Title: Reload: Albion
Characters: Merlin, Arthur, Gwen, Freya, Morgana, Morgause, Mordred, Percival, Gwaine, Lancelot, Elyan, Leon. Other Merlin characters mentioned.
Warnings: Merlin canon compliant up 'til 5x13 – full series spoilers. Homestuck canon characters only briefly and very obliquely mentioned. Clearly stated pairings: Arthur/Gwen, Merlin/Freya; any others you are free to imply or assume on your own time. Some blood, death, battle.
A/N: I am well aware that this entire idea is, or should be, sheer insanity. Homestuck is a crazy fandom, and Merlin is something which, perhaps, should never be crossed with it. Still, the idea struck, and how could I resist in the end? Still, fear not; even my craziest ideas tend to twist toward something genuinely viable and even serious overall. There may be splotches of humor in the narrative and interactions, but ultimately I treated this as though it really could happen...even though it never will.
Despite my early attempts to write this in past tense, my tendencies oddly kept slipping toward the present. A quarter of the way through, I gave up and went back to change all the verbs to match up. I may have missed a couple despite editing. Please forgive me for them.
In addition, this is written in snapshots, some longer than others, and all focused from Merlin's limited point of view. Much is left either entirely unstated or only lightly implied. Though I intend this to be complete as is, I may be convinced in the future to add bonus snapshots of background characters or events as new chapters.
After fifteen hundred years, countless natural disasters, and millions of deaths in a string of wars each more terrible and destructive than the last, Merlin has all but given up hope of Arthur returning for anything less than Doomsday.
He has no idea that this vague inkling of a half frustrated, half ironically hopeful thought is right. Rather, he had no idea until five-thirteen on a rainy May evening, when an e-mail from someone who was neither a coworker at the local supermarket nor a scam artist fishing for fools pops cheerily up in his inbox.
The mobile phone and the use of the internet are minor concessions he made to keep at least some small place within the world. Mere decades in existence, a blink of time to Merlin, and already they are standards of communication – standards which have their own odd places in getting and keeping a job (for instance) in this new day and age. Despite being technically incapable of starving to death, not eating remains an extremely uncomfortable business, and one Merlin does his best to avoid.
Merlin nearly deletes it immediately upon registering the e-mail address as unfamiliar. Then his brain catches up with his eyes and he freezes. It is from someone under the username "swordKeeper." The domain name is "Avalon." And the subject line is written in the long-dead language of the Old Religion.
It is time.
Merlin keeps up on the news faithfully, if a little jadedly, over his centuries of life. He listens to town criers and picks up gossip in taverns. He visits tea and coffee houses and skulks about bars. He picks up the knack of rolling with changes in language, speech and spelling, so that he can read newspapers from the time they first came out up until modern day. He watches the news whenever he happens to be around a telly and he checks a number of world-wide news sites online daily. It's good, he thinks, to keep a finger on current events, but mostly he does it in hopes of seeing the first signs of Arthur's return.
Albion's darkest hour. He feels a little guilty every time he catches himself searching a little too eagerly for whispers of trouble and rumored disaster, but it's hard to keep a mortal perspective on death tolls and suffering when he has watched fifteen hundred years' worth of humans live and often suffer and always die at a distance.
It's also nigh impossible to take conspiracy theorists and doomsday predictors seriously. He sometimes feels he's lived through more prophesied apocalypses than he's cleaned boots of Arthur's. As such, when a handful of relatively minor – but still alarmingly dangerous – meteor crashes are reported, Merlin brushes it off as a cosmological oddity (it wouldn't be the first time in his life). When it comes out in a number of comments and forum boards that said meteors hadn't been predicted by a single Space program around the world, nor was there evidence of their existence until mere moments before they entered the atmosphere, and the conspiracy theorists cry everything from government cover-up to secret alien experiments to the end is coming, Merlin ignores the lot.
As it turned out, he should have paid more attention, for this small thing is the very sign he has been looking for.
Freya, for it was she who had sent the first message (apparently Avalon tended to remain contemporary with the mortal world, regardless of how long the souls there had been dead), explains everything she can. Merlin thinks it all a muddled, confusing, and even nonsensical mess, but is too ecstatic to be reading her words and thinking of Arthur's return to care much. He downloads the bizarre chat client Freya sent him without question, loads his contacts with every username she lists off (he nearly cries upon seeing "onceandFutureking" amongst them, and makes a mental note to tell Arthur – to tell Arthur! – that "superciliousPrat" would have been a better and more modest choice), and agonizes for half a moment over his own username. MaEvans is a business-standard form of his current alias, but it will hardly do here amongst this colorful list of two-part usernames. In the end he goes the simple route, and "warlockEmrys" signs into Pesterchum for the first time.
Merlin has never played a computer game before – they seemed to him so frivolously temporary that he never bothered to try. Given this attitude, he finds it utterly ridiculous that a world should start and end and start anew using such a game as a medium, but like everything else, he accepts it. Nothing makes sense anymore and he just might be going insane, but this all pales in comparison to the chance of seeing Arthur again.
Freya informs Merlin as far as she can into the game's general workings. Everybody will be a server player to another, arranged in a great loop, and Arthur is to be the first to enter the game's Medium.
Arthur, it seems, has insisted that no one be his Server player but Merlin.
No doubt thinking that Server is the same thing as Servant, Merlin thinks to himself with a broad (if somewhat watery) grin, watching the shifting spirograph on his loading screen and tapping his fingers impatiently. That complete and utter prat.
The screen clears, informs him that his client player is connected, and he stops breathing until a window opens with a birds-eye view of a large, comfortable room styled in a strange mixture of modern and medieval devices and decorations. Merlin does not dwell on these, nor on the fact that he is now looking, through data and wires and whatever mystical qualities this Sburb carries, into Avalon itself. His eye is drawn instead to the blonde-haired man sitting at a desk, typing something on a rather wide-screened personal computer and grinning to himself. Merlin feels his own face stretch into a matching grin, though he knows Arthur can't see him.
The chat client pings.
- onceandFutureking began pestering warlockEmrys –-
OF: what took you so long?
OF: even after all these years, you insist on running late
OF: taking your time, nevermind it's the end of the world
OF: Idiot.
It's a long time before either smile lessens.
Freya doesn't tell him in so many words, but between the things she does say and a few particularly suspicious names on his contact list, Merlin suspects that not all the players in this game are those he would have called "friend."
One of his suspicions is confirmed, yet at the same time almost rebuffed, not long after Freya saves him (and his ramshackle little home) from a particularly large meteor, serving him into the Medium. He is just in the middle of wondering what would happen to his umbrellasprite if he added a book to it (and whether that would make the imps – all perpetually drunk thanks to Gwaine's initial prototyping of a flagon of ale – more or less a danger to everything around them) when one "druidicKnight" begins to pester him.
DK: Emrys.
DK: I realize you have very little reason to listen to anything I have to say, but please, hear me out.
DK: I'm sorry.
DK: I've had a long time to think things over, and I want a second chance to help Albion awaken.
DK: I know I destroyed it before, and in so many ways I wish I hadn't.
DK: Please, Emrys.
DK: Let me be your ally, this once.
DK: I truly wish to help.
Merlin thinks for a while, then discards the book. Too many unknown factors, too much risk. Instead he unearths a patched, floppy hat from a cupboard, decades old and threadbare, and deems it a much safer option, though between this and his umbrella his sprite would be utterly useless and probably inarticulate for the duration of the game. No matter. Arthur will be hard-pressed to get himself killed by a monster partially made up of a bumbershoot and a flat tweed cap.
Pesterchum chimes again.
DK: Emrys?
Merlin's fingers feel stiff as he types out a reply, and he wonders if that harshness is somehow conveyed in the flat electronic words that appear on the screen.
WE: Have you forgiven Arthur for Kara?
WE: Because I feel I cannot forgive you for Arthur.
Long minutes stretch away before an answer comes, and it is hardly an answer at all.
DK: Please.
Merlin glares at the screen, torn. He has only the past to rely upon, no vision of the future. Not this time. At last, he makes something of a decision.
WE: Prove yourself.
WE: I will be watching.
- warlockEmrys ceased pestering druidicKnight –
Lancelot, it seems, has developed something of a morbid sense of humor in death. Why else would he have chosen "twiceBuried" for a username?
He had hoped that entering the game would allow him to immediately see the others. Of course, that's not how it works. Instead they each have their own land, tailored to their own personal needs, preferences, and tasks. Merlin has already seen some of Arthur's by virtue of being his server player, and he hopes to see it soon in person, because a screen can only convey so much. The Land of Rays and Castles is a beautiful place, full of shifting light and keeps that tower above open forests or sprawl through gentle plains and, quite often, freestanding arches filled with meticulously cut panes of stained and mirrored glass that shimmer in the sunlight and were built for no purpose other than their own magnificence.
Then again, perhaps having his own land isn't so bad. Arthur's might be beautiful, but it is in a rather austere, stately manner – its focus is the height of civilization, of architecture and mortal artistic skill. Merlin's land...Merlin's is untamed, raw, wild. As a whole, it feels almost like the grove of the Disir, so bursting with life and magic that it takes his breath away when he first beholds it. Ancient trees tangle together, eternally reaching for the open air even as their knobby roots stretch deeper into the earth. In the distance, jagged mountains cut through the clouds. Glowing blue butterflies wisp their way over and under dense foliage, and Merlin can hear water whispering somewhere nearby.
But the most dominating feature of the land isn't the trees, the earth, the sky, or the water; it is the stones. Dotted here and there are towering formations of standing stones, single or grouped in formation, upright or leaning against one another, and it is around these that the magic thrums the strongest.
A Land of Standing Stones and...
Rrrrrribbit.
- warlockEmrys began pestering swordKeeper –
WE: Freya, do you know why my Land is overrun by frogs?
SK: Probably because you're our Space player. Didn't your sprite explain anything?
WE: My sprite is half umbrella, half hat. It makes these soft flapping noises and shows what I think is agitation sometimes by opening and closing very quickly. I don't think it can properly talk.
SK: You know those are supposed to be guides for us. Why on earth would you sabotage yourself that way? Gwaine I almost understand, but you, Merlin?
WE: The prototyping makes the monsters more powerful as well. I was trying to sabotage them, not myself.
WE: Space player and frogs? Please.
SK: I trust you remember what I told you about the game giving us each a title – one part a class, one an aspect.
SK: And that I didn't know what these titles were just yet, that we'd each have to discover them by exploring the lands of the game.
SK: I do know a few key markers of some of the titles and aspects, though, and some of the clearest are for Space.
SK: You're going to use the machine I'm about to place outside your home to breed the frogs.
WE: Beg pardon?
SK: It's all right Merlin.
SK: Just catch the frogs and create time paradoxes.
SK: I'm sure you'll work it out.
SK: As you go the frogs will become more and more...special.
SK: Eventually you'll have a Genesis frog.
SK: You'll know it when you see it.
SK: Don't stop there.
SK: We don't want the Genesis frog. That creates an entirely new world. Another session from Earth is taking care of that. It's not our task.
SK: We want, for lack of a better term, a ReGenesis frog. An Albion frog.
SK: We're going to create a new Albion.
WE: Wait.
WE: You're saying that our world depends on the creation of a special frog.
WE: Are you quite sure I haven't gone mad, and this isn't the result of a wildly detailed hallucination?
SK: I am quite sure.
WE: All right, then. A regenesis frog it is.
WE: Just don't tell Arthur.
WE: I don't think he'd ever stop laughing at me.
- warlockEmrys ceased pestering swordKeeper –
Thanks to the hints Freya drops, Merlin looks forward to falling asleep in the Medium for the first time. All the same, he is so busy working out how paradox frog-cloning works, building up Arthur's tower to reach new gates, exploring as much of his Land as he possibly can, and flambéing mutant imps and ogres (his magic makes it almost too easy) that it is many, many hours before he can be convinced to take a break. He wards a room of his own ramshackle house-tower against intruders and all but collapses into bed.
It's like blinking.
He opens his eyes, feeling wholly refreshed, and realizes that he is not where he fell asleep. The furnishings are similar, but everything seems to have been repainted and reupholstered in deep shades of blue and trimmed in gold. Merlin sits up, looks toward an arched, open window which is nothing like what his own home bears, and he sees her for the first time in so many long years.
Freya is perched on his windowsill, dressed in gold and smiling gently at him.
Her face had faded in his memory, along with the faces of everyone else he held dear in Camelot, but seeing it again reminds Merlin almost violently of how he had once regarded her, and he feels his heart pulsing in his throat. He can't speak around it.
He doesn't have to.
Freya floats over to him, takes his hands in hers, and guides him toward the window.
"Come – let me show you."
And Merlin doesn't know if it's because of the freedom of flight or the towers so brilliant they almost glow or just the feel of Freya's hand in his, but it's not long before he decides that Prospit is perhaps the most wonderful place he has ever seen.
"I have something for you."
Freya produces something like a glowing glass orb, filled with wisps of swirling fog and light. She holds it as though it is fragile, and precious, and so Merlin takes it very carefully from her hands. It is surprisingly warm and heavy, and in it he feels life.
"What is it?"
"All the souls of Albion."
Merlin clutches the orb closer.
"Gaius? Kilgharrah?" he entreats, hardly daring hope. Freya smiles warmly.
"Among many others. We will be creating the land, but the people must come from somewhere. Normally this is also among the duties of the Hero of Space. Like Excalibur, I merely kept it safe for a while."
"Thank you."
"Not at all, Merlin."
They sit in silence for a while, both watching clouds pass overhead, Merlin cradling a million ancient souls in his arms.
"Freya?" he asks suddenly, "how will I know what to do? How to release them, when the time is right?"
"You will know, because it is what you were always meant to do. You will know here," she presses her fingertips over his heart, "because Albion will tell you."
Merlin keeps the orb of souls safe and hopes Freya is right.
Being openly known as the most powerful warlock of all time by all of his oldest friends proves to have some interesting side effects for Merlin. For the most part, they seem to come to the near-universal consensus that should anything strange or obliquely magical happen to or around them, Merlin is the man to ask, because of course "most powerful" must necessarily equate to "most knowledgeable."
- forgeFire began pestering warlockEmrys –
FF: merlin I just fought a bunch of imps
FF: just when I was growing tired and short of breath
FF: they started choking on air
FF: and suddenly I was fine
FF: did you do something somehow?
WE: No, I didn't. Isn't Gwen your server player? Ask her if she noticed anything, or ask Freya if that seems familiar.
WE: She tends to know what's going on.
- kingsHand began pestering warlockEmrys –
KH: Merlin, are you busy?
KH: I have an inquiry.
WE: Not terribly.
WE: I can chase down frogs and type at the same time.
WE: Is something wrong?
KH: I'm not sure if "wrong" is quite the word for it.
KH: Strange, certainly.
KH: Unless you have an explanation of course.
KH: You see, earlier today I made a somewhat careless mistake.
KH: One of the unicorn imps gored my left thigh with its horn.
WE: I'm going to kill Gwaine. How did he get a unicorn to prototype?
KH: I can only conclude that he managed it simply by being Gwaine.
KH: All the same, I dispatched the imp and found a safe place to dress the wound and rest.
KH: That was several hours ago.
KH: Just recently I unwrapped the wound to more thoroughly clean and redress it, only to find no wound at all.
KH: As far as I know, the first dressings used had no special properties, nor did I pair it with any kind of tincture or poultice.
KH: I don't suppose you had any knowledge of these events, and therefore could not have performed magic from a distance – I similarly doubt any of our other magic-users were aware of my plight.
WE: No, it wasn't me, and it probably wasn't them.
WE: I suggest talking to Freya about this.
WE: It sounds like something we discussed before, about the game giving us all titles and strange abilities along with them.
WE: Perhaps yours is something to do with healing?
KH: I will do so. Thank you, Merlin. Good luck with...whatever it is you are doing.
- onceandFutureking began pestering warlockEmrys –
OF: merlin
OF: as your king I order you
OF: stop this instant.
WE: Stop what?
OF: you know perfectly well what.
OF: I will not be coddled in this manner.
OF: I am perfectly capable of defending myself, having managed for twenty years before you even turned up.
WE: I don't understand.
WE: What's got your royal pants in a twist?
OF: MAGIC, MERLIN
OF: stop now!
OF: I know you can see me at times, considering the fact that my tower has actually reached the third gateway and continues to grow
OF: I know for a fact, therefore, that all these...mishaps...are your fault
OF: cliffs crumbling under ogres
OF: stones falling on top of imps
OF: that EXTREMELY FORTUITIOUS flash of lightning that JUST SO HAPPENED to strike a particularly tall monster while I stood, unharmed, not five feet in front of it
OF: don't deny it merlin
OF: this has your name scrawled all over it, as they say.
WE: What's your title?
OF: don't change the subject, you know perfectly well all my titles from life, death, prophecy and more.
WE: No, your game title.
WE: Mage of Space, for instance.
WE: Except that's not you, that's me.
WE: I think Freya mentioned our session being something odd and special because we've got enough players for a full set yet the master classes still came out.
WE: So I rather expect you're the Lord of Something, but I don't know what.
WE: Magic had better not be an aspect, and if it is it had better not be yours.
OF: I know I've somehow given you the impression that I missed your nonsensical prattle, but this is ridiculous
OF: so stop it
OF: and swear you'll stop being so utterly overprotective
OF: in all honesty, I admit I can...appreciate someone – anyone – having my back in a fight
OF: I'm a knight
OF: I understand the value of teamwork, especially in battle
OF: but there's a difference between support and smothering
OF: and I feel you have crossed this line in this game.
WE: Arthur, calm down and pause a moment.
WE: It's not me.
OF: of course it's you, it's always been you.
OF: we covered this years ago.
WE: Just ignore all that for a while and go on a quest. Find out your game title – ask those strange red lizards that run around your world. They're called consorts for some reason, and if you can dig through their riddles and ramblings sometimes they'll drop useful information. Put it together, then talk to Freya about it.
WE: Tell me when you've got everything figured out.
WE: I think it'll likely answer all your questions.
- bearArms began pestering warlockEmrys –
BA: Merlin, we have a problem...
BA: there's two of Gwaine.
WE: Oh no.
WE: What happened?
BA: One of them claims to have come back in time.
BA: He has no idea how or why, and says it's never happened before now.
BA: I'm on his world with him, trying to figure out how to fix it.
WE: Better contact Freya.
- swordKeeper began pestering warlockEmrys –
SK: Merlin, dear, I don't know everything about the game. Far from it, in fact. Please stop sending the knights to me.
"He really is trying, you know."
Merlin tears his gaze away from a Skaian cloud to look at Gwen. It had been a long time since the Queen and the warlock – the two former servants of Camelot – had been able to sit together either in peace or in idle chatter, and it is one of the many things Merlin had come to appreciate about dreaming on Prospit.
"Mordred," Gwen elaborates, tilting her head slightly to indicate the former druid, perched several levels above them and peering intently at the clouds drifting overhead.
"He killed Arthur."
"And Arthur killed him. I'm not saying that the situation is perfect, but in Avalon, long before any of this started, we all reached a sort of understanding. Mordred, Morgause...even Morgana. Arthur and I worked out a treaty with them. Our New Albion will have peace between Camelot and the Isle of the Blessed."
"What of the throne? I thought Morgana desired that above all else. What's to stop her from turning on us?"
Gwen leans against a golden balustrade and traces the elaborate carvings there.
"Morgana's mind had been...damaged. By her fear, her suffering. Being at peace, in Avalon, healed her to a great extent. In addition, she still looks up to Morgause, even in her own independence and power. So when Morgause chose to accept Arthur's proposal of peace and the return of the Old Religion to respect and a treaty of friendship, it didn't take too long for Morgana to accept the same. She and her sister will be High Priestesses and effectively rule over those of magic on the Isle. Arthur and I will have Camelot. And Mordred has sworn himself to us."
"Again," Merlin can't help but point out.
"Again," Gwen agrees, layering more meaning into the word.
"He betrayed us once."
"For love, and pain. He will not make the same decisions again. Besides, even if he is ever tempted...he will have you to guide him, will he not?"
Merlin understands, and he takes a deep breath. It is hard, so hard, to deny Gwen anything; once she asks, his response is almost a foregone conclusion.
"I will do my best, my lady."
Unfortunately, even being an abnormal session with two master classes and the goal of a ReGenesis frog doesn't exempt them from the pressure of a time limit. The Reckoning is coming faster than comfort allows, and Merlin has only just managed to breed a load of rainbow-colored frogs that sort of shimmer around the edges like a heat mirage. He is getting closer, but it's still not enough.
He needs help.
Thankfully, Morgause and Morgana (and there's an odd thought, he thinks) somehow combined their natural magic with the game's strange process of alchemy to create a series of portals linking all twelve worlds. Though most of them are too busy to go visiting, the thought that they can do so at any time is a comforting one and, in this case, very helpful.
Leon has, with his usual efficiency, already completed the tasks set him by the Land of Firebirds and Fletching, and so the Knight of Life willingly comes to Merlin's aid. He raises an eyebrow at the odd request Merlin makes of him, but sets about interfering with the lives of the local frog population with the same meticulous determination that had characterized his career, and so between them they make good progress. The addition of Percival to the team is also a welcome one; as a Rogue of Time, his presence tends to stretch the hours they have available, and on occasion he even manages to send one or both of his companions back a short temporal distance, creating an extra set of hands for half an hour at a time.
They take turns operating the cloning machine. Leon shows a surprising skill with working machinery once shown how, and Percival possesses something of an instinct for temporal matters, so it isn't as though Merlin was irreplaceable in that position. Creating the frog might be Merlin's duty in the end, but he wishes to do more than spin dials and press buttons hour after hour. Any opportunity to wander about his land and revel in the magic that saturates it is welcome.
So for a long while he meanders through forests and clambers beside streams, rests in rings of stone and stands in the spray of waterfalls, catching and releasing every interesting frog he comes across, sending a brief message back to whomever mans the cloning station each time he does so. Occasionally some indescribable mutated creature of stone and crystal attempts to waylay him, but the fights are generally short and honestly rather one-sided – Merlin may not have gotten much intensive practice in during his fifteen-hundred year wait, but he is certainly making up for that now.
Between his calm self-confidence in the face of the game's dangers, the frankly benign nature of his task, and the fact that he'd somehow failed to do so for centuries on end, dying is the last thing he expects to do that day.
Perhaps he should have seen the signs, but it has been a long time since he last ferreted out plots and assassins, and even then they had rarely if ever been directed against him. If the creatures attacking him do so with slightly greater frequency and ferocity, tiring him as he travels, it is because he has ventured into unexplored territory, where the forest grows thicker and the waters wider and the stones more imposing than yet before. If the creatures seem smaller, faster, more cunning, they are a different variety, made so by a mere chance of prototyping. If one knocks him staggering and draws a little blood with a swipe of one umbrella-frame wing, and then requires two quick blasts of lightning to shatter into grist and granite, it is because he hadn't been paying attention and his aim was a little off.
He stops for a moment to send a message warning Percival and Leon of the darker portions of his world, then forges on.
It is chance that brings him to the spire, or perhaps destiny, and he has been deep in the darkening woods too long to deny himself the opportunity offered by a stone ramp spiraling up into the sky.
Whatever he expects to see at the summit, it is not a bed of cracked black stone, framed by a tall post at each corner and decorated by a swirling white sigil. Merlin paces around the slab, touches it, feels the magic hum soothing and warm beneath his fingers. Comforted by this, he sits down upon it and looks out over the land, watching the light of Skaia slowly fade toward the western edge of his world. He had not realized it had gotten so late.
He does not realize that he sits carelessly with his back to the ramp's entrance to the summit. Rendered sleepy and distracted by the lullaby magic beneath him and the strange, beautiful, raw landscape before him, he does not hear the stealthy steps approaching, nor sense the danger of a sharp knife and a cold, triumphant gaze.
Perhaps it is chance, or maybe destiny, but as the sky above seeps from Skaia-blue to Void-black Merlin's blood flows across his quest bed from a deep gash across his throat, and the Archagent of Derse returns to the Black Queen for a new assignment – but Merlin is not the only one to have made careless errors in that encounter, and his are the less damning to the victory of his side in the war.
It is not long before Leon and Percival notice the dark sky blaze with brilliant white and sapphire light. Though nominally confident enough in their warlock's abilities, they are nevertheless unsettled by the sight, and so they find themselves following streams of blue butterflies toward a dark spire deep in the forest.
Merlin returns to the Land of Standing Stones and Frogs in the morning, confused and anxious, garbed in black and grey and the swirling white sigil, only to interrupt his own funeral. Arthur, who had rushed from his own land and sat by his best friend's body for hours in a later-embarrassing state of numb, choking tears, nearly kills him again.
For Merlin, the most surprising part of the whole fiasco is not his ascension or all that it entails, but the fact that he could die to begin with. Centuries of immortality had taught him that he couldn't be killed – even if he was taken by surprise, even if fate didn't or couldn't avert a blow, he tended to simply survive anything and everything. On occasion he might walk off a little worse for the wear, but he had never felt life seep out of him, never choked and wheezed his awareness away through a gaping, blood-clogged windpipe.
He later feels a little stupid for not wondering beforehand if the game might have changed that one aspect of his being. After all, it had already proved itself to have a strange, unnatural power over both those of the living and those who are not: technically, none of his friends have been dead since they entered the Medium.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU'RE A GOD NOW?"
"God Tier, Arthur, God Tier..."
"WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE? AND WHY IS YOUR—YOUR DEAD BODY LAYING THERE?"
"Um, yes, frankly that's a little disturbing for me as well. I suppose you might as well go on and...get rid of it?"
"MERLIN!"
Gwaine, as it turns out, already knows all about God Tiers. Coming from the Land of Quests and Mead, it makes sense that sooner or later one of his half-drunken consorts would have sent him off to find something called a Quest Bed, with instructions to die on it as bravely as possible. For a man with a reputation as a lackadaisical drunk and a born troublemaker, Gwaine had never been stupid; he had probably pieced together other rumors and tavern hear-say and worked out that dying there meant something very special happening.
He claims to have reached God Tier ages ago. He also mentions not caring much for the outfit. Merlin thinks he can understand just a bit; the odd forked cut of his tunic hem bewilders him, and it's taken a while to get used to the hood and short cape, and he's never really gone for wearing so much black as it reminds him too much, perhaps, of Morgana after her fall. Then again, it's not really that bad...
As it turns out, not every class receives the same uniform upon achieving God Hood. And, yes, Bard of Void really is that bad.
Gwaine shows them. Gwen and Freya blush, Percival and Elyan burst into uproarious laughter, and Arthur looks torn between joining them and telling Gwaine off for indecency in front of a pair of ladies (one of whom is Arthur's wife, thus worsening the crime). Leon and Lancelot are less divided on the matter. And Merlin stands shocked and a little selfishly relieved, because maybe the oddly-cut hem and longish hood and occasionally annoying cape and all that black where he prefers color aren't so bad after all.
At least he doesn't look like a blue-garbed clown with a disturbing codpiece.
Merlin takes full advantage of the fact that so many had come to Lossaf to mourn him – including Mordred, to his surprise and a following touch of shame – and sets them to frog-catching. Arthur is, true to form, first incredulous and then inordinately amused by the thought of Merlin chasing frogs through the woods all day, but pitches in willingly enough. In fact, Merlin thinks him rather enthusiastic about the prospect, as much as he tries to hide it, and wonders if Arthur is having more fun than he wants to let on.
For Merlin's part, he discovers some very useful qualities in being a fully-fledged Mage of Space. For the first thing, he finds he can teleport, quick and clean and without fuss. Instant, long-distance travel using magic had always been too conspicuous and disrupting for his tastes; the whirlwind involved could be neither contained nor negated, and tended to draw too much attention for a man who had spent the vast majority of his inordinately long life in hiding.
Later he will admit that he might have somewhat abused his new ability while "trying it out," popping here and there when he could simply have walked.
It's almost too amusing not to.
With so many extra hands and a warlock who could now make a habit of zapping himself halfway across the world and back in seconds should the mood strike him, the ReGenesis frog is completed in only a few short hours. It is stored, the Forge of Worlds is stoked, and Merlin feels, for the first time in such a very long time, free to do as he will.
The Land of Rays and Castles is more magnificent in person than he ever imagined.
Slowly, Merlin and Mordred learn to converse in a manner which approaches normalcy. Things never were truly at ease between them, and perhaps they never will be. Long ago, they were a boy longing for approval from a legend of his people yet receiving nothing but hesitation at best and betrayal at worst, and a young man bound by his own secrets and weighted down by dark visions he could not guess how to prevent. Now they are free of that first destiny, and perhaps they have even come to understand each other, if only a little, but that does not make acceptance easy.
They can only step cautiously, blindly, about one another, each trusting, praying, that the other is not about to stab him in the back, yet somehow confident, almost against his will, that such will never again come to pass.
Arthur and the Knights know the marks of an assassination when they see them, and Merlin's death had been neither a clumsy accident nor the brutal attack of a monster. He had been taken by surprise, cut quick and clean and fatally, and it was only a twist of fate that saved him in the end.
The only questions then, were who and why?
For a time, Morgause and/or Morgana are suspect. Gwaine in particular has never quite managed full forgiveness, and so he is most certain of Morgana's guilt especially. After all, who is to say she does not harbor much the same sort of ill-will for the man who haunted her nightmares and brought her doom?
Then Gwen is targeted.
This time, the assassin is far less clever, far less subtle. In fact, he proves to be so inept and his method of operation so distinctly different that when the dust has settled and the smoke has cleared, they have to acknowledge that the two attempts are only connected either by coincidence or by a higher power.
The perpetrator, this time at least, is a tiny black Carapacian wearing a wonky, oversized version of Merlin's prototyped hat.
He tried to create an incendiary device using three large barrels of ale lashed together.
He made the colossal mistake of targeting Camelot's greatest Queen while the most powerful warlock of all time was helping her arrange matters for the Reckoning.
There's not much left of the assassin by the time Arthur arrives.
"The Black Queen of Derse," he pronounces after identifying the remains as a Dersite agent of some sort. "She's been getting pretty aggressive towards us lately. Fortunately, the general populace has been willing to hide us while we're awake, but...well, I didn't think she'd go this far."
Apparently she is indeed willing to go so far...and farther yet.
Morgana's Dersite dream-self has a cripplingly close call with yet another agent, and this is the last straw for both she and Morgause. The sisters make it known that they are pursuing their God Tiers as insurance, state that the other Derse dreamers, at the very least, would be wise to consider the same, and proceed to more or less ritualistically sacrifice each other on their respective Quest Beds.
Then Percival finds Mordred's dead dream-body on Prospit and, not minutes later, a massive Dersite assassin looming over Freya's sleeping form, and there is something of a rush to ascend before the Black Queen can systematically off them all, as she seems to be attempting. After all, it's hard to die a heroic death by being snuck up on and stabbed in the back, and all notoriety gained before their entrance into the game was wiped clear alongside their status as dead and undying beings.
When the frenzy passes and everyone is garbed in colorful and occasionally unlikely clothes (the sight of Lancelot in puffy brown-and-red shorts and white tights makes even ever-sympathetic Merlin laugh), they make the mistake of allowing themselves to relax. Nearly every world-quest is done save the confrontation of the Denizens, and all with time to spare before the Reckoning. They are collectively safe from any surprise form of death and collectively powerful enough to fight off any direct attack.
Or so they believe, until the Black Queen does the truly unexpected.
She moves against them herself.
Their master classes, their own King and Queen, nearly fall to her. They might well have done so if not for Merlin's timely and completely happenstance arrival on the Land of Wings and Spires, and even then the battle is close. There is no time to call for help, every possibility of dying a heroic death as each one seeks to protect the others, and the Ring of Orbs Twelvefold renders the Black Queen terrifyingly powerful – in spite of Merlin's saboteur work of prototyping and Gwaine's capriciously cheerful treatment of the same.
In the end, the Black Queen is forced to retreat to lick her wounds, and the Muse of Hope, Lord of Light, and Mage of Space collapse in the ruins of what was once a beautiful white stone tower, where they remain until the Knight of Life, hurriedly contacted, comes to their aid. With phoenix-fletched quarrels enhancing his own game-given gifts, he heals them of their injuries, yet it is a somber process, for all three were somewhere on the verge of dying and had no guarantee their status as God Tiers would have protected them.
They have never doubted their victory so much until that moment, and for the first time since the start of the game, every player is called together in conference.
Morgana sees Doom for them all, and Morgause guides the power of her sister's Mind to instead see the circumventing of it.
To defeat the Black Queen, they need the help, or at least the power, of their Denizens.
To create their new Albion, they need their Denizens' deaths.
Meeting, bargaining with, and fighting one's Denizen is strictly a solo quest. In addition, their spare time before the Reckoning, once so comfortable, suddenly seems too short, too close.
Powerful opponents or no, they have no choice but to split up.
Merlin returns to his land and teleports to the uppermost level of his swaying tower-home, leagues in the sky. There, he stares at the pulsing, shifting light of his final gate. He breathes in deep, feels the magic of the land so far below him, and exhales his anxieties and expectations into the wind.
Then he leaps up into the light, and tumbles out far, far below the surface of his world, in the roots of the very mountains, the roots of the magic itself.
There Emrys meets Echidna, and the two regard each other as solemn equals.
The next time they meet the Black Queen in battle, she is not so fortunate. They are all together, better armed, more powerful, and quite determined to fight as allies despite their past differences.
Merlin himself must admit to taking some satisfaction in pulverizing her with magic from his new (and uncommonly sharp) white staff.
And thereafter came the Reckoning.
After losing Camelot so many centuries ago, Merlin had done his best to avoid war. Occasionally it couldn't be helped – battles and skirmishes have a way of simply not caring just what tiny, out-of-the-way settlements they sweep through and decimate, and more than once he found himself forced by circumstance to defend himself and those few innocents he could reach in time. Still, every time the crown or parliament or what have you called for conscription or draft, Merlin found a way to duck out, usually by altering his age and forging a new identity as a cantankerous old goat obviously far too old to fight for whatever current monarch-who-was-not-Arthur that needed young men to do battle. If he were to spend any time on a battlefield by choice, he preferred to do so in the aftermath, seeking out and quietly aiding any survivors he could find, no matter their country of origin.
Albion holds his most absolute loyalty, the loyalty which had once driven him to fight, even to kill, in the name of a nation, an ideal. And while one may argue that Albion had eventually become England, that the two were therefore one and the same, centuries of watching waves of invaders and outsiders settle and become natives and the names and borders of land and language shift had really put into perspective just how little truly made one "English" in the very long run. Eventually it reached the point where Merlin metaphorically threw his hands into the air and decided it was people he would defend, not a single country, and that wouldn't change unless Albion truly rose again.
Stepping out onto a battlefield and knowing it was to fight, to deal death and destruction to one side while shielding and aiding another, is therefore a slightly surreal experience.
Each and every one of his companions, by contrast, seems to take the promise of what is to come in stride, though Freya takes a moment to slip a hand into his and squeeze, either seeking or giving reassurance. Merlin squeezes back and makes a mental note to keep her well back of the fighting; her roles as both Lady of the Lake and Sylph of Heart are those of caretakers and helpers, and though she has had a long time to heal and grow past the dark memories of her cursed days he does not wish her to relive them by being forced to kill yet again.
Not if he can help it.
Arthur strides forward, stopping just ahead of the line they have almost subconsciously assembled, and looks out over the chessboard-patterned field. Meteors burn overhead, crashing into the ground with such force that it trembles even where the players stand, miles away from most of the impact zones. Warships growl across the sky, light and dark, exchanging fire, and the sharp smell of burning earth and metal fills the air.
And despite their horrific surroundings, Arthur has never looked more regal.
He no longer wears his yellow-orange Lord attire, having exchanged it for chainmail and armor gifted to him by Cetus, and the metal seems to capture light and reflect it back magnified into a soft, encompassing glow. Excalibur blazes with a slightly stronger light, shimmering like a tightly controlled fire, as though its true intensity is half-veiled, waiting to be unleashed.
He turns, faces them, and as his gaze drifts down their staggered line, Merlin follows it.
Morgause and Morgana stand together at the far end, perhaps a little removed from the rest despite being part of the group. Unlike Arthur, they wear their God Tier uniforms stubbornly, like badges of pride, though the teal skirt and long olive green tunic seem strange on women who preferred stronger colors and more refined styles in life. They hold their heads high and maintain calm expressions, though both offer the Once and Future King solemn nods as he looks to them.
Leon is next, and he has fit his chainmail into his own God Tier uniform, placing the beige shirt over it like a hauberk and wearing the brown hood and cloak as proudly as though it were Camelot red. Though he also carries a sword at his belt, his hands are full of a beautifully carved crossbow of reddish wood, and the slight shimmer around it tells Merlin that it is in some way enchanted. The fact that Leon does not seem to have a quiver suggests just how.
Lancelot and Percival stand together, calm and serious and also outfitted in mail, though both have kept their hoods and capes and Percival seems to have taken something of a liking to the trousers, boots and armguards of the Rogue class. Together, they remind Merlin of their days as knights of Camelot, for Lancelot's cape is that same familiar blood-crimson and Percival's is only a few shades darker, so that Merlin could almost fool himself into thinking it the same color darkened by damp, and it is only the cut and shape of each which belies the illusion.
Gwaine, thankfully, seems to have borrowed nothing from his own Bard outfit, though his mail and sword occasionally flash and glimmer, reflecting the light of Arthur's blade and armor into the shadows cast by other bodies. One who allows the destruction of or through Void, Merlin remembers hearing an inebriated and slightly cross-eyed salamander mumble once, though admittedly it had been far more halting and slurred, and the corner of his mouth quirks slightly at the memory. Truthfully, he is also somewhat relieved that Gwaine has consented to using a sword in this battle at all; through most of the game he handicapped himself by using nothing but an iron fire poker, claiming it made fights more interesting. Then again, the knight is a daredevil, not a complete idiot.
Gwen stands upright and determined between Gwaine and Elyan, shorter than the surrounding men yet as regal and eye-drawing in the graceful cream hood and robes of the Muse as she ever was dressed in richly colored fabrics and crowned by jewels. She is armed with a sword, one somewhat narrower than the others but no less deadly. Merlin sees her catch Arthur's eye, and they share a look which is all intense promise and no weakening doubt. He contributes silently to that promise: if there is ever an opportunity in the battle to save one for the sake of the other, he will not hesitate.
He refuses to fail either one of them again.
Elyan seems to be promising much the same if the set of his eyes and the firm nod he gives Arthur are any indication. As with the other Knights, he has somehow procured chainmail and armor and a sword, and like Gwaine he has adopted nothing from the clothing afforded him by the game. Then again, perhaps he finds that being a Thief, even a Thief of Breath, isn't such a matter of pride after all.
The awareness of someone's gaze resting on him draws Merlin's eyes to Mordred before Arthur's move on from Elyan. The Heir of Rage nods solemnly to him, almost a bow in miniature, before turning his full attention back to their King and leader.
You have my oath, Emrys, is all he says, but Merlin understands.
...thank you.
And then Arthur is looking at Freya, and then at Merlin himself.
Merlin does his best to look as solemn and serious as the others, even when he suddenly realizes that his and Freya's hands are still entwined. Arthur glances there briefly, returning his eyes to Merlin's face with a sarcastically quirked brow. Merlin raises his own in reply before he can stop himself. After all, it's not as though Arthur didn't already know about the pair of them from various other sources, and there are better times to tease an old friend about such matters than just before a great battle.
Fortunately Arthur seems to realize this as well, and after yet another exchange of nods and the quick flash of a spontaneous, unstoppable grin from Merlin, he addresses the group as a whole.
Time beyond them seems to slow to a crawl, stolen for their use, and they know they have Percival to thank. Nevertheless, Arthur's speech is brief and to the point.
"We all know what's out there: the Black King. We may have defeated his Queen, but he has defeated Prospit's army and forced the surrender of the White Monarchs. This will not be easy. Nevertheless, I have faith...in all of us. Look at who we are!
"Two High Priestesses of the Old Religion! Six brave Knights of Camelot, one of whom is trained in magic! The greatest Queen Camelot has ever had, who kept the kingdom strong and at peace after my own death. The Lady of the Lake. The Once and Future King. Oh, and the most powerful warlock of any age, if my sources are correct.
"We have the collective strength to defeat him, if only we can fight together, as one. So I can only ask: are you with me?"
The answer is apparent in a broad range of sharp grins and soft smiles, nods and bows and oaths unspoken but through gesture – they almost need not reply verbally, but do so anyhow. Arthur's eyes are beaming, though his face remains stoic. He turns, draws Excalibur, and holds it tight in one gloved fist.
"Together, then, we go to battle."
The Black King towers over them, so immense he might almost have used Camelot as a dollhouse, and he is much the same sort of hideous and confusing conglomeration of prototyping as his queen had been. Merlin can just make out the form of a flat cap speared by a long spiral horn atop the behemoth's head, and though it is hard to tell with something so large he thinks the Black King just might be swaying as though lightly inebriated.
If so, it certainly does nothing to impair his speed, or his aim.
The Battle is a confused blur. Thankfully the bulk of the army is kept well clear of the conflict by the legions of consorts Arthur gathered and trained for battle, and so they don't have to worry about smaller pieces sneaking up on them, even as the hours of Reckoning tick down and meteors pepper the Battlefield.
Merlin saves Morgause and is saved by Morgana in turn. He glimpses Gwaine and Percival covering Freya as she casts shielding spell after shielding spell, her face fiercely determined. Minutes later Gwaine is at the forefront of battle instead, cutting a path open through the Black King's guard for Arthur's blazing sword to follow, and Leon has dropped back with Percival, firing quarrel after quarrel in a never-ending stream. Lancelot and Elyan flank Gwen protectively.
Merlin calls lightning from the sky, spears of rock from the ground, fire from the ether. He blasts the Black King with pure power from the Quill Echidna, upon her death, willingly granted him as a staff and a collection of her own raw strength. For the first time the Black King does not sway so much as he staggers. Merlin's heart leaps and he darts forward, closer so as not to risk hitting his friends and allies, preparing another blow...
In an instant, he is spinning through the air, out of breath but with the faint blue flicker of a shield between him and what should have been a bone-shattering blow, and he barely hears Mordred's cry of rage, doesn't see the druid's sword bite deep into the Black King's elbow joint, but most definitely feels the pulse of raw, powerful magic released through said sword.
The Black King loses half of his left arm in an instant, and Merlin quickly regains the air knocked out of him.
Suddenly heartened, their efforts redouble. Morgause and Morgana spin their spells stronger, filling the air with illusions and falsehoods, subtle, powerful magic that confuses the Black King's mind and makes him flail at enemies which do not exist. Mordred and Arthur and Gwaine fight side-by-side, drawing the Black King's attention further from Elyan, Lancelot and Gwen, who sting at his every vulnerable point. There are two of Freya beside Percival now, and while the one shields the other calls up water into slicing spears and fluid whips. Leon's quarrels spark and catch flame, shrieking through the air to catch on chinks in the Black King's carapace, sucking and draining little bits of Life from him with each blow.
He writhes and swings his scepter wildly, but for every strike he lands there is a shield, and for every near miss there is retaliation.
And then Merlin misses. A lightning bolt intended for the Black King's chest instead strikes his scepter, cracking it. The Black King's entire figure shudders, flickers, almost seems to diminish to nothing for a moment, and then solidifies.
There is no need to shout an order, no need to explain or strategize. Almost as one, they turn their efforts towards the source of their enemy's power. It cracks again under a heavy blow from Mordred, and further by Lancelot's hand, and then Arthur is there, sword and armor shining like the sun, and the scepter shatters.
The meteors stop, the Black King shrinks to the size of a pawn, and one last shot from Leon strikes him in the heart, easily piercing the suddenly thinner carapace.
The defeated monarch hits the ground in the midst of an expansive silence.
Looking back, the game seems like a dream.
Merlin, dressed comfortably once more in blue and red and brown and a long cape finer than anything he has possessed before, sits on a parapet under a dusty lavender sky, the orb of souls in his lap and the sunrise casting its warm glow across his face. Camelot looks just the same as he remembers, save for one thing: it is empty and it is silent.
He holds the means to fixing that.
A quiet sound – a rustle, a footfall – behind him draws his attention. Freya is there, looking like a princess, and he gives her a brief smile before turning back to his contemplation of the world.
"You're up early," she comments, approaching and tucking herself against the low stone wall below and beside Merlin.
"I couldn't really sleep," he confesses, still cradling the orb as he once did Aithusa's egg, so long ago. "Been thinking."
"About?"
"The game. New Albion. All of this, really. I mean, what happens now?"
"Arthur and Guinevere rule over a golden Albion, as was always meant to be. You will advise them and aid them in magic. They will hold an alliance of peace and goodwill with the Priestesses of the Blessed Isle and with the Lake of Avalon, and the Knights of the Round Table will protect all. We all find our places...we live."
"But we were dead. Or most of us were. I was something that didn't quite count. What I mean is...all of these people...they're souls. Dead. Do they really have a place in life anymore? Won't this upset the balance?"
"The balance is already upset by the deaths and destruction of our old world. It is only the creation and population of the new which can repair it now. As for having a place...Avalon preserved them, and Magic gathered them together. We can only trust that everything that happens, every resurrection and rebirth, is meant to be."
"It will be good to see them again," Merlin says after a while. It is more a whisper than a statement, and once again more a confession than a remark. "Gaius and Kilgharrah, I mean. Part of me hopes for my parents as well, even though I've lived without them for so long. But if they do return...what about Arthur? Surely he deserves the same, yet if Uther and Ygraine come back, can Arthur and Gwen rule as they should? Would we see another Purge? I can't imagine who will return, who will not, and who can say whether anyone deserves it more than another? What if it all goes wrong?"
"Merlin," Freya interrupts, standing up and placing a hand across his. "Trust."
He quiets, and they watch the sun rise together until it has crested the dark fringe of trees beyond the city walls, burning the shadows from the sky and drawing a wash of pale blue across it, and deep within the earth magic stirs, expectant and hopeful.
And so the warlock takes a deep breath, drawing on all his courage and magic, and whispers the words that come to mind in that moment. The glass shell glows white, pulses like a heart, and then dissolves away, and for an instant the world is filled with pure, warm light, and for another instant as it fades there is silence still.
Then, somewhere far below, a dog barks. A child laughs. A pair of guards stroll out into the courtyard, muttering together as though it is any other day and nothing has changed, and slowly, Camelot awakens into its rebirth.
High on the ramparts of the castle, the warlock Emrys and the Lady of the Lake watch and know that, no matter what, all is right at last.