It had started out as a perfectly normal day. Or at least, as normal as a normal day in Merlin's life usually was – that is to say, not very normal by the standards of an average person.
Merlin had woken – rather unpleasantly, if I may add – to a freezing draft across his person (courtesy of Gaius) and the glaring light of the morning sun in his eye. It had taken him a few moments to realise that hey, Gaius had stolen his blanket and that oh hell, he was three hours late for work.
He had shot out of bed then, not unlike a startled rabbit, and had dressed in record time with minimal mistakes (for Merlin, that is. To be fair, he hadn't tried to wear his boot on his neck and his scarf on his foot like he did the last time he was late for work).
When he had arrived at Arthur's chambers, caked in dirt (having fallen a few times on the way) and with his shirt on backwards (at least both his boots were on his feet), he had found Arthur wide awake, dressed, and very angry.
"You idiot!" Arthur had roared, and it was then that Merlin realised that there had been a knighting ceremony earlier that morning, that Arthur had, probably, judging from his red face and flaring nostrils, missed. Merlin kept from commenting about Arthur's resemblance to a tomato.
Arthur had commanded Merlin to pack his hunting gear then, and Merlin, for all his loyalty to Arthur, felt as though someone had taken his stomach through Gaius's leech tank before stuffing it back via nostril (it hadn't been a very pleasant feeling). Still, being the ever loyal, ever obedient manservant, Arthur's hunting gear had been packed with a speed that had almost ('because, Merlin, princes are never surprised') surprised the prince himself.
And here he was now, fumbling with various weapons in the middle of a dark, stinking forest with a bunch of stinking knights and a stinking prince. Needless to say, Merlin was an extremely unhappy manservant. He adjusted the straps of Arthur's hunting pack on his shoulder as he hurried to the prince's side and yelped when he jabbed himself in the eye with the crossbow.
"Quiet!" Arthur hissed, peering resolutely into the dark mass of trees before him, a frown creasing his brow and a strange glint in his eye (that Merlin knew and did not like). He grabbed the younger boy by the arm and gestured meaningfully at the trees. Merlin blinked owlishly.
Arthur rolled his eyes with the air of one who thought Merlin an idiot (it wasn't uncommon) and began to remove the pack and weapons from Merlin's person, dropping said items carefully onto the muddy ground (Merlin ticked an hour of his list of 'hours of available free time').
"I want you to go in there and flush it out," Arthur whispered, the smirk on his face (and that strange sense of Déjà vu – hadn't something similar happened before?) sending nervous shivers down Merlin's spine. Still, being the ever loyal and ever obedient servant ("What? No! You can't be serious! You don't know what's in there!"), he staggered meekly forward, a thick branch clutched to his chest (not one of the most useful means of protection, but it would have to do, Merlin thought) and his knees a wobbling mess. He shoved a few low hanging branches out of his face and froze.
"Ah," he said, for right before him was a beast – a tremendous leviathan (with 'tremendous' being redundant in relation to 'leviathan', Merlin knew, but it had a nice ring) with tusks as long and thick as a man's arm and a body twenty times as large. The beast (was it a giant boar?) turned its heavy head in Merlin's direction, its small, piggy eyes (what contrast, Merlin though wryly) boring large holes into his face.
"Ah," Merlin said again, and he whirled around and fled.
****M****
Arthur's lips were forming the ever familiar "idiot!" when Merlin crashed noisily through, twigs hanging from his hair and dirt smudged on his cheeks. His eyes were wide and panicked as he continued barreling his way towards the prince and his knights.
"Run!" he shouted, and Arthur saw. The knights shifted anxiously behind him, weapons raised as they judged the size of the beast ("That's a mighty big boar," Sir Kay commented). It was tossing its head about, squealing as it thundered towards the small party. The ground was, quite literally, trembling beneath its 'feet'.
Arthur didn't run ("Princes don't take orders from their servants, Merlin."). Instead, he hefted the muddy spear in his hands, aimed, and threw. It struck the boar-like beast squarely in its head – or it should have, at least. The spear seemed to strike some strange, blue shield before bouncing off and onto the ground, the beast's hooves grinding the wood to splinters soon after.
"Run!" Arthur yelled, and the knights (and Merlin) gladly obeyed.
It must have been fate, or really, really bad luck, that Merlin always seemed to fall in the face of danger, whether by root or by foot. In any case, Merlin fell and rolled onto his back with his hands over his face in terror as the boar-like beast reared with a rather nasty and un-beast expression on its face.
He was considering the aid of his magic – knights and prince in the vicinity or not – when a long-fingered hand wrapped itself around his upper arm and yanked. Then, a flash of gold and brown and Merlin found himself staring at the back of Arthur's head.
****M****
Arthur, though he never would admit it, was terrified. The boar-like beast had stopped charging, choosing instead to scorch Arthur's face with the intensity of its pig-glare (as Arthur, in his moments of terror, had decided to name it). Arthur glared back, and whirled his sword around in a rather dramatic (but fairly intimidating if you weren't a pig. As it were, the boar-like beast was rather unimpressed) manner. It's now or never, Arthur told himself, before charging forward.
He could have sworn that Merlin had whispered something just before the sword impacted the beast's head and sliced through bone and brain. But with adrenaline coursing through his veins and the rush of wind in his ears, he really couldn't be sure. In any case, it was a rather unimpressive death on the part of the boar-like beast, because, Arthur was sure, it had probably thought that that trick with the blue light would have worked a second time.
****M****
Merlin stared uneasily at the dead boar-like beast on the ground. There was something off about it, he was sure. It wasn't just the fact that it was protected by magic; it seemed too un-animal-like to be just an animal. Arthur was still prancing about in a vaguely crazed manner, and Merlin ignored his more-than-unnerving thoughts in favour of skinning the boar-like-beast for their dinners (it was too large to be carried back to Camelot, but there was no doubt that Arthur would take a tusk or two as a keepsake).
As he began on the boar-like-beast's leg (he had loads of trouble lifting that up), he noticed, with some horror, that the leg had been tattooed by a strange snake-like symbol: green, with two red dots (Merlin thought that they might have been drawn to look like eyes, but he really couldn't tell. It was an awfully bad drawing and he had thought the snake-like symbol to be a squiggle of strange origins at first). He stored that image in his mental diary of Strange Things Sighted and mentally scribbled Put Arthur in Danger, might be the Work of an Insane Sorcerer next to the image in large, bold letters.
Then, satisfied, Merlin continued to skin the boar-like-beast, all thoughts of evil sorcerers and green squiggles pushed to the back of his mind.
****M****
In the middle of a very green field with very purple flowers and very bright sunshine, there stood a very large cave of very black rock that really wasn't inconspicuous at all. In that very large cave, there stood a man we shall call the Sorcerer, the Avenger, the Enemy, the Self-Proclaimed Lord of that Large Cave in the Middle of Nowhere, the Destroyer of Kings, and the Bringer of Arthur's Doom.
The Sorcerer, the Avenger, the Enemy, the Self-Proclaimed Lord of that Large Cave in the Middle of Nowhere, the Destroyer of Kings, and the Bringer of Arthur's Doom was currently glaring very furiously at the Merlin he could see in his very large basin of very clear water. He shook a white-knuckled fist at the dark-haired boy (even though said boy was completely unaware, and thus, completely unintimidated. It was pointless shaking, really – and a rather pathetic way of expressing one's feelings. But we mustn't judge…).
"You will not thwart my plans again, Merlin! I will kill Arthur Pendragon, and there will be nothing you can do about it!"
The Sorcerer, the Avenger, the Enemy, the Self-Proclaimed Lord of that Large Cave in the Middle of Nowhere, the Destroyer of Kings, and the Bringer of Arthur's Doom laughed then, a cackling, hacking sound that bounced off the walls in waves.
Camelot's doom is inevitable!
***End Chapter***
A/N: Um. Well. Thanks for reading, and I hope that you didn't mind the repetition of the word 'very'. It really isn't because I had nothing to replace it with, haha. Anyway, I hope to be able to update it regularly, and that you enjoyed the stuff above :D Reviews are really appreciated!~ My writing needs improving :) Thank you~ Stuff always seems to look loads longer on MS Word... Does anyone know how to paragraph (with spaces) stuff on ff. net? They seem to get rid of the spaces before a paragraph every time I save it... And asterisks too, normal ones, like ***** without the letters, to indicate a change of perspective or scene.