Disclaimer: I own nothing in this marvelous universe; it all belongs to BBC Merlin.
Author's Note:It's been a while, I know ::sweatdrop::. But the last quarter of the school year—especially this school year—was always going to be hectic. To top it all off, I decided doing summer school would be a brilliant idea ::face-palm::. But at least we have three-day weekends, which means my creative juices have slowly started to flow again (also, I may have been inspired by Casey McQuiston's Red, White, & Royal Blue…just saying ;)). Magic duels in this universe are not something I've read about often, so getting what I pictured in my head onto paper was tough, but I hope you approve! Bit of BAMF Merlin (and Morgana) here. Please enjoy :)
Reviewers: All 324 of you, thank you!
Rating: T/M
Summary: Three years have passed since Merlin's partial reveal of his magic. On the eve of their assault on Helios and Morgana's forces, Emrys must finally reveal himself in full. Quite without his knowing, it alters the entire course of Camelot's future—as well as his own, with the Once and Future King…[Ambiguous Relationship (Merlin/Arthur)]
"Speech"
Personal Thoughts/Memories (Italics)
.:A Man's Measure:.
By Sentimental Star
VIII: The King's Grace (Part 18)
The woman lounging on the throne looked nothing like the Morgana Arthur remembered.
She wore all black, with her hair severely pinned back from her face and a cruel set to her jaw Arthur found foreign. Not the almost-sister (and now his sister, in fact) of his memories.
As one corner of her mouth crooked upwards in a wicked smirk, Arthur turned to Guinevere at his right side and murmured, knowing Isolde and Tristan would overhear, "Secure the doors."
Guinevere nodded, slipping away with Tristan and Isolde to do just that.
A single glance from Arthur had Merlin falling in beside him, and they closed the distance to Morgana and Helios.
Morgana stood up from the throne and leisurely made her way towards the center of the chamber where she met them, "Refreshing to see some of the old prejudices whither and die, wouldn't you agree, brother?"
"Morgana," Arthur acknowledged warily, sensing Merlin fall back a pace to watch their backs. He raised an open hand to show he did not intend to attack her, feeling her eyes on him as she watched him sheath his sword.
A corner of Morgana's lips tugged up into a wicked curve, "I apologize for the difficult reception. It's so hard to know who to trust these days."
This was not the sister he remembered, either.
She had always been flippant, but never so cold. Despite her best efforts, she had never quite been able to conceal the truth of the feelings roiling just beneath her composed exterior.
He saw none of that now.
"What happened to you, Morgana?" he asked softly.
She met his eye, a sliver of regret and genuine hurt finally shining through.
Arthur felt his lips tighten; a small twitch in his cheek muscle alerted him to the fact that his own countenance probably looked much the same.
"I thought we were friends…" he murmured. "I know we were."
"That's what I thought, too," she responded softly.
Feeling Merlin stir in surprise at his shoulder, Arthur reached for her, unconsciously reacting the forlorn longing in her voice, "Morgana—"
She stepped back, moving beyond his reach as her voice hardened, "But alas, we were both wrong."
Stung, Arthur pulled away, "You can't blame me for Father's sins."
Morgana snorted, "Oh, I can. You've made it perfectly clear how you feel about me and my kind."
Hurt gave way to outright astonishment, "What? Morgana, when have I ever—"
She gave a harsh laugh, "Plenty of times, brother dear. You are not so different from Uther as you like to think."
Merlin bristled at his side. Arthur pressed a hand firmly against his best friend's chest, a warning to stay silent.
"Nor are you, Morgana," he responded softly, a hint of steel beginning to flicker in his voice.
Morgana scowled, bunching her hands into fists.
Arthur increased the pressure he had against Merlin's chest, sensing the man's protective instincts start to flare and unwilling to drag him into this just yet.
"Hit a nerve, have I?" he asked with a smirk, albeit a rather tight one.
Perhaps provoking Morgana was not the best decision, but it meant her reactions were genuine, and not those of the stranger inhabiting his sister's body.
As an answer, the enchantress's countenance smoothed.
Arthur's stomach twisted as he watched her gracefully back towards the throne and sit herself on it, a smirk marring her features. Apparently, his plan had backfired spectacularly.
The smirk turned into a smile, but it was not terribly friendly, "I am going to enjoy killing you, Arthur Pendragon. Not even Emrys can save you now."
That was entirely the wrong thing to say, as Merlin's low hiss attested to. He made an aborted attempt to step in front of Arthur, but the king's arm blocked his progress.
Morgana watched it all with a smirk on her lips and sudden gold swirling in her eyes, "Hleap on baec!"
Before Arthur could blink, Merlin had twisted beneath his arm and shoved the older man behind him.
"Scildan!" he roared.
A transparent, blue-tinged shield sprang into existence around them, rebounding the purple spell back towards Morgana at nearly twice the speed it had hurtled towards them.
Morgana shrieked and dove to the side as it splintered the tall back of the throne.
Blown backwards by the sheer strength of two powerful forces colliding, Arthur propelled himself up from the ground in barely enough time to prevent Helios from lunging at Merlin.
"No!" he snarled, swinging Excalibur up to connect with Helios's sword in a ringing clash of metal. He pressed forward until they were in each other's faces. "Not on my watch," he growled.
Kicking out at the warlord's knee, he heard the satisfying crunch of metal against bone as the heel of his left sabaton collided with Helios's kneecap.
Helios gave a strangled yell and went down on one knee. However, the Southron general still had enough wherewithal to yank a dagger out from a hidden sheath in his boot and lash out at Arthur's wounded side.
With a grunt, Arthur twisted to avoid it, gritting his teeth and trying not to grab at his bruised ribs as they screamed in protest.
Staggering to his feet, Helios flashed both dagger and sword up to lock with Arthur's own blade, forcing Camelot's king to step back to accommodate for the added power.
Years of training to fight opponents much taller and larger than he flashed through Arthur's mind in an instant (with don't being the most pertinent):
Present as small a target as possible.
Use cunning and speed to your advantage.
Outmaneuver and outwit them. It's what I've been doing my entire life, dollop-head.
As Arthur ducked under the next blow and attempted to jam his shoulder into Helios's solar plexus, he prayed that Merlin was having more success fighting Morgana.
But if the drop of his stomach at the sudden clash of multiple swords behind him was any indication, the odds had just been stacked impossibly higher against them.
IOIOIOIOIOI
Two dozen Southrons poured into the Council Chamber through its door, with more behind them, catching Gwen, Tristan, and Isolde completely off-guard.
Slamming the heel of his palm against the nearest wall, Merlin uttered the first incantation that entered his head, eyes swirling gold as the same translucent shield he had used to protect Arthur earlier leapt into existence around the three defenders at the door.
It kept any further Southrons out, but locked the ones fighting Gwen and the smugglers in. Which meant several harrowing, endless minutes of battle on their part.
It took every ounce of willpower Merlin had not to jump into the fray. Morgana was far too dangerous an opponent to leave on her own: she had slammed into the ground and rolled upon destruction of the chair she had been sitting on. Now she shoved herself up with shaking arms, one of her black lace sleeves shredded and stained with blood.
She was gaping at Merlin, utterly unable to form a coherent sentence.
Heaving a breath, Merlin turned around to face her, doing his damnedest to try and ignore the crash of Helios's and Arthur's swords in the background.
Morgana's face darkened with fury: "You," she breathed, "you have magic-!"
Merlin set his jaw, hands held loosely at his sides as he balanced on the balls of his feet, knowing he had to be prepared for anything.
"Yes," the word escaped him on a sigh. How many times had he imagined telling her this when they were younger?
"Why," and the air around her crackled now, with some indefinable power, "why didn't you tell me?!"
At the end, her voice raised to a scream, twenty years and more of heartbreak contained within it.
It was the same question Merlin had asked himself on the daily, ever since Morgause first arrived in Camelot.
He had yet to reach a satisfactory answer.
Twisting to the side as she sent a burst of fire at his chest and dousing it with a wave of conjured water, he responded tightly, "I wanted to, Morgana, don't think for a moment I did not. Especially when I realized what was happening to you—!"
"But you did nothing," she fumed, blasting a concussive hammer of air at him. "Instead, you abandoned me in favor of gallivanting off after your prince!"
Merlin hurriedly erected another shield to divert the blast, the council chambers ringing with it as the two forces collided.
Morgana shrieked as she ducked the returned blast, sending a wave of magic straight into the stone floor which caused their immediate area to start roiling with its power.
Before the ripples could reach—and unbalance—Arthur or the other three, Merlin froze the stone with a gesture and ducked behind one of the many columns that lined this room, attempting to catch his breath as the wear of all his previous battles began to tell.
"You could have come to us," Merlin insisted softly as she stalked towards him, both sets of eyes and hands glowing with the wash of their power. "Any one of us—me, Gaius, Gwen…even Arthur. We would have tried to help you."
"Arthur?" Morgana laughed harshly, conjuring an iron chain and sending it whirling towards him. "Arthur would have sooner seen me burn on the pyre!"
Merlin spun up a miniature whirlwind which sucked in the chain and then spat it out at one of the remaining Southrons unlucky enough to have wandered too close to warlock's and priestess's battle.
As the man went down choking, scrabbling at the links that had wound themselves around his neck, Merlin stepped out from behind the cover of his pillar and flung out his hand, sending his own chain speeding towards Morgana.
A flash of her eyes and the chain glowed bright orange with fire and heat, disintegrating into cinders the moment it touched her gown. She barely even flinched.
"As for Gaius," she snorted, invoking her magic to summon a waterspout, which she held, spinning in place, as they hashed this out, "I did go to him, but all he did was give me a draught, pat me on the head, and send me to bed."
Merlin frowned fiercely, unable to refute her. As much as he loved Gaius, there was so much more the physician could have done for Morgana. So much more that he could have done for her. He had thought so then, and he still thought so now, but—
"And if he hadn't? If he had told you what you had, and not hidden the truth? You were already terrified, Morgana. How much more would you have been, had he told you? What if you had panicked and gone to tell Uther, hoping he would be merciful? Gaius was trying to protect you-!"
Morgana hissed and Merlin found himself forced to abandon the cover the overhang as she released the whirling waterspout in a fit of fury. Which then collided with the load-bearing column he'd hidden behind and shattered the stone, bringing down a good portion of the wall and roof with it.
It buried the last of the mercenaries and sent Gwen, Tristan, and Isolde staggering sideways to avoid the avalanche of rubble it created.
Merlin miraculously escaped the worst of it, though his hands would be stinging for quite some time where they had scraped along the stone when he landed on the floor.
His half-checked yell at the shock of it, however, fatally distracted Arthur.
IOIOIOIOIOI
Arthur's and Helios's duel had brought them to the far-right corner of the Council Chamber, so they were out of the immediate path of the debris. They certainly heard it, however, and at its roar—and Merlin's half-choked cry—Arthur spun around, entirely forgetting his own fight with Helios as he attempted to gauge Merlin's condition.
Helios used that distraction to slam the pommel of his sword directly into Arthur's still-tender-side.
Crumpling, Arthur bit back a loud cry, keenly aware that any sound of pain on his part could (equally as fatally) distract Merlin.
With a grunt, Helios kicked Excalibur out of Arthur's hand, following it up with another kick to his chin.
Arthur collapsed backwards, cracking his head against the flagstone floor. As the Southron general towered over him, the king set his jaw and clenched his teeth despite their aching, reaching for the dagger secreted in his boot.
If he was going to die, he was going to die fighting, until his very last breath, for Merlin and their people. For Camelot, and the destiny they were supposed to fulfill.
Fortunately, it never got to that point. Even as Arthur mentally prepared himself, even as Helios raised the sword over his head, there came a sudden, feminine yell.
…Gwen, whose own sword connected with Helios's blade as it descended on Arthur in a crash of metal. She had Isolde and Tristan on her heels, both of whom looked determined to fight alongside her.
Arthur spared a brief thought for how, one day, she might make a spectacular general, before he rolled out from underneath the two blades and attempted to push himself off the stone with his forearms, shaking his head in attempt to clear his ears of their ringing.
Excalibur still lay a few yards from him, and he was in no fit state to go scrabbling after it just yet. Nor was Helios particularly keen to let his prey go.
With a growl and a vicious backhand that sent Guinevere sprawling, Helios stalked after him, a definite swagger in his gait where Arthur had fractured his kneecap earlier.
He never reached Camelot's king. In his single-minded focus on Arthur, the Southron warlord had neglected to account for Tristan and Isolde—and their definite prowess with a knife.
With Helios thusly distracted, the two crept up on him from behind, Isolde seizing the opportunity to slam her dagger into the mercenary's unprotected side as soon as she was close enough.
Helios gave a pained howl, staggering away and whirling on her to lash out with the blade of his sword.
Tristan was a split second too late to stop it. Isolde barely had enough time to twist away from the blow and yank out her long knife before the edge of Helios's blade caught her on the hip, forcing a high scream from her throat as she crumpled to the ground.
Helios might have finished the job, too—indeed, had even raised his sword to do so.
However, the moment Isolde collapsed, the Southron warlord found himself smashed into the unyielding stone wall by a concussive blast of blue-tinged magic.
"ENOUGH!" Merlin roared as the wind he'd conjured wailed throughout the entirety of the Council Chambers, sweeping everyone and everything off their feet. Another translucent shield snapped up around the four of them as Merlin stepped into Arthur's view, setting himself squarely in-between the priestess and the friends at his back. He faced Morgana, locking his jaw, "This battle is between you and me."
TBC