OK. So it's been a while. Months. Which really is inexcusable, so I'll ask you to forgive me, and hope there's still someone out there that gives a damn about this fic now. So, here's the next chapter...
Arthur closed the door to his chambers behind him carefully, refraining from slamming it so hard that the foundations of the castle shook. He pressed a cloth smeared with some foul-smelling concoction that Gaius had given him to his black eye, courtesy of Morgana. She was just as hysterical awake as asleep, refusing to let Arthur anywhere near her. He had left her with Isabelle after the king's ward had given Arthur his bruised and rapidly swelling eye – that, and something chilling to let his already-troubled mind dwell on. Morgana wouldn't say anything about what had reduced her to a sobbing, hysterical wreck, save muttering over and over that it was all Arthur's fault. And that "it" – whatever "it" may be – was coming closer, and closer.
Arthur pushed the quiet nagging doubts to the back of his mind and refused to dwell on that for too much longer. He had more important things to worry about. Namely, surviving the mind-numbing tedium that manifested in the form of his father's meeting with the rulers of the surrounding kingdoms. He knew from bitter experience that such events were predominantly talking, with very little ever being accomplished. And yet it was obviously of paramount importance that he sat through each and every discussion, because the very people who dealt with the running of their respective monarchies each day evidently couldn't function without him standing silent at the back of the room. He sighed and swung his legs off his bed, pulling the cloth away from his eye, wincing slightly as he did. Not that he'd ever admit it, but he was sure that if Morgana ever landed herself in a fist fight of any description, she would more than be able to hold her own. Arthur probed the swollen purpled lump that was his eye gently with his fingers and winced again. That was not going to impress his father.
Back in his room, some hours later, Arthur brooded, troubled. Normally when the kings met, the atmosphere was a little strained, with many a raised voice, accompanied by the sound of a fist striking the table. Today however, Arthur got the impression that hands were never far from the hilts of daggers or swords, that plots and subterfuge shrouded the room and the men within it, that even the air they breathed was tainted with the hint of strife and death that was to come.
He was brought out of his reverie by a timid knock at the door.
"What is it?" he asked, in no mood for pleasantries. He found he was beginning to crave solitude, with nothing but his own thoughts, hopes, fears, desires for company, and started to resent being disturbed.
"It's me" a voice called, its familiar tones laced with exhaustion, and something that Arthur thought might have been…fear?
"Morgana" he was surprised to see her. "Come in." In the past few months, they had become closer than ever before, each relying on the other to be there when no-one else was, but Arthur had thought whatever had grown between them had been destroyed just that morning, when Morgana had blamed him for whatever had reduced her to a pitiful, sobbing wreck.
"I wanted to apologise" she said, fiddling with the hem of her sleeve, not meeting Arthur's eye. "My behaviour was inexcusable, and for that, I hope you will forgive me." She was formal, as if addressing a member of court, instead of the man she had thought of as a brother for many years gone by.
"Morgana. You have to tell me. What did you see?" Arthur was worried about his almost-sister. Deep purple shadows under her eyes said that she hadn't had a full night's sleep in far too long, and her clothes hung off her near-emaciated frame. She was silent for a long time, and he thought that once again, she would refuse to tell him. But then she spoke, and what she said chilled his blood.
"I saw a king, a fair king, with hair like spun gold in the sunlight and eyes of a clear sky-blue, and he was beauty and terror, standing tall and strong and he was terrible in his glory. He was crowned with stars and clothed with blood, and sat upon a throne made of the twisted and tortured bodies of the weak and helpless, and around him, in the very air, hung the screams of the broken. And all around him, were flames, burning higher and higher, burning through stone and metal, flesh and bone alike. And he laughed, laughed as his skin peeled away, laughed as his entire body was consumed, laughed as the armour he was wearing melted itself to what remained of him, laughed as his world burned, as floors collapsed and walls caved in around him – laughed as he died."
Again, I'm really sorry. Honestly. Really really really really really sorry. But please review? Please?
8/1/10 - aww, come on, please? Even if you want to tell me that you hate it, and that I should never even touch a keyboard ever ever again, please review...