Of Gold and Dust

''In their love and in their lust,

They became nothing more but

Fallen angels, wings crumbled into dust.''

A land of myth and a time of magic … That was the starry-eyed declaration most writers used to describe the olden days of Camelot. The Kingdom had fascinated many upon its subsequent rediscovery. Priceless relics were dug up and examined closely for any hints of the bygone era. Hundreds of texts were dusted off and translated with only too much enthusiasm. Pick any one of them up and they'll tell you tales of legend and lore, of lust (you'd be a fool to mistake it for anything else) and power. It would seem the Kingdom had it all. And you would be inclined to agree if only you could ignore the fact that the lore never led to wisdom, the power never to justice and the lust never to devotion. And certainly not Love. No, there was no place for love in Camelot.

Not in the famed time of Camelot; when the King still mourned the loss of his half-sister - his lover, his enemy. When the Queen, exalted for her morality, stole into the night and slipped into the bed of her husband's most trustedsoldier. Where virtue and vice became so inexorably linked that you could no longer tell the one from the other.

And what of Arthur's half-sister? The one who fell astray? Who fell from grace in Camelot but climbed the ranks of powerful magic which only grew stronger within her? She had laid siege to her own Kingdom and to his throne; demanded it as her birthright, as the illegitimate daughter the old King would never acknowledge. A bloody battle ensued and finally it was Merlin who drove her out. As she knew he would. Who else but her kin? His magic was always the more powerful, forged on the lives of the many he had annihilated before her. And so she became a wanderer, and Arthur's obsession. Any sighting of her, any rumour and he would send out his knights in search of her. Ordered relentless waves to hunt her. Patrols, scouts... It didn't matter to him. Even at a distance, even as a ghost, she drove him to near madness. He didn't even know what he would do once she stood before him. A prisoner, but she would never bow. He knew her well enough. Better than anyone, or so he thought. No, she would rather drown in her own blood than bow to him on the very throne that had become their battleground. But it didn't matter and so he simply ordered Merlin to send out more men. And more, when those failed to return.

But Merlin knew exactly where she was. Always knew. It was easy work, to lead the soldiers out, following false-trails and dead ends. She was his own. It had always been foretold that he would be her doom. If she was taken down it would be at his hands. And yet like Arthur, he couldn't destroy her. Dared not. No, if he was cursed to live on in this God-forsaken place, then so would she. He ensured it. It was once said that he would be the light to her darkness. That prophecy mocked him now, when all was darkness; no light in him, none in her.

No, he'd be damned before he led them to Morgana. He told himself she didn't belong in Camelot anyway. Not in Camelot, where sinners danced with saints and in a court where a smile was deadlier than a scowl. But their own dance was just as deadly. The bloody game they played, hell-bent on vengeance. They were kin, the same cursed magic flowing through their veins. The same twisted pull that drew them together despite the vows of enmity they had taken against each other. He still remembers the first time he forced through that barrier.Her barrier. Remembers running his fingers through hair as dark as sin (his sin or hers?) that fell on white shoulders which seemed to carry a world of pain. They say perpetrators always returns to the site of their crime. And so they came together, night after night, year after year until all that remained of them were imprints on a broken bed and ghostly whispers in a long-forgotten tower.

And what of Merlin's work? The one whose destiny it had been foretold, was to unite the worlds of Human and Magical being? And unite them he did; binding them both in a chokehold so tight that it was bent only to his will. And so he too was exalted, remembered as the savior of Camelot - or maybe it was the curse of Camelot…It did not matter because he had brought upon the acclaimed 'Era of Peace'. But that label of 'peace' had been added later, when few were still alive to remember the dreadful silence that filled the city almost as thickly as the stench of the dead, piled high on every field and in every alley. This was the silence that was labeled as peace. Because when the wars reaped every household dry, no one remained alive to fight or to be fighting. Nothing but the sound of empty cradles rocking in the wind… And this deafening silence, masquerading as Peace.

And this was the Golden Age of Camelot. Gold, like the kind that could be seen on a King's tomb, elaborate and grandiose; yet filled with nothing, but decayed remains and bleached bones, finely ground into dust…