Fear of the Dark

Flickering candlelight shone around the darkened room, sending the shadows dancing. Though the night had fully fallen and darkness had filled the air, this one room was lit brighter than daylight, shining with the light of hundreds of candles. In addition to the candles perched on every available surface and hanging suspended from the ceiling, several magical orbs of light floated in the air around the room, casting an eerie mix of blue and orange light and sending the room into a kaleidoscope of colour.

Aside from the hundreds of sources of light, there really was not much else in the sparsely decorated room. Just a single bed and crouched on it, arms wrapped protectively around herself, a woman dressed in a ragged black dress.

Although she sat completely motionless, her limbs seemingly locked in place, her eyes darted restlessly around the room, taking in every detail, never stopping. They were lined with dark, livid shadows from lack of sleep and the skin around them was pale and unhealthy looking.

A sudden creaking interrupted the oppressive silence of the room and Morgana whipped round, knife in hand, tensed for an attack. Her defensive position relaxed slightly as she took in the man standing nervously in the corridor. He was dressed in the common clothes of the guards and seemed to pose no immediate threat. She fractionally lowered the knife and motioned for him to come in.

"My lady." His voice quavered slightly as he glanced around at the windowless room and the hundreds of pinpricks of light pushing the shadows into the far corners, around to the fierce, wild-looking woman before him.

"Mordred has arrived. He requested to see you." The guard waited for a reply and when he got none gave a slight cough. "Should I let him in?"

Silently, Morgana slid her knife back into its sheath and gave an almost imperceptible nod. Bowing low, the guard hurried out of the room, letting out a relieved breath as he did so. He was one of the lucky ones. Entering the Lady Morgana's room was one of the most dangerous things one of his fellow guards could do and that was including going head on with the armies of Camelot. If they hadn't been so terrified of the boy Mordred, most of the guards would have been content to just nail up the door and leave the room for good.

Passing him in the corridor was a small, cloaked figure and the guard instinctively flinched and pressed himself to the wall to make room. Ice blue eyes met his and held him in a look of cool indifference before the figure swept passed, towards the door the guard had just left. Mordred had arrived.

It took all the guard's power to stop himself sprinting away as fast as he could. Mordred may not be the leader of the rebels, but he was by far the most powerful and the most feared. Get on the wrong side of him and you wouldn't live to see another dawn. And he was fiercely protective over the Lady Morgana although no-one knew why.

Averting his eyes, the guard hurried away, glad to be away from the cursed place. It was the rumour around the camp that the Lady Morgana was haunted by demons. He had to admit from the feel of the room that he agreed.

"Morgana." Mordred slipped inside the room, pulling down the hood of his cloak and revealing his shadowed face. The face was very different to the scared little boy that had been smuggled out of Camelot by a group of loyal friends so many years ago. The cheekbones were harder and more defined, the face changed from a young boy into a young man. Even the eyes had changed. Though they were still the same piercing blue, they were no longer the eyes of a child. Something had ignited within them, some would say cruelty, some power and some a spark of insanity. Whatever it was this was someone to be feared.

But as he entered the room, Mordred seemed to lose his dangerous air and shrink back into something like the little boy he had been so many years ago. He and Morgana shared a special bond, he was the son she never had and she the mother he never knew.

They took care of each other and neither of them would ever let anything harm the other. That was why he hated seeing her in this state so much. Such a great and powerful sorceress, hiding, terrified in a guarded room. Hiding from a terror that no-one, not even he, understood.

"Morgana. The scouts have returned with good news. We move out tomorrow and by dusk we will have struck. By dawn tomorrow, Camelot will be ours. You must prepare to leave. We will need your power and when we have killed Arthur, you will sit on the throne of Camelot as queen."

For a second he thought she wasn't going to respond but then she stood up, drawing herself to her full height and looking much more like the Morgana he used to know. His presence in the room seemed to reassure her and give her strength.

"Good." Her voice seemed strong and self-assured but her eyes remained nervous, still restlessly flickering around the room. She walked over to Mordred and put her arm around him, reminding them both of the day they met. But unlike that day, Mordred could feel the slight tremble in her hand and the fear in her presence.

He lifted his hand and touched her cheek, stroking it in a gesture that was almost like love. And maybe it was, maybe even the evilest of people have someone they care about. "Morgana, what's wrong? Our last plan may not have worked but this time we are guaranteed to succeed. Nothing can stop us. What have you to be scared of?" He knew the answer even before she opened her mouth.

"It's him. He's there. He's always there. Watching me. Listening to our every move, our every plan. Whatever I do, he can always defeat me. I can't see him. I can't hear him. But I can sense him. In the shadows, waiting till I let my guard down. It's Emrys, Mordred. He won't leave me alone."

Mordred bit back a sigh and looked up into the eyes of the woman he saw as his mother. He would do anything to protect her, but this time there was nothing he could do. He couldn't fight something from Morgana's imagination. He couldn't fight a shadow.

"Emrys is dead Morgana. You know that." It was as if their positions had been reversed and she was the child, desperately looking for reassurance and he was the adult giving it.

"The druid elders have confirmed it. He's dead, dead and gone. No-one stands in our way. You shouldn't fear a dead man. He can't hurt you. He isn't here. He exists just in your imagination. He's not real, not anymore."

"But I saw him." Morgana's voice had dropped to a whisper and her hand tightened painfully on his arm. "He was there, in front of me. If you hadn't come and saved me he would have killed me, I know it. He's my doom Mordred, he always has been. I can't escape him. Not even when he's dead. He's always lurking in the shadows waiting for me. Every plan we make fails because of him. It's always him."

"Luck Morgana. Your brother has an annoying amount of good luck and that's the only reason he's managed to defeat us these past months. Chance ruins even the best laid plans. But that's all it is. Luck and chance, not the ghost of Emrys. You won Morgana, when he died and you still live. But if you let his memory haunt you like this then he will have won. Don't let yourself be beaten by a dead man."

Morgana smiled down at him and he saw some of her old confidence and power returning. Mordred smiled back but he was unsure if he really had managed to convince her. Not that it mattered. By tomorrow they would rule Camelot and after that, the whole of Albion. Then she would see that he had been right and there was nothing to be afraid of.

"I'll come for you in the morning. We ride at dawn." He slid the hood of his cloak back over his head, throwing his face back into shadow and slipped out of the door into the corridor beyond. Closing the door behind him, Morgana walked quietly back over to the bed and sat down, reassured by the flames of the candles.

Mordred was right. There was nothing to be scared of. By tomorrow she would have her rightful place on the throne and nothing could stop her. Emrys was dead. All the glimpses, the whispered words, the sights from the corner of her eye. They were all from her imagination. They weren't real. He wasn't real.

Laying her head back on her pillow she closed her eyes, grateful at the chance for sleep. There was nothing to be scared of. Nightmares were for the weak, naïve person she had been when she still didn't know the full extent of her power. The terrors that had haunted her in the night these past few weeks would disappear as soon as she crushed the weakness she had felt at closing her eyes and accepted that there was nothing haunting her in the shadows.

It was just as she was drifting in the strange place between consciousness and dreams that it happened. Just as she had managed to convince herself that everything was fine and that Mordred was right that she heard it. It was quiet, so quiet that had the room not been so silent she wouldn't have noticed it at all.

It was a laugh. A single low chuckle that echoed softly around the room and pierced straight through to her heart, sending a stab of fear to her soul. She knew that laugh. She knew that voice. It was him. He was here again.

In an instant Morgana was completely awake, knife in hand, staring wildly around the room, looking for the source of the sound. She couldn't find it. The flames of the candles lit up the whole room of the room but the very edges which were cast into shadow. And there was no-one there. She was completely alone.

Except she knew she wasn't. She could feel it. She could feel him, her doom once again, laughing at her futile attempts to persuade herself that he was dead and gone and that he would finally leave her alone. He would never leave her alone. She would never be rid of him as long as she lived.

For the rest of her life, Morgana slept with one eye open, in a room filled with light, constantly watching the shadows. To many it seemed like an irrational fear, scared of a person who was long dead, the imaginary ghost who existed only in her mind. But after they were defeated time and time again, the rumour grew and soon it was common knowledge that there was a curse upon all those who sought ill of Camelot and that those who tried to send harm in any form to that kingdom would be forever haunted by a demon who existed only in the darkness.

Even Mordred came to fear it. For all his power, even he couldn't destroy a shadow.

Morgana is brave. She is a highly skilled warrior and a master swordswoman (and whatever Arthur says, she did used to beat him back when they were young). She is a powerful sorceress and a priestess of the old religion. She does not fear her brother or his army or the castle in which she was raised and knows is almost impossible to breach. She does not fear battles and fighting where she fights mortal men with weapons of steel. She does not even fear fighting battles with other sorcerers, knowing she is the most powerful of all. There is only one thing she is truly scared of, the one thing that haunted her until the day she died.

Morgana Pendragon was scared of the dark.

It is not the darkness we fear. What we fear is what lurks within the shadows out of sight, the monster under the bed, the terror that we cannot see.

AN- Good? Bad? Review? Hug? I'll love you forever if you do.

PS- Merlin says thanks for all the hugs from last chapter. He is very pleased with all of you but he still won't talk to me. Probably because I killed him off in the first chapter and then proceeded to be mean to him the rest of the story but you never know. Maybe he just doesn't like me. He likes all of you though. Be honoured.