Its been a long few days for Merlin. The King, Arthur Pendragon, took him and a few knights on a three day patrol. The patrol went smoothly, only a few bandits tried to ambush them, but none of the Camelot knights were injured in the fight. As it turns out, the only person injured was Merlin, who on the last day, accidently stepped into the mouth of a burrow and sprained his ankle.

The court physician, Gaius, deemed Merlin unfit to do his daily chores for at least two days and put the young warlock on bed rest. This wouldn't have been a problem, but the servant the king appointed to take Merlin's place temporarily was quite new to the life as a servant to a noble, and was most certainly not prepared to serve the King.

When Merlin was finally able to go back to his duties he found that his replacement had been far too inexperienced to take his place, even for the short two days. This lead to Merlin staying up for about 37 hours straight trying to get everything back to both his and Arthurs standards.

Luckily, Merlin was able to finish the King's laundry, which was also the last chore, at about eight O'clock, giving him enough time to finish the rest of the day without having to rush around and to be able to change his shirt, which got quite wet while washing. Running into the physicians chambers he quickly ran past Gaius, who was settling down for the day himself, and up to his room, closing the door once inside.

Sighing, Merlin sat down on the end of his bed to relieve his aching back, even if it's only for a few minutes. Slowly pulling his shirt off, Merlin laid back after relieving his right arm from the sleeve, the shirt hanging off his left arm while both arms were out at his side, hanging over the bed. Even though Merlin had only wanted to rest for a few minutes, he found that now tat he was lying down he couldn't seem to keep his eyes open, falling asleep not even a minute later.

"MERLIN!" Arthur yelled from the corridor leading to the physicians chambers. Last the king knew, Merlin was washing his laundry, though that was two hours ago. Now, after having looked in any place he knew Merlin was prone to disappear off to, he was finally getting around to checking Merlin and Gaius' rooms. Arthur needed Merlin to clean and polish his armor and chain male for training the next day.

Entering the chambers, Arthur saw that Gaius was not there, and neither was Merlin. Walking to his manservants bedchamber, he swung open the door to find Merlin still sprawled out on the end of his bed, light snores coming from his open mouth. Arthur had stopped dead, looking at his manservant's bare torso in shock and curiosity.

Littered all across Merlin's chest were both white and pink scars ranging in both size and shape. Along Merlin's arms were crisscrossing lines that dominated the inside of his lower arm, while the upper part of his arms seemed to have scars from either whips or swords, though they could be from both. Along his upper torso were scars from cross bow bolts, mace spikes, a few scattered smaller, almost patch like scars. In the middle and slightly down was a burn mark shaped to be an almost perfect circle. Across Merlin's abdomen were scars likely make from daggers impaling the manservants sides with more slashes scattered around. It was a sight to see, especially on the body of a manservant.

Not trusting his voice, Arthur quietly backed out of Merlin's bedchamber and made his way to his own room, changing the next days plans as he went. Arthur, knowing how touchy some scars can be to anyone, decided to be a bit more tactful on his approach to asking Merlin about them. Arthur knew how impactful a few scars can be to any knight, be it that they were from a tavern brawl or protecting someone dear to them. Despite this, Arthur knows that not a single knight within Camelot has even half the number of scars as Merlin, leaving the King speechless and floored at the idea of Merlin having so many, evidently, battle scars.

~0~

I HATE THIS CHAPTER I HAD TO RESTART IT THREE TIMES ARGH!

Also I never noticed how many commas I use when writing. It's kinda weird to read a sentence with like 7 commas and yet it still makes sense to me.

Anyways! Let me know if something is too wordy or, yah know, incorrect whether grammatically or otherwise.

I know this is a very short chapter, but it really isn't meant to be long because it's more the lead in to the story. the word count went up by about 200-300 so that's something!

It will be posted on my Wattpad so if it's easier to comment there let me know that you came from here and what I likely did wrong XD.