This is my first fic in the Merlin fandom, so be nice :)
and sorry about the dearth of dialogue, it'll be there in the next chapter, promise!
Morgana was consumed. There was no other word for it, the endless pacing and the hours interrogating and the endless raids on numerous libraries. She went days without rest, kept conscious by an amulet that prevented sleep from fogging her mind, chasing after every tale or whisper that came her way.
She had blown through the land east of Camelot like a hurricane, never tiring until she had reached a nobleman's estate on the western point of Cantia. She wanted to be far enough away from Camelot that none here would know her, but close enough that she could return if she caught wind of any sort of opening or weakness.
Lord Wendon, a thin but cruel man that showed mistrust to most men and an unbridled admiration to every woman, was the conniving lord who had let her into his estate. He was just the man she needed. She did nothing to spurn his advances and his doting affection, but made it clear that she got what she wanted. And what she wanted was people to order around and opportunities to learn more about the dragon, and the last dragon lord.
It began with a thundering of hooves. Sara couldn't have imagined a sound any louder nor more horrible than the sound of Wendon's men coming for her and her sister. It was fate then, that they would be making the trek back to their father's home from town, and that the sorceress Morgana desired female servants.
Sara was ideal, Morgana said. Morgana said that she wanted a plain girl. A dumb, ugly girl that would do what she said and not think of anything else. And her wish was granted. Wild, unruly, and violently red hair had been granted to Sara at her at birth, along with dull brown eyes. She was alarmingly short and slightly stout, with forearms accustomed to heavy lifting, and a strong back. But Morgana would have been disappointed in this girl, because what she lacked in physical attractiveness, she made up for in cleverness. It was this cleverness that helped her hide in her peasant clothes and play the part of the dumb, uneducated girl. It was the cleverness in her disguise that "won" her the position of Morgana's personal servant. And it was this that got her twin killed.
Where Sara was ordinary but clever, Ava was wild, vibrant and strong willed. But she could be dense, and a showoff, and would not stand for something as despicable as slavery. She fought so hard for her freedom, and for Sara's, but it was her strong will and vibrancy that dragged her down to Wendon's dungeon. And it was that untamable life that kept her bones there forever.
When she had first arrived at Wendon's estate, Morgana showed Wendon a feat of magic that left him cowering. She watched his face, a mix of fear and attraction, twitch and pull into a smile that almost made her breath freeze in her chest. He may not have very much power in the politics of Albion, but he certainly had a strange sort of mind, the sort that granted him power and leave of his conscience. She had heard tales of his strange form of cruelty, they were the reason that his estate was among the first she approached. But she knew that to keep the string that held him in her grasp tight, she could never take her mind off of him for a second, never start to underestimate the man. Because just because he didn't desire power beyond the estate he had inherited, didn't mean he couldn't easily seize as much as he wanted.
It was two months after arriving at the estate and three weeks after procuring Sara that Morgana began her longest venture in finding the dragon and its lord. She first suspected that Emrys was the one who had tried to halt Agravaine's advances, but as time went on she was not so sure about her assumptions. How could an old man so obviously powerful have cropped up out of nowhere? It did not appear that he had arrived suddenly from a distant land, so how had his prowess with magic not reached Uther's ears and gotten him killed? He seemed to have been alive long enough, he must have been an impulsive youth at some point, so how had his gifts been kept a secret? No, Emrys was a mystery that she knew would be revealed in time. If he turned out to be this dragon lord, so be it. But Morgana made the decision to investigate her dragon as if its lord was an entirely new person. So far, she had only succeeded in confirming much of what she already knew. The dragon could only have been hatched by a Dragonlord. The supposed last Dragonlord was Balinor, only son of the royal family of Listinoise, a land on the other side of the sea and a good week's voyage across unpredictable waters, and which was experiencing an unprecedented era of peace. It was shrouded in mystery, for it was a land entrenched with magic and therefore kept its borders well protected. It would have been the ideal place for refugees of the great purge to go, if not for its great distance from Camelot. Its current rulers were Balinor's elderly parents, who had produced but one son, though had many daughters who had themselves produced many heirs to the kingdom. Though their line was one of the Dragonlords, which gave them a sort of power above any king, with the death of Balinor their legacy as a clan of the wisest of Dragonlords would fade into memory. Since learning the basics of Balinor's story, Morgana spent little time going over the other Dragonlord family histories, for their families had either died out many generations ago or were burned in the purge. Morgana allowed herself to believe for the briefest second that maybe one of those that had burned had a son who had inherited their powers, but her hatred for Camelot bloomed once again within her when she found that Uther had every connection to a Dragonlord and his family burned. Since his death had been so recently, Morgana found that her only hope was to travel to Listinoise, and learn as much about her phantom Dragonlord as possible.
Sara, as Morgana's personal servant, was bid by the witch to prepare for a great journey. Having followed her mistress from household to household, library to library, she was used to packing their packs for the journey. Sometimes she accompanied Morgana, sometimes her Mistress woke her in the dead of night as she left on a solo journey. The solitary missions never lasted long, but when Sara had to accompany the witch, they were often gone for weeks at a time.
But to prepare for a sea voyage? Impossible! It was only with Morgana that Sara had left the confines of Cantia for the first time, and that was less than a year ago. Now she had to prepare for a voyage to a place that took a week to arrive to in the first place! It wasn't as though Morgana could perform a transport spell, for one had to know the area they were transporting to, and she had never been to Listinoise.
But there she was, standing outside the kitchens in the shade of the stables, with bags of food and clothing. The stable boy stood beside her, anxiously holding the reigns to Morgana's magnificent chestnut mare and her own dappled grey. The boy was a slave as she was, but he seemed nervous to be in her presence. This was another new thing that had come with being Morgana's servant, the fear. She wished that there was at least one servant in this place that did not place her in the same circle of evil that her mistress stood in.
She lifted her eyes, still heavy from sleep, as her mistress seemed to flow down the stairs like a black fog. She snatched the reigns from the frightened boy, and without a word to Sara, she thundered out of the courtyard.
R&R