Everybody in every kingdom knew the story of The Fall. Everybody in every kingdom knew how a sorceress put Camelot, the strongest kingdom in the land, to sleep and unleashed the Knights of Medhir on the citadel. Everybody in every kingdom knew of Prince Arthur's valiant efforts to save his father from the Knights' wrath—efforts that were tragically in vain. And everybody in every kingdom knew that Uther had been right, that magic wasn't to be trusted.
Only three people had escaped from Camelot alive: the sorceress Morgause, the king's ward Morgana, and the man known only as Emrys, the Immortal. Rumor had it that Emrys had fallen under Morgause's spell along with the other Camelotians and woken only when he had been asleep long enough to die of dehydration and be revived.
Before the kingdoms all turned against magic and prosecuted all magic-users in a mass Purge, crowds used to gather around the hooded figure to listen to him tell of the terrors he found upon waking. The entire citadel stank of blood and rotting corpses. Emrys discovered that the Knights had slaughtered all the sleeping Camelotians while departing from the castle, and the victims' blood stained bed linens, dried like paint on stone corridor floors, and clotted in between cobblestones in the courtyard. The Knights had spared only those locked in the throne room—the lady, who had escaped with the sorceress, the king, who had died of dehydration, and Emrys.
He always spoke of Prince Arthur's corpse in vivid detail, as though the image was branded into his mind. The sword gripped in the prince's right hand was a testament to his refusal to give up the fight, and he had died standing up, as sometimes happened when a person was active immediately preceding death. By the time Emrys reached the prince, the only thing keeping his body upright was one of the Knights' swords, which had gone straight through the prince's chest and been embedded between the stone blocks of the wall behind him. His eyes stared straight ahead, and his expression might have been resigned at one point. It was difficult to tell after so much time had passed. Dried blood stained the prince's chin and armor and the floor at his feet. Only the prince and the king's ward never succumbed to Morgause's enchantment.
Emrys had removed the sword from the prince's chest, intending to keep it as his own, and closed the other man's eyes before proceeding underground to where the last dragon was imprisoned. He never told why he felt the need to release the dragon, but many theorized that he had made some sort of pact with the dragon or that he had been doing the dragon's bidding while in Camelot. However, he always told of the favor the dragon was only too happy to do. He implored for the dragon to burn Camelot to the ground, cremating the bodies in the process, and although his enemies were dead, the dragon must have found some satisfaction in carrying out the deed, considering the citadel was in ruins by nightfall. Emrys used the Knight's sword to break the dragon's chains and free him.
Just as the sword allowed the dragon to enact his revenge, Emrys kept it with the promise that, someday, it would allow him to get his own revenge. "If I ever meet Morgause again," he would say while gripping the hilt of the sword, "I will run her through. I swear it on my life."
And nobody in any kingdom would dare accuse him of being anything but sincere in his vow.