A/N: So the last chapter got some nice Cu action going. XD apologies to those who didn't realize that this might turn into a mature story. Since I'm not drawing it, I am pretty well free to go as my brain goes. Drawing a comic version would hinder this, I think, though drawing does give me time to think about what I want to do next rather than do stuff all in one go. Anyway…
XD all hail the hound.
Chapter Seven
Bedivere proved himself to be quite a good conversational companion, as he was quite knowledgeable and had a great deal of good sense. Arturia was kept quite occupied as they headed back North to talk to the men and women of Fernhill and then to Brimton. This left Merlin to listen to them as well to his own thoughts.
"Tell me of your problem, my queen, for I have not heard of what your trouble is that you would leave your castle to go looking for what might take years for you to accomplish," said Bedivere softly, his pretty face most pleasant as he gazed toward her.
"This whole country, yours, mine, the Scots, the Irish, will all be affected if I do not accomplish something to stem this problem we have to face," said Arturia, stroking the fur of her cloak in thought.
"How so?"
"We are being threatened with invasion and quite possibly annihilation." She plucked a knot from the fur and frowned at it as thought the conversation were of little more concern than the knot itself.
Bedivere briefly wondered what on earth he had signed himself up to before she spoke again. "My coronation brought my own countrymen, as well as men and women from the surrounding countries; yours included, I might add," she said softly, "However, it also brought uninvited guests, such as a king from the middle east who wished to charm me by flaunting everything he could offer me in front of everyone as entertainment and then pursued me to my chambers where he attempted to assault me and make me agree to be his wife."
"And he is the one that is invading?"
"Yes," said Arturia as she looked to Bedivere. "He will invade and attempt to take me as his prisoner and will most likely kill everything he can in our islands before pulling everyone he 'saved' to be slaves in his city. He loves nothing, save himself and his godhood and power."
Bedivere frowned and looked ahead with his pale blue eyes. Arturia watched him for a moment before looking to the stump on his left arm. "Why is it you do not get a prosthetic?"
Bedivere snapped from whatever he was thinking to look at Arturia in surprise. "Pardon?"
"Your hand. If you had lost it in a fight, or really anything to cause you to lose it, then you would be able to get it replaced, at least somewhat. A prosthetic hand would serve you well enough I'm sure, I've seen a few, though not in Camelot." Arturia didn't even seem to register the look of genuine confusion on Bedivere's face, though Merlin did. "What?"
Merlin raised a hand and shook his head. "Arturia, I believe not everyone in this country has seen what you have, dear girl," he said.
Arturia frowned. She knew she had seen someone, a man, once, long ago when she was a child, who had a prosthetic hand all of metal, like a gauntlet, who kept his hands hidden in white gloves when he visited with Merlin for some reason. She had asked the man why he wore such odd gloves when his right hand was metal and his left would need the best protection. Arturia barely remembered what the man looked like, but remembered he had gold eyes like her own and was also short like she was.
Arturia made a mental note to talk to Merlin when they made it to Fernhill, meanwhile, she was going to speak more to Bedivere about what she needed to do. Merlin sighed as he felt in his bones that he was not going to be left alone once again that night when they settled down in an inn at Fernhill.
"Why would this man come for you if you rejected him? I'm certain that if this king is as rich as you say he is, that he has plenty of prospects for a wife, or, really, many wives, if he should choose to have more than one. He would be able to pick and choose as he pleases and one rejection wouldn't really matter to him if he doesn't really care what you feel about it," said Bedivere, his confusion past.
"He has not said he will come back, rather, I know he will, because that is what I would do, were I wanting to truly vanquish some person who I disliked. He seemed to have his heart dead set on having me as his bride, though I hardly know why if he is that rich. Camelot and Briton all have little enough as it is. That was why I chose to take the sword from the stone in the first place, because I knew that it was the key to making sure my people had more to live with than what they have now." Arturia sighed and rubbed her forehead for a moment before continuing. "It is a game of chess. You plot your opponent's moves five to ten paces ahead to make certain you are the victor of the battle. I am thinking ahead. If he does not come, then I have accomplished building my army to the fullest I can in a matter of months, which is more than can be said for some people. If he does, then I will have accomplished building an army that will stand with me against his forces, though it might not be enough to fight him. That is the next problem I face, plotting that direction out completely."
"You are truly a remarkable woman, my queen," said Bedivere, his smile praising her as much as his words. "You constantly surprise me with your thinking. You are truly a good queen, though you don't seem it right on the off."
"How do I seem?"
Bedivere almost felt a cold shiver run down his spine at the simple question. The look she held was one of a completely doll like frozen mask as she inquired with a very chilly tone that made icicles form on his breath. What had he done to anger the queen so? "Ah, you don't have the air of a person who thinks like you do, erm—really you have a very cold air to you and you don't seem that worried about being in command."
"That is because I already have command." It wasn't a retort, it wasn't spat at him like a woman would have done, and it wasn't even said with a sneer; she simply spoke with the tone of someone saying the truth. Indeed, he knew she was right. She already had command of everyone around her; therefore, she didn't need to be worried about keeping it. Should she worry, she might make the confidence her people had in her waver.
"The king you say will invade, who is he?"
"Gilgamesh, the ancient king of Uruk. He is now the king of Babylon." Arturia had an odd look to her as she spoke the name, like one reciting a spell, her eyes half lidded and her mouth speaking the name slowly.
Bedivere felt the very marrow of his bones grow cold. "King of Babylon? That Gilgamesh? How can he be alive?! He was alive back even before the ancient ones' ancient ancestors were even thought of!"
"I know, Bedwyr." Again, the queen used his Welsh name rather than his British name. Bedivere wondered why she chose certain moments to call him so intimately by his own Welsh name, which he prized more than what the Britons called him.
"The king has come back and taken Babylon as his own once more, though I hardly know why when his tales always say he hated being the king of humans," she said softly, tapping the reigns in her hand. "If he came back to rule, he must therefore want to be worshipped like a god once more. As I recall, the heathens of the deserts in the Middle East do believe, at least, in one God, or they did when the ancients ruled the lands."
"They did, as I recall. I have read books on such subjects, curious to know what lies elsewhere in the world other than my own home." Bedivere smiled boyishly at Arturia and she felt a small blush filter into her cheeks, though the charming smile was not planned to be so charming. Perhaps that was why she found it so appealing.
"He is vain and will think that he will win against us," said Arturia, thinking carefully upon the golden king. "He doesn't know what I have and can get here quickly, should he choose to. He might not come here so quickly as a few months, but a year, perhaps, to make me feel safe in the thought that I had completely banished him from my homeland."
"You think like this all the time, my queen?" Bedivere was once again in awe of how fast and far ahead this little queen he joined thought about things. The possibilities were endless as to what the golden king of Babylon would do and yet, she still thought of them.
"Yes, I must, for I feel I do not have the time to think of anything else." She absently curled a lock of her pale hair around her gloved finger as she contemplated the possibilities. "A vain king would only look upon the surface of a pool and claim it perfect because it shimmers so perfectly, yet forget to check beneath to see if the life inside the pool was as perfect as the surface."
"Are you planning a falsity, my queen?" asked Bedivere.
"Perhaps," she said, "I have long wanted to bring the unfortunates that have been eternally cursed by the wasteland in the north of this continent to my home of Camelot. They should not be shunned simply because they look strange, but allowed to work if they are capable of doing so."
Bedivere brought his left arm up to his face and shielded his face as though he had smelled something awful. "Those people?! Their blood is fouled! Rotten to the last of them! How could you bring them in?!"
"Because the surface hardly ever shows the life beneath," said Arturia.
Bedivere frowned faintly and settled back in his saddle. "You know this from personal experience?"
"That is none of your concern, Bedivere." Arturia gazed at the road thoughtfully as she watched the snow drop from the hooves of the horses in front of her. "They are outcasts because of what is wrong in their blood. They can not breed with normal people, however, they can be allowed to live as they have been doing. The wasteland is not a place for people to live, it is a place of death, one of which that can not spring life no matter how long you wait. It has been waiting for nearly two or three hundred years for life to come back to it and it has not. Before, the land was uninhabitable because of the burning that had occurred there. The explosion of it cursed the land and incinerated everything it could. Then, it left behind something that changed the people that were close to the explosion. The people grew and lived in these tainted lands until they started having problems, then they started moving elsewhere, though the people outside of this on either side of the continent shunned them from their homes. The unfortunates then went back into the wasteland where they were at least welcome there. Most died in the land, though many managed to survive to breed more unfortunates. They are dying out and I wish to at least give them someplace to call home that isn't tainted by the rash acts of the ancient ones."
"What do you wish to—I see. I don't know why I didn't see it before, my queen, but I see why you want them so terribly in Camelot!" Bedivere spoke excitedly as he thought out loud the revelation that had occurred to him. "Camelot's lands are very large, am I correct?"
"Yes, they are, Bedwyr," she said softly, smiling faintly for once.
"Do you have ruins on the outskirts of your Camelot's lands?"
"Yes."
It all made sense to Bedivere now. While Arturia may have wanted the people there for some reason that seemed unknown to him, but he felt it was quite personal whatever it was, this queen did nothing without a purpose that was not completely for her own gain. She was very ambitious and clever, this queen, and quite extraordinary in that fact. She was finding a medium between her own wants and the wants of her people while still maintaining the creed "what do I get out of this?"
"You'll let the unfortunates live on the outskirts of your lands, in the ruins where they will be far more comfortable than they would should they continue to live in that desolate place, meanwhile, the invading army will have to go through the ruins just to reach Camelot from the direction of the ocean!" Bedivere watched the smile on Arturia's face remain as he spoke and grinned when he felt he found something right.
Arturia's smile fade as she looked ahead to Fernhill as they approached the outskirts. "A vain king only sees the surface and proclaims it perfect should he think that the surface was indeed perfect."
"And a vain king would feel something as awful looking as the unfortunates to be diseased and thus make him diseased should they come toward him," said Bedivere. Indeed, this queen had a mind he could feel very secure with. This was a queen worth serving. "I wish to serve you as a knight, my queen, should you feel that I am worthy."
"Then, we will see if you are truly worthy, good Bedwyr," she said, smiling faintly at him once more. Was she being cheeky? Bedivere found his new queen most entertaining and fascinating!
They found an inn to stay in Fernhill and started to bed down for the night, Merlin felt he nearly managed to have a night where he didn't have to give more exhausting explanations, but his hope was dashed when Arturia entered the room and sat down in front of the fireplace of his room with a very expectant look upon her doll like face. Indeed, she looked downright irritated.
"What is it you wish to know from me, my dear pupil? Wine?" Merlin poured himself a little wine as Arturia answered with a definite "No" at his back. He sighed and turned with his cup and walked over, sitting down across from her and sipping his wine carefully.
"I wish to know why it is that not everyone has those prosthetics. You told me that they were to replace limbs that had been lost in some injury to a person and were most widely used where that man came from. He spoke with an odd accent, I must say, but he still seemed as though he had been born of this country!"
Merlin cringed faintly at her tone as it became angrier at him. "Ah, yes, that man. You remember him?"
Arturia stiffened slightly. "Not that well, I admit, but I still remember a great deal about that arm of his that he showed me."
"And you have only seen a few people with these limbs in Camelot, correct? Mostly magicians or nurses, correct?" Merlin sipped his wine slowly as he watched her over his cup.
"Are you telling me that only the magicians have this product and no one else? That is simply unbelievable! Why would you keep something so helpful away from people who need it!"
Merlin waved his hand at Arturia in a motion to calm her down. "Calm down, Arturia, you'll wake the dead with that shriek of yours. Yes, I admit, mostly the magicians have these prosthetics for it was a magician's wife who brought it into this world in the first place. It stayed for a while in my school as a means to help children who were casualties in the various wars that occurred there off and on for at least a century. Not just children, actually, it was also adults who took the aid willingly. Also, mind you, the technology required for those limbs also requires of the nurse who makes them to have a fair knowledge of the nervous system of her patient, something that is not often taught to people. However, there are several who have learned a least a certain amount of it to be able to make and design the technology in question to be far more advanced and far better looking than what you saw as a child."
"You said there were wars at this school for nearly a century? Why?" Arturia leaned back in her chair slightly as she watched her teacher think over her question, or, rather, the answer to it.
Merlin frowned, as he didn't know quite how to answer it. It was really more than a century that wars had occurred at the school, however, he only spoke of the ones occurring during the time of the great Harry Potter when he was alive and before him when the headmaster was alive.
"Maybe I should start at the beginning," he said finally.
"Yes, I expect that would be a good start," said Arturia, her tone dripping with venom.
Merlin frowned at his pupil for being so disrespectful toward him before attempting to find a good spot to start. "There have always been good wizards and bad wizards, men and women both who have used magic for good and for evil. One wizard in particular had been born from a non-wizard man and a witch from a very inbred wizard line. This wizard was a little loose in his mental stability and felt that non-magicians were a plague on the planet and that wizards and witches were the true rulers of the land. This man also feared the fact that the human condition also means we grow old and die and he didn't want to die. He made it his life's ambition to make wizards the rulers of everything and on the side he found a way to make him immortal. This man split his soul into seven parts and hid them away in objects he coveted and treasured."
"How does one split their soul?"
"You commit cold blooded murder." Merlin watched Arturia now very carefully. "That is, you commit murder in a fashion that magically splits your soul and place the piece into something that will keep it safe. Commiting murder alone won't split your soul as men and women commit murder everyday. I'm not really sure of everything I tell you, as it's mostly speculation and the one who managed to do this never divulged anything to us students."
"The splitting of his soul made him less and less human and addled his rather brilliant mind. You see, as a whole person, he is very skilled and very clever and very intelligent. His mind is as sharp as yours, probably even sharper. I have never seen the like of him. He truly is a genius. However, he sacrificed that genius to become the thing he turned himself into. He was gathering support from the pure blood families for they have hated non-magic born magicians and the non-magic people for a long time, thinking them all to be dirty, much like you do the unfortunates living in the wasteland." Merlin sipped from his cup again and looked to the stony face of his pupil. "I shouldn't actually use that analogy for it isn't quite right. The unfortunates are tainted to their very core because of the land they live in, while non-magic folk are not tainted in their blood, but the pure bloods felt that was what was wrong with them, that their blood was dirty."
"I see," said Arturia, watching her master carefully. "What of this man and his following?"
"That man found out that there was supposedly a prophesy about his demise, that one day he would definitely die at the hands of a boy who would be born at the end of July. There were two born that year at the end of July and he picked one that seemed the most likely and went and killed the boy's entire family before attempting to kill him. However, he didn't manage to kill the boy, but, instead, sheered off another part of his soul and somehow shoved it into the boy without thinking. The boy grew up in a non-magic family for sixteen years, never knowing that was what was wrong with him. He went to the magic school with his peers and learned a great deal of magic spells and potions as did everyone else, meanwhile, that dark lord came cropping up again, trying to come back to finish what he had started. This boy fouled those plans over and over again until the dark lord managed to create a situation where the boy was forced to do things outside of what he knew."
"That boy, with his two closest friends, the great witch Hermione and the brave wizard Ronald, who I must say was like a knight to his friends, helped demolish the objects that the dark lord placed his soul in, meanwhile, his school friends rebelled against the school that was slowly tightening the dark lord's grip upon their windpipe. He had made it so that every witch or wizard had to submit themselves to a blood test, a lineage test to see if they were a true magician and not a false one born from a non-magic family. He made certain the school would only teach those subjects he felt proper, the dark arts especially."
"The dark arts?" Arturia frowned at this, wondering what Merlin meant.
"The dark arts are what the priests would say are the work of the devil. They are dark curses meant to harm people, meant to kill and curse and maim and torment all for the pleasure of the user. That was what the dark lord felt would be appropriate for the young witches and wizards to learn. The studies they might have learned before were demolished and all because he felt them to be inappropriate material for his brainwashing. Thankfully, most of the students were too wise to this, but unfortunately, the dark lord had kept his people inside the school as teachers to the students and the rebels were squashed one by one and forced into hiding. The great Neville Longbottom was the first of these. While no one even cared what he did most of the time, while everyone made fun of him for his inability to use a wand properly, he sprang up from such jeers and began to rally the children to his friend's aid, against the evil lord and his minions."
"There had been a war previously to the attack at the school, one that had killed several men and women, a pair of which turned out to be the mother and father of another student who was also quite capable in magic and who became the professor of alchemy at the age of seventeen, when she was legally an adult. This young woman also held a rather interesting secret. When the dark lord laid siege on the school the night Harry Potter and his friends came back to the school and started the great rebellion against the dark lord's forces, she helped fight in the battle the occurred inside and outside of the school. All the senior students fought, save the Slytherins, as most of them were either too cowardly or too caught up in their dark lord being ruler that they were shoved out of the battle and to a safe place where they could be watched. The great Minerva McGonagall then led portions of the students left into battle, brandishing her wand high and riding atop a desk she enchanted to move like a horse."
Merlin sipped from his wine and took a deep breath. He looked to his pupil and found her attention was squarely on him. He smirked. He always loved telling her tales, whether they were true or not, it did not matter. He enjoyed seeing the emotions cross her face, much like watching a child listen to a great story. "All hail the Scottish and the women they produce," he chuckled. He sipped the last of his wine and poured himself a little more before settling back in his chair again and stared at the dark liquid.
"And? What happened? Why was the girl you mentioned so important?" Arturia was getting impatient.
Merlin chuckled and sipped the wine a little to wet his throat and gazed at Arturia. "The woman I mentioned had a rather interesting secret, but I will get to that in a bit. You see, Arturia, because a part of the dark lord was inside Harry Potter, he needed to go and be rid of it. To kill himself. To sacrifice himself to for the love of the people he wished to protect. You see, love that strong will protect, cover the people he loves so much and keep them from harm, of any sort. So, he went to the place where the dark lord stayed, inside the forest next to the school, showed himself to the dark lord and let the dark lord kill him. This caused them both to fall, for a part of the dark lord himself had been killed in killing his adversary. When the dark lord woke, he thought his adversary was dead, even told one of the Malfoys to check on him and she claimed him dead, but she tricked him in exchange for the information that her family was still alive and they brandished him about in victory against the forces of good."
"However, in the battle that ensued when the school's defenders saw the damage done to their beloved hero, the hero showed himself to not be dead and proved that he was a master of all things, even over the dark lord himself. He told him that the people had the protection of his love now and that the dark lord could not harm them anymore and dueled the dark lord. The dark lord then was killed by a strange reaction. The wand he used had backfired his own killing curse back onto him, killing him instantly."
"Really?" Arturia frowned. "What about the woman?"
"The woman I mentioned had a very interesting secret. She held a gate inside her soul, a key to an in-between world that is not unlike the place where souls go to be judged. Because she had access to that gate, she could also see beyond that gate and into the in-between place of judgment which also has a gate connected to the gate of truth. She opened that gate and pulled the dark lord through it and then let whatever was inside it piece the portions of soul back into the dark lord and placed him at the gate of judgment, where he was to remain in a constant state. He didn't know who he was, why he was there, or even what he was supposed to be doing. He simply existed in that place as a soul, a body, with no place to go. The gate of judgment never opened for him and he simply stayed there until he was taken out of it through the gate of truth and placed back in our world. However, when this occurred, he had somehow been aged backwards to that of a teenager, when he had first killed, and started realizing what love was as he grew in the new world that he no longer knew of."
"That was before the great war that the non-magic people caused; that war that caused such places to exist as the wasteland and the people who live there. That war occurred a full century after the war against the dark lord Voldemort." Merlin took a sip from his wine and thought a moment, gathering what he was going to say next. "The next wars happened at the behest of new dark lords. One cropped up after the war against Voldemort, though this one was less terrifying and more irritating. He was clever, however, liked to have an alchemist create false humans to do his bidding. He managed to merge the newly emerged Voldemort into a false human shell of himself and forced him to kill that which he had grown to love and forced him to hurt that which he loved more than life itself. That dark lord was taken care of and then another dark lord cropped up a few decades later, though this one liked to use illusions as his main fighting technique. He liked to steal one of the school defenders and then use them against their loved ones as well. He controlled them through magic objects that he cursed to not come off of their bodies. Again, the newly emerged Voldemort was used against those he loved and his own sons had to fight him. His wife was dead and he had a daughter who had become the personification of Rage."
"Rage?"
Merlin nodded and sipped his wine. "Yes, Rage. Rage joined dark lord because he was very goodlooking and held her interest. He also wanted what she wanted, which was to torment the school defenders. Death's personification was her cousin, born from her mother's great uncle's loins. He loved Rage more than anything in the world and nearly let himself die from a broken heart when he knew that she had given herself to the new dark lord. However, his father encouraged him that he should speak his heart to the girl, in order to convince her that not all was made to make her unhappy in the world and so he went to her and confessed his love to her. That took Rage away from the new dark lord and he was forced to pull another away and that resulted in the personification of War. He was born from the loins of the brave Amber's grandfather, the young woman with the key to the gate of truth; her grandfather fathered the child in another brave woman, my history teacher. I told you once before, strange things occur when you mix strong magical bloodlines together."
"But what does this all have to do with those prosthetics?"
Merlin felt a headache coming on. He hated trying to explain all this and then realized what it must have been like to tell all of this to curious young minds. He felt sorry for pestering his history teacher so much in his youth and tried to come up with a good explaination. "You wished to know what I meant when I referred to wars for nearly a century, well, I meant for the first century that the war against Voldemort held. The second century held the other wars, so I suppose I should have been more specific."
"The prosthetics, hmmmm," Merlin muttered as he leaned back in his chair. "Amber's grandfather and grandmother and great grandfather and great uncle all came from another world. That world shoved out souls into our world when the two started merging together. It started slowly enough, only with her grandfather and his brother, her great uncle, then escalated with his wife at the time and his father. Then, his comrades' souls started coming from the world he came from and they were given bodies when a great upheaval of the underworld occurred. Most chose to live out their lives as best they could and so they lived like that with the school defenders. Anyway, her grandfather was the man you saw back when you first started living with me, Arturia. He was giving me information on the workings of the school since I couldn't come to inquire myself. His first wife, the mother of Amber's father, was the first automail engineer. She was actually, to be more precise, a doctor. She taught my teacher's great granddaughter about the craft and that great granddaughter in turn taught her own children who went out into the magic world and started teaching those who wanted to know the craft as well. This 'automail' then became a normal thing around the world of the magicians, but did not catch on except in those areas that held an automail expert in the non-magic villages."
"We do not have any such expert in Camelot," said Arturia.
"Which is why no one, but the very few magicians we have, have the prosthetics and thus why you shouldn't expect everyone you encounter who is missing a limb to have one. Also, they are dreadfully expensive, as it takes a lot of work to create these prosthetics and a lot of materials," said Merlin. "That was what that man had, full steel prosthetics that work from the electrical impulses that our nervous system creates."
"Electrical?" Arturia looked confused now. Merlin decided that then was a good place to stop.
"Yes, electrical, but I shan't explain that, as that would take a long time to explain and I grow weary and need bed." He stood up and placed his cup next to the small bottle of wine he brought with him. Arturia watched him from behind.
"Very well, master, I will retreat to my room." She stood and walked out, stopping just inside the doorframe to speak to him without turning to him. "However, I will inquire as to why such advances have not been given to us after so long later." Then, she walked out and left him to his thoughts.
Merlin frowned and sat on his bed, looking at the floor. Had he revealed too much to the rather ambitious queen? He worried she might try to infiltrate the school and take the people hostage until they give all of Briton what advances they had made for themselves since the great war had demolished a grand portion of humanity.
