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Don't need to have a tumblr to look at it, so feel free to check it out periodically, as I'll make posts about all my fics there, and potentially thoughts about past fics of mine, or even upcoming projects in the world of fanfiction. If you're interested, check it out. If you're not, well, on with the fic!
Ruins of My Kingdom to Come
By Alkeni
Chapter 10: What On Earth Is A Vampire?
Gaius followed after Sir Leon as they made their way through the streets of the lower town towards the body, Merlin trailing behind, holding – as usual – Gaius' bag, carrying vials and herbs and other assorted medical and scientific tools.
"How can you be sure that the death was magical in nature?" Gaius asked the knight as they walked. "You don't possess any medical or scientific training, Sir Leon."
"The body is pale, like they lost a great deal of blood, but there is no blood on the scene, and there were no visible marks on the body." Leon replied. "I've never seen anything quite like it it." They turned down one more street and they saw it, one of the town guards standing by the body to keep it undisturbed by the small crowd of gawkers and onlookers that had gathered around. When he saw them approaching, the guard, who clearly had been on the receiving end of one of Gaius' tongue-lashings, stepped aside to give the court physician room to work.
It didn't take long for Gaius to cluck his tongue. "There actually are some marks." He tilted the neck to Leon and Merlin could see. Two small holes in the neck, only a short distance from eachother. "The cause of death is certainly blood loss. But the lack of any blood around the wounds, or on the ground is strange. I can't imagine any way to catch the blood so perfectly. If this wasn't magical, the body was left here." He lifted one of the body's hands, and then let it go. It fell limply. "Its recent as well. Likely just last night." He looked up to Merlin and Leon. "Help me lift him."
"Lift him?"
"I can't do a proper analysis right here in the middle of the street, Merlin!" Gaius pointed out. "And at the moment, I've no idea what killed him. Finding that out will take time, and it would be better if I had the body on hand as I conduct my research." He gestured to knight and to Merlin. "So help me lift him."
Of course, Gaius' idea of 'helping me lift him' was Gaius doing none of the lifting and Leon and Merlin doing all of it. Merlin grabbed onto the man's legs as Leon grabbed the shoulders and together they lifted. The body was, as expected, heavy, though perhaps not quite as heavy as one with all its blood might have been. Merlin wasn't really sure.
"You want us to carry him all the way to the castle?" Merlin asked, expression desperate.
"Of course. I can't work on him in the middle of the street or anything in between." Gaius replied.
Good God, I hate this job sometimes. Well, really, he hated it most of the time. But usually he could cheat with magic when he was cleaning something or what have you. He couldn't do that right now, which made it all the worse.
With Gaius making sure the way was clear, Sir Leon – who wasn't enjoying himself, but wasn't struggling as much as Merlin – and Merlin wound their way through the streets of the lower town, into the keep and, finally, blessedly, into Gaius's workroom. Unfortunately they had to wait while he cleared a table of books, vials and ingredients.
Arms screaming in strain, impatience building in him, Merlin found himself actually lightly drumming the fingers of one hand against the dead man's leg. It only took Gaius a short time to get the table ready, however, and with a final lift, Merlin and Sir Leon laid him out onto the table.
"Thank you. You may tell Uther that I will endeavor to have some kind of news for him shortly. In the meantime, business should continue as normal. There is no reason to cause some kind of panic." Leon nodded at Gaius' words and left. Merlin, stretching his arms a little to try and work out the soreness, rubbing at his shoulder as well, made his way to the door as well.
Gaius, not looking up from the body, interrupted his movement. "And just where are you going?"
"Out." Merlin replied. "Figured I go for a walk, or at least find Arthur and let him berate me, as per usual." He rolled his eyes.
"So you're not going to go talk to or spend time with Morgana?" Now Gaius looked up at Merlin, raising one eyebrow in that way of his. "It hasn't been completely unnoticed that you seem to be spending more time around her."
"She's my friend, Gaius!" Merlin countered with exasperation. "And she's going through...she's terrified, still, just a little. She's starting to cope with it, a little, and she doesn't seem to have had such violent dreams or outbursts of," he didn't need to add 'magic'. Gaius knew what the missing word would be as well as he did. "But you don't understand how scared she is. I'm the only person in this castle who has any idea of what she's going through. I can't just completely abandon her!"
"Merlin, you can't-" Gaius started.
"Oh, stop it, or you'll sound like the Great Dragon, and I get it enough from him." Merlin interrupted, fed up with the both of them, how they either distrusted Morgana or wanted to 'protect' her from who and what she was. Neither of them had any idea what they were saying or doing, when it came to Morgana. "I've not told her the truth." Merlin was a little surprised that this lie could make it past Gaius, but he'd said it before during an admonishment from the physician, and he hadn't been called on it.
"The Great Dragon is a wise being, Merlin." Gaius scolded. "He isn't omniscient by any means, but his age and wisdom give his advice merit. You would do well to consider it."
"Its not advice that he gives me, Gaius. He wants to command me. I'm just a tool to him – the Great Dragon is selfish, obsessed with himself and his prophecy. I don't give a damn about either." Merlin resisted the urge to raise his voice – being heard by passersby would be a bad thing, to say the least, but this whole subject inflamed Merlin's passions and anger the way little else did. Ever since the Dragon had put his mother at risk like that, nearly killing her, demanded his freedom as the price for defeating Sigan, tried to get him to ignore Morgana's plight...every time the Dragon did something, it seemed, said something, demanded something, it just made Merlin more angry.
Anger was not something Merlin carried around that much of, most of the time. Temperamentally, it just wasn't him. But with the Dragon...
"Prophecy is complicated at best." Gaius replied. "Nothing should be taken at face value, but everything in prophecy happens – just usually not how you'd think. Be careful when dealing with any matter that involves prophecy." The physician shook his head. "I need to get back to work. Just remember you have responsibilities, Merlin. You cannot let yourself simply act as you will, and take the consequences. The future is depending on you, Merlin."
Merlin, much as he almost wanted to, couldn't bring himself to roll his eyes, or sigh in exasperation, at Gaius' words. He'd heard them before, and had, to a degree, heard them from the Dragon. But the earnestness with which Gaius spoke...He couldn't just dismiss it out of hand. Besides which, Merlin understood, and believed what he said, largely. Prophecy or not, I am in a position to try and make the world a better place. Arrogant prat and clot-pole much of the time or not, Arthur was, at the end of the day, a better man than his father, and would be a better king. As long as he lived long enough to get the crown, at least.
Which is the real problem.
Merlin looked back to the dead body as he left Gaius' workroom. He'd lived in Camelot long enough to know that it would come up again. But, for the time being, he had to continue his slow efforts to train Morgana. Making it up as he went along was the best he could do at the moment, but..it was what he had, and it seemed to be helping Morgana, if even a little.
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Forming his fingers into a closed fist, Wesley rapped lightly on the open door frame of Gaius' chambers. The white-haired man looked up from the dead body laid on the table before him, books and vials scattered on other tables – clearly, Gaius was researching something, and it likely related to the dead body.
"Ah, Wesley." Gaius greeted the man politely. The former watcher couldn't help but notice the distance that remained in Gaius' tone, though he wasn't exactly surprised or bothered by it. Given the strangeness of their arrival, and the content of the half-truths he'd told the man and told Merlin, careful distrust was an expected order of the day. "What do you need?"
As he spoke, Wesley walked towards Gaius and the dead body, curious as to what the physician was working on. "I had some questions about the Dragon beneath the castle. Namely," His eyes settled on, by accident, the dead man's neck. He saw the marks, the rest of his words coming out of his mouth almost absentmindedly as he looked up to the man's face, the mouth closed. "...how it got imprisoned underneath the castle..."
Placing a hand both above and below the dead man's mouth, Wesley pulled it open ignoring Gaius' objections. Blood, right there, on the tongue.
"Fuck." Wesley looked over at Gaius. "You know what this means, don't you?" Vampires. Always bloody vampires.
"No, I haven't a clue. What does it mean? What on earth possessed you to rip the man's mouth open like that?"
"I had to check, to see if it the man had been turned. He has." Wesley could see Gaius still had no idea. "How can you not recognize a vampire kill when you see one? The bite marks alone are telltale!"
"Vampire? What are you talking about?" Boggled, Gaius turned to a pile of books, selecting a volume and started paging through it, as if he could just look up 'vampire' within and find the answer to his own question.
"I'm talking about the walking dead rising, feeding on the blood of the living and creating more of their own from their victims. That blood in that man's mouth is proof enough. He will rise as a vampire come the night. They have no conscience, no guilt, no shame. They seek only to feed their hunger and usually commit other acts of evil." Sort of. Sometimes it was more complicated than that, sometimes it wasn't. Wesley wasn't going to be able to give Gaius chapter and verse on the vampires, even though he could quote from memory every authoritative council text on the subject without much effort. There was just no frame of reference that Gaius had, if he really hadn't even heard of vampires before.
"If this dead man is going to become this 'vampire' so soon, is there no way to prevent that? Do you have proof conclusive?" Gaius raised a skeptical eye. "I've not heard of any creature even remotely like these vampires you've very loosely described. I find that hard to believe."
"Stick a piece of sharpened wood into the body – specifically, the heart." Though he didn't need to show Gaius where the heart was, he still unconsciously pointed to the organ with one hand. "Come nightfall, when it actually completes the transformation, the wood through its heart will kill it. That is one of the few ways to actually kill a vampire – wood through the heart."
"And what are the other ways, then?" Creatures that could only be killed in a handful of ways he knew well – the magical creatures of Albion were often only killable in unique ways, specific to their kind of creature, normal weapons of little effect.
"Fire – complete immolation, and you have to watch to make sure – or beheading. The strength and speed of a vampire, even the weakest, is easily twice that of most mortal men..."
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Merlin watched as Morgana, sitting in the center of the basement room, closed her eyes once more. Her gaze, if her eyes were open, would have been resting on the small remnant of a candle Merlin had 'borrowed' for this. Morgana, since that night, had demanded that candles not be left in her room at night. Uther and Arthur took it as an understandable, if not entirely rational fear based on what had happened. Morgana, though...every night she went to bed, terrified she'd wake up to yet another inferno caused by her own magic.
"Merlin, I- I can't." Morgana said after a moment, opening her eyes. "This – this is too much. I can't- what if I lose control?"
"Morgana, no fire you could create from that tiny little candle would be too much for me to stop, even if you lose control or go overboard." Merlin pointed out, stepping closer, looking at her gently. "But until you can light the candle by your choice – magic is part of you, and if you don't control it, it will control itself. You have to know how to use it, even if you won't."
It had taken a long day of searching to find this room, the perfect room for Morgana's training. Deep in the storage basement of the castle, nestled in the back with supplies for the longest of sieges, they were almost certain to never be interrupted, no servant or guard would stumble upon them here. At least during the day – the night did have the occasional guard once every now and then, come by, covering this area as part of their patrol. Not even every night though. But they were never planning on working here in the night anyway. There was a two-hour span when Morgana could stand to be missed, most days, and they did what they could during those times.
Merlin had started her slowly, brief exercises to try and get her to get in touch with, to feel her magic. Going straight to lighting a candle was more of a leap than might be entirely reasonable, but...Morgana was still afraid, and that fear was affecting her. She was sleeping less, and when she slept it wasn't as sound, though no nightmares, just...fitful, light sleep. Terror at what would happen if anyone else – Uther, Arthur, Guinevere, one of the other nobles or servants, a knight or a guard – found out that she had magic. She'd seen too many magic users be burned, or beheaded, or otherwise killed to not know what would happen – her entire life in Camelot had been one litany of execution, imprisonment, exile and torture after another, as suspects, and friends of suspects, and people to suspected to be friends of suspects were sometimes swept up in paranoid purges, concepts like actual proof of magic use tossed out the window in most cases.
Merlin couldn't do anything about that fear, not really, much as he would like to. He lived with that fear himself, though...he hadn't seen all the punishments firsthand like she had. It was worse for her.
He couldn't help her with most fear. But if he could just get her to control the lighting of a candle, he could help her handle one small fear, build her confidence in her magic up. Thus...thus the candle.
"Morgana, I wouldn't ask you to do this if I didn't think you could." He took her hand loosely in his, no squeezing or holding tightly, just affirming that he was here, here for her. "You can do this. It may take practice, but you can. Close your eyes."
Morgana, feeling Merlin take her hand in his, closed her eyes, breathing deep a moment, try to calm herself. She envisioned fire – just a tiny amount – on the candle. Just a lit candle. Nothing more, nothing less. In and out she breathed, touching her magic, trying to match her magic to the vision on her mind, to make it real.
It only took but a moment, for all it felt like an age inside her. She felt power, felt her magic moving, doing. She opened her eyes, feeling no sudden heat from any kind of towering inferno.
And there wasn't. No inferno. No danger. Just a small lit candle, flickering in their breath, burning the wick and wax, innocent, almost harmless.
I did it...I..I did it. I did it. She had lit the candle. She could control the candle, light it on her own will.
Merlin smiled. "Good work, Morgana. Now – put it back out." He squeezed her hand ever so gently.