28. It's Over
Summary: "Gilli," Merlin mutters, near my ear, and I understand the plea in his voice. But Merlin cannot help. Not in this state. I know it, he must know it – and yet. I know he'll never forgive me if I don't let him try.
Three things happen at once.
Merlin lets go of his grip on the man's arm, his eyes blazing golden as they watch his captor fall to the ground. Eyes rolling, blood trickling from each of the man's nostrils.
A great wind blows into the tent – a great, terrible wind, biting at my skin in its force and blowing the tent's canvas askew. Knocking Black-beard to the ground, his eyes so wide they nearly bulge from his head.
At Merlin, who stands and starts slowly raising his hands. Not forward, not directed at his enemies; out, as if wings that have been bound, and bloodied, and tortured and maimed, finally now are able to stretch. To spread.
All that happens after is a flurry of movement and sound; horses screaming like men, men screaming like horses, the tent flying off its poles, the current of air gathering dust and billowing out in every direction, around him, at the epicenter Merlin. His eyes won't stop glowing, and my chest won't stop burning. Merlin is on fire and so am I. I feel it between us like a current, an invisible tendril of flame that sparks what is consuming us both.
But another current beckons just to me.
I feel it creeping from the corners of my vision with every second, at the edge of my skin. The fire is either dulling, or my senses are. The canvas ceiling has been replaced with winking stars that I watch as the camp is leveled around me, but slowly, slowly, they start to wink out.
A black, suffocating arm grabs and tugs, pulling against my last shred of will and plunging me deep into dark waters. My ears are clogged with it; my eyes are mucked with it. For a moment, I think I touch the other side. I'm going to die, I think. The power is drowning me. I'm going to die.
I don't want to do this anymore.
"Help! Please help, please, help, help . . . help . . ."
The word pulls me, slowly, out of the water.
"HELP! Someone, help!" The voice pleas. I don't recognize it.
"Anyone! Anyone, can . . . can anyone hear me?"
I blink my eyes open to find my chest, no longer glowing though still feeling on fire. The stars are back. Finally I have the clarity of mind to sit up, to look around me at the camp. At what's happened to the camp.
Just like that night, essentially the one of Foehart's death – there isn't much left. The trees are even stripped this time, the horses run off, the ground covered in debris and unmoving bodies.
The voice comes again, from behind me somewhere in the wreckage. "Help, help, help, it's over, gods, it's all over isn't it? . . . someone help us, someone – " I turn sharply, rustling the debris around me. "Is that you, Merlin?" I call softly, moving to my knees. A decent-sized tree has fallen near where it came, muffled and hopeless as the sound is.
"Merlin?" I call again, and stand to seek it out.
But I nearly step on him in the process.
He lies on his back, body shivering still, but only every few seconds now. Like it's just an aftershock, too worn out to do anymore. His eyes are closed, but he can't be asleep; I can see the pain in his brow, the beads of sweat glittering in the cold starlight. His eyes open in slits, sensing me there. No longer gold.
"A-arthur?" he croaks, barely opening his mouth to do so.
"This is bloody perfect, Merlin," I hiss at him in utter relief, grabbing his limp arms and attempting to get him over my shoulder. "You flatten our captors, and yet still manage to flatten yourself in the process – "
" – Just leave me," he groans as I successfully sling him across my back.
I snort, looking around the battlefield of debris and bodies in a business-like manner. "Now's not the time for jokes. Let's go before -"
"Please, is that you Merlin? Please, whoever's there!" The ragged voice suddenly shrieks, the same one that called me out of that dark pit of unconsciousness before. But it's a desperate sound now; a cry of despair instead of a mournful plea.
I carry Merlin, moving towards the sound warily – and hardly keep my stomach when I round the fallen tree.
It's Gilli, the new recruit. He doesn't look too worse for wear: still pale, dirty, shaking and bloodied. But it's not his blood. Oh, no. His master, the nameless knight from our travels, lies pinned beneath the fallen trunk, right below where his previous injury lay. And though Gilli's hands are stoppered against the fallen man's wound, dark blood gushes from between the cracks in his fingers like from a leak in a bucket.
"I can't save him, I don't have it, I have nothing," he immediately starts babbling upon seeing us, almost forgetting to keep his hands on the wound. "Merlin, please, let Merlin help me sir, please, save him sir," he goes on, looking at me with teary, bloodshot eyes. My mouth feels dry.
"Gilli," Merlin mutters, near my ear, and I understand the plea in his voice. But Merlin cannot help. Not in this weak state. I know it, he must know it – and yet. I know he'll never forgive me if I don't let him try.
I crouch, let Merlin slide off my back as gently as possible next to the dying man, and when he can hardly keep himself sitting upright I want to sling him back up in the next second, carry him away from here and trek to the safety of Camp that, funny enough in all this horror, is not two leagues off. We should leave, never once look back.
"Arthur, please," Merlin says, lifting up his arms.
Leave; never once look back.
"Ic alīesan ēow anweald don mīn ferð," I say quickly instead, after clasping his limp hands in mine. Heal, save him. But - not at great cost, I add quickly.
The briefest of flashes in his eyes, and then Merlin is back to the same tired, wasted state. His hands shake as he places them gently over Gilli's bloody ones, above the wound. He closes his eyes for a second, opens them, let's out a string of those unintelligible words.
When Merlin's eyes don't even flash in the darkness, he bows his head in defeat.
"It's over then, is it?" Gilli asks in disbelief, eyes flicking between us like a cornered mouse. When Merlin says nothing, I give a slow nod to the recruit. "No, no, no, no – " he chants, slightly rocking over his guardian, patting the man's face as if that's all that's needed to revive him. Then the young recruit begins to sob big, horrible, ugly sobs into his curled-up knees, ones that quake from the very first ridge of his spine to the last. Hoarse, dreadful sounds escape from the back of his throat. And Merlin makes no move to comfort, to reach a hand out and soothe the pathetic thing.
So I say, "It'll be alright," just out of helplessness, and Gilli freezes. His face slowly lifts from his knees, and his eyes light up – not with the gold of magic, but the red of hatred.
"This is murder," he says, face wrecked and chin quivering. His mouse-like eyes bore into me, so intently I can't look away. "You've killed me," he says, echoing Merlin's words at the beginning, "all of you. I hate you so much – you've taken everything, EVERYTHING!" He frees his hands, pointing at me with both of them, bloody black in the harsh moonlight. There's a dark, murderous intent to his demeanor. For a moment I think he might jump on me, strangle me with his soiled fingers, and I hunch for the fight.
Gilli flinches at my changed posture, but his eyes remain wild and reckless. "You - you can't do anything more to me now! IT'S OVER! Over before it'd even begun . . ." he mutters the last, eyes suddenly releasing me to fix on his guardian again. His master.
In a slash of movement he's pushing Merlin away – Merlin, who's stayed frozen through this whole speech, moving not a muscle – and crouching over the fallen man. With hands covered in the knight's very blood, Gilli's intent becomes much clearer. His hands reach out not to strangle me, but the unconscious knight.
Neither Merlin nor I do much besides gape as the dead man chokes on his recruit's grip, gags, and then truly dies.
Or stare in shock as, seconds later, Gilli jumps back from the body: clutching at his own throat now.
I see it – just as the tendrils of black claiming marks, decorating his pale wrists as with all recruits and guardians, suddenly slither up his arm out of sight. And a moment later reappear, creeping like living shadows of skeletal hands, to completely encompass Gilli's throat. A dark, crude necklace.
His dirty face whitens, then reddens. His body starts convulsing, and he drops to his back, kicking like a trapped animal with a tortured yell. The marks are choking him, somehow.
Then slowly he grows still, becomes silent. He gives one last kick and then his body no longer so much as twitches - the black necklace of the claim taking its final, mortal claim: the recruit himself.
All from the irreversible words, 'Ic fæstnian ēow.' I bind thy life, to mine.
A/N: On that note . . . thanks for reading! I feel the need to say that the main antagonist of this fic is not Uther or Nimueh or the mad king of Camelot, but the claim itself, if that helps you understand why this chapter was necessary. If you didn't need help, cool! You're officially as evil as I am ;D
catherine10: LOL Your reviews never fail to make me smile, or in this case laugh! Its good to hear you like the idea of Merlin exerting more of his will, though I must point out that he wasn't exactly conscious, haha. Thanks for your review :)
