell was he going to descend that monstrosity?!
- Oh, damn it… - he whispered while kneeling on the rocks, grabbing the edge with tremulous limbs again – Damn it, damn it, damn it…
It had been so easy to follow her without looking downwards, always with the eyes fixed in the sky…
- C'mon, Knight-Boy! – she exclaimed from below – It's easier to get down than to climb up!
Yeah... – he thought with a chilly sweat coursing along his spine – And it is easier said than done.
Still sore from the previous exercise, Lucius' steps downwards were more insecure, his muscles already protesting after few meters, his breath ragged, his perspiration abundant.
It was bound to happen one way or another.
So his foot found this slippery ledge, his own physical weight, if not considerable, acted against him and his sore muscles did the rest.
It took a while within his brains to process the pain product of his bruised side from the fall, the stinging from the violent splash against the lake's surface… and the emerald waters surrounding him while weight and gravity dragged him to the bottom.
Then a voice… a brief golden glint in the corner of the eye… mystic golden eyes, silvery long hair… a dress made of iridescent scales…
… The sword on her hand…
And the green arcane energies surrounding him; flesh, bone and soul united, propelled… and then…
An iron, darkened grip before the air went again on his lungs.
Somebody coughed beside him; then a dense, wet mass of bright red hair was the first thing his eyes saw.
- By the Gods! – her rough, feminine voice found its way to his ears – You okay, Knight-Boy?!
Coughing as well, still feeling the sting on his left side, raw and tender but thankfully without any visible wound; Lucius eyed her with awe.
- You… you saved me… - he managed to formulate.
- Yeah, and for being so damn skinny you're as heavy as a rock, geez… - she complained – Guess swimming with armor is not a good idea, huh?
Eyeing her with such intensity he thought his eyes would lose the ability to look somewhere else… until a deafening war cry raised his alert state immediately.
- MORDRED!
And out of the blue, Medraut had unsheathed her sword from her mount's saddle, quick as thunder, to parry a monstrous claymore that came from behind.
Rubbing his eyes several times as if trying to convince that what he was seeing was real, Lucius beheld the powerful, fully armored frame of someone he thought he would never see again.
For he would recognize that armor anywhere.
- Bors! – he exclaimed from his disadvantaged position on the ground, feeling a sudden pang of pain traversing his whole left arm and left side of his ribcage. The fall had been worse that he had thought in the beginning – Stop it Bors! BORS!
Bors the Younger, former knight of the Round Table as his father had been back in his day, at his scarce twenty-three years was a hulking mass of pure muscle and Medraut was feeling all the brute strength of the young man combined with how heavy her black armor felt after having take a swim with it.
They struggled a bit, their blades making small shrilling noises that made Lucius to teeth grinding.
- Great, just great. – Medraut hissed while fighting with her wet, now annoying long mass of red hair getting in the middle of her vision – Another Arthur's bootlicker for breakfast. And a mastodon of all.
Behind his helmet's grid, Bors' eyes almost popped out of his skull.
- You… you're a woman? – he realized after hearing her voice and studying her features more carefully, thunderstruck – How…? No, this is not possible…
Seizing her opportunity out of his evident confusion, Medraut's blade twisted around the hilt of Bors' claymore in a complicated maneuver that quickly disarmed him, leaving him defenseless before her.
- Oh, it is possible, mastodon. – she mocked while raising her blade with its sharp point against his throat – Here you got the proof in front of your very eyes.
Bors' bulky frame knelt in front of her.
- Kill me. – he said, head down in shame – I'm a disgrace to my Order. I've failed my King, I've failed my Brothers. I don't deserve to live.
Lucius held his breath for a moment until he saw Medraut first cocking a brow, then rolling her eyes.
- Oh, for fuck's sake… - she grunted, clearly exasperated – Quit the melodrama already, mastodon, and get the fuck up. Now.
Lucius blushed furiously not only after hearing her cussing so vehemently… but after witnessing again how powerful she could be.
He liked her powerful.
Confused, Bors lifted his face and carefully, making sure to not make any sudden move that could alert the fiery girl in front of him, took his helmet off.
Lucius sighed in relief after recognizing his comrade, the distinctive scar on his forehead the most prominent feature besides his squared mandible and thick dark brows.
A very late son of former King Bors, then Bors the Elder as the oldest knight in the Round Table, with a second wife; Bors the Younger had been born four years after the death of his by then only son, Sir Lionel, making Bors the Elder a father for a second time at the respectable age of fifty-three years old.
Technically a sort of a grand-uncle, Bors the Younger had been, since Lucius had memory, a sort of good-natured cousin that had been always there in his morning drills, being an integral part of his recent promotion of being a knight while many of them, their dying Order, kept disappearing or withering as the years left their mark upon the ill King Arthur.
Bors had been a support, almost like the big brother he never had. Lucius was glad to see him alive.
- Bors! – he exclaimed again.
Diverting his sight from the strange warrior girl that had managed to defeat him, Bors blinked a few times.
- Lucius, is that you? – he asked – What is this… this highlander had done to you?
Medraut rolled her eyes again. She knew the infamous nickname, and she wasn't willing to let it affect her like it affected to her father, as her mother once told her.
Grabbing his now throbbing side, Lucius got up slowly and went to his relative's side.
- Well, you'll see… - he began.
- You're wounded! – Bors exclaimed, his eyes shining with anger directed towards the now nonchalant redhead – Did she attacked you?
Lucius inhaled deeply, feeling how the chilly sweat started to slid down his spine again.
- Erm… not exactly… - he said hesitantly, his eyes nervously looking from Bors to Medraut – We climbed up this rock and…
- "We"?! - Bors exclaimed again – Don't tell me you're with her! Are you?!
So, at that very point, Lucius swallowed. Hard.
- Well, what a touching reunion. – Medraut snorted with sarcasm – But all this melodrama is making me nauseous. And bored since our good mastodon here clearly had been quite disconnected from the late news concerning Camelot, hmm?
Eyeing her first with surprise, Bors then gave an inquisitive look to Lucius.
- What is she talking about? – he asked, anxiety crystal clear all over his features – Lucius?!
The young blonde sighed. He had feared that much.
- Bors… - he started carefully – Around three weeks ago, Perceval returned to us to kneel before King Arthur: he had found the Holy Grail.
A sudden relief played on Bors' eyes.
- At long last… - he said – I myself was doubtful about the very existence of it. Two months away from the Court and my hopes had been waning, slow but surely. Thank God for His mercy and bless Perceval and his constancy.
But soon Lucius' hand grabbed his relative's wrist.
- I'm not finished yet, Bors. – he announced – When Arthur drank from the chalice, his eyes cleared and his spirit returned to him.
- Thank God…
- … But then, he decided to play war.
- With her, no doubt. – Bors gave a hard look to Medraut – Continue.
Lucius sighed again.
- Our last battle was in Camlann, Bors. – he explained sadly, remembering such a butchering confrontation, not a soul left alive afterwards – Arthur… invoked Excalibur's power… but he was old and… - he stopped, unable to continue.
Bors' eyes held a deep sadness.
- He… he's dead? – he mumbled absently – After all these years… everything had been for nothing? Our Brothers… our people…
- I'm so sorry Bors… I've lost much in that battle as well…
- Who killed him? – suddenly, the always good-natured gaze of Bors the Younger was filled with venom as he spoke – Was it her? – he asked as he pointed Medraut with his now furious eyes – Where's Excalibur?! Does she have it?!
But before Lucius could provide an answer, another voice surged from the foliage.
- She had Excalibur in her power, although briefly. – the serene tone of this new voice brought confidence and comfort to all of the presents, special as its owner himself was – I saw how she threw the sword to the waters so nobody could wield it again.
The three youngsters raised their eyes until they localized the calm figure of a rider atop of a white horse, his armor shining as a sunray, his pose gallant and dignified, his crystalline, pious blue eyes framed by golden short locks of curly hair.
Were not for his distinctive masculine voice, the person in front of them could've easily been mistaken for a girl.
- Galahad! – exclaimed Lucius happily, having his only and best friend by his side once more.
The dashing young man smiled, and his smile was as radiant as a morning glory.
- I'm glad to see you in one piece, Lucius. – was his greeting – A mighty feat given the companionship you had been entertaining as of late. – he added directing a brief look towards Medraut. However, his eyes held no contempt against the redhead but an amicable curiosity – I've been following the two of you at a prudent distance, for the lady here has the keenest senses I had the pleasure to test in a long time. You would make a fine hunter, my lady.
- As you would make a fine flatterer, Goldilocks. – Medraut snorted, amused – What are you intending to achieve by following us? To lay an ambush? Pardon me if I say that this display makes an epic fail for an ambush. I can tell you are alone.
Galahad smiled again, his blue eyes shining in the sunlight as two gems.
- I mean no harm to you or my good friend here Lucius. – he stated – But now, with Bors' interruption, I feel that now is time to talk, for there's much to discuss about what your intentions are towards the kingdom… Medraut, daughter of Ruber of the High Lands.
* Froggy", "frog" and "Frenchy" are pejorative terms used to design French people. I've always thought Lancelot was French not only because of his title "du Lac", but because in Arthurian Myths he is represented as a foreign champion who sought being defeated in fair combat.
Author's note: well, here I am again, publishing the continuation I promised myself I wouldn't write of my QfC fic "Highlander". Now we will be following Medraut's and Lucius' adventures along with their companions of the Round Table.
Why posting this under Quest for Camelot section? Because old characters are going to have their second round (yes, I'm talking about Ruber, Arthur and even Lionel). This story, like its predecessor, is not going to be very long-winded and with many chapters. I want to write five or six chapters at maximum.
How old characters are going to be intertwined with the new generation? Let's just say there's still a lot of magic energies going on (and an angry warlock, you'll see) and time is but a mortal concept ;)
Let me know your thoughts on this one. Cheers!
PD: yep, inspiration from Disney's "Brave" all along the chapter, I declare myself guilty :D