0x01: The Last of the Dragonlords

Moonlight from a waning crescent moon shone down on a large clearing in woods outside of Camelot. It gleamed pale silver on the chain-mail of an entourage of knights surrounding a richly attired man with a crown. In front of them stood the last dragon, staggering from the fatal wound in its side, and a rough looking man who was also soon to be the last of his kind.

The dragonlord was too stunned to move, frozen in shock even after the Last Dragon fell to the ground as bloodied carcass before him. He merely stared at the felled beast, looking unable to believe what had just happened – as though expecting the dragon to stir any moment. He didn't even seem to notice Uther making hand signal or how he was suddenly surrounded. It wasn't until they started binding his hands that the dragonlord spoke.

"You swore you wanted to make peace with him," he whispered, still deep in denial. But, as though saying it aloud had broken through his shock, he came to life with a mighty wrench that sent two knights to the ground. "You swore - you SWORE!"

More knights swarmed him, trying to restrain a man lashing back in mindless fury. "You swore, you treacherous snake!"

Yet no matter how the dragonlord fought, he was still just one man. If he had used an enchantment he might have been able to escape, but either he didn't know any powerful enough to do so or in his distress had completely forgotten about magic. Uther was unsure which it was, but in either case, outnumbered as the man was, within five minutes the knights had him pressed to the ground. Seven knights held him down as they wound ropes securely around his limbs.

"Gag him," Uther ordered. "We don't want him escaping through his unholy powers."

Uther turned to go, though he could still hear the dragonlord thrashing on the ground and muffed, furious yelling. "Throw him into the dungeons for the night. His execution will be at noon tomorrow. See to it."

"Ye- argh! Sorry. Yes, Your Majesty," one of the knights behind Uther panted, as though he'd just had the wind knocked out of him. In all likelihood he had. The noise of the dragonlord's thrashing had risen with the word 'execution' and Uther could hear muttered swearing and scrambling on the part of his knights.

Uther mounted his stallion, left just outside the clearing lest the sight of the dragon spook him, and set off for his castle satisfied. He had entertained the thought of keeping the dragon alive and chained beneath the palace, but had quickly discarded the idea as too risky. He had made many powerful enemies in these last months who might find a way to free the beast. A vengeful sorcerer armed with a dragon was the last thing Camelot needed. It was better to err on the side of caution and only the dead were sure to never turn on him.

He never spared the sorcerers, why should he spare the dragon? What good would keeping it alive as a symbol of his power do if nobody ever saw it chained up? It was much easier and safer to just kill it.

He wished he could have killed the dragon in front of all his people, to boost morale after all the necessary devastation his Purge had brought about, but the dragonlord had insisted on meeting at night, fearing the dragon's approach would sow panic. It would have been impossible, anyways; Uther would never endanger innocent civilians by exposing them to a battle against such evil as a dragon and sorcerer. Still, he would have the dragon's head hanged in the square and its wings down the battlements of his castle so everyone could see that there were no more dragons to fear. Their king had rid them of them.

The dark shadows of the tree branches fell upon Uther, darkening his face, which was held high and proud.

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Gaius had never felt so much like slime as he did under the gaze of the man trapped behind the iron bars of Camelot's dungeon. "You knew, didn't you?"

Gaius didn't answer, merely averted his eyes. His inability to meet Balinor's glare was confirmation enough. Gazing resolutely at the bars of the cage rather than the man in them, he clutched the tray in his hands as the guard slowly unlocked the door, keeping a wary eye on Gaius the whole time. Though he had sworn an oath in front of the entire court to renounce magic and never again practice it, everyone knew that Gaius had once possessed moderate skill in healing spells. He was not entirely trusted to be unbiased when faced with practitioners of magic.

Untrusted by the persecutors and despised by the persecuted. Such was the lot of a collaborator.

Gaius placed the tray on the floor just in front of the bars, and said as evenly and unemotionally as he could, "The King has granted you a last meal as a reward for your aid in the fight against magic. He advises you to enjoy it while you can and make your peace with God."

Balinor snarled, voice dripping with bitterness, "You can tell His Majesty that a full stomach will hardly be much good to me come morning and that the advice of a cowardly deceiver to make peace is laughable."

Gaius felt a flare of panic. "But regardless, surely you will eat? What earthly good does it do you to stay hungry out of stubbornness?"

Balinor scoffed, as though the very idea was ridiculous, and turned to face the wall. He was effectively ignoring Gaius as though he were nothing more than a gust of hot air, a childish reaction that was only too justified.

Gaius had indeed known of Uther's plans; perhaps he might have been able to warn Balinor. It was, however, the perhaps that had stayed him. As a former practitioner of magic he was treading on dangerous ground with every breath he took, permitted another only because of an oath and old friendship with the king. He needed to watch his every step, because if Uther had the slightest doubt about Gaius' absolute loyalty to the fight against magic then it would be his pyre that was built. He could have taken the risk, but the odds had seemed so out of his favour that he hadn't.

And Balinor would not forgive Gaius for standing by and letting him walk into a trap.

Burying his guilt under a bland expression, Gaius picked up the tray again and set it directly in front of Balinor. He hesitated for a moment, the back of his neck prickling under the guard's gaze, and weighed his words carefully. "Well, perhaps you will change your mind. I'll leave it here in case you do."

Gaius turned and left, the prison door clanking shut behind him and the guard returning to his post outside. As he made his way from the dungeons, he prayed to every deity he'd ever heard of that Balinor would eat.

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Inside the cell Balinor lifted the cup, intending to throw it at the wall in a fit impotent rage, and found a slip of old yellow parchment hidden underneath. Squinting at it, his eyes grew wide as he read a terse note.

Eat it all. Make for Ealdor in Cenred's kingdom. Destroy this as soon as you've read it. I know it means nothing, but I'm truly sorry.

Balinor glanced down at the tray. It looked like perfectly normal food. He glanced back at the note. It still said the exact same thing. He looked between the two a couple more times, wondering what the devil Gaius thought he was up to and why if he had room on the parchment to include an apology he couldn't find space to elaborate a little more on how the disjointed sentences amounted to spiriting Balinor out of his cell and safely away to Cenred's kingdom. But then that might have been his intention; the less written down the less incriminating it was if it fell into the wrong hands.

Balinor raised the cup again, sniffing it suspiciously, poking at the liquid, and examining it the best he could in the meagre light the dungeon afforded. As far as he could tell, it was water. With what he felt was a healthy amount of scepticism towards Gaius' vague plot, Balinor raised the cup to his lips and took an experimental sip. He had to forced himself not spit the liquid back out.

It had a bitter, acrylic taste and cloyed thickly on his tongue, lingering unpleasantly in his mouth. Whatever it was, it was certainly not water or any other refreshment. It was a potion. Gaius, the collaborator who swore off magic in return for clemency, had brewed him a magical potion and snuck it into the dungeons under Uther's very nose.

Despite himself, Balinor was impressed.

He ate with a wild fervour, devouring the (completely disgusting, what in all the names of the Great Leviathans of yore did Gaius use as ingredients?) food and drink as though he had never seen food in his life. After he did, Balinor sat against the dungeon wall, waiting. Nothing happened. He waited still. Still nothing. The guard changed twice, and still nothing.

Just as Balinor was coming to the bitter conclusion that Gaius's rusting skills in sorcery had mucked up the potion, the sun started to rise, peaking through the dungeon bars faintly. Instantly, Balinor felt magic bubbling up within himself like boiling water against the lid of a kettle.

Though it was a little known fact, Camelot's dungeons were bespelled to dampen and drain all magic, the spell dating back ten years to the Sorcerer King Vortigern who had ruled Camelot before Uther. When Uther had defeated Vortigern and reclaimed his castle, he had gotten rid of many of the enchantments hanging around the place, but kept the more useful ones, such as the dampening spell on the dungeons. The hypocrisy of using magic to stop sorcerers from escaping when said sorcerers had been arrested for their magic was not lost on Balinor.

It would appear, then, that Gaius had given Balinor a strength potion. One that strengthened his magic and activated when the sun rose. The reason for the second stipulation became clear when a guard opened his door and said,

"Out you get, the execution's to be at first light by the king's orders!" Balinor nodded, approaching with his hands up to show he was unarmed. The guard undid the chain around his ankles, and Balinor smiled darkly.

A flash of gold and a mumbled word in the Old Tongue later, and the guard was slumped unconscious on the floor.

Balinor ran.

He encountered more guards on his way out, each swiftly dispensed with his strengthened spells. Giddy with lack of air, the potion, and the adrenaline urging him onwards faster and faster, Balinor scarcely processed his flight to freedom. It was a blur of running and guards and the warning bell, all running together so he could not tell what was happening when. Each step he took became less and less clear, until the whole world ran together in a blur of moving colours. He could feel himself racing through it, as though jerked about on puppet strings, but which direction he was headed or his surroundings were mysteries to his befuddled mind.

Then suddenly he was blinking awake with a splintering headache, ominous hissing surrounding him from all directions. He grimaced, and something flaky crusted across his cheeks cracked. He was lying face first in a puddle of dried sick. Revolted, he shakily pushed himself away… and promptly realized he had bigger problems than sleeping in vomit.

The hissing was coming from a ring of encroaching serkets, wanting him for breakfast. Glancing upwards and dully noting that the sun was past the half way point and beginning its downward descent, he amended that to late lunch. Balinor wondered dazedly if it was even the same day as when he broke out of the dungeon.

Clearly, Gaius' potion had side effects.

Pushing himself upright, he hurled a volley of spells at the serkets to force them to retreat. His magic screamed inside him like a strained muscle that he was putting too much weight on, protesting every spell he used. He pushed himself off the ground, intent on fleeing, and the world lurched wildly as though he was on a plank of wood in choppy waters. Balinor brought a hand up to his mouth and closed his eyes, fighting back nausea. He didn't dare keep them closed long, though, with the serkets still nearby.

Sluggishly, he dragged himself forward on his hands and knees. Simple blasting spells held the serkets off temporarily, but he had to wrestle with his magic for each one.

And so Balinor did the only thing a person in his position could do: he climbed a tree.

He could hear the serkets launching themselves after him, their pinchers flailing against the thick oaken trunk. He sent out a blasting spell every couple of minutes in the vague direction of the racket. He couldn't quite make out where they were; his vision lurched and careened and refused to focus on what he needed it to. It was a miracle he'd managed to get up the tree at all.

From there he had no choice but cling on white-knuckled as his vision spun. He could only hope that the serkets would give up soon, and no knights of Camelot would ride by. He could not have picked a more visible location if he had tried.

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The serkets gradually wandered off one by one, but Balinor didn't dare move from his uncomfortable position. It would be night soon, and Balinor dared not light a fire for fear of attracting the notice of Uther's men. Without a fire to deter predators, a restless night dozing in a tree was a safer bet than one helpless on the ground.

In any case, he had nothing but the clothes on his back; the only way to start a fire was with magic, and currently Balinor's magic had sunk deep into him. Reaching for it was akin to prodding at a gaping sore. The damage did not particularly surprise him; after all, he had lost his one remaining soul-brother, spent a night being drained of his magic, taken a stimulus potion, fought his way out the city, and ran more leagues in a day than was non-magically possible. Even magic could only take so much abuse before it faltered.

The night in the tree was every bit as uncomfortable as Balinor imagined. He picked a branch that was high enough that nothing from the ground could take a swipe at him, but thick enough that his legs could stretch out without slipping. He leaned against the trunk, cursing himself for not being prepared enough to carry rope to secure himself with. But then why should he have brought rope, when he had dressed for a diplomatic meeting? He was a fool for taking Uther at his word, supposed man of honour or not.

He could not allow himself think further on what happened, not now. There would be time, later, to mourn and blame himself for his naivety which killed his kin and cost him everything, but for now he could not think on it without breaking. And if he broke, here and now, then he would surely die and Uther would have truly won. So he forced himself not to think.

Instead he occupied himself with the discomfort the bark digging into his legs and spine brought, with the strange nocturnal noises of the forest, with anything except all he had lost. He had to survive this, somebody needed to remember those who had died, somebody needed to remember what a hypocritical double-crossing bastard Uther Pendragon was. If Balinor died then the dragons and dragonlords as more than a footnote in old books, a people exterminated by naive belief in a mad king. As long as he lived though, as long as they never caught him, they would know he was out there. They would fear him as the one who got away. And as long as they remembered him, they would remember his kin, lured out and slaughtered by a man who promising peace. As long as Balinor lived, Uther Pendragon would not be able to brush what he had done under the rug.

He had to get out of this alive, no matter what. With that conviction, Balinor started thinking beyond his present situation.

Reading the night sky was something all dragonlords learned as small children. Dragons were masters of it, often flying with nothing but the stars as their guide, but all dragonlords could proficiently navigate by the stars. Balinor had headed in the right direction for Cenred's kingdom. In fact, he was probably only a few hours from the border. He shut his eyes a moment, blessing Gaius for the potion and profusely apologizing for thinking ill of him. There was no way he could have travelled such a large distance on foot in such little time without the magical boost.

He didn't know where Ealdor was, but once he made it past the border he could approach the outlying villages, asking for directions. He drafted a simple excuse for seeking it: a friend of his had died recently, and he wanted to inform the family, but all he knew was the name of the man's hometown. It was plausible enough to not attract too much scrutiny. It was trickier to explain his lack of supplies; Balinor could only hope that his story of being waylaid by bandits would render him sympathy rather than suspicion.

He didn't know what he was supposed to do when he reached Ealdor. Was Gaius planning on meeting him there? Did he know someone there? Was that just a town that Uther wouldn't strike against for some political reason? Was it safe to ask the townspeople if they knew Gaius? Balinor wished Gaius' note had included more detail, even though if Gaius had a contact there he would be right not to jeopardize their safety with written evidence. Including the town name was risky enough, but he supposed Gaius was counting on Uther to not wanting to start a war by razing an entire municipality for the potential actions of one of the residents.

Balinor closed his eyes, now heavy with lack of sleep, and sighed. He dared not think of the past for fear of losing himself to guilt-ridden grief, and the future was as uncertain as the rippling reflection of an unclear shape in the water. His present was nothing to celebrate either, alone in the dark, balanced on a tree branch and unable to sleep without falling to his death.

The night was long, the waning moon his only company as wild cries echoed from below.

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Yes, before even the start of series one I just killed off the scriptwriter's biggest plot device, the CGI dispenser of unhelpful foreknowledge and the magical means to defeat the foe-of-the-week!

I have two major reasons for doing this:

1) The second Gaius said Uther kept one dragon alive as an 'example' I thought to myself, "Weak. That is a weak excuse. They just wanted to have a dragon on the show to provide a convenient source of selectively omniscient knowledge for their young protagonist." The more I saw of Uther, the more convinced I became that that explanation was complete BS. Where else in the show does Uther ever say, "We must make an example of him... by keeping him alive"? Nowhere. When Uther wants to make an example, it's by execution.

2) Since all these prophecies seem largely self-fulfilling, I've always wondered what would happen if nobody told them to Merlin. To get this to happen, the blabbermouth dragon had to die.

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