Disclaimer: I own nothing in this marvelous universe; it all belongs to BBC Merlin.
Author's Note: Or, at least, hopefully know for sure which direction Morgana decides to take ::face-palm::. I am fairly sure I know which direction I'll take her character in next chapter, but for the moment I'll leave up to you to guess what actually happens because…um…you'll see ::sweat-drop::. I'm pretty satisfied with the way this chapter turned out, after several weeks of banging it out and writing and rewriting it. I think it's about time to move on to the next (and possibly final) phase of this story :). I was originally going to up the chapter count, because there are still a few things in my outline I need to get to, but I'm hoping the way I reworked this chapter and these scenes will let it stay at 23. I may up it to 24 or 25, but we'll see what Chapter 21 looks like. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this one!
Reviewers: All 328 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 20)
A quarter of a candle mark ago, one of the farther afield walkways collapsed. From their vantage point atop the Keep, Bors, Kay, the dragons, and their fellow defenders watched it with slowly increasing dread.
"That is the Council Chamber," Kay muttered, when he felt brave enough to speak.
Bors sat up, only to immediately topple against Kay afterwards, still unbalanced but with rapidly widening eyes, "You are certain?"
"Nearly," Kay affirmed, steadying him.
Aithusa, who shrieked and fought and struggled to pull free of Kilgharrah since the explosion of stone filled the sky, now finally thrashed free, shooting straight up into the air and then diving straight down, aiming directly for the area it came from.
"Aithusa!" Kilgharrah bellowed, trying to leap up after her.
But she was already gone.
IOIOIOI
Merlin was first aware that the air smelled strongly of singed leather. He was secondly aware that the front side of his fists were blistered-though not badly-where they had risen to protect his face.
The last thing he registered was Morgana's voice, taunting Arthur, "...Do you enjoy feeling powerless, Arthur? It is only a matter of time before he succumbs to my spells, you know. None but Emrys may withstand the magic of a High Priestess!"
"Then it is fortunate for me that you are only half-trained," Merlin spoke up quietly, slowly lowering his arms.
Morgana and Arthur jerked their heads towards him, startled. He smirked, very much the lady hawk that was his title, "It is also, perhaps, a bit unfair..." his eyes glittered when they meet Morgana's.
The first glimmer of fear flickered in their depths as she took note of his mostly hale state, quickly concealed by the simmering fury that entered them soon after.
Merlin turned away before she could say anything, eyes softening as they landed on Arthur.
Arthur was a mess, tears streaking down his face and jaw clenched so tightly that its tendons stood out.
Merlin snorted, fondly, "You clot pole."
His hand went against the shield, pressing there softly as Arthur echoed his stance, its magic humming between their palms.
The king breathed out heavily-and unsteadily-leaning his forehead against it just above the point where their hands connected.
Merlin gave a breathy laugh, mirroring his position: "I'll be okay, Arthur," he whispered with a roguish smile. "I promised you, didn't I?"
"...And you are obstinate about keeping your promises," Arthur finished the familiar argument in a whisper.
Merlin took a step back, smirking crookedly as Arthur did the same, the king lifting his chin to meet his gaze as he had in Excalibur's glade three days ago.
"You said you trust me, Arthur," he murmured. "Trust me now when I say I will be fine. I can handle this."
Unreserved compassion and tenderness and something scarily like love flitted across the older man's countenance as he watched him, "...I know you will. I know you can. Just...be careful, Merlin. For me."
Merlin had never been able to say "no" to Arthur.
IOIOIOI
"How perfectly saccharine," Morgana's voice sneered.
Merlin slowly straightened up and turned to confront her, calmly raising an eyebrow and folding his arms across his chest.
"I wasn't aware that you were a participant in this conversation," he drawled softly.
Morgana snorted, twirling her finger and sending a blast of water in his direction. "I wouldn't care to be."
Merlin deflected it with an open palm, redirecting it into the already strewn pile of rubble with a simple flash of his eyes.
Swirling his own hand, he conjured up a decent sized fire ball in his cupped palms and sighed.
So much of this woman was the girl he remembered-and so much of her was not. He hoped there was a way to bring her back, but he did not know if there would be. Or if she would even want it.
"I feel I ought to warn you," he advised her softly, releasing the fire ball. "I am capable of more than you think."
She ducked the fire and laughed as she came up, conjuring up a set of arrows with flames at their tips, "Are you now? Lofty words for a common hedge sorcerer."
Merlin raised another eyebrow. A flash of his eyes burnt the arrows to their tails and the ashes dropped in a heap on the ground. He spoke not a word.
Morgana backed up a step, unnerved by the utter impassivity on his face.
"I am warning you, Morgana," steel entered Merlin's voice, "do not underestimate me."
He held a hand out. The blue tinge of his power crackled at his fingertips.
With barely a thought from him, it leaped across the space separating them, nicking Morgana on the cheek before she could lunge away.
He ignored her startled shriek to send a much more substantial blast of power her way.
She did not quite dodge this one in enough time. It clipped her shoulder and sent her reeling.
Merlin shifted into an attack stance.
"You are not the only one who has been trained," he stated softly as she stumbled back to her feet.
IOIOIOI
It provoked a reaction. Exactly as Merlin intended it to.
He did not expect retaliation to come in the form of a sword whirling through the air, although in hindsight he probably should have.
Luckily, he knew how to handle this, too.
On the down cut of Morgana's swing, his daggers whirled into his hands and flashed up to cross beneath her blade in an x-block.
A corner of Morgana's lips curled down. She knew that he fought with long daggers. She had known it since the first time she witnessed a weapons practice between the prince and his manservant, and had at first been startled, then righteously angry, when Arthur expected Merlin to wield a weapon.
That was, until she saw them spar.
From that point forward, she knew his capabilities as a fighter. As a result, she did not hold back. She never had.
They were evenly matched. A feat that Merlin was quietly proud of, since he was aware both she and Gwen could often push Arthur to his limits, not just Merlin.
Part of him wished this were still an innocuous spar. A moment of respite for them all, away from the pressures of court. But he knew those days were long past, and that he was perhaps locked in the deadliest combat of his life.
She did not make it easy for him. Switching her swing, switching her grip, ducking low when he expected her to go high, spinning to go high when he expected her to lash out low.
He found it interesting that she did not use her magic when she used her sword.
Slowly, as he blocked one blow after another, Merlin grew confident that Morgana did not actually know how to use her magic when she was wielding a weapon.
Merlin did and used that to his advantage on her very next swing.
It was a maneuver that should have lost him at least one of his daggers. Indeed, he even allowed her to tangle their cross guards together as she prepared to forcefully yank the weapon from his hand.
However, it was not Merlin who lost his weapon. It was Morgana, as a flash of his eyes rendered their weapons into man-made lodestones.
Her sword could not disengage from his dagger, though she tried, repeatedly, to force it to do so.
He watched her calmly as she finally processed this. Observed as she gradually began to understand what Merlin had done, and how futile it was to continue her struggle.
She hissed, letting go of the hilt to send a blast of her magic at Merlin that he really should have anticipated and did not.
It exploded against his dragonflight armor at close range, sending him flying backwards into the unyielding stone wall.
The expected collision of his spine with stone did not happen. In the mere seconds he had left before his spine broke, Merlin imagined a dragon's wings-or, possibly, a merlin's-springing up around him from the swirls decorating his shoulders on both sides of his armor.
The wing-shaped crackles of his magic caught him, yanking him to a halt a mere hand's span from colliding with unyielding stone. Before unceremoniously disappearing and dumping him on the floor.
He found himself panting, as if he had run a league-or many. Sweat broke out across his forehead where he landed on his hands and knees. But he did it, created a spell out of nothing the very instant he needed it.
It was a huge step forward in his struggle to control-and command-his magic. But he had little time to relish the small, personal victory.
Morgana grabbed him, gripping the nape of his neck and yanking his head back, forcing him to look at her.
"A worthy opponent, indeed," she murmured, a twisted echo of what she had once told him after their first sparring match. Her smile was predatory. "You may have impressed me, but you are not Emrys, and so, must follow the way of those who came before you." She smirked, full-blown and with a hint of teeth, taunting him as she had first taunted Arthur, "I am going to enjoy killing you, Merlin."
Except at that very instant, as her eyes, once again, began to glow gold, a long, high-pitched whistle shattered every single one of the wards Merlin had yanked up over his friends and the Council Chamber as Aithusa blasted through the crumbling wall.
IOIOIOI
Merlin had enough presence of mind to spit out the incantation again once the shields came tumbling down. But Morgana was not so lucky-one moment she had his throat in a stranglehold, and the next a small, but strong, white tail lashed across her face.
Morgana cried out, toppling backwards.
Aithusa landed in front of Merlin, hissing and spitting, all her scales rippling, as she snapped her not inconsiderable jaws at Morgana's feet.
Rapidly, Morgana backed up, wide eyes locked on the baby dragon. They contained mortal fear now; she knew just as well as Merlin that, High Priestess or not, immortal or not, few had ever survived a dragon's flame.
Infant though Aithusa was, she most certainly had that ability. As she quite pointedly displayed by opening her mouth and releasing a gout of flame directly at Morgana's retreating form.
Morgana shrieked, rolling to the side as she barely avoided the full brunt of it. Half her side was singed, quite possibly burnt, and she was much slower to scramble back upright than she had been during the entire combat.
Aithusa snarled, crouching low and creeping forward like an oversized feral cat.
Morgana shoved herself away as hard and as fast as she could, hugging her clearly damaged sword arm to her side. Tears of pain and frustration streamed down her cheeks, and she looked so much like the Morgana he remembered, the Morgana they once had to rescue, that Merlin spoke before he even realized it:
"Aithusa, heel," he rapped out in Dragonspeak, voice at once raspy and commanding.
Aithusa jerked to a stop, small snarls and hisses still pouring from her mouth, along with unbridled smoke and flame. Her tail twitched irritably from side to side as she glanced back at him, eyes swiveling between feral and clear.
But she could not ignore a command from her Dragonlord. A fact which Morgana was keenly aware of, judging from the way her eyes widened as she glanced rapidly between Merlin and the baby dragon.
"Come," he ordered, still in the same tongue, although this time he gentled it to be less intimidating for the baby in question.
Aithusa growled one last time at Morgana, before turning her back on the enchantress and-with a half-hearted grumble-started tottering over to him.
Merlin was unsure whether the sudden release of tension or Aithusa's antics were responsible for his reaction, but the chuckle he released as she clambered up his arm to sniff at him came out rather wet and strangled, "Thanks, Aithusa."
More grumbles as she plopped herself on his spaulder and pressed her warm snout to his neck with a huff. A moment later, for all intents and purposes, she went to sleep.
Merlin laughed again, the sound still rather strangled, and a deep purr pulled itself from Aithusa's breast as he ran a finger along her spine.
A small sound from Morgana's direction brought his gaze back to focus on her, eyes growing hard.
"I can order her to kill you, you know," he murmured when the enchantress continued to say nothing, merely stared at him with gradually dawning horror, "and she'll do it, without a single thought."
Morgana's eyes were still round, wide enough for him to understand that she was on the verge of panicking.
Stumbling more than scrambling upright, Morgana used the column at her back to steady herself, glancing wildly around the Council Hall for a means of escape.
Merlin's eyes flashed. Stones rumbled. There were several gasps, and not just from Morgana, who was rapidly nearing asphyxiation.
Arthur, Gwen, and Tristan also witnessed the stone wall flowing seamlessly in front of any possible exits, none of them able to tear their gazes from what was previously immobile stone as it took on a life of its own.
Even Aithusa lifted her head from his neck with a sleepy whine, disturbed from her nap by the thundering of stone.
Merlin released a harsh breath, swiping his hand across his forehead as he turned back Morgana: "Any teleportation abilities have also been blocked," he informed her softly, eyes glittering as he watched for the enchantress's reaction.
"This proves nothing," she screeched, but Merlin noted that she looked nearly as feral as Aithusa had, her pupils shrunken, and her eyes glazed, as she searched desperately for a way out of this situation.
"Doesn't it?" he murmured, scratching Aithusa gently behind her ears as the baby dragon resumed purring. "You know who I am, Morgana. You must. I am no longer hiding."
"You cannot be Emrys," but her voice trembled and her limbs spasmed, so Merlin took that as an indication that she would not be in denial much longer.
"He is," Arthur's voice, shaking as badly as Morgana's, spoke up, causing both magic-wielders to whip around and face him. He looked an absolute mess, hair frazzled, eyes overbright, but his words strong, "You know I would not lie to you about this, Morgana. Nor would he. You are outmatched. Please…please, let it go—!"
"If you believe I would ever surrender to you—!" Morgana shrieked.
Merlin interrupted her in turn, voice surprisingly soft for all the power it carried, "Surrender, Morgana—you must. Surrender yourself and stop this. Uther is dead, don't you see? You got your revenge. It isn't needed anymore."
For a moment Merlin thought she would not listen, her words confirming that she would rather die by her own hand than submit willingly to anyone, least of all Merlin.
But then Arthur spoke up again, and Merlin almost jumped out of his skin: "Morgana..." the king's voice cracked, and Merlin winced, shifting to face him. "Morgana, please stop this. It's not..." his beloved friend's breathing hitched, "you're the one that once said killing will not solve this. I...I'm..." Arthur released an unsteady breath and Merlin about fell over at his next words, "I'm planning to dissolve the magic ban. One day...one day soon...Camelot is going to be safe for people like you...people like Merlin-"
Arthur said more, but an incessant buzzing had begun to rise in Merlin's ears, causing his head to spin. He may have tried to make a sound, but before he could get even a tenuous grip on his magic, he folded over and collapsed onto the flagstone floor.
TBC
