A/N: I'm a horrible person and haven't updated this in years because I've been working on a serialized Arthurian story that's consumed my life instead. Here's an excerpt. Please let me know if you're interested in more. :)
They think they know me, my story, my life. My loves and losses. Each century, many people attempt to retell my mistakes in prose or poetry.
I'm infamous for my folly, for trusting my wife and best friend, for letting a kingdom crumble because I did some‐ thing so foolhardy and silly as to fall in love with the woman I married.
I loved Lancelot more.
They tell me I'm Arthur, the once and future king. At the time that I write this journal, I'm still a scared child, although I reckon Merlin trusts me to be a man since in a previous life, I drew the sword at an even younger age. There is no sword to be found here. My servant threw Excalibur in a lake that has long since dried, and secret excavations have come back empty-handed.
Maybe there is no Excalibur. Maybe there is no Arthur. Then this world is to be ruined for no conceivable reason, with no savior to rise from the ashes. They tell me I am that savior. A reluctant one, but I have a role to play in all this, if for no other reason than to save Morgan Le Fay from herself.
She was my sister once. Now we are strangers. This doesn't change my love for her. I was born with it. My name was once Benjamin Kinning, from Northern Califor‐ nia. You're likely wondering now why on Earth I would be born in America and not Arthur's home country of Britain?
It's because of Avalon.
When I asked Morgan Le Fay to take me through the mists into this legendary land, I didn't realize what I was asking of her. In my dying breath, I asked her to sacrifice everything that she is for me, and in her love, she did. She brought a human into the realm of the fey, something that resulted in her exile. It became a locked realm, even to those who possessed magic. Over time, the magic that was left in this world became used up and now we have forgotten its very existence outside of fairy tales.
But this will change.
It has changed, and no one would stop the sands of time or the woven fabric of fate. The sorceress, Nimue, did her best to prevent the story from telling itself again. Even she could only cast a spell that would last as long as magic existed. Now it's gone. Some girl used the last up in Milwaukee trying to make a love potion for her 9th-grade crush. It didn't work. Love potions never work, because love is its own type of magic.
Still, when the young girl recited those words she read on the internet, she did something that would change the world. She drew magic from the last place on Earth that had any left—Merlin's Cave. Because her heart was pure, the magic took pity on her and abandoned its post, it had long ago forgotten why Nimue left it in such a spot.
Tourists came to gawk at the magical location without ever seeing anything. They talked about the wonders of the cave and the dark history that had happened there. How
an old man drove a young sorceress to lock him away for all of eternity. Except, my friends, nothing lasts forever.
I digress. The magic had ceased being the lock that kept Merlin sealed away in the Void, the realm of nothing‐ ness between this world and Avalon, hoping to bring this girl some solace. The magic didn't remember its purpose. Perhaps too, it did and was just waiting for the right moment to leave its post. We can't understand magic as much as we try. All we can do is call upon it and pray that it does our bidding. Because, you see, that's all that magic is, a simple prayer, made by those who are most connected to it.
It took Merlin awhile to break free still. He has yet to tell me if he stayed inside the Void because of a bigger plan or because he had trouble leaving. It wasn't a physical lock that kept him trapped, but fear is a lock in itself that keeps us trapped, unable to reach our true potential. Merlin told me he feared leaving the Void after being trapped over a thousand years in the nothingness.
As the first scents and sounds filtered into the Void, Merlin excused the sensations to insanity. Then he noticed it came from certain spots, closest to where Nimue created the gateway. He heard murmurs of his name, of my name, and a time long ago. Those murmurs became louder and louder until he realized all he had to do was will himself out of the Void. Then he would be back in our world.
I often wonder why he hadn't closed his eyes and envi‐ sioned a cave by the seaside next to my childhood home, Tintegal. He could have thought of the damp walls and listened to the waves in the distance, which would have brought him back to the fifth century, back to before he was locked away. Then again, Merlin is an astute man. He must have known that there is no looking back in life, only forward. Doing so would have cosmic consequences. Instead of the past, he focused on the now—of the sounds
of that very moment—and transported himself outside the Void and into the U.K. during the 21st century.
This is where my story continues, beginning with Merlin, when he realized he had been set free:
A/N: You can find me on Amazon - Awakened from Avalon by Abby Goodrich.
It's only $1 but if that's an issue for you, lmk and I don't mind sending out promo codes :)