Destiny's Pet
A/N: This is a new genre for me: Satire, and Allegory. The characters are figurative rather than literal, if you know what I mean. Please keep this in mind as you read…
This fic is set up in four chapters, plus an epilogue, each chapter dedicated to a character (as titled). Each chapter is divided into three sections (following the maid, matron, hag personas of the triple goddess, or the fates) which are distinct from each other within a chapter, but related to the other chapters. For instance, each facet 1 follows one 'story', each facet 2, and 3, tied together by quotes from the relevant episode in italics. Hopefully not too confusing…
Also, warning. This fic is (mostly) like a cup of yesterday's coffee – dark, cold, and bitter.
Chapter 1: Will
Facet 1
(freond: v. to honor, like, love a friend. Old English.)
Freond was marked as a young boy. Claimed by the young mistress, gorgeous and cold and supreme in her caprice. Perhaps for the compassion in his heart, the understanding and empathy. Perhaps it was simply that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He was a young man still, when he was taken. Quite suddenly, and without warning, during a bandit's raid on his village.
Make the most of this day, it will be your last.
I should have kept running, he mused to himself, in a surprisingly composed way, as he was lowered into the pit.
The fraying ropes, biting into his flesh where they bound him, were his sole support as his weight dragged him down. Into a darkness that breathed a wet foul stench, with a pestilential catch in a slimy throat.
I was out. I was away. And yet, and yet…
It wasn't who he was, after all, young Freond. Marked for destiny's pet, it was inevitable, really. This capture.
You've just signed our death warrant.
He felt he was descending into water, not air, the silty murk compressive as the cave, the dungeon, the lair swallowed him.
Whose choice? Maybe it didn't matter.
Maybe it's meant to be this way.
Dead was dead, and the mistress was not to be denied her pleasure. And so the young man went to feed her pet.
His feet touched rock, and slipped. He was lowered still further to his knees.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
He tried to struggle, to cry out, when the creature reached him – touched him – tore into him - but the ropes held him. The rush of blood - warm and sticky and copper-sweet over the tattered remains of his shirt – weakened resolve and voice and muscle, torn from bone.
Screaming. But it wasn't him, screaming.
Something's gone wrong.
The ropes dissipated, an illusion of freedom as life dripped away, slippery on the rough rock.
He was on his back. Looking up. There was a dot of daylight, far away. Beckoning, promising, taunting. There was movement near that dot, and with conscious intent, the figure twitched into identification.
Another prisoner, chained to the wall. An emaciated live-skeleton with indefinable rags for a travesty of clothing, hollow skull eyes blazing with an agony of hope.
Then light and companion both were obscured by a grinning-demon visage, a slavering maw exhaling filth and decay, drooling acid over face and neck and chest and into Freond's torn flesh, pooling like liquid agony. And the ragged bloody lips pulled back over crooked broken fangs in a bestial grin of sadistic satisfaction before the massive head bent to finish the meal.
Freond heard his bones crack and his viscera pull and tear as the rest exploded in obliterating fire – and he was quite sure it wasn't him screaming…
Facet 2
The prison was clean, light and airy. Each cell separated from the next, and the walkway, by a series of slender floor-to-ceiling bars, reinforced by horizontal rods, and flooded with sunlight from generous windows at each end of the rows. All day the brilliance drifted across the bare swept floor as the sun moved outside, an unseen power bound also to routine, throwing the lines of inescapable shadow that pinned their movement from a dance to a burdened crawl, dawn to sundown.
It was still a prison.
And no one felt it more keenly that morning than the last dragonlord. A young man who – shocking temerity – had attempted to escape. Had dared to think he could, and had actually tried.
So he was being moved to a new cell. Tighter security.
Down the walkway – another enclosed, locked space, just of a different shape and size – behind the Matron, he couldn't help glancing into the cells he passed. Inmates who, for the most part, had grown so accustomed to the bars they neither noticed nor minded them. Neither noticed nor minded him.
Except…
One young girl. Sitting alone in a corner of sunlight, plying needle and thread in some task of sewing. She was slender and small, brown dress, brown hair, unremarkable from a hundred others just like her, but for the green scarf folded demurely over her hair. A scrap of color, of individuality retained, without defiance or offense. And she was humming, as their steps brought them to her cell.
And she looked up. Looked at him – exhausted and despondent and hopeless – and smiled.
His step faltered, slowed.
And the prison Matron who was leading him, noticed. Noticed the girl's smile and kind brown eyes, and his interest. His yearning, maybe, to know more of someone who could still hum, in this place.
The Matron stopped. And with a jingle of keys from her belt, unlocked the door of the girl's cell.
"In here," she drawled. Amusement and sarcasm were audible in her tone.
And if the dragonlord had been thinking clearly – and not so desperate to replace what he had lost in his attempted escape – he would have questioned her choice. To reward him? With such possibilities he had thought forfeit, after his attempt – friend… home, family?
The dragonlord went inside. And the girl in the green scarf stood to meet him. To welcome him.
He should have known better. Should have expected less from the Matron, not more.
In the morning, guards came to move him. To harry him to his new cell – somewhat less clean and airy and light, and solitary – his shoulders bowed under the punishment of loss and memory.
What he wanted – love and comfort and companionship and acceptance and absolution – what he had for a short, wondrous, brilliant time. What he could never have again. The knowledge that the girl suffered the same, because of him, was an additional punishment. He accepted his incarceration, and retreated still further into himself from the physical constraints of his cell.
So it came to be that the warlock was born into captivity, though it was a cell that was light and airy and clean, to a mother who wore a green scarf over her brown hair and hummed as she sat and sewed. Though her eyes were sad, she could not regret the opportunity for kindness and love.
As the warlock grew, he made a friend of the boy in the next cell. They laughed, they played, they teased and tricked, though always the friend was irritated by the limitations the bars between them placed upon their fun.
The day the Matron came to transfer the warlock to another cell block, the mother made no protest. Perhaps she thought he might – by a trick of orders, or only chance which serves neither destiny nor chaos – be placed near enough his father that the dragonlord might know the satisfaction and happiness to be had in being parent to this son.
Perhaps she thought, if her boy experienced another cell, he might realize his true condition instead of overlooking it – although then, the despair of his father was just as real a possibility as the chance of the warlock's attaining freedom at last.
Perhaps she thought, trading one cell for another, with new neighbors and companions, interests and concerns, might be enough freedom, that he never would consider himself a prisoner, and if his spirit could be free – perhaps that would be enough for all of them.
I just didn't fit in anymore. I wanted to find somewhere that I did.
The day the Matron came to transfer the warlock, he kissed his mother goodbye and went eagerly, excited as a child to see new places and meet new people. His stride lengthened, unknown to him, down the walkway that was so much longer than any of the cells. Deceptively so, since it was still enclosed, and locked.
"This is for you," the Matron said, as he entered the new cell.
Two old men stood there, each with a set of wrist- and ankle-chains, though only one of them appeared to notice or mind. Between them they held a creature like the warlock had never seen before. It shifted in the sunlight, and he could not tell whether the wings were rainbow gossamer or tattered leather, whether the skin was softest velvet or rough scale. It cocked its head and looked at him and he knew it was his, and wasn't sure whether to be excited or frightened.
"What am I to do with it?" he said, not reaching to take the creature into his own arms. The two old men set it on the floor.
"Do as you will," the Matron said, sounding bored. "Ignore it, train it, love it, hate it - it matters little to anyone but you. It will be yours regardless."
"Be careful," one of the old men whispered, not unkindly, brushing past him as he exited the cell.
"They can be troublesome things," the other said, twitching at his cuffs and chains, kicking out ineffectually at the Matron and her guards as he too left the warlock alone in his cell.
And the warlock never noticed the cell door closing behind him, the Matron pocketing the key with a satisfied smile on her face.
There were many new people to meet, in the cells adjoining his, which took much of his attention away from his uneasy new pet - which he didn't understand and felt no affection for, and wasn't even sure how to care for. Sometimes he wondered why he was alone, if he would be allowed a cellmate at some point, or if it depended upon the behavior of the growing creature who shared his space, before deciding it didn't matter. Surely his solitude was temporary, and in any case, his nearest companion, the blind prince, was far more fascinating.
Fascinating, irritating, magnetic.
It was the blind prince who first taught the warlock about the bars that defined destiny's prison. Because he was a prince, his were all named.
The first one, he said, is Because-I-Am-A-Prince-We-Can't-Be-Friends.
The warlock only laughed, touched the gray iron bar, and it vanished in the blink of an eye and the twinkle of golden motes.
It was good thing the prince was blind. He might have hated his cell-mate, else, before he learned to love him. But ever after, the blind prince felt for that one missing bar in a genial sort of confusion.
Whatever happens out there today, please don't think any differently of me.
They talked, they argued, they laughed. They didn't play, though sometimes they fought. Sometimes they teased, and always they tricked.
Almost the warlock forgot the pet that was his responsibility. It grew slowly, and never seemed to enjoy the attention it occasionally demanded. The warlock fell into the routine of giving it what it seemed to need, and leaving it alone, else. It shifted when he looked at it, shape and color, beautiful to ugly, and the temperament was nearly impossible to ascertain at any given moment. It seemed indifferent to him, as well.
Though the prince had identified the bars of the cell for the warlock for the first time, he didn't truly mind them. At first. He had freedom in his cell, to move and exercise, he was provided for and cared for. He was occupied, always, and slept peacefully exhausted at night.
But then. One night he woke startled to find his boyhood friend just outside his cell.
It's good to see you again. How have you been?
"I've had enough, I'm out of here," his friend whispered. "Come with me, why don't you?"
"How do you know out there is any better than in here?" he responded.
"I have no reason to stay," the friend said, and bent to begin picking the lock.
This place has been boring without you…
The warlock left his hard prison bed and his single blanket, out of curiosity and a sense of responsibility. A sense of danger, and responsibility. "But I do," he argued. "My prince – my friend."
His pet, curled in the corner, stirred and rose and padded forward, trailing tail and wings.
"Your friend? I could hear him all the way down at the end of the row earlier, hollering."
"He doesn't mean it, it's just his way," the warlock explained. "I can't go without him, though."
"Well, hurry up, bring him along."
The warlock went to the place where the bar named Because-I-Am-A-Prince-We-Can't-Be-Friends was missing, and attempted to reach the blind prince. "Wake up."
The prince stirred.
"What is it?" he slurred sleepily.
"There's someone here, a friend of mine, and he –"
Voices rose suddenly. Men's voices, loud and angry, confident and strong and the warlock shuddered.
"Come on, hurry!" his friend begged, as the lock clicked the door of the warlock's prison swung open.
The pet-creature swelled, tipping its soft-lumpy head upward, and bayed, a sound the warlock had never heard from it before.
There's one, get him! Kill him!
Other prisoners heard it, felt it in their sleep, rolled over and pulled blankets closer. The mother heard it, and shivered. Lights flashed and the friend crouched in the doorway screamed in sudden terror.
And the warlock could not cross the cell in time, it happened too quickly.
It can't be done. The odds are too great.
He was still turning from his prince when the scaly shadow-creature sailed through the guards' torchlight, stumpy wings playing the bars of the cell row like a fingernail on the teeth of a comb.
The friend was down almost before he knew he'd been hit. Caught trying to escape, trying to free the warlock – though if the warlock realized his part in his friend's fate, it was only subconsciously – and executed.
… It was good to see you again.
He lay bleeding on the walkway, bleeding and dying in a space that was shaped with the illusion of freedom. The warlock on his knees, reached through the bars but ineffectually, as his pet breathed on the back of his neck and drooled the red of the friend's blood onto his hand, bracing his weight on the stone floor.
The Matron stood at the end of the row, running her fingers over her keys as the warlock cried.
Facet 3
(wyrd: n. fate, chance, fortune, destiny. Old English.)
Wyrda followed the wolfhound Balinor. Had been following him, all his life, like his fathers before him, but with a bit more interest.
She wondered, when he was young, if she should choose him. And Uther. But there was something off about the pairing. Some mismatch of traits, some weakness in the genes.
It might be good to blend the pureblood with a little hardy peasant stock, for this one. Since the other pup had already come mewling and blinking into the world, she couldn't delay long. There was a perfect female in this village, too – young and unconnected, caring and sympathetic – patient and humble. Wyrda hoped those traits would breed to the pup. No use having a rare champion too proud to risk himself, after all.
The mating went as Wyrda had planned, in the little village in the dark behind closed doors. But she didn't think it would do the pup any good to be raised with the sire's influence – Balinor was entirely too cynical already, too sharp. Twice on the road he'd hesitated and looked toward her as if he could see her.
She called the king's mastiffs, then, and their baying flushed Balinor, giving him a good enough scare, she thought she probably didn't have to worry about his return.
Wyrda left Ealdor alone for a time. No use hovering until the pup was weaned and could leave his dam.
But the bond between dam and pup was strong – she'd intended it so, that was the peasant stubbornness. So little they had, they clung the more fiercely to it. By Wyrda was canny and experienced – putting young Merlin in the right place at the right time with one of the other village pups and it was obvious to anyone with an eye for breeding that Merlin was different. It scared the mother, so she was ready to let go – for his sake, she thought.
That made Wyrda smile.
I can't keep him, Wyrda heard Hunith's thought. In the little village, in the dark of the last night before an escape, this time planned. Behind the closed door of her home. I can't keep him, either.
Wyrda watched the dam curl around her pup in the box-bed, watching firelight flicker across the bone structure of the pup's face and his sleek black pelt as he slept. He was perfect – misleadingly delicate, he would be underestimated in every match Wyrda set him to. And she had many planned.
"You can't keep him," she whispered to Hunith. "But his glory and his pain – that will be yours forever. A mother's curse."
In the morning, Wyrda slipped the leash over the pup's head, and walked him to Camelot. Barely she could hold him back, so eager he was, and she smiled at his youthful exuberance, ready to start his training, herself.
Docile, he was not. He snapped a bit at the leash when it caught between his oversize puppy feet or pinched the tender skin around his neck. He snapped at the other pup she'd paired him with too; Arthur was a bit older and so intent on his training he needed a little astonishment to shake him up. Make him lighter on his toes, make him more aware of his surroundings, and possible threats. He was a little too inclined to rest on his own breeding and training, too – Wyrda wanted Arthur reminded that a halfbreed might give him a run for his money.
But, all in all she was pleased with how the two handled the matches she brought to them. They fought well together, even if they couldn't seem to stop snapping and tumbling over each other outside the fighting ring. Wyrda didn't try to stop them – they never hurt each other really, and it kept them in good shape to face outside threats.
One day, though, Hunith came to Camelot, drawing Wyrda's attention. That mother-son bond again, she'd have to take that into more serious consideration. It was one of the things that kept Merlin strong on the inside.
A pack of wolves, it seemed, threatened his birthplace. Wyrda shrugged. Not exactly a planned match, but it would be good practice for the two pups. And a chance to see how they performed in less structured conditions.
This is your home. If you want to fight to defend it, that's your choice. I'd be honored to stand alongside you.
One thing she noticed. The purebred pup sniffed a bit around the sweet mongrel female, one of the two that followed Wyrda's pair. She watched them, and shrugged over that, too. They looked nothing alike – no telling what the product of that mating would be – but she supposed a bit of mutt hardihood in the royal bloodline couldn't hurt.
Perhaps she could present the opportunity for mating to the yellow-haired bull-pup as a reward. In a few years, though; they were both young, yet.
I have faith in you… we all do.
Then the wolves came, howling. Predictably.
Wyrda strolled the street up and down, keeping an eye on her two pups – who fought well, and she was satisfied. This time Merlin showed a bit of aggression to finish the fight, and Wyrda's eyebrows lifted.
You fight for your homes. You fight for your family. You fight for your friends.
"Well done," she complimented him, clapping her hands thrice.
Only – that bit of unexpectedness took her attention from Arthur. Just at the moment when the dying alpha of the wolf pack snapped at the pup's jugular.
Wyrda casually put her foot out and kicked one of the village hounds – vaguely noticing it was the one she'd made use of before, the comparison that had weaned Merlin from his mother – right into the wolf's jaws, instead. The pup squirmed and snapped, but she'd ruined his balance, and the old wolf reacted instinctively.
I saw how desperate things were becoming. I had to do something.
The pup whimpered, twitched, and went still, moments after the wolf expired.
Merlin whined, nosing his pack-mate, trying, in the way pups had, to prompt him back to life with his desire that it should be so, and his confusion that he was being denied. He whined again, squirming against the cooling body of the other pup.
"He's dead," Wyrda told him. "Come on, we've done what we came here for. Let's go home."
If you fall, you fall for the noblest of causes, fighting for your very right to survive.
Compassion and stubbornness, the traits she'd hoped to breed in him, were stronger than she thought. He didn't bounce right back up, panting eagerly for another trip, another match, but nosed again at the dead carcass of the mongrel pup.
"Get him up," Wyrda told Arthur.
I'm sorry. I know he was a close friend.
Who trotted obediently to his fighting-partner, obviously at a loss to understand the dumb animal grief. Arthur cocked his head at the two – one alive, and one dead – and tried the only thing he knew to do with Merlin. He nipped at him, rousing him with the instinct to prevent a reoccurrence, snapping again, still uncomprehending why his mate wouldn't tumble and snarl like normal.
"All right, let's go," Wyrda told them. "There'll be other matches. And you," she added to Merlin, "better get used to other dogs dying in the ring."
Arthur lolled his tongue and wagged his tail, ready to return to his kennel and start again the next day.
You have to go, Merlin. You belong at Arthur's side. I've seen how much he needs you… how much you need him. You're like two sides of the same coin.
Merlin shook himself, shook off the road dust, and gave her one reproachful glance, before trotting after Arthur.
"Well!" Wyrda said to herself. "Guess I'd better keep an eye on you."
When the time is right, the truth will be known. Until then, you must keep your talents hidden. It's better for everyone.
A/N: The italics are quotes from ep.1.10 "The Moment of Truth".
It's different – I know! Just… be as kind as possible?