A/N - Good morning lovely Merlin fans!

Thank you to purplecat19 for you review and to Just Hedera for following!

And look, I'm hurting Arthur again. Sorry your Highness!

No. 9 – Buried Alive

The scream burst from Arthur as the floor gave way. The walls tumbled in. The ceiling collapsed. The earth tunnels he had been running along reduced to nothing but a roaring rushing sound as they caved in on top of him.

Silence descended again once the earth stopped shifting. It was a deafening silence, not a single sound reached his ears except for his own ragged breathing and groan of pain. He had fallen on his front, his face pressed down into the dirt, the heavy weight of rocks and soil on his back.

He should have let Merlin come with him. No, he corrected himself, he was glad Merlin wasn't here too. So that he was not trapped down here with him. Buried under goodness knows how much earth and stone. Buried alive.

He tried to calm his breathing, which had sped up into frantic gasps as terror flooded his mind. He closed his eyes – not that it made much difference; it was pitch black under here anyway, his torch had been smothered in the collapse – and tried to steady himself. He brought his breathing back down slowly, concentrating on the pounding of his heart that was echoing in his ears.

Once he had his panic back under control, he focussed on working out a plan. Merlin wouldn't come looking for him for another few hours, he'd told him to wait at the camp. So he'd have to find a way out of here on his own.

A small part of Arthur hoped that Merlin had ignored the command as usual and would be following him already, ready to pull him from the mess he was in just as Merlin liked to claim he always did.

He shook his head. He was a prince, the finest warrior in the kingdom. He was not going to lie here and wait for his manservant to rescue him like he was some bloody damsel in distress.

He didn't have time to sit around waiting anyway; the air felt heavy, thick. What little he had, trapped in this hole with him, would soon be used up. He needed to find the surface, or a part of the tunnels that hadn't collapsed, and he needed to find it quickly before he suffocated.

He twisted himself around until he could get his hands out in front of him and began scrabbling at the wall like a mole. The soft dirt was, luckily, fairly easy to move. He scooped it out and squashed it underneath himself, slowly inching forwards.

His heart leapt as his fingers dragged at a small rock and suddenly a draught of cold air hit his face. He was through! He was out!

His celebration was short lived though, as he realised it was just a small crevice bringing in cold air from somewhere further down the tunnels. But it gave him something to aim for. He dug with renewed vigour, widening the crevice and gasping in the cool air, crawling along on his belly.

Several times, he managed to cause more cave ins, bringing torrents of mud down on top of him, cutting off his meagre air supply.

He thumped the ground in front of him in annoyance after once such cave in, swearing under his breath when that made more mud rain down into his hair. It was everywhere. The dry dirt grinding into and through his chainmail, under his gambeson. It was working its way down the back of his neck, getting slick with sweat to make unpleasant sticky mud.

He pawed uselessly at the neck of his chainmail, the constricting metal almost garrotting him. He wanted to get it off. He couldn't breathe. He was hyperventilating again and he hadn't found the airway.

Gasping and choking, he managed to hook his fingers underneath his pauldron, yanking it harshly until he ripped it from his shoulder. He used the curved metal as a scoop, digging chunks from the wall of earth in front of him. He grunted with the effort, digging with all his might.

He dug until his shoulders screamed with the effort, until his fingers hurt, until his lungs could barely take the lack of oxygen anymore. Until finally he broke through. His pauldron met no resistance as he thrust it forwards for another scoop. Cold air rushed onto his face and he took a huge gasping lungful of it, coughing harshly when dust followed the air down his throat. He stuck his hand through the hole, feeling around. It wasn't another tunnel. It felt like a cave, a big open space. Or at least big and open compared to his cramped tunnel.

Pushing forwards on his belly, he wriggled through the hole into the wider cave, letting out a breathy laugh of disbelief that he had managed it. But no sooner had the laugh left his lips, his movement dislodged a large stone from the top of the tunnel he was squirming out of and the whole thing shifted and crashed down on top of him again. He couldn't move. He was trapped.

Tears sprung to his eyes as he coughed and spluttered out the soil that had filled his mouth. He was never going to get out.

He let out a scream, a ragged hopeless scream.

"Merlin…" he cried helplessly. His strangled cry was barely more than a whisper.

He let his head drop. His forehead pressing into the soft mud below him as tears cascaded over his dry eyelashes. He lay and wept, defeat crushing him as surely as the earth and rocks.

Something flickered at the edge of his sight. His head shot up, bumping the roof of the tunnel and sending more mud down the back of his neck. But he didn't care. It suddenly wasn't pitch black anymore.

His eyes opened wide. Surely he was seeing things, the lack of air making him hallucinate. There was a blinding light coming towards him. Silvery blue, a small floating orb of swirling light. It felt familiar, friendly. It was the same light that had helped him in the caves of Baloch when he'd gone to retrieve the Mortaeus flower.

This time he did not fear it, or doubt it. He eagerly reached forwards to brush his finger against its shining surface. It was cool to the touch and bobbed as his finger touched it. It reminded him of something but he couldn't quite figure out what.

Nevertheless, as it slowly drifted away from him, it gave him the courage to pull himself forwards after it. With a lot of struggling and wriggling he got free from the rocks holding him down.

His fingertips were bloody and ragged, the nails ripped down past the quick, the skin shredded. But he used them to scrape through the earth regardless of the pain, dragging his aching body along. The light guided him through endless tunnels, directing him into paths where stronger rocks or more solidly packed earth kept the ceiling of the tunnel up away from him. He was no longer digging through soft dirt, but crawling through firm fully formed channels.

And when he finally, finally, tumbled from the tight tunnel into an open cavern he heard a shout of his name. The orb of light flew towards the figure scrabbling through an opening – through which Arthur saw the light of the sky – and Arthur saw Merlin's worried face.

He managed to lift himself into a kneeling position just as Merlin skidded to the floor in front of him. Merlin grabbed him in a firm hug and he let himself sag against his manservant's chest. He was free.