*Authors Note*

First of all a special thanks to my first reviewer :) *virtual cookies* and to my first followers! :D I'm so glad you all like the story so far! Keep 'em coming! Please keep reviewing good, bad or otherwise constructive criticisms help me as a writer. As always grammar guru's are welcome too (still no promises that I will fix any or all grammar mistakes though) Also please please please if you see any story plot holes let me know so I can try to reconcile them cuz sometimes I forget as I'm writing a new chapter that I already mentioned a certain piece or that I never introduced it at all. I'm also thinking of playing around with some chapter style techniques, let me know what ya'll think. Also any requests for a random character POV?

As always, I own nothing from King Arthur or events in the story except for the characters and events I make up.

Enjoy!

Chapter Nine. Sapphire P.O.V.

A giant of a man came up and said his name was Dagonet or 'Dag' for short. Sapphire wrinkled her nose thinking it was an unfortunate nickname since to her it sounded a bit like 'Dog'.

Almost as soon as 'Dag' stopped speaking, and Iona managed to stop stuttering like a fish out of water, Diana started freaking out.

"How can I understand you now?" She asked in a shrill voice, one that almost made Sapphire want to cover her ears. Sapphire watched as a deep frown settled on her face.

All seven of the men were now dismounted from their horses and two started to walk toward Sapphire and her friends. Except for Iona whose arm was now being inspected by the giant man Dagonet, the girls each took an involuntary step back.

The two men that had begun walking toward Sapphire, Diana and Iona stopped and held up their hands to show what Dagonet had already expressed verbally; they meant no harm.

Sapphire narrowed her eyes at them anyway daring them to come closer. Just because Pax was quick to trust a perfect stranger doesn't mean Sapphire was, especially when Sapphire wasn't at all sure that she and Diana would be able to fight their way out, away from the strange men, if they needed to. You know, just in case these guys really did escape from the looney bin, not that Sapphire would ever admit to the slight possibility that Diana was right, but just in case.

The two men, the leader in the red cape and the blonde one that smirked and made Diana blush all shades of red again, noticed her glare and stayed where they were. They must have been able to see how skittish Sapphire was feeling, she kept her knees bent and was ready to bolt and drag Diana and Iona along with her at a moments notice.

"What do you mean you couldn't understand them before Di? When did you meet before?" Sapphire asked, her eyes never straying from the three men closest to them.

"I don't know Fire, but when these guys first found me they were speaking gibberish. I couldn't understand a word. They found me just before I crashed into you."

Diana shook her head and looked down at her feet.

"I don't know why I can understand them now, maybe it's just because my brain is fully functioning again." She continued before looking up and meeting the eyes of the blonde man.

"I'm sorry for flipping you by the way, I was startled and acted on instinct." Diana finished, her eyes not leaving the man she had put flat on his back only minutes before.

Sapphire saw the smile that split her friends' face when the man waved it off as nothing to worry about and that he had not been offended. Sapphire couldn't help but smile at her friends who had now developed full-blown crushes.

'Of all the people in the world, leave it to these two to fall in love with someone they just met after being attacked by a psychopath and his goons.' Sapphire thought smiling and shaking her head at her ridiculous friends.

Sapphire lessened her glare when the lead man in red introduced himself as Arthur and explained a little more fully how they had found Diana after hearing her cry of pain (at which point Diana blushed in embarrassment again) and how they had been attacked by Woads and wanted to make sure Diana was safe and had not been killed or carried off.

Though Sapphire had felt her glare lessening as she listened to Arthur's story her glare snapped back full force as a new voice added rather cynically to the conversation.

"Or to make sure she wasn't a Woad herself sent to spy and meant to draw us into another ambush, in which case we would have just killed her and you and your other friend there."

The man that the new voice belonged to said nodding in Iona's direction. It was the one with dark curling hair and twin swords strapped to his back. He was the only one, Sapphire noticed other than another man who had disappeared on horseback into the woods, who was still armed.

"Lancelot!" the leader, Arthur, said in warning.

"The lady ran because she was being attacked by Woads just as we were, these three women have shown us no intent or means of harming us, we can give them the benefit of the doubt"

He concluded at which point the dark curly haired man shot back "She had Gawain flat on his back with his arms pinned above his head so he was effectively unable to reach his weapon, with a hurt arm and no weapons herself to speak of, All within a matter of seconds for the gods sakes! They could still be working with the Woads Arthur to bring us into a trap."

He finished with his arms crossed and a glare aimed at Diana who crossed her arms angrily and muttered so only Sapphire and Iona and possibly Dagonet could hear.

"I was only able to do that from the adrenaline rush at being startled. I doubt I would have been able to pin him down at all if I hadn't taken him by surprise."

Sapphire couldn't help it, she snorted at the ridiculousness of this cynical mans' statements. He swung his glare around to land on her upon hearing Sapphire's derisive snort.

Sapphire was un-phased on the outside, (his glare was nothing compared to what Tegan could dish out) but internally she was starting to freak out.

They really were in the past, in the time of King Arthur before he was king to be exact. All the names were matching up along with characteristics attributed to them in all the legends. Arthur, Lancelot, Gawain, Dagonet and Sapphire was willing to bet that the other three men were Galahad, Tristan and Bors.

"And why should we believe otherwise?" Lancelot questioned Sapphire at hearing her snort at his accusations. Sapphire felt her temper rising rapidly and she vaguely heard Iona mutter under her breath "Oh shit now he's done it. Here we go." Dagonet must have given her a questioning look because Iona's next statement was just simply "Temper."

Sapphire crossed her arms over her chest in much the same fashion that Lancelot had his crossed over his chest. She huffed.

"Because you sound like a paranoid imbecile who either can't or won't take his head out of his ass and take a look at the facts around him because he's too self absorbed to notice anyone or anything else other than himself."

Lancelot's face had gotten redder and redder with each word, while Arthur just stood there in a shocked silence and the fat one had his mouth hanging open in surprise before he began to laugh. Clearly no one had been expecting Sapphire to speak as she had.

"She's just as much of a stubborn spit fire as you are eh Lance?" The fat one said while laughing and slapping Lancelot on the back.

"Shut up Bors." Lancelot said, his arms shaking slightly as he controlled his own anger, something Sapphire had never been particularly good at.

"You still have yet to prove that you aren't Woads and that this isn't some sort of elaborate trap."

Lancelot kept his glare trained on Sapphire and stuck to his original accusations. Sapphire felt her temper get even more out of control as she grew more irritated with this man who seemed adamant about refusing to use his brain and really assess the facts right before his eyes.

"Look" She started, "if this were a trap don't you think we would have been attacked by now? Also your scout would have warned you by now as I highly doubt he would be gone for as along as he is if there were danger nearby. Secondly have you ever seen Woads dressed as we are before? No? I thought not. Third, if we were working with the Woads then why would they attack us along with you? Fourth do you see any blue paint anywhere on any of us? Because I don't remember putting that on yesterday."

She finished her little rant, blowing wide holes in the basis for his argument. Just to add to her point Sapphire spun around a few times in a circle for all the men to see, making a show of checking her arms and legs after for blue Woad markings.

"She has a point Lancelot" Dagonet chimed in "I see no markings on any of them, all I see are injuries."

"The lady has a point Lance, if this were truly a trap they would not have waited so long and Tristan would have returned by now. These three young women would not have been attacked themselves if they were truly working with the Woads."

Arthur stated before clapping a hand on Lancelot's shoulder and continuing.

"I appreciate your caution friend but it would appear that this time your concerns were unfounded. However, I would like you all to accompany us back to the Fort so we may know how you ended up here in such a state of injury and undress."

Arthur finished, turning away from Lancelot who he had been smiling at good-naturedly. The smile slowly faded away as he turned to look at Sapphire and the hidden meaning in his polite words seemed startlingly clear to her.

'He means to interrogate us, despite the fact that I just proved we were not enemies.' Sapphire thought her anger rising again.

'But what choice do we have?' she thought as she nodded her consent to Arthur who was waiting for Lancelot to visibly begin to relax before removing his hand from Lancelot's shoulder. Though he was still clearly quite mad at the comments Sapphire had made about his being self-absorbed he did eventually lose some of the tension in his shoulders.

Mentally Sapphire laughed, if she and her sisters were truly in the time of the great King Arthur, then Sapphire doubted these men had ever experienced a woman as loud and outspoken and independent as she and the others were. She doubted that many of the women at this "Fort" had ever spoken to any of the Knights as freely as she knew she and her sisters were apt to do for however long they were there until they went back to their own time, if they ever went back that is.

Arthur was just about to address her and Diana and Iona when the missing knight with tattoos on his face returned and said something that only Arthur could hear. He unstrapped something from the saddle on his horse and was about to drop it when Sapphire, Diana and Iona all recognized it as Tegan's violin case and shouted in unison as he began to let it drop.

Their sudden unified shout was probably the worst thing they could have done. It startled his horse into rearing, almost throwing the man off causing him to let go of Tegan's violin. All three watched in horror as the case began to fall toward the ground. Sapphire felt herself spring forward to try and catch it but even she couldn't move fast enough and the case fell to the ground under the horse's feet.

'Oh no' She thought 'Oh no, oh no, oh no, please horse don't step on it, please, please, please.'

Sapphire kept repeating the mantra as the knight began to calm his horse. She eased up slowly making and maintaining eye contact with the spooked animal as she slowly moved around it to try and retrieve the fallen case.

She didn't make it.

The horse backed up away from her on step too many and there was a sickening crunch as the weight of the horse splintered the wood of the fragile instrument.

She froze at the sound and felt her face drop in remorse. She didn't make it in time to save Tegan's violin. She knew when her friend found out she would be devastated, for so long that violin had been Tegan's only outlet, the only way she could say everything she was holding in without using a word, and now it was gone.

The horse finally calmed and the man dismounted and retrieved the crushed case from the ground. He brought it over to Sapphire and handed the case to her. Sapphire took it and looked up at Arthur and Lancelot who surprisingly no longer looked suspicious of her or her friends.

Sapphire cleared her throat and willed herself not to cry, not to take this as a bad omen about Tegan and Niamh. She cleared her throat once more and looked in all seriousness, all anger and temper from before now gone, and addressed Arthur and his knights.

"This belongs to another friend of ours, Tegan, we need to find her and our other missing friend Niamh, they are hurt."

Sapphire paused, the fear that her two missing friends were hurt and badly so caused her eyes to fill with tears no matter how much she didn't want them to. Sapphire didn't dare look over at Diana or Iona as they came to stand next to her. If she did then the tears would fall for sure.

"Will you help us find them?" She finally asked, the fear she felt seemed to choke Sapphire as she struggled around the words. Fear that they might already be too late. Sapphire didn't expect an answer right away. But the one she got surprised her and the other girls.

Arthur and Lancelot shared a look and when Arthur nodded his head Lancelot spoke. He walked up to Sapphire and lifted her chin so she was no longer looking at her bare and freezing feet. She would have thought that the gesture was kind of sweet as she was forced to stare into his eyes, if it weren't for the fact that he was an infamous womanizer and she had just gotten into a verbal pissing match with the man in which she had insulted him repeatedly.

His eyes held her own bright sapphire blue ones.

"We will help you find your missing friends then we will return to the Fort where Dagonet and Vanora will help you get fixed up and get you some food. Then you will tell us who hurt you and your friends, where you are from and how you found your way here in the middle of a skirmish with Woads. You have nothing to fear from us."

With that Lancelot, having mistaken her fear for her friends' wellbeing as fear of him, smirked and turned to mount his horse along with the other knights.

Sapphire, Diana, and Iona looked around as all seven men mounted their horses and they stood, beginning to shake much more violently in the cold air, wondering who they were to ride with. Fortunately they did not have to wonder for long as Arthur noticed this predicament as well and asked three knights to volunteer to have the ladies ride with them. Immediately three hands were offered to Sapphire and her friends to help pull them up onto the horses.

Sapphire looked up at the hand she was about to clasp and was surprised to see that it was Lancelot who had ridden over to her and offered his hand. She hesitated for just a second too long. She thought Lancelot would have hated her a considerable amount given the first words that they had exchanged had not been overly pleasant.

'Because that isn't an understatement at all' she thought to herself as Lancelot sighed.

"I'm not going to bite." Then he smirked and added, "Not unless you want me too."

His eyes raked over Sapphire's now very dirty and slightly torn dress. Her hat and belt and shoes long since missing leaving her in only her once white dress that hugged her body and showed off her every curve. Sapphire shivered, but this time not from cold, but from how much she suddenly liked having the most infamous playboy in history stare at her in the way he was. She crossed her arms over her chest as she felt a blush rise to her cheeks. Sapphire was suddenly very aware of just how much her body was reacting to his flirtations coupled with knowing just exactly how much Lancelot must be able to see…of her chest in particular.

He laughed at her sudden blush and extended his hand to help her up once again. Sapphire huffed indignantly and slapped his hand away before vaulting herself up onto the horse sidesaddle style in front of him. Sapphire kept her legs together and hoped he got the silent message of the action, thought really it was just so Sapphire's legs weren't as exposed to the cold.

Lancelot wrapped his arms around her to grab the reins and Sapphire tried not to sigh at the sudden warmth they provided. Lancelot must have noticed though as he pulled his cloak around to cover her legs and held her closer to him, though Sapphire suspected that it was just so he could have a better hold on and control over the reins.

Sapphire glanced over her shoulder and saw Iona as she was being picked up and placed on a horse by Dagonet and Diana was already sitting normally in front of the blonde knight who Sapphire guessed was Gawain.

Lancelot kicked his horse forward and started to follow Arthur and the others. Sapphire was thankful as she and Lancelot rode in silence for the first few minutes. Then it ended when Lancelot started asking questions, questions Sapphire wasn't sure how much she should or could answer in a way that he or any of the Knights would understand. Lancelot must have read Sapphire's mind though as he asked one of the questions she had been seriously hoping to avoid.

"Why are you and your companions dressed so…oddly? Does your…er…profession, require you to show so much of yourself so readily?"

Sapphire shook her head and fought hard to suppress a wild giggle thinking 'if he thinks this is scandalous he should see what I wear for gymnastics competitions…or to the beach.'

How in the world though was she supposed to explain to the most famous playboy of all history that she and her friends were definitely not hookers or prostitutes and that this is how almost all women dressed for parties without it making her sound absolutely crazy?

Sapphire took a deep breath, better to just jump in headfirst.

"Well you see…where we come from…"