Hello!

So this is not only a re-write of an old story of mine (Still posted on my profile but please for the love of god don't torture your eyes trying to read it) but also an update of a re-write. Some important things have changed, although at the moment the story-line so far will remain the same. Namely I've tried to give more background on the true environment they find themselves in, things like hygiene and diet.

Additionally I have woven a lot more 'history' into the story, that is to say, some of the characters now written in may really have existed. I have of course mixed already doubtful historical 'fact' with my own fiction, so if you are a history buff, please don't be horrified at the inaccuracies! That being said, I have tried to stick to some of the basics, and put a decent amount of research into this. However, if you do have any suggestions or corrections, please don't hesitate to voice them to me!

So, for the hundredth time, welcome to 'In the Name of the King'.

Chapter One

The Beginning

The world is full of magic; we just don't see it anymore. We've put those thoughts aside, safely into the box labelled 'childish dreams'. We have moved on to more important things; the real world calling, and now we can only laugh at children's naivety, no longer able to see what they see. We are closed off by times betrayal-growing up. We look at magic without ever seeing it. This is a story of when sometimes, just sometimes, magic looks back.

Fate wasn't happy. Not happy at all. She'd lost the last game, and look how that had turned out. She wasn't ready to lose again, they'd only just managed to eradicate the Bubonic plague, and another dose of it surely couldn't be survived. Weak creatures, those mortals, but engaging. Maybe that's how they'd survived so long.

Fate carefully set the chess board in place. "Best of three?"

And Death smiled.

It began with the rain.

In England it always rains, however unlike many people, I've always loved the rain, loved listening to it as I fall asleep and dancing in the rain when it pours. That day it was raining so hard I could barely see a metre ahead; I stood sodden and well and truly locked out.

I and my friend Evie-short for Eveline- were staying in Wales in Lynn Ogwen cottage, by a nearby lake. It was a lonely area; the nearest town was well out of sight. The landscape was rough and untamed, and that was how we liked it. We were only staying there three days for a short holiday, a break from the hardships of university life, respite from our exams. We were flatmates Evie and I, but we had known each other long before that. She was my best friend, and I hers; we had known each other since my regretful attempt at ballet, age three. I had thought that nothing could bring us closer, but I hadn't counted on the holiday that would last longer than I had ever anticipated.

On our second day we had decided to brave the outside regardless of the raging weather and attempt to climb up the rocky hills to explore the lake that our accommodation was named after. We had been told that a castle stood isolated among the rugged hills, overlooking the water; therefore our main goal before we left was to take a tour of the ruins.

Unfortunately due to the tumultuous rain the castle was closed for the day leaving us in our current miserable state; this was not rain for dancing in, but the type you watched from inside with a hot chocolate.

My thoughts were broken as Evie emerged from a nearby overhang frowning, 'It's no use, there's clearly no-one here so we might as well go back to the cottage'.

The rain soon had us running, slipping and sliding through the mud, we sprinted over the next rise and were suddenly falling over a sharp drop above an expanse of water. We might have made it still if Evie had stopped one step sooner, but as it was she plunged helplessly into the lake below, disappearing from sight in the rain. I slipped in the sodden mud and quickly followed her into the lake, my foot catching on something and I was quickly pulled under. To this day I cannot be sure if whatever caught my leg were simply riverweeds or a cool hand grabbing my ankle. To add to the complete the strangeness of it all, as the water closed over my head I thought I heard a voice in my ears whispering 'Nikita'; whispering my name.

I surfaced further away from the shore than I expected and kicked out hard, trying to look for Evie however the rain was too torrential. Nearing the banks I could just see Evie already there so I dragged myself ashore to be frantically patted on the back as I coughed up half the lake.

"That was smart" I wheezed before looking around, "let's get back, I think we both need a hot shower and a hot chocolate before we get sick". She nodded in agreement and together we began making our way up the hill that would lead us to shelter. As Evie reached the top of the hill, she suddenly stopped, causing me to bump into her.

I looked over the ridge, and then stopped, looking again. I kept blinking, waiting for the image in front of me to change, but it didn't.

The cottage where we had been staying was gone, no trace of it or any other type of civilization remained.

"What..." I managed to voice. Ludicrously I wondered if the heavy rain had washed it away.

"Where is it?" Evie exclaimed.

Slowly we walked down the hill trying to wrap our heads around this completely unexpected mystery.

"Perhaps we went in the wrong direction?" Evie mumbled, and I shook my head; I wasn't good with directions but it had been a direct walk from the cottage to the lake, it would have been almost impossible to get lost on the way.

"Perhaps we should go back to the castle, the rain has stopped now and perhaps one of the guides will have some idea of what has happened."

With no better plan in mind, I agreed and we set off back the way we came. A path that I had never noticed before wound its way over the hill, so we followed it almost without realising. It was only once we had passed the lake and gone over another hill that the second shock hit us; where there had been nothing only half an hour before, now stood a busting village.

We came to a standstill, simply staring at it in shock; it was like no village we had ever seen.

"It looks almost medieval" Evie blurted, neither of us knowing how right her words were. We stood some distance from the village looking down at it, the 'village' was made up of one muddy unpaved road, on either side sat small, rectangular long houses made of wood with thatched roofs and chimneys. In the centre was some kind of clearing, a larger house sat in the middle, and people were walking back and forth around it, many of them standing at small makeshift stalls, a market of some kind?

"I think something happened when we fell in the water" Evie said, looking at me seriously. "Maybe we hit our heads, or the water has strange properties"

"Did you hear a voice?" I blurted out, and she looked at me frowning. "I don't know, I thought I heard...something."

I suddenly felt very small and lost, my eyes suddenly filling with tears as I realised something was terribly wrong. "What do we do?" I asked.

Evie continued staring at the village, "go down there and ask where we are?"

We began to walk down the hill slowly, as if trying to put off the inevitable. "If they say something strange, let's just go along with it, there's no point them realising we aren't from around here, they might become hostile." Evie murmured; the reality of what had happened had yet to sink in.

We approached the person nearest to us, an elderly woman behind a ramshackle stall full of cabbages. The smell down in the village was phenomenal, like nothing I had ever come across; regardless, we held our noses trying not to gag in front of the woman. She eyed us distrustfully, clutching her ragged kirtle as if we were going to try and take it from her.

"What do you want?" she asked, her voice was strangely accented, and there was an oddness about the way she formed her words, I supposed it was some rural Welsh accent.

"Could you tell me where we are?" Evie asked carefully.

The woman stared, "Carneddan of course." She told us as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

I blinked. So we were in the same place, and yet it looked so different. I couldn't understand, how did our cottage disappear, and how could a village spontaneously appear at the same time?

It was Evie that said it; the idea was tugging at the edges of my consciousness, tantalising elusive at the corners of my brain, but it was not something I would have said for a long while-I was too logical to consider it.

"And what date is it exactly?" Evie asked, causing me to stop and look at her strangely, my heart rate accelerating oddly.

Now the elderly women was looking at us as if we were truly mad, "It is the eleventh year of King Arthur's reign."

That's when things began to fall apart. At first we just gaped at her, wordless, then without speaking I turned and wandering a short distance away, there were black spots dancing in front of my eyes and I wondered if I was going to pass out for the first time ever. Evie followed me.

"What the hell is going on?" I shrieked, everything was different and couldn't understand why.

Evie gestured helplessly, "I don't know! I don't understand!" then she stopped suddenly thoughtful, "maybe this is one of those conventions, where everyone dresses up and pretends to be from a different era?"

I shrugged, "why would our house be gone? It doesn't make any sense at all!" I was angry but I didn't know why, I just wanted to reach out and hit something until everything turned back to normal; it was an anger born out of fear, because the only other alternative was to run away screaming, find a dark hole and cry into it until everything became normal. Tempting as it was, I knew better.

"You don't think..." Evie trailed off, unable to actually the voice the thought out loud.

I knew exactly what she was going to say, as I was thinking the same thought. "How? How could falling into a lake do this? We aren't in Narnia you know!" my voice grew louder without me meaning it to, I was getting angry again.

Evie shushed me; we were already getting strange enough looks from the townsfolk, I didn't want to exacerbate their distrust of us anymore than I already had, so I quietened. "There was something in the lake, a hulligen, or this is some weird scienctific experiment we are caught up in, or we are dreaming!" I threw out the possibilities, each more unlikely than the last, even though none of them felt right. My brain wasn't computing right now.

"What are we going to do?" I asked, my voice wobbling.

We stood in contemplation for another minute, when the idea struck me. Of course it was me that came up with the idea so ludicrous I could barely voice it out loud. Instead I suddenly felt the urge to hysterically giggle.

Evie must have noticed the change of expression on my face, because she grabbed my arm. "What!"

"I have an idea. But it's ridiculous. What if it was the lake?"

"And?" Evie asked, not following.

"Well let's just say that this isn't some crazy dream, and there's something strange about that lake. Surely we just have to jump back into it and everything will go back to normal?" It wasn't one of my most brilliant ideas, but it was all we had.

We turned around and trotted back up the hill, hyper-aware of the stares of the townsfolk, but ignoring them all the same.

We came to a halt in front of the lake and stared at it. The cold looking water glistened back at me uncaringly.

"This is such as bad idea" I mumbled.

Evie shrugged and without another moments notice, jumped in the lake, I followed a minute later, and that was how I found myself surfacing from an icy cold lake gasping for breath for the second time that day.