Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin or any of its characters
In the kingdom of Camelot, a grand castle rose in the center of it. In it resided the strong King Uther, and his son Prince Arthur, as well as his ward Morgana. It was protected by many guards, who (despite the amount of prison escapes and break-ins) had way too much time on their hands.
For example, two guards, let's call them Ryan and Frederick, were busy gossiping while the third prisoner escaped that week. What was so important that they ignored their duties completely? Well…
"Did you see the way the prince looked at that one servant girl? Makes you wonder if there's anything going on between them?" Ryan was saying to Frederick. Frederick rolled his eyes and then rolled his dice.
He glanced at the results before his eyes moved to give his friend a skeptical look. "What about the prince's servant and the girl?" he said, ignoring Ryan's scoff. He rolled the dice again and said in a convincing tone, "Those two have been getting pretty chummy don't you think?"
Ryan scoffed again in disbelieve over Frederick's clear ignorance. "They've been chummy for a while. If anything were to happen it would have happened already," he then declared that they were old news.
And speaking of old news, it would be about time "William" entered the story. He nervously walked into the room, his nervous demeanor being amplified by his young age.
"Um," he practically whispered, though achieving to get his fellow guards attention. "I wanted to talk to you about something… I don't know who else to go to," he mumbled. He took a deep breath and managed to be even more quiet as he whispered, "I think Prince Arthur's servant has magic."
William scrunched his eyes shut and while Ryan and Frederick stared at him in disbelief.
"You're a newbie right?" Ryan asked, and William opened his eyes slightly and nodded. The two older guards gave each other a, "that explains it" look.
"Well you should probably know that, we all know that," Frederick assured him calmly, going back to his endless cycle of dice rolling. It would appear that this shocking revelation was also old news. At this point you may be wondering, "Why don't they tell Uther?" William inquired the same thing.
"It gets boring, having a secret warlock keeps things interesting," Frederick explained as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
As it turns out, all the guards knew this, since the servant, Merlin, wasn't as furtive as he should have been about his magic. They all got in a long discussion about this and other strange things, including their previous topic. William even suggested a relationships the prince and Merlin, to which both Ryan and Frederick smacked him in the head.
You're probably waiting for something bad to happen from their negligence aren't you? Well as it so happens, the very servant they were discussing, had just helped a druid doomed to be executed escape from prison.
The bells rang when the guards actually doing their jobs noticed his absence. It jolted all three of them from their "deep" talk about if it would still be appropriate to ship Morgana with someone, since she was clearly evil.
They kept their jobs. So the moral of the story is kind of watered down by that fact. But if the moral still had a punch to it, it would be this…
Don't get involved in the lives of the people you're guarding, and don't go into fangirl mode if you do.
Thank you for listening to my story, and thank you for listening to my moral that I made up on the spot.
The End
Author's Note: But seriously, how much do you think the guards actually know? Because they're always there in the background.