Warnings: I'm not on crack, I... uh... swear. HahahahaI'msoconvincing. Anyway… different cultures? Gratuitous liberties taken with the canon fandom? And oh boy, do I ever mean GRATUITOUS. Will eventually be slash in a highly hilarious/demented fashion. I'm indulging my crazy here, so you really should just ignore this. Also, some foul language. Also, it's meant to be written like a (disturbed) fairy tale, so if you had a traumatic childhood or sommat, you might want to go elsewhere.
Pairings: Eventual Arthur x Merlin. Mainly. Other pairings will show up periodically.
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Get Yer Mitts Off Me Gold!
Chapter One: And We Were All Disgusted
Begin by envisaging the most repulsive human you know. Bus drivers, bosses at work, and children who never remove their fingers from their noses—all acceptable responses.
Now, add tusks.
Their skin should sag, with a texture ranging anywhere from warty to slimy. Their fingernails grow in as rigid yellowish claws. Where their reeking flesh does not dissuade company, their dispositions tend to.
If you're a bit put off of your biscuits, know that there is justice in the world; they find each other as repugnant as the rest of existence.
So you can understand why Merlin was immediately hailed as an aberration among trollkind. First his mother went and had relations with another troll that involved touching and smelling and, of all things, proximity, then there was Jonas, and it only got worse as Merlin grew up because he set about being the worst troll, ever.
0o0o0
"What's he doing?" Jonas's tail twitched distastefully. "There's dung right there." He gestured. Merlin ignored this in favor of drooling impressively and lighting ants on fire with his puny claws.
"Oh, let him be," Catrina said, distracted. Fresh dung. Fresh goblin dung. It required her full attention. "He's just wrapped up in killing things. It's fine."
An hour later, infant Merlin was found curled up napping. Dung? Nowhere in sight.
No, Merlin was perched on a tree branch, caressed by what clammy breezes stirred the murky bog water of his backyard. He blinked himself awake at Jonas's scandalized cry and upon seeing his mother in Jonas's tow, floated daintily out of the tree and splashed aground.
He smelled of fresh air and tree sap.
"Right," Catrina decided, after thoroughly dousing the baby in fresh offal. "No more magic."
Merlin pouted and behind them, their den abruptly went up in smoke.
It was made of stone. There wasn't even anything to burn.
Catrina growled at the baby (Jonas went tearing out of the burning cave, flailing wildly at his burning trousers. "None of the sass, Merlin!"
Merlin looked sheepish and storm clouds gathered to rain heavily only on the few square meters of burning cave, bathing them sweet-smelling, clear water.
Catrina promptly established the fond family tradition of shouting, "Merlin, no!" and punching the child in the face.
0o0o0
"What do you MEAN you won't throw your things into the slop pit?!" Catrina demanded. She was irate; the subsequent bugling sounded a bit like an elephant, were it having its kneecaps broken. "Do you know how it smells in here?! Are you trying to kill Mummy by making things—" she shuddered. "—sanitary?!"
"Like a bed of roses," Jonas added from where he was crouched at the back of the cave. Merlin shot him a blistering glare. Jonas stuck his tongue out.
"I store them under garbage whenever I'm not reading them." Merlin protested defensively. The book in his lap was impressively large, serving to further emphasize the fact that Merlin was a puny troll. "I've tried to get rid of the smell by putting rotten fruit inside. But it stains and makes it impossible to read!"
"Like roses and butterflies," Jonas sing-songed, and dodged the rock Merlin hurled at his face. "Ha! You missed!"
Merlin's eyes narrowed.
"What do you need to read for?" Catrina snarled. Jonas flailed in the background, shrieking as a hoard of luminous spiders converged on him. "By all things foul and furious—Merlin. Books are as far from treasure as you can get—all dull and wordsome!"
"They're hardly my treasure," Merlin protested. "But books talk about such incredible things… Treasure too! Like no troll has ever seen!" He fumbled for the right page. "If you'd just look—"
"No." Catrina held up her claws before the child could go any further. Merlin deflated, disappointment writ clearly in his rheumy eyes. "That book stays outside. I mean it, Merlin. No son of mine will be clean."
Merlin grimaced. "It's not—I mean, yes marm."
Catrina nodded. "There you go."
So Merlin began to pile up a small library outside the latest den, and each day, he had to scrub himself in refuse and sewage before coming back inside. As you might imagine, trolls are not big fans of unnecessary effort—so it stood to reason that Merlin would soon come to his senses.
But the library just kept getting bigger and bigger and Merlin started coming home less and less.
0o0o0
The last straw was Merlin's Coming of Age Day.
It was meant to be a night of revelry and incessant flatulence, christened by several of the ancient troll hymns; curious things composed entirely of belching (and, if the singer got very excited, botulism).
And Merlin was nowhere to be seen. When Catrina actually found her son, he was talking to a naiad.
A naiad.
A naiad.
A naiad spirit of an obviously very clean stream, with limpid eyes and a silvery voice. The little faerie bitch had her purifying hand on Merlin's arm and they were both giggling.
Before Catrina's brain even managed to wrap itself around the dazzling array of nightmarish possibilities, she roared and charged. She tried to put a fist through the water spirit's head, but the naiad dissolved into shimmering bubbles before she could manage it. Merlin gulped as he found four hundred pounds of enraged troll focused on him.
"I can explain," he said.
An hour later and Catrina had yet to stop screaming and pacing.
"MY OWN SON!" She howled. "SEEKING THE COMPANY OF ANOTHER LIVING CREATURE! OF A NAIAD!"
"We only met by chance," Merlin muttered, head buried in his arms. "I was trying to dump slop into the water. And she said she liked to be dirty."
His voice said he had taken this at face value. Adolescent trolls are not known for their ability to read into things.
Catrina spluttered with wordless rage. She turned to Jonas. "He's broken! Fix him!" Merlin scowled at Jonas behind her back and mouthed something that made Jonas go pale.
"I'm afraid there's nothing to be done," Jonas said bravely. "He is an abomination. He must be done away with."
Merlin and Catrina snarled at the same time. Merlin eyed the spider burrows with a pensive gleam in his eye.
"It is not troll-like," Jonas insisted, cringing away from the glares of two angry trolls. He wasn't quite sure which was worse—Catrina, who could sit on him and kill him, or weedy Merlin, whose magic had already killed him. And then brought him back. "He wanted to have company, Mistress! To…" Jonas lowered his voice, ashamed to let the words even cross his lips. "…Befriend."
Catrina pressed a hand to her chest, stumbling in obvious pain. "No!"
"I bet he doesn't even like filth," Jonas pressed.
"You take that back!" Merlin shouted, leaping to his feet. "You're the one who doesn't like filth! You're not even a troll!"
"SHUT UP!" The walls of the cavern shook; Merlin landed on his rump and Jonas just covered his head in case of falling rocks. Catrina rounded on her son again. "Is what Jonas said true? Were you looking for a friend?" Merlin stared up at her, tears glimmering hopelessly in his beady troll eyes.
"I'll—I'll be a better troll, Mother! I promise—"
"Not another word." Catrina cut him off with a snarl. She shook her head slowly. "You're… not worthy to be called a troll."
Merlin's eyes widened. Jonas was agape; Catrina looked away from them both.
"I'm going to send you away, Merlin," she decided. "To a proper place. Where you'll grow up right. We'll see if that won't straighten you out." Merlin looked up, cheeks wet with tears, and for a moment he looked as innocent as any child.
It was enough to make Catrina gag.
"But," Catrina's voice hardened with nausea, "This is your last chance. The world has no use for a troll that can't behave like what he is." I'll feed you to the wyverns myself if you fail.
"I won't let you down, Mother," Merlin swore. Jonas snorted—which soon turned into a yelp of dismay as a boulder launched itself at his head.
Catrina scratched herself thoughtfully. "You'll be needing a lair…" She paused and jabbed a claw at her son. "And absolutely NO BOOKS."
Merlin bowed his head again, muttering something that sounded like "darn."
0o0o0
Honestly, the fellow had just been asking for it, stumbling along an empty road in the dark of night. Jonas grabbed him by the neck and slammed him against a tree.
"Where is the most loathsome, filthy place on this earth?" Jonas growled at the man.
Jonas was then hurled several feet back into the air by a magic spell—for once not by Merlin, who was at Catrina's side (looking like he wanted to applaud). The apprehended sorcerer dropped back to the ground with a wheeze, incanting something in a slippery language.
Catrina beat him to it with a grunt and a flap of her hand. The sorcerer slammed back into the tree and when he felt the need to struggle, Catrina bashed him against it a few times.
"Filthy," she whispered into the profusely bleeding man's ear. "Loathsome. Isolated," she added with a severe look at Merlin, who was staring at the human with more fascination than revulsion. Merlin abruptly became interested in his toes. "Where can we find this?"
"From where I just escaped," the sorcerer slurred. "The dungeons of Uther Pendragon. No place more loathsome than that piss-hollow."
Catrina gave Merlin a considering look.
Dungeon-troll. It has quite a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
And they sallied forth into the night.
0o0o0
The dungeon smelled like terror, human refuse, and mildew.
"You can add the dung yourself," Catrina said anxiously, nudging Merlin, who was staring around in unabashed wonder. "What do you think?"
He swallowed. "It's… it's all mine?"
Catrina couldn't contain her smile. "Yes, Merlin. It is."
Together they blew up a large portion of the floor, hollowed out a comfy little chamber for him to lurk in, and then enchanted ground back over the whole thing.
"Only your magic will open it," Catrina reminded Merlin. "So as long as you're careful, no one will ever know you're here."
Merlin rolled his eyes. "Yes, Mother. I know."
"And don't forget to look for treasure," she added, scratching at her jowls. "The king has all manner of lovely shiny things. Wouldn't be surprised if your destined treasure was somewhere up there!"
Merlin heaved a sigh.
"And Merlin," Catrina eyed him warningly. "Keep to yourself. Keep filthy. No books. And think about what it really means to be a troll!"
"I will, Mother." Merlin nodded and subtly tried to guide his mother and a smirking Jonas out the door. "When you next see me, I'll be fully reformed—I'll be so antisocial that I probably won't be able to stand the sight of you!"
They all laughed at that, and made their final farewells. Merlin's slight form receded into the shadows of the dungeon and finally Catrina was left staring at the high walls of Camelot.
Jonas put a hand on her shoulder. "He'll be OK," he said quietly.
Catrina didn't reply, but imagined her boy alone in a den full of magic-hunting humans and…
…Was she fretting?
She dug deep inside herself and belched.
No, just indigestion. Although it did occur to her that in all the fuss, she'd never sung Merlin's Coming of Age Song for him.
0o0o0
As celebration itself marked the entry of a young troll into the world of treasure hunting, the Coming of Age Song explained all the pertinent information. For instance, it explained what could and could not be construed as treasure.
It also set forth the three things that could kill a troll.
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Well, Merlin wouldn't possibly run into any of those, would he?
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A/N: Seriously, this was already on my computer. I'm not procrastinating! I swear! Yeah... Anyway. Let me know what you think? Too weird? Cause that's not going to stop me, but it will make me cackle more frequently while I write. But in all seriousness, I hope at least some of you were entertained.