A/N: And so we begin a new chapter. Once again, writing at night. Lol Got myself a new toy that takes up my already short attention span. XD It's one of those cyber pet things from Littlest Pet Shop. Got the turtle one, as I've never seen one with a turtle and I miss my pet turtle muchly. nods
So anyway… I keep debating whether I should have mordred come out of the woodwork here or not, as Arturia does not allow anyone to think anything less than WOMAN RAWR about her. Hmmm…..
Chapter Ten
Silence was throughout the manor. In the servant quarters, the wasteland people were allowed to be left alone for the night. No one bothered them as per the orders of Arturia. Merlin slept in his room as well as he could. Bedivere remained silent, but ever vigil in his room, taking small naps when he could. Arturia, however, was sound asleep, even lightly snoring. Bedivere could hear it even through the wall, though he did possess rather excellent hearing and he was looking for her snores.
A shadow descended upon the door of Arturia. It was that of a female figure, her hair a dark curtain down her back. Morgan stood glaring at the door and the charms Merlin had placed upon it. She would kill the man so his work would end that very instant!
She went to do this when a thought occurred to her. She pulled her wand out, a light colored stick that was very long and seemed to sparkle slightly. She tapped the charms where Merlin had placed them and felt the wand bounce back into her hand as it was repulsed from them. Merlin wasn't going to win so easily as that! A witch she was and a good one at that! However, the stories she had heard about Merlin made her nervous. Just how powerful a wizard was he? They said he was born from the wishes of the faeries, their wish for someone to champion them in the world of the non-magicians where they were looked over and sometimes killed as being rodents or other vermin, never anything useful or possibly magical. The house elves didn't deal with non-magicians, unicorns were only ever seen by girls occasionally, though not anywhere south of the Carlisle ruins, if they even were there. The only unicorns she knew existed still were in the forests in Scotland, where the people protected them and the other magical creatures.
And as she remembered, Merlin was indeed a champion for the faeries. He learned what he could about the past so he could better understand the present, as he learned as much about magic and the uses and the ways of performing it as he could. Even headmaster Riddle hardly had a complaint about him and he was severely critical of everyone around him!
Morgan tapped the charms again and found a hole. She grinned to herself, though she was started to perspire from the amount of work she had to do in order to just find the hole. Opening the hole, exposing it to her counter spells, was a great deal harder than finding the holes and Morgan all but abandoned the mission. When she released the last charm, she was huffing and puffing softly as her breathe came out in little soft clouds in front of her. The frozen chill was almost making it difficult to stay in the hallway. She slowly opened the door and entered, hoping that the stupid knight with the pale hair didn't try to burst in. She hit the lock softly and tip toed over toward Arturia's bed.
Arturia was huddled under the quilted blankest, curled up in a fetal position with her hands covering her head. It was as though she were trying to hide under the covers in as small a space as possible. Morgan had seen her sleep like this when Arturia was a little girl. She was as odd back then as she had been when she first arrived at the manor, silent and cold, frozen as the very air outside. She would follow Morgan around, clutching Morgan's skirt and wanting to come with her. Mother never wanted her near at all. Morgan understood this feeling as she didn't want Arturia around her at all either. Arturia was a stain, a black stain upon their family. She was the result of a trickery performed by that blasted magician Merlin upon the very man her mother loathed. Why had he allowed something so sinister, nay, helped perform the task himself by disguising the black hearted man, when he himself was touted as the champion of the fairy folk?
Morgan watched Arturia sleep and thought. Killing her would rid the world of the stain, but then another king would have to be selected to rule. Morgan could have her own husband become king, as he should, by killing Arturia and thus putting Morgan in the place of Queen. Morgan also had another thought occur to her. Perhaps, she could make an illusion to make Lot think Arturia was her and he would bed her and Morgan could steal the baby from inside Arturia and place it in her own womb. She knew of some old magic that would do this. This would give an heir to the throne that Morgan alone could manipulate!
No, Morgan couldn't do that. She hated even the thought of the small, insignificant worm getting her hands on her husband, much less letting him between her legs for a night! Morgan pulled the small silver dagger from her belt and eyed Arturia. Killing her would be a mercy to the land, anyway. The woman had not been right as a child, odd and cold as the land itself and was the same as a young woman, one who thought she should rule as a man should!
"M…um…." Morgan stopped when she heard Arturia mutter. She watched the little woman with suspicion. Why was she calling for their mother now? "Mum… please look at me…"
Morgan frowned and moved away. Of course their mother didn't look at Arturia, she hated the very thought of her! Then, why did Morgan feel a strange pain in her chest when she heard the anguished whimper escape the prideful little queen curled up as tight as a ball under all those blankets?
Morgan started thinking carefully. Should she kill Arturia right then, she would have gained only in satisfying the rage that ran through her blood at the sight of her. However, if she had an heir that Morgan herself could manipulate, or maybe not even an heir, so much as someone who claimed to be her heir….
A homunculus was the thing. It was a risk, but Morgan was certain she could manage to find something that would be able to be shoved off as equivalent exchange in the making of the beast. There were also other ways of doing that particular alchemy that Morgan knew existed. Again, she would need either an egg or seed from Arturia to create it, however, the creature wouldn't endure as long as one formed from the life of another human. The thought of turning Arturia into a man sounded better than letting her sleep with her husband, and so, Arturia was spared for that night. Morgan needed to plan out a way to make Arturia a man and steal her seed to create the homunculus. That would take more than one night to do and she had to be certain of her research. Perhaps a journey to the Hogsmeade library was called for. She didn't have access to the Hogwarts library, not as an adult, but she had access to the one in Hogsmeade, which held copies of the books inside the Hogwarts library for those outside of the school.
The door opening caused Morgan to stop. She put a disillusioning charm on herself and skirted to the darkness. Gawain entered the room and looked around, his long red hair standing out even in the darkness of Arturia's room. Green eyes looked around and looked over Morgan before frowning. When he moved on, looking around as though searching for something, Morgan skittered out as fast as possible, trying to make no noise.
Gawain stopped when he heard his mother leave and closed his eyes. What had his mother been attempting to do to his aunt? He knew she had been there, the door had been locked and he had taken a key for the room from one of the maidservants by charming her with his smiles and good words. He went over and closed the door carefully and went over to check on his little aunt on her bed.
He pulled back the covers slowly, so as to not disturb her and blushed faintly when he saw her in the nude. She was really very small. Her body was very slender, but her hips were wide. Her arms and legs were both muscled, though not overly so and her chest was partially hidden by her arms as she was tightly curled into a small ball. He pulled the covers back over her and moved away to sit in a chair, feeling a little bit ashamed for peeking at her and enjoying the sight a little. However, he justified it with the need to know if there was anything terrible under the covers that might be trying to harm her, magical or otherwise.
He could recognize magic when he saw it, as his eyes spied it all the time. Spells and enchantments came up as lines, like a spider's web, forming around the object that was enchanted, or a net of lines where the spells were located. That was how he had seen his mother, for the lines were all over her body.
"Mu..m… please look at me… please look..."
Gawain frowned when he heard Arturia whimper, clutching his hand to his chest over his heart as he heard her soft cries. What had his grandmother done to his aunt when she was so young that she couldn't be fostered yet? She was so small, so tiny that she would have seemed sickly or a runt to any normal person as a child. Her face was so delicate, like that of a finely made doll from France or Germany, that he could hardly tell that she had supposedly grown up as a boy in the tutelage of Merlin.
He sighed and stood again and glanced toward the flaxen haired girl that he refused to truly acknowledge as his mother's sister. She was so much smaller than him, a few years younger than him even, and yet she was supposed to be revered in the same position as an older woman would. He admitted, reluctantly, that he was a little smitten with his aunt, for she was very pretty and so very clever and brave. He wished all the women in Cannick could be like that, since he was needing to find a bride to wed and soon. He wasn't the heir to Cannick, however, his mother was growing more and more insistent that he find a bride soon and give her grandchildren.
He smiled faintly and walked out the door, locking it behind him and pocketing the key. He would find a bride one day, he knew, so he didn't worry overmuch for his aunt. Besides that, he didn't really like the idea of having to bed down so far to kiss his bride and Arturia was really tiny compared to him. He saved his laughter for when he went to his room so he wouldn't alarm the pale haired knight he would serve beside.
The party left Cannick the next morning, Bedivere the only one who did not rest well. Arturia had Gawain keep him upright while they rode to the next town to sleep for the night. When they finally reached Camelot, it was on a strange day where the people seemed strangely scarce. When she went the castle, she found a display of a few of her guardsmen who were staying to protect Camelot from raiders were being beheaded.
"What is the meaning of this!" she called. Galain immediately saw her and ran over to her from the platform. "Galain! What is the meaning of this!?"
"They are men of Gilgamesh, spies!" cried Galain as he ran over to her. Arturia looked to the men on the platform and seemed to growl low in her throat. Galain had to take a step back from her as she dismounted angrily and pulled her sword and scabbard off the back of her saddle and stalked through the crowd.
The crowd parted for her as she strode up the steps to the platform where the men were to be beheaded for treason. She stopped glared down at one man who cowered in fear at the look of complete outrage burning in Arturia's eyes.
"You, men of Gilgamesh," she said, loud enough for the crowd to hear, "will die for spying against your queen for a man who would sooner kill you as look at you! Such insolence will not be tolerated!" Arturia pulled Excalibur from its scabbard and let the scabbard drop onto the platform as she walked over to the nearest man by his hair and hauled him over to the chopping block. With one swing, she didn't just cut off his head; she sliced the man completely in half, his body still jerking on the ground beside her feet. "This is what I will do to traitors! No headsman will take care of this job, but I will! For it is ME who you betray!"
The people seemed to back away from the bloody sight, Arturia splattered a bit with the man's blood from her cutting him in two and the two halves on the ground, blood flowing over the boards of the platform and dripping onto the frozen earth beneath. She grabbed the second man and struggled with him for a moment before she took his head and wrenched it off with a gauntlet clad hand. When had she put on any armor?
Merlin was rooted to the spot, uncertain as to whether he should say or do something to stop the slaughter on the platform. The people were backing away slowly, though they did not scream or cry out in terror. And Arturia was a terror. After she had ripped the man's head off, she stood holding it in her black gauntlet covered hand and looked out at the crowd. "This is what will happen to those who will oppose me in such an underhanded fashion. Who would endanger the lives of every Briton and not just me." She threw the head out into the crowd and watched as some people finally cried out in horror and moved away from the head. It was then Merlin saw that she was clad in armor; black armor with red lines decorating it. Her gauntlets were sharp with claws on the ends of her fingers with razors pointing backward toward her arm along the sides of them; her sides were protected by black armor plates with the same razor sharp looking edges to them as the gauntlets. Merlin realized, as he watched her, that the armor came from both the sword and scabbard being together in Arturia's possession.
The last man on the platform was pulled up crying and begging for mercy. He kissed at Arturia's feet and begged for her mercy, to be spared death in exchange for his unending loyalty. Arturia watched him with an unreadable expression on her face, a mask once more. Merlin frowned at her. Why wasn't she giving her mercy to this man who begged for it so? He had taught her that forgiveness was important, that mercy toward those who would be your enemy was the just way of dealing with people rather than ignoring them. Why was she simply standing there and watching the man beg and grovel at her feet?
"No mercy," she said, and then she stabbed the man through the top of his skull as she plunged Excalibur down on him. He jerked slightly on the platform before she used her foot to pull the sword from him and whipped the blood out to her side. She cleaned the blade off with her cloak and put it back into Avalon before walking off the platform, still in the armor.
The people just watched her, stunned. Merlin, however, frowned disapprovingly at her. He had taught her better when she was a child and she was directly opposing the morals he instilled in her, or he thought he had. Agravaine and Gaheris both seemed a little uneasy as they watched Arturia grab the reigns of her horse and head for the stable. Gawain, however, was left with Bedivere, frowning slightly at the turmoil inside him.
"She's brutal, savage," said Bedivere.
"Aye, but she's also right in killing them. No mercy should be given to spies like that," said Gawain softly. "However… something about her right now is troubling."
"I know what you mean," said Bedivere. "However, I'm also certain that that could have been handled differently."
Gawain nodded and helped the pale haired man toward the stables. Meanwhile, Merlin was following Arturia, thoughtful as he watched her put her horse into his stall and deal with him. The armor had gone now and she was in her cloak once more. However, her cheeks still had the creeping black that had come up when her armor appeared on her. They were slowly returning back to normal, though this still didn't give Merlin any comfort. It made him feel even more uneasy.
When things calmed down, Arturia showed the wasteland people to the ruins outside of her city. She gave them many things to use, clothes and food and things to make the ruins less frozen inside their walls. The wasteland chief graciously took the materials and distributed it all to his people before Arturia left to announce the arrival of the wasteland folk to her townspeople.
"In our village, we have newcomers," she said, "As you have seen, they are not like us, but from the wasteland border." At this, people started shouting at her, saying things like "Why did you bring them here!?" and "What will happen when we catch their diseases?!" Arturia waved her hands for the people to quiet down and gazed out at the people gathered. "They are not diseased as you seem to believe. They are cursed with this in their blood, unable to pass it on to us with just dealing with us from day to day. They would have to breed with us in order to give it to their own children. I have brought them here to allow them to live in a place with far more opportunity to live than they would have in the desert. Please do not harm them and let them work beside you. They are now people of Camelot, your neighbors. Treat them as such."
With that, she stepped down off the step she was standing on to be above the crowd and walked to the castle. Merlin was inside the castle waiting for her when she arrived. "You disappointed me, Arturia. That man was asking for your mercy and you didn't give it. Why? You could have at least used the opportunity to show yourself as a merciful ruler instead of a brutal one."
"The man was unnessescary, all of them were. They spied on me and passed information to Gilgamesh. Now he knows that I have been gathering men for an army and will most definitely come to take Briton now, though now it will not be in months, but weeks." Arturia's tone was far colder than Merlin had ever heard it toward him and felt a chill run down his spine when she looked to him. "Don't judge me so shrewdly, Merlin."
"Or else what, Arturia? You will behead me much like you did to that one man? Will you rip me limb from limb?" said Merlin, leaning against the wall behind him.
Arturia looked away from him. "You I would never harm unless you too betrayed me."
Merlin sighed faintly and nodded. "I apologize, Arturia, for I was being rude myself." He stood up straight and walked up to his quarters, still thinking about the display he had seen and the meanings behind it. Arturia, left alone, crouched down and hugged herself, staring at the floor as she shivered slightly. She did not cry, nor did she even hint that she was sad or upset; yet, she felt an incredible pain inside her chest from the betrayal she had been informed of. Now, she had no time whatsoever to raise her army.
