A/N: A bit of mild gore in this one, specifically the first couple of paragraphs. You have been warned.

Ch. 4

"The problem is, boy," said dead Jimbol, helping himself to a red apple – or what looked like an apple. But instead of crunching, when Jimbol bit into it, it squelched. Instead of juice running down his decaying skin, it was blood. "Is that for all this talk of bringing magic back to the land, you're doing a piss poor job of it. You need your kingy to do it but you've gone and made him hate magic. What's worse, he's fragile as a little lamb. Armor and swords don't make a man immortal, and there's worse things than love potions and questing beasts out there."

Jimbol spat out a wad of bloody apple. It landed at Merlin's feet, lumpy and flesh-like and pulsating.

It wasn't an apple.

Jimbol tapped the not-apple against his balding head. "You should be knowing things, lad. It should be coming to you, clear as day." He shrugged, and said around another sloppy, smacking bite, "S'not your fault, I suppose, not with them magic chains on. But, still, really." He gave Merlin a disgusted look, then shook his head at the not-apple. "Fine piece of work he is, right? Most powerful warlock, and little chains are stifling him. He escapes with the snap of his fingers and still needs his little kingy to go rescue him. And what does that do? Puts his little kingy and his little knight in the wrong place at the worst possible time."

Merlin opened his mouth to demand what Jimbol was talking about, why he felt so wrong, what was going on. All that came out was a choked croak, like the chains had stifled his voice along with his magic.

"You're a wreck, boy," Jimbol went on. "A wreck and a mess and not much use to your kingy. The man that was this body did a fine job of it. All you can do is watch. Watch while I bleed one of your little friends dry." He winked at Merlin. "Care to choose which it'll be?"

There was a scream. Arthur. No, Gwaine. No, it was Arthur, it was... Jimbol took a bite of not-apple, then he laughed, blood spraying from his mouth.

Merlin snapped upright with a gasp that caught in his lungs, choking him. He coughed until he thought his ribs would collapse, but when a mailed arm slid across his shoulders, Merlin flinched violently away.

"Merlin. Merlin! Merlin, it's all right. It's me, it's Arthur. Listen to me, you need to breathe. Just slow down and focus on breathing."

The arm returned, but the familiarity of the voice made it welcome. Merlin felt himself pulled against Arthur's chest where the pattern of the king's own breathing gave Merlin's lungs a rhythm they could follow. The wooden head of a water skin was pressed to his lips and he took the liquid like he hadn't had any for days.

"Better?" Arthur asked when the flask was pulled away.

Merlin nodded. "Better."

"Good. Because if you die after all the work I put into rescuing you I will follow and drag you back to the world of the living... by your ear. Understood?"

Merlin managed a small smile. "Don't you mean... all the work you and Gwaine... put into rescuing... me?" It was difficult to talk with lungs still hungry for air. But he no longer felt like he was dying, and that was what mattered.

Arthur arranged the single, flat pillow against the headboard and eased Merlin against it. Merlin wasn't the only one picking up a few healing tricks from Gaius. Sitting upright – or at least mostly upright – eased much of the pressure off his chest, and his lungs were finally... not content, but certainly less combative.

"Semantics," Arthur said. "Most of it was my plan. I had to play the servant, remember. He had me fetching blasted firewood."

"Poor you," Merlin said, chuckling. He clutched his side. "Don't make me laugh, please, it hurts."

"It wasn't meant to be funny, Merlin," Arthur said dryly. He adjusted the blanket around Merlin's shoulders. "You are such a..." he sighed. "Never mind."

Merlin lifted an eyebrow, or tried to. Lords, was there at least one inch of his body that didn't hurt?

"This. Is. Amazing," he said. "You really can't give me the respect I deserve unless I have a foot over death's door."

Arthur scoffed. "That's the key word, Merlin – deserve. See, you believe you always deserve my respect but I'm the one who decides who deserves what. Which, mostly, you don't deserve anything." He pointed a finger at Merlin. "And that last time was only because I really did think you were dying."

"And you think I'm not dying now?"

"No."

"So I don't deserve a little respect?"

"No."

Merlin pressed his lips into a thin line. "You were about to call me idiot and you didn't."

"Do you want me to? Because I will. Gladly."

"No, no. I'm fine." Merlin smirked.

Arthur rolled his eyes. "I liked you better when you were asleep. Speaking of which-"

"No!" Merlin cut in, sharp and desperate and a hair's breadth away from panic. He cleared his aching throat. "I mean... I think I've had enough sleep for now."

Arthur studied him carefully and with painfully obvious skepticism. "Funny, because it looks as though your eyelids would like nothing more than to slide shut."

"I don't want to sleep!" Merlin snapped, and instantly regretted it as one often did when inadvertently betraying a truth they were trying to avoid.

Arthur's skepticism changed places with something softer, and dare Merlin say, almost kinder.

"Bad dreams?"

Merlin hunched into the blanket until his shoulders were up somewhere around his ears. "Something like that."

"About what?"

"Where's Gwaine?"

"Fetching water. Don't change the subject-"

Merlin shuddered. "He shouldn't have gone alone." His eyes tracked the room, feeling as though the source of his dreams had been here, had gone, but were he to look closely enough he would find traces of them having loitered close by, unseen.

Them, not him. Not Jimbol. Except it was Jimbol. Only Jimbol wishing to finish what he started and torturing Merlin any way he could. Except there was no Jimbol because he was dead. Arthur had killed him. Arthur, whose scream continued to echo in Merlin's head. Or was it Gwaine's scream?

"You shouldn't have come," Merlin blurted.

Arthur frowned. "What?"

"You shouldn't have come for me. You shouldn't..." Merlin glared at Arthur. "You're the damn king, it was too dangerous!"

Arthur's head reared back, his expression like one regarding a stranger who had just insulted his parentage.

"Excuse me?" Arthur said, tone clipped and cool. "If I hadn't rescued your skinny, useless hide you would be dead. Or worse. See, Merlin, this is why I have a difficult time showing you respect. You have yet to earn it."

But Merlin shook his head all throughout Arthur's reprimand and continued to shake it. "Too dangerous. I'm not worth it, it was too dangerous."

Arthur exhaled, then pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I'm sorry," Merlin said, his voice small and contrite, though he didn't know why he was apologizing. He'd meant it, every word. Arthur shouldn't have come and he shouldn't be here, not this place that felt so wrong it was like a waking nightmare. But then he thought of Jimbol, of those nights sitting huddled in the cage wagon, cold, hungry, hurting, the bite of the whip across his spine, the crack of a fist across his face or a boot to his back, and he couldn't help being selfish.

He couldn't help not caring who had rescued him.

"I'm sorry," he said again, rocking back and forth. Sorry for being ungrateful. Sorry for being grateful. Sorry that Arthur had come. Sorry that he had wanted Arthur to come.

A hand on his shoulder made him stop.

"It's all right, Merlin. Don't worry about it," Arthur said, sounding very tired.

Merlin rubbed his grubby sleeve across his dripping nose. Then he dug the heel of his hands into his eyes before the moisture had a chance to fall. "I'm sorry, I'm just... if you want to call me a girl, feel free to, I I think I actually deserve it this time." He said this with a chuckle that he didn't really feel up to.

"I'll save it for when you truly deserve it," Arthur said kindly. "You've been through hell, Merlin. I've known knights who have suffered less and barely managed."

Merlin chuffed. "Is that a note or respect I hear?"

Arthur's lips curled into a half smile. "Not at all. What in the world would give you that idea?" He ruffled Merlin's hair.

Merlin pulled away, feigning annoyance. He averted his gaze to the blanket, licking his lips nervously. "You are right. I wouldn't have gotten far if you hadn't come. Which is why... I was wondering, sort of... if maybe, perhaps, I should take some kind of lessons."

"Lessons?"

"Yeah. Something self-defense related. Or maybe learn to handle a sword better. You know, beyond merely being able to hold it up long enough to keep you from pummeling me during practice." Because sometimes having magic is pointless because I can't use it. And how will I protect you if I can't even... "...protect myself. To protect myself," Merlin finished.

Arthur shrugged. "I suppose there is no harm in it." And it said so much that Arthur tacked nothing on about clumsiness, or Merlin accidentally impaling himself, or impaling Arthur. It said that he truly was worried. It said that he understood. And it said that, no matter how much he attempted to say otherwise, that he did respect Merlin. Arthur may have been a prat who liked to throw things at Merlin, but he was an honorable prat. Sometimes, he was even just honorable.

"Thank you," Merlin said, meaning it.

Arthur responded with a quick nod and an averted gaze, which said he was being kind but in about ten seconds he was going to do something prattish.

"Where is that mead-addicted oaf with the bloody water already?" Arthur said.

And there it was.

Arthur went to the door and peered out, as though the physical act of checking would make their wayward knight reappear.

Merlin shivered when the door was opened. The sense of wrongness to this place seemed to increase without a barrier between them and the corridor beyond. It was a strange sensation, like a whisper or some half-remembered thought that was important but refused to surface.

It was the chains. It had to be. It was stifling more than simply his magic, and he knew – without a shadow of a doubt – that were he to remove the chains then whatever he was almost-sensing would smother him like a flood of arctic water.

It wanted to smother him. It was waiting to. That's what it felt like – a thing beyond the door, pawing at the crack between the barrier and the floor.

Merlin shrank back. "We really shouldn't be in this place."

Arthur huffed. "Yes, Merlin, you've told me I don't know how many times already. And I would have happily obliged to the request were it not for the raging blizzard outside." Arthur stepped back and shut the door. Merlin felt only a fourth of the way toward better.

"Maybe I should go and look for him," Arthur said, neutral but with the far-away stare of indecision. Merlin couldn't blame him. On the one hand, Gwaine had been gone far too long in a castle that felt too many kinds of wrong. On the other, feeling selfish again, Merlin didn't want to be left alone. Neither did he want Arthur to be just as "taking too long," as Gwaine.

Arthur stood there, staring at Merlin with a look of concentration that usually accompanied a bout of internal warfare.

But then the decision was made for him. Gwaine burst through the door then slammed it shut with his back pressed like a barrier against it. He was pale, sweaty, panting, his sword in hand – the very picture of a man who had just seen a ghost that turned out to be a dorocha.

"We need to get out of here," he said.

Gaping, Arthur swung his hand toward the window then toward Merlin. "Blizzard and injured man! Remember?"

Gwaine deflated. "Oh... damn. Then we need to barricade ourselves in." He didn't wait for any comment when he was dragging the little writing table in front of the door, followed immediately by the stool.

"Gwaine," Arthur said carefully as if talking to a mad man, but his eyes were on the door and his hand going to his sword. "I hope you have a good reason for locking us in."

"Oh you bet you're expensive crown I do," Gwaine said, and the wild look in his eyes was making Merlin feel as twitchy as when Arthur had the door open. "This place is a bloody enchanter's mess. I found their bloody library – nothing but magic books."

Arthur stiffened. So did Merlin. That's all they needed – a castle full of missing sorcerers and him without his magic.

"What?" Arthur growled.

"Oh, that isn't the half of it, friends" Gwaine said as he searched the room for more furniture to add to the barrier. "I don't know what those bloody sorcerers did but whatever it was, it must have involved conjuring beasts from some hell dimension. One attacked me. Ugliest thing you will have ever seen and I've seen plenty of ugly in my time. Then I kill the thing and as if it's ugliness wasn't enough, it's body vanishes, blood and all. Complete and utter madness. I'm normally a fan of complete and utter madness but this a little bit much even for me. Vanished! Just... vanished!"

With nothing else but the bed to block the door – and for a moment Gwaine had seemed to consider it – Gwaine stepped back, surveyed his work and shook his head in disgust. "This won't hold, not against such a beast. We need to either leave or find some place more simple to fortify until the storm passes." He began dismantling his barrier.

Arthur grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. "What sort of beast?"

"Did you not just hear me! Ugly! And vanishes when you kill it! But most importantly – we're not safe here. I suggest we get the hell away from this place. Since the storm won't let us, we find somewhere with thicker doors or bigger furniture."

"In other words, we stumble around the castle hoping these... beasts don't find us. How is that any more safe?" Arthur demanded.

Gwaine, breathing hard, face still clammy, raked his hand through his hair. He opened his mouth, tilted his head, closed his mouth then tossed up his hands. "It would make me feel better, all right?"

Arthur's head reared back and his face turned thunderous. It was his turn to toss up his hands. "Oh, Excellent reason! To make you feel better. We're to drag Merlin around – who can barely walk - in the hopes of finding a slightly thicker door merely to make you feel better."

Gwaine stepped forward until he was inches from Arthur's face. He said in a voice Merlin had never heard him use before, a voice low and tight and quavering, "If you had seen that beast, you'd be dragging us along looking for the bloody armory. Nothing about it was natural, and I don't trust this room to keep us safe-"

"And I don't trust this entire castle!" Arthur cut in. "This storm cannot last forever. We need to stay here until it passes and leave."

"We're not safe-!"

"Stop it!" Merlin barked, struggling upright despite the pain it caused. But anger was a funny emotion, able to mask even the fiercest agony for a time, and it was a time he was going to use while he could.

Both men fell silent but gave Merlin identical looks of growing impatience. It was confirmation of what Merlin already knew – that this place was wrong. Because a place that was wrong never merely felt wrong, it was a wrongness that manifested itself, whether as disappearing beasts or brave men in desperate need of a place to hide and willing to sacrifice their loyalties for it.

This was Gwaine, for the love of all that was holy – a man who ran toward a fight, who went drinking at the most violent taverns merely for the fun of it, and whose ego was intolerable whenever he killed some enchanted beast.

And he was afraid. Afraid and wanting to run.

"You're not going to get anywhere going at each other's throats except to attract whatever else might be roaming this castle," Merlin said tremulously. Anger might have been lending him strength, but it was a quickly waning strength. "Then it won't matter where we go or what we do, then, will it?"

Merlin's arms gave out and he collapsed on the bed, squeaking out a small cry of pain.

Gwaine and Arthur looked at him, then each other, not chastised but the fact that they had shut up was progress Merlin would take. It was the best he could hope for with everyone on edge.

Suddenly, Arthur shifted, his face going tense and the meat of his fist pressing against the wood of the door. Merlin knew that expression, that stance, painfully well. He lifted his head.

"What? What is it, Arthur?"

"We need supplies."

Gwaine balked, honestly balked, his face draining of color and his eyes going wide. He really was afraid, and it was a look Merlin hoped to never see on him again.

"You want me to go out there, after what nearly happened?"

"No!" Arthur said hotly. "But we're going to need water and... other things."

As in other things such as towels for bandages to keep Merlin's wounds from being infected. Arthur didn't need to say it, and the way his eyes seem to fix themselves on the wall behind Gwaine confirmed it.

"No, we don't," Merlin said.

"Yes, we do," Arthur said. "We have some water left in the skins but there's no saying how much longer this storm will last. And if Gwaine is right, if whatever attacked him is strong enough to get through this door and there's more of them – or something worse... We'll need someplace where we can have space to fight and a way out if needed.

"The Kitchen," Gwaine said, brightening. "It has a door to the outside. It's where I've been gathering snow."

"Does it have a front door?" Arthur asked pointedly.

Gwaine smiled. "Oh, yes. And great wooden things they are, too." Then he frowned. "But Merlin's too weak to move."

"No I'm not," Merlin said, trying to rise.

"Shut up, Merlin. Yes you are," Arthur snapped.

Merlin flopped back onto the bed but glared at Arthur. Arthur ignored him, too busy rolling his eyes as though the answer had been right in front of them the whole time. He tossed up his hands.

"Of course," he said.

The next thing Merlin knew after nearly blacking out several times, he was cocooned in a blanket and cloak on horseback, pressed against the horse's neck to avoid low archways. It was Arthur's horse, with Arthur leading it at the front, Gwaine's horse following obediently behind and Gwaine taking up the rear, muttering to his erstwhile beast that it had better not kick him or it was off to the knackers with it.

If the castle had felt foreboding in the small room, it felt utterly threatening within its halls. The something tugging at Merlin's restrained magic seemed to observe them like a pair of eyes – several pairs, all of them glaring at the intruders and hating them with every fiber of their being. It was a presence that seemed to whisper into Merlin's ears, those whispers trickling coldly down his spine. He was shivering, and not because it was chilly in this place.

Yet there was nothing to see beyond guttering torches and flickering candles. They arrived at the kitchens without incident, and with the horses safely inside, Gwaine and Arthur pulled the great doors closed. The wood groaned and the barrier thumped. Three metal bars that didn't look up to barricading anything against so much as a goat slid with some effort into their slots, and Merlin prayed they weren't as flimsy as they looked.

It took both Arthur and Gwaine to help Merlin from the saddle. Try as they might to be gentle about it, the pain still bordered on intolerable, and Merlin was panting and sweating by the time they eased him to the floor. They had brought the pillow for his head. Merlin wished they could have brought the mattress, the stone floor digging into his bruised bones, making his ribs feel crushed. Gwaine tossed logs of wood from a pile in the pantry into the huge hearth, then lit it with a bit of flint and cotton tinder. Arthur had taken a cauldron and was gathering snow from outside, his head up and in constant motion.

"If I didn't know any better I would say that the storm has gotten worse," Arthur said, placing the full pot next to the hearth to melt. "You can barely see the courtyard."

"Let's just hope nothing saw you," Gwaine said. Just in case, he and Arthur shoved the heavy butcher table in front of the door.

"Feel better?" Arthur said dryly."

Gwaine smirked and patted the table. "Much."

They moved back over to Merlin, Arthur checking the pot and Gwaine adjusting Merlin's blanket.

"How are you faring, Merlin?" Gwaine asked. "Warm enough?"

"I'm getting there," Merlin said, finally feeling the heat of the fire soaking into him. "What about you? You seemed a bit... shaken back there."

Gwaine rested his arms on his knees, pursing his lips. "To be honest..." he shook his head, leaning back on his haunches. "It's funny the things you face in life without batting an eye. I don't think the bloody dorocha scared me half as bad as that thing I faced, and I killed the blasted cur in one go." He frowned, his brow frowning with his mouth. "It's strange. It's like... it's like I knew the thing. Not knew knew like I'd met it before. It was more like I had this sudden thought while it was attacking me, like a knowledge lost to memory until that moment. What I knew, without a doubt, was that I didn't want that thing killing me, because whatever deaths I faced before they would be nothing compared to the death I would face at that creature's claws."

Gwaine scrubbed his face one-handed. "I'll be honest – it terrified the hell out of me. I don't even know what the damn thing was but I knew if it won then what followed would be beyond nightmares."

Arthur, stoking the rising flames, said nothing as he stared into the hearth. He felt it too, Merlin knew – the wrongness of this place.

"What did the beast look like?" Merlin asked. He loathed having to make Gwaine relive that moment, but with information came knowledge, knowledge they could use to hopefully kill any more of these beasts they may come across.

Gwaine did his best to describe it.

"I've never heard of anything like it," Merlin said in horror.

"Because you know every mythical beast in creation," Arthur said dryly.

"Yes," Merlin said, just as dry. "Almost. Thanks to Camelot being a rather favorite target of magical creatures, Gaius is making me memorize the types of creatures we might encounter so I know what to do if I'm gathering herbs and run into one - again."

Education was how Gaius liked to show his concern, although after the incident with the griffin he had been more like a task master shoving endless amounts of facts into Merlin's head. Merlin knew just about every mythical creature known to man; it was the subspecies he was still working through. But this dog beast matched nothing he had ever heard of – not the hell hounds that dragged damned souls to the underworld, not the deadly winged ghost dogs of the far north called the kludde, not the black dogs of the moors whose howls heralded Death.

And that was rather unsettling.

"There was a book, there," Gwaine went on. "Where the thing attacked me. It talked of a place called the place we do not name or do not speak of or something. Sounds all nice and lovely 'til you flip the page and see who owns the place." Gwaine shuddered. "Ever heard of it?"

"Could be one of a hundred places. Sorry," Merlin said apologetically. "But I think you're right. I think magic must have gone wrong in this place. Doesn't it feel off to you?"

"It feels off because it's deserted and all the signs say it was recent," Arthur said.

"But it's more than that and you know it," Merlin said irritably, huddling deeper into his blanket.

"And there's nothing we can do about it," Arthur said soberly. "Not until this storm passes."

Merlin sighed tiredly but, lords, he couldn't sleep. He wouldn't.

"Try to get some rest, Merlin," Arthur said, not unkindly.

Merlin shook his head. "I'll dream again."

Gwaine cupped his hand to the back of his head. "We're right here, Merlin. You dream, we'll wake you. Sound fair?" He then ruffled Merlin's hair. Merlin really wished they would stop doing that. He wasn't a blasted child.

Gwaine's promise would have to do, Merlin figured. While his mind begged him to, please, stay awake his body begged him for rest, and it was his body that was the victor. His eyes slid shut no matter how he fought them, and he hoped more than he had hoped for anything that he was too exhausted to dream.

~oOo~

"Poor lad," Gwaine said, keeping his hand on Merlin's head, the dark hair making the boy's face seem near white as the snow, but his eyes sunken in pools of shadow, most especially the right one drowning in a day-old shiner. "Gah, he's right. It's like this place is toying with us." He turned just enough to put Arthur in his sights. "Did he tell you what he was dreaming?"

Arthur, leaning with his elbow on the brick of the hearth, stared into the flames in contemplation. "No. He wouldn't."

"Poor kid," Gwaine whispered. He adjusted the blanket after having already done so, then the pillow making sure Merlin was as comfortable as he could get. There were new bruises on Merlin's face, he noticed, sickeningly dark surrounded by the whiteness of his skin – no doubt received this very day courtesy of the bastard slaver who had been tormenting him. It was near impossible to reconcile Merlin in the clutches of cruelty even with the proof right in front of him, and the proof made him long to run every damn slaver he could find through the gut.

It was funny – Gwaine kept having this feeling that if the slavers had known how friendly and harmless and just plain innocent Merlin was then they wouldn't have taken him. Which was stupid, because the nature of cruelty was that it was just as much the great equalizer as death. Cruelty did not care if you were kindly or a right arse, all it cared about was beating you to a bloody pulp, allowing you to be rescued, but instead of letting you go home safe and sound it dumps you off in some hellish castle full of hellish beasts waiting to give you a fate worse than death. Oh, and you're still shackled and can't bloody move because you're still beaten to a bloody pulp, because there are too many right bastards in this world.

That was cruelty.

Gwaine wondered if Merlin asleep would cut down on the pain of removing the shackles. Gwaine unburied one of Merlin's skinny arms, adjusting the bandage between the manacle and Merlin's damaged wrist. Lords, his arm was thin, like merely touching it would snap it in half, and Gwaine was suddenly loathe to try.

He tried anyway, hating the sight of the damn chains even more. But the moment the blade of his knife began fussing with the lock, Merlin stirred.

"Leave it," Arthur said, still in his contemplative stance.

Gwaine glared at the chains. "They're hurting him and we're not getting out of here any time soon. If there's a way to get them off, then the sooner the better."

"They'll hurt him more if you keep fiddling with them. Let him rest. He needs that more than he needs the damn chains removed."

Gwaine clenched his jaw, but gently tucked Merlin's arm back beneath the blanket, the thrice-be-cursed chains clinking.

"I don't want them on him any more than you," Arthur said quietly.

Gwaine nodded. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that his royal pratness really did give a damn.

The fired popped with a spray of sparks. A voice whispered without words in the subdued silence that followed. Gwaine leaped to his feet, drawing his sword, and heard Arthur do the same.

"So I'm not just hearing things," Gwaine said.

Arthur held a finger to his lips. He moved to the door and pressed his ear against it. Gwaine did the same with the other door, having to half crawl onto the table blocking it to do so. The only sound was the wind.

Until something large, solid and furiously persistent slammed into the kitchen doors.

TBC...

A/N: I would like to take the time to thank everyone for their comments and feedback (because I am terrible about responding to reviews, apologies). The comments are much appreciated :D Reviews feed the muse ;)