Title: The Manservant's Bane
Summary: Courage, Strength, and Magic go off an adventure to save the fate of the Kingdom, an adventure full of mayhem, merriment, and sometimes even, true camaraderie. And despite a few hiccups, all is going as well as can be expected. That is, until Poison joins the trio, turning their world upside down, and perhaps unsettling Destiny herself.
A/N: Welcome! This takes places in Season 4, but is AU and will diverge from canon.
Chapter 1: Sweet Beginnings
Morgana sharpened the dagger Arthur had gifted her, slowly, lazily, admiring the way the jeweled hilt glittered in the bleak, candle-lit hovel. Oh, the sweet irony it would be to see this beauty plunged into the heart of the one that commissioned it. She smiled.
A knock resounded on her door, and after a pause, four more taps in quick succession—a signal that marked the arrival of Agravaine. Morgana frowned; she was not expecting him.
"Enter," Morgana said briskly.
"My lady," Agravaine said with a hitched breath, bowing, "please forgive my unexpected intrusion."
She continued sharpening the dagger—back and forth and back and forth—the screech of metal on metal exaggerated in the suffocating hovel.
"Please, my lady, I would not have come if I didn't have something important."
Morgana did not look up. "I hope for your sake, it is." She was the one that set the terms here—when and where they met, how and when he could address her, the types of payments he would receive for services rendered—and she did not tolerate any deviations from their understanding.
He swallowed, but continued. "Arthur is readying for a mission whose true purpose he has kept hidden. He has not announced it to the council or even to me. It is by chance that I caught wind of it." He looked up at her from his slightly bowed head, expectant.
Morgana stilled the sharpening and looked at him. "Go on."
"He and his manservant have been readying supplies and horses this morning. The official story is an extended hunting trip, but very little details have been provided, and they're keeping the party as small as possible—a bit unusual for a king to have so little guard for so long."
"It's just him and his manservant?"
"And Sir Gwaine."
Morgana scoffed, thoughtful. "A bit unusual indeed, to bring two of his least useful lackeys." And to leave himself so deliciously vulnerable. "Now, don't waste my time any longer. Where are they really going?"
Agravaine licked his lips and smiled. "I only live to please you, my lady. They are on a quest of the most unusual kind. They seek an item of great, some say unrivaled, power."
At this, Morgana stood, a crack in her cool mask. "Arthur…is seeking an object of magic? He is willing to risk his life for it, and with that, Camelot? This isn't like him."
"No, it isn't…but word has spread that Odin and a group of mercenaries are traveling toward the Valley of the Fallen Kings after catching word about a possible location of this object. The thought of Odin possessing such power may have been incentive enough for Arthur to get to it first."
"What are they saying it is?"
"There's rumors of all sorts of things that Odin could be seeking: the Cup of Life, a crystal born in the heart of magic, the Fisher King's Trident, the Pool of Eternal Youth—but one prevails above all: the Bane of Carmarthen."
Morgana's already pale, sickly skin turned ashen. "It can't be. All records mention it as an obscure legend, originating as a peasant's tale from over a millennia ago, and repeated to this day in the same vein. It's nothing but a children's story, something to frighten bairns away from the excesses of magic."
"And yet two kings race to find this bairns' tale," Agravaine said, silkily. "Are you going to take that chance that it isn't real?"
Morgana ran a finger along the dagger, her eyes cool and calculating. "Surely you, my little evangelizer of this unfortunate myth, did not forget its most important message?"
"I'm s-sorry, my lady?"
"Even if it was real and Arthur or Odin were to find it—they wouldn't be able to use it. That is the precious moral of the story, Uncle," Morgana hissed. "It drove even the most powerful of kings and the most powerful of sorcerers mad trying to unlock its magic. Indeed, it ended up being as useful as a fallen branch for them-power untouched-for all the destruction it wrought. Magic, after all, corrupts the soul. For it was the lust for magic that resulted in the execution of the sorcerer, of course, and in the madness of the king, and in the collapse of his kingdom, only remembered as cautionary tale against folly. That, my dear children, is why magic is evil, and why anyone that practices it, faces not only death, but humiliation in death."
Agravaine bowed his head. "You are right, as always, my lady. There is no doubt that some god would have safe-guarded something with so much power, to prevent those that were unworthy and prone to corruption bringing about our doom. Only the truly worthy, such as yourself, would have the power—" Agravaine stopped mid-sentence at the sight of his mistress' countenance. A flash of panic (of fear?) passed through her eyes, and it made him decidedly unsettled. "Lady Morgana?"
The words came hesitant, stilted, as if under a spell herself. "Arthur or Odin would never unlock the secrets of Carmarthen, but there is one that might. The shadow that never seems to leave my side. My destiny," Morgana said. And under her breath: "My doom."
Morgana shook out of her reverie. "Come Agravaine, for once you have not been entirely useless. Help me prepare for the journey."
Agravaine looked pleased, and not a little bit relieved. "So, will you be following after Arthur then?"
Morgana contemplated, feeling the satisfying weight of the dagger in her hand. "No, I'll need to get closer than that. I will need to infiltrate their merry little group, get in the midst of them, as contemptible as it will be. Perhaps even earn the trust of one of them."
"You think they would fall for that…after everything?"
"No, of course not," she snapped. "At least, not immediately. But you forget that I know my brother very well. For all his rash temper, his great weakness is that he can't help but forgive, even the ones that betrayed him."
Agravaine did not seem convinced. "If you are sure…"
"Trust me, the man has a weakness for pretty faces. Why do you think he keeps Gwen and that manservant of his around?" Morgana grinned wickedly, returning the dagger to its scabbard in her side pocket.
"Remind me again whose grand idea it was to chase after a children's tale, Merlin?" Arthur drawled.
They were barely outside of Camelot's castle limits, and already Merlin regretted his role in insisting they go on this adventure. Merlin shifted on his horse, keeping pace with Arthur. "Might I remind you, sire, that it was our noble and esteemed scouts that reported on Odin's activity, and that if there is even a remote possibility of the Bane existing we must prevent it from falling into Odin's hands—or God forbid, Morgana's—and that most importantly of all, I am always right." Merlin quirked his lips ever so innocently.
Arthur reached over and clipped him over the side of the head. "That's for always, stupidly, being right."
Gwaine, pacing his horse on Arthur's other side, slugged Arthur's shoulder. Arthur yelped in surprise, turning toward the offender.
Gwaine merely shrugged his shoulders. "That's for being stupidly right about Merlin always being stupidly right."
Arthur narrowed his eyes dangerously. "Well you just earned yourself clean-up duty for the foreseeable future." And he trotted ahead of both them.
The knight winked at Merlin. "Worth it," he said, before speeding after Arthur.
Merlin looked heaven-ward, only asking that he survive this journey with most of his sanity intact. And then he followed after them in a gallop.
