Arthur crept through the ruins, Excalibur poised for an attack. He could hear his manservant, Merlin, following just as warily – if not just as quietly – a few paces behind him. Every few seconds, he caught glimpses of his knights performing the same search across the courtyard.

It had been two days since word had reached Camelot of a band of rogue sorcerers hiding in these ruins. Arthur saw three possible outcomes of their search: the trespassers knew their location had been discovered and would be long departed; he and his knights would sneak upon them unawares; or they lay in wait even now, having lured the king into a trap. He prepared himself for every outcome.

"You know," Merlin whispered. "Swords don't work on sorcerers. They can toss you through the air just by looking at you."

"Your point, Merlin?" Arthur hissed back.

"I just don't know what you lot are planning to do if you find any."

"Merlin, I've faced far more sorcerers than you will in your entire life. I've been hunting them down since I was a boy. I think I know what I'm doing."

At that moment, the floor began to crumble beneath their feet. Arthur felt it giving way and quickly leaped to the side, managing to grasp onto a flagstone as the floor fell away into darkness. To his side, he could see Merlin, dangling from a tree root.

"You were saying?" the scrawny man yelled, feet scrabbling for a hold. Leave it to Merlin to be cheeky when they were literally about to fall to their deaths.

Of course, Arthur could never let him have the last word. "It's a ruin, Merlin! Not the work of sorcerers!"

"Oh, that's what you think!"

"What would you possibly know about it?"

"Just a feeling!"

"You and your bloody-"

The flagstone shifted under Arthur's grasp, shutting up both king and manservant. Arthur could see the nearest knights scrambling over the rubble, but he knew they would not be in time. Even if they were, the ground here was not stable. He yelled for them to stay back.

Merlin was dangling limply now, eyes locked on his king. Arthur could see the root slipping inch by inch through Merlin's grasp. He started to yell at the idiot to climb, but it was then that the flagstone finally gave way, and Arthur was plunged into darkness.

Sore limbs and a throat full of dust woke the king sometime later. Groaning, he sat up and looked around. He was in a small chamber, lit by a burning fire, littered with stones and rotting pieces of wood. At one end of the room, over a particularly tall pile of rubble, was a steeply slanted entrance – the only way in and out of the room, apparently.

He coughed again, blowing dust into the air. A water skin was handed to him, by none other than Merlin. His gaze was intense, but besides a few tears in his clothes, some already scabbing scratches, and a healthy coat of dirt, the manservant seemed unharmed. Arthur tried to speak to him, but his mouth was too dry. He rinsed the dirt out and took one deep swallow.

"What happened?" Arthur croaked.

Merlin looked away, toward the fire, shaking his head. "Well, the floor gave way. You fell, I jumped after you, and we were both dumped here. Oh!" From behind the stone he was sitting on, Merlin produced Excalibur and offered it to his king. "Can't lose this."

"You… jumped after me."

The black-headed man shrugged. "More or less."

Arthur frowned, but he was secretly pleased. As useless as Merlin was in a crisis, it was better than being alone. "Idiot," he muttered.

Merlin nodded absently, and his attention drifted upwards. Arthur followed his gaze. There, carved into the walls, were great runes, completely illegible to Arthur. While the rest of the castle was crumbling with decay, these stones seemed strangely untouched by time; Arthur shivered at the thought that perhaps magic was keeping them.

The manservant stood, running his hands along the inscriptions. Arthur nearly snapped at him to stop – it would be just like Merlin to somehow trigger an ancient curse, just because he couldn't resist touching it. But Merlin's next words stopped his own at his teeth:

"It's not the Old Religion…" He mumbled, as though he were speaking to himself. With the size of the room, though, it was impossible for Arthur not to hear. "More like… Druidic? Maybe something else…"

"How would you know what the Old Religion looks like, Merlin?" Arthur drawled, wanting more to take out his slowly mounting anxiety than simply to poke fun at the boy. Really, though, Merlin was so terrified by magic… Arthur's frown deepened. Suddenly he was thinking about all of the times Merlin seemed more knowledgeable about magic than he should have been – at the cave of the Disir when they were trying to save Mordred; in the shrine where Elyan had been possessed. Both times Arthur had not listened to Merlin, and both times it had been a mistake. Was it Merlin's so-called 'feelings'? The same that let Merlin somehow think that the world was 'vibrating' about him?

Merlin looked over to Arthur, like he was surprised. "Gaius," he said simply and went back to studying the ruins.

Arthur rolled his eyes. Of course, Gaius. The physician had once been a sorcerer, after all, and while he no longer practiced magic, it was not uncommon for the court to approach him to decipher certain dangerous or potentially dangerous artifacts. It was no small wonder that some of that would rub off on an unnaturally curious boy like Merlin.

"Well, can you make any of it out?"

Merlin shook his head, one hand lingering on a particular block.

"Get away from it, then. We don't want to activate it, or whatever it is one does to enchantments."

Once he had drawn Merlin away from the walls, Arthur pushed to his feet and examined the chamber. He first tried to climb out the way they came. Getting over the pile of rubble was hard enough, and when he finally made it to the opening, he discovered it was too slick to scale just as a particularly large flagstone came crashing down upon him. If not for Merlin pulling him out of the way, Arthur would have been crushed.

Coughing, they looked up into each other's eyes. The understanding was immediate. That was no way out.

Arthur spent the next hour prying his sword against the walls, trying to find another hidden doorway, anything. Merlin, as usual, did nothing more than sit and stare into space, seeming altogether too calm for the situation that they had been presented. Every few minutes, he fed the fire another piece of rotten wood, which quickly disintegrated in the flames. It would not be long before their supply was gone. As obvious as that was, Merlin seemed to have no qualms about stacking the wood high.

Arthur would probably have to take back what he thought earlier, about Merlin in a crisis. Even if he was useless and lazy and made extremely poor decisions, at least he did not panic.

"You could try to help, you know!" he called out at one point.

"I am helping!" Merlin called back. "Thinking. Waiting. Saving my strength."

"You call that helping?"

"Just you wait. You'll be completely useless by the time we get out of here."

"Right. Be sure to tell me when you divine our escape."

After a while, Arthur's arms grew weary. His whole body ached from the fall, and his stomach grumbled. Reluctantly, he propped Excalibur – even now without a scratch! – against the wall and sat down on a stone near Merlin. "I'll keep looking in the morning," he explained.

"Of course," Merlin replied. The king could not tell if he was being sarcastic or not, and it made him scowl.

"Tell me, what great progress have you made? Did the worms tell you anything?"

"Don't be silly, sire. There aren't any worms in here." That earned him a clip to the head. Rubbing the new bump, grinning sheepishly, Merlin continued. "I think you're right. I think things will look better in the morning."

The fire chose then to extinguish, leaving them in total darkness.

"Yes," Arthur sneered. "Looking better already."

Arthur was not sure if he would be able to fall asleep. The chamber was dark as pitch, stale, and he knew how small it was. Not to mention the fact that the walls were lined with mysterious ruins that may or may not be dangerous. Plus, every half an hour or so, more rubble would fall in, loudly, through the hole. But then, after some time, he heard Merlin's snore rising softly into the dust-laden air. Even that, the sound of another human being, was enough to bring the king comfort, and he fell into unconsciousness.

His dreams were confusing. He imagined a heaviness in his body, soft blue lights, primordial voices speaking. He thought he saw Merlin's face, staring down at him in concern, and then the voices of old were coming from the manservant's mouth, and from his own. He felt his body fall away, and for a long while he experienced nothingness in its purest form.

Then, one of the walls of the chamber ground to the side, flooding the room with torchlight. Arthur realized this was the waking world. He held an arm up to shield his eyes, looking in the shadowed figures for the faces of his knights. Instead, his eyes adjusted to the visages of strangers. They held their hands out, their eyes flashed yellow, and with a yelled word, Arthur was thrown into the opposite wall. He knew from the thump nearby that Merlin had been thrown, too.

Obviously, his third prediction had come to pass. This was all a trap.

Arthur fumbled at his side for his blade, but his fingers grasped at thin air. In fact, he was not wearing his armor at all. And… that wasn't his arm?

The king did not have long to ponder this, because his wrists were being roughly tied behind his back, and he was shoved forward into the hallway. He struggled, but his strength had fled him. Merlin was right – damn him for it! Arthur had worn himself out, and now he could not defend them. He could do little more than growl and glare at his captors.

After several long minutes, Arthur was shoved into the sunlight of an old garden, long since overgrown with weeds in places and beaten down in others. He was forced to his knees. At last he could look at his captors.

Arthur blinked to clear his vision. Several persons came into focus. Four were shrouded with rough brown cloaks, hiding everything about themselves other than their faces. Three of these figures were men, but there was also a female, lithe, with orange hair cut at the length of her chin. Even though she looked physically weak, there was a sharp gleam in her eye. They were likely all sorcerers.

And there –

Arthur's mind froze. Across the garden, forced to his knees on the ground, staring back in terror, was none other than Arthur Pendragon.

What?

The king looked down at himself as well as he could. Brown pants, red shirt under brown jacket, all hanging on a skinny frame. His eyes rose again to the figure across the courtyard, who was staring at him in earnest. Arthur, it mouthed.

Merlin? he mouthed back. Arthur's body gave two sharp nods, and that was the end of their communication, for at that moment one of the men grabbed the blonde hair of Arthur's head and jerked the face up.

Arthur could do nothing but stare, mind racing to comprehend what was happening. That's Merlin. In my body. And I'm in his! How?

Merlin meanwhile handed his captor an impressive, cool glare, his jaw hard. If it were any other time, Arthur would have verbally offered his approval. Certainly, leave it to Merlin to never panic, no matter what senseless situation they landed themselves in.

"Arthur Pendragon," the sorcerer sneered, running a dagger over Merlin's throat. Rather, over Arthur's throat. He gulped at the thought. "King of Camelot. Here we are."

"Who are you?" Merlin spat. "What are you doing in Camelot?"

The sorcerer leaned close. "Looking for you, lovie. You've got an excellent price on your head. How lucky we were to have you fall into our snare. You walked right into it."

Merlin's eyes flicked to Arthur's, easily communicating an 'I told you it was a trap, you cabbagehead'. Arthur narrowed his eyes in return, just as smoothly telling Merlin to, 'Shut up'.

One of his comrades whispered something in the aggressor's ear. He nodded and returned his attention to Merlin. "Love to sit here and chat, but we really must be off." The man placed a hand on Merlin's forehead, muttered something, and his eyes flashed gold. Merlin's eyes rolled into the back of his head, and the king's body dropped to the ground, unconscious.

"What did you do to him?" Arthur demanded, and he was shocked to hear the rough treble of his manservant's voice resounding in his head. He shook off the surprise and started going through his assets and potential escape routes. He did not have his strength, he was bound, Merlin was unconscious, Excalibur was nowhere to be seen.

Nothing.

The sorcerers all looked to him, as though they had forgotten he was there. The woman grinned, chuckling, and sauntered to him. She ran a long nail along the edge of Arthur's jaw, causing shivers to climb his back. He jerked his face away and glared at her. It only increased her amusement.

"What should we do with the whelp?"

"Leave him," the first man grunted, hefting the king's unconscious body over his shoulder. "We've got enough to deal with."

"'Sides, he can be our messenger," said the second man, the whisperer.

And that was how it was decided that Arthur would be hit on the side of the head, and while he lay dazed and bleeding on the ground, hands still roped behind his back, a hastily written note would be shoved into the inside of his coat. Without the strength to move and barely the strength to think, Arthur could only watch helplessly as the criminals carted Merlin away, into the woods, and quickly out of sight.

As soon as he was able to, Arthur wobbled to his feet. He felt the blood dribbling thickly down the side of his face, and his head still rung from the impact. He could hardly tell up from down – but he could see that the sorcerers were long gone, with his body and his friend. It was all he could do to place one foot in front of the other. In seconds, he tripped and fell to the ground again, knocking his chin against the dirt.

"Damn," he whispered. "Hell." Tears collected in his eyes and cut paths through the dirt on his face. He curled in on himself, thankful in the bitterest sense that he was alone, so no one would see him cry.

He had to cut his arms free. That was his priority now. If he could not even help himself, he would not be able to help Merlin.

He thought of Excalibur, conspicuously missing from the garden. It must have been left behind in the first chamber. That was a relief, if a small one. He could not stand the thought of those sorcerers' hands begriming it; it made him feel physically ill. Again, he pushed to his feet, waited for the wooziness to pass, and carefully walked back inside.

It was deep black within the passageway, only feet from the garden, as though the ruins absorbed the light of day. How was he ever supposed to find his way? If only he had a torch – something!

Yet, as soon as despair began to take his mind, a pale blue light, an orb no bigger than his fist, appeared beside him and drifted steadily into the passageway. It stopped a few feet from Arthur, as though waiting on him to follow.

Arthur glanced about himself, looking for the source. Then he looked back towards the light, hanging simply in the air. It was… the same. This was the same light that had helped him in the cave during his search for the Mortaeus flower. When he looked at it, he felt no ill intent, nothing but warmth and light. It would lead him to his goal. He just knew.

Arthur barked a laugh. Not only was he stuck in Merlin's body, but now he was even having 'feelings'. Maybe he would finally understand just what was going on in his manservant's head. Not that he would ever admit experiencing any of this. No, he would be sure to tell Merlin just how big and clumsy his feet really were and how useless his weak body was during a fight…

With these thoughts, Arthur staggered after the light, which moved at just the pace he needed it to. Soon, he arrived at the chamber and was relieved to see that the bandits had left the door ajar. As he stepped inside, the light floated to the ceiling to better illuminate the entire room. It revealed again the strange ruins carved on the walls, etched black in the pale blue light. The ruins felt heavy, ominous, like they were tugging at Arthur's very heart –

He shook his head. What was going on? Was this the result of being in Merlin's head? Gods, no wonder the boy was so distracted.

Arthur found the sword quickly enough, stashed carefully between two large stones. He wondered when it had been taken from his side, or if Merlin had hidden it just as the sorcerers found them. More likely, it had fallen off at some point during the night. They hadn't had an exactly restful sleep.

Sitting on a piece of rubble, Arthur carefully kicked the sword into the open. It took several minutes of painstaking maneuvering, but eventually he had the sword propped so that he could run the rope along the edge of the blade. Excalibur was so sharp that it took little effort, and his hands were free in seconds. His shoulders cried out at the release; blood pumped into his hands. He massaged them to help the circulation.

Once the pain faded, he grabbed Excalibur… and dropped it again. Just now – had the sword sent a jolt up his arm? Slowly, carefully, he wrapped his fingers around the hilt and lifted the blade into the air, scrutinizing every inch of it. There was no denying it. The sword was vibrating, sending pulse after pulse of energy up his arm. It was not painful, but it was strange, and it definitely felt powerful.

Several pieces fell into place. First, his sword was magic. It was not so big a surprise; he had always known his blade was no ordinary blade, seeing as how it reacted in Arthur's hand, choosing him when he pulled it from the stone. Normal swords did not choose anything, like a sentient being would. Further, it was stronger than any blade in existence, and it did not need to be sharpened. No, he had had this knowledge for some time. It was simply new to feel the magic in his hand.

That was his second, more pressing realization. Merlin could feel magic. It explained everything! Why he was so skittish around anything magical, why he could sense that a place was 'sacred' while no one else could, why he could feel danger lurking around otherwise mundane seeming corners. He had a sixth sense for it!

Arthur laughed, in Merin's voice. The idiot! Did he even know that's what it was? That meant… His grin fell. That meant he would actually have to start listening to Merlin when the manservant said they were in danger. He would have to admit that Merlin was right all along.

At least Merlin had some talent now, besides being a clumsy, mysterious, wise fool.

Satisfied at the new information and at having his sword again, Arthur picked his way back through the tunnel, following the orb of light until it evaporated in the garden. He wondered where it might have come from and why it was helping him. It could not have been a will-o'-the-wisp, could it? Some other sort of spectral, glowing swamp gas?

Outside again in the garden, Arthur remembered that he'd been given a message. Dropping the sword, he quickly pulled the paper from Merlin's jacket and unfolded it, absently noting how long and thin Merlin's pale fingers were – didn't he eat?

To Whoever it concerns,

We have your king. Don't expect to get him back, unless you can pay the price.

We're not talking gold, neither. I'm sure our master will contact you soon.

Until then,

have fun imagining his screams.

Arthur's stomach dropped. Just fantastic. He was being held for ransom, or sold for a price on whichever black market dealt in captured royals. And he would probably be tortured for information about Camelot.

Crumpling the paper in his hand, Arthur glowered at the ruins about him. This was not right. He should have been the one captured, not Merlin. He had been trained for this kind of thing. Merlin was innocent. Not only would they hurt him, but he would unintentionally hurt Camelot if he betrayed any of the vast knowledge of the citadel that Arthur knew he was privy to. Not only that, but this note told them nothing about the captors, only that they were working for someone who wanted Arthur's head. That could have been anyone! Were they supposed to be content to wait for this 'master' to contact them with more information?

Arthur growled in frustration and shoved the paper into his jacket before he accidentally tore it in half. There was nothing he could do now. He needed to find the knights, get back to Camelot, and let Guinevere and the council know the situation.

He could not tell them about the enchantment, he decided. If somehow that information were to be leaked to the enemy, there was no telling what they would do to Merlin. No, it was best kept a secret for now. He would simply have to… act like Merlin… until he recovered his real body.

How hard could that be?

Look forward to Chapter Two next Friday (Feb 14).