It was late at night, one long day's ride from Camelot. Merlin camped in the woods - far enough from the road for privacy, and near enough to make the resuming of his journey convenient when the sun rose. He made himself a small fire. He did this not because it was cold, but rather because Merlin had seen enough monsters in the dark to make him crave a little light for company. One might think of unpleasant things if one sat alone in the dark long enough. Things like magic-stealing doracha, for example. Yes, a little fire was a pleasant thing, provided it wasn't large enough to be seen from a distance and invite bandits.

Camping alone forces a person to be contemplative - a mindset Merlin was sometimes wont to carry too far. He wondered what he was heading into. He wondered if anyone could possibly be more woefully unprepared for a job than he was for this one. He wondered who Arthur had gotten to replace him. And then he laughed in spite of himself.

It had all begun less than a week earlier, when Gaius had brought Merlin a most peculiar message. It had arrived quietly, through a woman from a distant village. She, in turn, had received it from a Druid called Flam.

Scrawled neatly in the old tongue on a small, blue-gray piece of cloth, it read simply: "Emrys, the creatures that dwell by Harron's Sea have lost their shepherd. We await you."

Merlin had been baffled. But Gaius, surprisingly, had not. "Harron was an ancient seafarer who became the first king of Gedref."

Merlin had blinked at him. "Gedref?"

"I believe you are aware that Gedref has long hidden a sanctuary for creatures of pure magic. And that the sanctuary was guarded by a shepherd."

Merlin was startled. "Anhora... The old man?"

Gaius had nodded. "Ancient prophets foretold a day when 'the sacred beasts at Harron's Sea' would 'lose their shepherd'. The prophets promised that a new protector would be chosen for them - by Emrys."

For the next few days Merlin and Gaius had scoured almost every tome in the library for more details about this prophecy, but they had turned up little. The few references they had found all vaguely said the same things Gaius had already told him.

Should the messenger be trusted? Merlin had to admit to himself that, upon receiving the message, he sensed something inexplicable. He sensed that destiny expected him to leave Camelot.

And thus, Merlin had quit his job of over a decade, left most of his friends without saying goodbye, ridden hard from Camelot, and was now camped in a creepy wood near a deserted road.

The thing that unsettled him most was that outside of arriving at Gedref, he had no specific plans. Should he go to the north? The south? The seashore? The labyrinth? And he was doing this because someone supposedly would be waiting for him. Who? The Druids? And then, apparently, he was going to be hiring a shepherd.

How exactly was he to become this 'Emrys'?

The wind whispered in the trees. Merlin could feel the memory of the doracha at the edge of his consciousness, but he refused to allow it into his thoughts. He carefully filled his mind with better things. Princess Mithian's people held Gedref now. He wondered if she had been told of the unicorns. And the thought of the unicorn he had once met drove away the last lingering shadows in his mind.

Pondering unicorns and dark-haired princesses, he drifted off to sleep.