Disclaimer: I owe Nothing that is not new.

Happy Samhain everyone. I wanted to hit the date and give you this as a Samhain present but it was not ready... so late present will have to do.

Happy Samhain.

Chapter 10: Ashes and Dust - 685

Year 685, August

Camelot was a dream. A beautiful dream. Once, Albion had been such a possibility, more than just all kingdoms in the Goddess' Islands united; but magic free on the land. A world where neighbors would not only tolerate each other but coexist.

Where magic would be accepted and seen with the beauty it deserved instead of instant suspicion and hatred. Where love and not superstition would rule the land, guided by a fair and thoughtful ruler. Generous with his boons and swift with his justice.

An Albion where Arthur Pendragon reigned. Even Morgana may have had a place in that dream… before her ultimate corruption…

A wonderful dream.

And it was over.

As he took in the result of Lot's attack on his once home. Merlin's heart shivered with sorrow and his face fell. The outer walls had fallen, only some remained. The gates were thrown down, wood was splintered, stone was cracked, the windows were shattered. People's homes were down, some burned, some crushed by siege weapons.

The halls were silent and broken, spires of dark, burned stone. Ash still filled the sky, covering the stars, moon and sun. There was nothing but smoke. Smoke and clouds.

The Castle had been cleared of everything of value. It was a husk. And if he was to protect Arthur's legacy, if they were to leave to Louernia.

Even that husk had to disappear… from memory and shape. Camelot had to disappear.

For once he felt truly more ancient than he really was, for once he felt like Dragoon, ancient beyond measure. He raised his staff and the spell he and Morgana had shaped together blasted so hard it recoiled in his hands. The ground shook, and then the blue light turned blinding. It began with a wall, the stones turning to sand and then all the walls began to crack and break. The roofs shattered...

When he was done, nothing remained. Only Ashes. Ashes and dust.

Morgana walked slowly, the remains moved around her weightlessly, but without touching her, almost as if she held a gale in her hands. They shifted, and waved in the air... pieces of stone turned into sand, particles of cloth burned beyond recognition... a horrible spell, very thorough, quite strong, it had taken much of their combined power to perform. She did not wish to perform an act of such destruction, despite having a proper reason to it.

Remembering the place as it was, was bittersweet. Camelot was a figure of misguided oppression, of death and loss. Specially for her.

It was here that she had been taken, not allowed to grief for her father or her freedom. Here death permeated the ground as an ever present layer of dust. This place was the origin of Uther's hatred and madness, of Arthur's pettiness and foolishness; Pendragon characteristics that had seen thousandths upon thousandths to their graves.

But yet.

It was still her home. It had been since she was a child, since Gorlois had been killed in battle. Perhaps even by Uther's machinations. She had been the daughter of a kind man with laughing eyes and golden hair one day and then an orphan with no father nor mother the next. And even know Uther was not her sire, not to her.

As Morgana walked the broken castle she considered the same questions that had plagued her for the past fifty years. She supposed Uther showed her a great kindness when he brought her to this, now wrecked childhood home, and Uther, a man that had not been known to show great kindness, had done it for her. Uther was a crude, ugly man, a wanton fool. Surely any blood shared with him had slowly been dried from her veins. Or perhaps she had bled it all out in Sarrum's hospitality, or by Merlin's hand. Any drop of blood she had shed, she counted it as Uther's.

So what was it? Why bring her close to him?

An admission of guilt? An attempt to fight off the miniscule part of his head that retained any memory and thought of morality? A thought that reminded him he let his closest, most loyal friend die for lust or greed? Was she a way to calm the sense of guilt he deserved? Burying his weakness in pretension of loving an orphan that had lost everything?

Or had he known? Had he known that their veins had held the same drops in it? That she was a child of his indiscretion all along, had he brought her to Camelot because of it? Because of pride or greed that he would not allow his flesh to have a life freed of him?

Why would he bring her here? Did he fear his own demons? Had he known the blessing of her maternal bloodline? The connection to the powers that be? Did he fear that she may discover those powers and become who she was, did he thought that maybe he could keep her from her birthright of magic?

Or was he afraid that on her own she may discover the truth, that all may know one day, that Arthur had been an un-rightful heir created from magic and unholy sacrifice? That the Duchess of Cornwall was his blood, and perhaps more legitimate than his precious impossible son?

Even her power over Cornwall had been denied by Uther, she had run home for aid at a point. But her cousin Cadur (1) was too drunk in his illegitimate claim to her land, and she had to go without. Cadur was Uther's dog, another indiscretion that Morgana had received from Uther, another insult. But he had promised her a Kingdom, it should have been Camelot.

But it wasn't. Much had been done to her. Much injustice. To have her gifts denied by Uther, all of them… she had lived here in this cursed castle for years.

She could not deny that when she had thought of the future, specially as a priestess, an immortal, she had seen this as a possibility or even as a finality that she could not escape. People spoke still of the fall of Greece, of Troy, even Camelot could not last forever though Merlin was naïve enough to believe it. But she never imagined that it'd be her that would deal the end to Camelot, she always saw herself at the head, rebuilding the castle after taking it from the Pendragon menace.

And she could not recognize it. Nor could she recognize the ambitions she now laid to rest. Any Queenship died with Camelot. Her rest in the cave would be her Kingdom, the underground, bigger than many other territories, but she'd have no subjects.

She would be Queen to no one.

Beyond ambitions, she could not place her memories in the location she was now, it was beyond impossible to see; any mound of dust and debris could be anywhere, any of them could be Gaius' tower, Merlin's former room, Arthur's room. Or her own. Morgana sighed and kept walking forward. Moving the stones that hindered her almost without thought.

She looked around as she walked slowly. Climbing over the precious few rocks that remained bigger than a speck of dust. She walked forward and frowned; there was a large wooden stick coming out of a mound, impressively intact. She looked at it and it cracked, right by the middle, allotting her a hole to move forwards. This place had an smaller mound that the rest... she could almost see the ground.

Here there were mounds of sand that had once been stone, obviously remains of the castle that would soon become one with the land...

Was that her room...? Or was it one of the servants' quarters, perhaps? Or maybe it was just a tower. Or a roof.

CRACK.

She looked down, she'd stepped on something. She turned back carefully. Looking down at an impossible, familiar sight. It was the remains of a windowpane. She pulled it up making sure to keep it intact. It was horribly familiar, and it was inexplicably unharmed.

That. She thought, looking at the pile of broken stone in front of her. The pile of stone where that window once stood. That was her room. Making this the main courtyard, she turned to a larger mound that must have been the walls. And that beyond was the main entrance. Those behind her were the battlements. Making that collapsed mountain of sandy sandstone the barracks.

It seemed she had come full circle. Here many a sorcerer was executed, and that window... had been her only separation for them. Then she had looked aghast in horror. Now she, a sorceress, stood where Uther had once stood and there was nothing left of Camelot and Uther was rotting on the ground by her doing. And she held the windowpane again, now a free woman.

Clutching the piece of glass to her breast, and in a burst of unexpected and unexplained nostalgia and emotions, she had been sure she had lost long ago, she covered it in cloth she conjured out of thin air and put it away into her magically extended pouch. For safekeeping.

There was nothing left of value in the castle, all relics had been collected before Lot had tried to take it for himself, either by Merlin or herself, they were saved.

They both took great care to collect anything that might prove dangerous or valuable. Morgana had scoured the libraries and roofs while Merlin searched zealously in the dungeons and battlements.

The relics were taken, and if necessary, locked, but she had to double check the ruin; she had to make sure that they had would leave nothing behind. While Merlin helped her nephew in Louernia she needed to do a priestess' duty. Find anything that could possess even a sliver of power and take it, before others could for themselves.

Her eyes were drawn to the side as she sensed a magical signature, faint, it called to her from under the ground. She raised her hand and a whole mound of broken stone, dust, even earth exploded outward, Morgana walked to the shallow earth where she still could sense that twinkle of magic. It was strangely familiar, she sat down and moved the ground with her hand it was soft and muddied if by blood or water she couldn't tell.

She felt a piece of something solid and pulled it out. It was a cracked wooden piece, a milky white, and it was both wide and long, it ended in many crooked, almost finger-like, branches. The size of which were bigger than her wide hand.

It hit Morgana suddenly. This was the staff Morgause had gave her, so long ago. The staff, of rowan wood, that had brought back the dead. Now she could see a many more creative uses for the item, but she had what Morgause had claimed to have, and what the King's ward had wanted. Experience.

It seemed Uther, or maybe Arthur, had buried the remains in secret in the middle of Camelot. Perhaps too suspicious to let it go to the library but wanting to keep it close. She might do the same thing if she had something she could not control, and perhaps someone had built on top of them when the secret was lost…

Merlin would have never buried such a thing. He knew it wouldn't stay lost.

She put her hand into the mud again and searched for the other shards. Though something told her that she would not find the rest. Maybe there were more relics, in the mud... who knew what else the Pendragons, in their ignorance, had buried?

She felt some kind of powerful magic beneath her very feet… too powerful to be part of the staff. Too deep to be buried by the efforts of Uther or Arthur. This had to be Merlin's doing, the fool… had they not agreed to tell each other about all the secrets Camelot held?

Why could he not understand? Was he as ignorant as the Pendragons? How many years would it take so he'd develop a strong sense of foresight?

She sighed. It seemed she was in clean up duty.

"You forgot?!" Morgana snarled, Llacheou, Arthur's son she reminded herself, looked at her in alarm and he looked like his sire. His hand went to the hilt of his sword, always ready to kill a sorcerer. But Morgana had no reason to pay attention to the boy. Bigger fish and all that. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS?" She roared, glaring at Merlin.

The steady gaze showed her he knew about the capability of the object. And was he beyond caring? No. He probably thought it out of her reach…

The skeleton in the sand and a sealed door was not gonna stop her, she feared no tomb. And she did not fear the dead. But the fact that a jewel such as that one laid deep in a cave she had certainly known better than to touch that object, it reeked of domination and slavery.

Beyond anything she was furious that her companion had decided to keep this horrid thing in Camelot's care, of all places. And then buried in a place with little protection, as if forgetting about it made it impossible too find. Instead of what it was; at the reach of any fool. What she could have done with the relic had she known it in her own war against the Pendragons… was the same thing any adept could do. Horrible things…

With the soul in the stone, or the power it possessed. She could have done great, terrible, powerful acts. The work of such magic… The blue jewel shone brightly, as if to prove her point, floating a bright cold cyan in the air, splashed with blue light. Merlin had not wanted to entrust Sigan's stone to Morgana of all people…

"Something that should have stayed buried." Merlin finally responded, eyeing her coldly. Morgana could feel his disapproval and it annoyed her greatly. This object was risky and she refused to be in the wrong – beyond that a tiny piece of her seemed to take great joy using this as evidence that Merlin still did not trust her. But what infuriated her was the risk that some fool would free the Lich in the stone and bring it to the surface.

Morgana made a displeased sound in the back of her throat.

"A Horrocrux." He snarled, eyes cold. Knowing that she would want an answer. Next to him, Llacheou repeated the foreign, strange word, looking confused. "It should have never been found. Not again." And not by her; he'd forgotten that Morgana was nothing but pure efficiency. He should know by now not to underestimate the sorceress and her ability to find objects that spelled doom for him.

Morgana shook her head vehemently, eyes cold. But still she said nothing. Found. No. Never. It should be locked beyond anyone's reach, deep in her vaults. Merlin looked up, his eyes narrowed. While Merlin would do anything to keep it out of her vaults, if it was up to him he'd grab the stone lock it in a stone box and throw it in the deepest part of the sea, but that was uncertain. And with a thousand relics or so, improbable.

And yet, thought she, to leave them where they laid… that was worse.

Llacheou let out a breath that he'd been holding, just realizing what this was shaping up to be. He had heard of Morgana's attempt for Camelot, the wars that had been fought in her name. And her sorcery, his magic, the most powerful mages the world had seen, some said.

That Morgana had raised the dead. That Merlin had manipulated lightning. That she could throw grown men across the room. That he had power over the elemental forces of the world. And now the two stared down at each other.

He had seen the results of their magical prowess himself. He'd seen Morgana swat away lesser enchanters like they were nothing, he'd seen her use an arrow to slay a scout or lift thousandths of swords in the air and have them fight off her enemies, he even saw her stop catapult fodder midair and throw it back. Unravel spells of a man capable of making the castle shake and come out on top with certain ease.

He'd seen Merlin, turn water into fire, make himself impossibly fast, manipulate a dead tree giving it both life and thought. He saw him resist certain death with golden eyes and a raised eyebrow before unraveling an army. He'd just seen Merlin turn a castle to dust. He would not wish to see the two duel.

Morgana glared at Merlin. "It should be kept far from the reach of fools and the Dark Arts! Least it is found and freed." Merlin raised his eyebrows, "Not in some cave forgotten but under the watch of someone responsible!" She said, Merlin snapped, annoyed.

"Then you, clearly, should not be the one to keep it." He stated sharply…

"Emrys..." She growled, warning.

He turned his back on her, her face went pale at his action. Icy. Normally she wouldn't let him rattle her, but only for the sardonically tone on his voice. For his lack of trust, for his arrogance. Her fury reaching a crescendo, she pulled her hand back and with a contrasting gold in her eyes, she threw the stone at his turned back as fast as an arrow.

The Pendragon boy gasped, "Merlin!" He yelled, horrified. Taking his blade out of the scabbard.

Merlin turned back and stopped the cursed object midair. Llacheou ran forward blade in his hand, Morgana felt the sharp pain in her back, screaming out with pain and rage, she pushed the youth back with one hand. Throwing him to the ground, with inhuman strength, the blow took away all the air in his lungs. But it was Morgana's scream that was more terrible, it was drawn long and filled with fury.

Surviving Knights and the Commonfolk began flocking to the commotion. And Llacheou feared for their lives now again with Morgana reprisal. He stood up unsteadily, glaring at the Priestess. They had attracted the attention of his people.

Some of them looked uncertain, it was his mother that walked forward and raised her hand at any who would try to approach knight or serf (2). Llacheou's eyes met Guinevere and she raised her eyebrows, displeased.

With a pained moan, Morgana found the hilt on her back and pulled it out, the scream in her throat. Arthur's son felt sick with the thought of such a creature, capable of pulling a sword from her chest and be unharmed.

Gasps began spreading, and whispers filled the area as she almost fell on her knees, children began crying. Their mothers trying to shield them, from the sight or from the reprisal the prince was sure would follow.

Finally – after a long angry glare and many horrified whispers. She dropped the unbloodied sword on the mud. Llacheou saw his people react immediately. Their faces twisted in horror and fear. Knights pulled their swords out. All in all, horrified by the clear and terrible power, by her seeming invincibility, "You ungrateful... BRAT." She snarled, "I saved your life!" His people whispered amongst each other behind him. He caught the words 'dark', 'immortal' and 'witch'.

Merlin quickly hid Sigan's stone among his robes and went to check on her. Even though common blades could not harm them, they were still not pleasant. And should her temper get the best of her, he would need to contain it. Least it harmed the people he swore to protect.

"Damn Pendragons," she hissed. Rambling in many tongues, she pushed through Merlin, shrugging him off. "And damn you all, wretched fools!" She roared, before she vanished into thin air. As if she had never been there at all. "Perhaps you will all die and I will be rid of your idiocy."

Merlin turned to Arthur's heir. "You should not have done that."

"She attacked you!" The youth responded brashly,

The Warlock raised a hand, silencing the young prince immediately.

"...with a stone. If you remember what I've told you, she could do much worse."

"Stone? You called it something else... oro... horro..." Merlin's teeth screeched. And he leveled a steely glare that used to leave Arthur's twins frozen in place. A look reserved only for the worst occasions.

Arthur's son wonders what he did to deserve it. Or if the word itself was so hideous to Merlin that he'd respond in such aggression to just the mention of it. Merlin had been adamant Llacheou learn nothing of magic, when Llacheou's brother had begun to show indications of inherent magic much like his aunt had, it had shook Merlin to the core.

"It is a word you need not learn." Llacheou opens his mouth to protest but his voice fails as he takes in Merlin's so rare not-up-to-discussion look fixated on him. The look that Merlin would set on Loholt more than him, the glare that indicates that Merlin is displeased about the topic nearly touching that of magic.

And it is so cutting, that he, almost-not-quite instinctively, turns away.

He gazed at his people, who were all looking at his sword in the floor shakenly. The boy went to it and picked it up. He turned and found Merlin gone. He looked down and then at his people.

I guess it is up to me, then; he thought.

"Are you well?" Merlin asked,

Morgana gazed at him from their shared reliquary, where she was placing all they had found in Camelot. He was surprised she even stayed to watch Camelot crash. She looked at him and Merlin felt her magic spike, she was attempting to sense whether his concern was genuine,

She judged him quickly, but didn't make her decision known. She turned back and placed a box in a case. The case closed and with a glance, the lock clicked.

Finally she turned to place a piece of wood in the table, the wood shone and it was familiar to Merlin but he could not decide how. Her voice was cold and heavy, "Your concern is unnecessary, it is not the first nor will it be the last time I am stabbed by a blade." She turned to him and though she was smiling, her eyes narrowed sourly, "As you well know."

Of course, Morgana went for the Jugular. She always knew what words cut deeper… She was a destructive force of nature. Everything of her was sharp edges and venomous.

Merlin would like to think he understood Morgana, half a century of uneasy cohabitation had certainly not gone to waste. But he didn't, not fully, understand her…

Perhaps he never would.

"Very well." He responded, turning away; he was not winning this round with her. So she'd win again. He had other concerns.

She scoffed as he turned and opened the door. He heard a mild explosion as he walked, certainly Morgana would not destroy her own castle in a fit. No. Any damage had to be done by an outburst of magic, or she was trying to manipulate him into coming back and having an explosive argument that might just do that and damage their reliquary.

He ignored it as he walked down the courtyard. What had begun as a cabin in the deepness of the crystal cave did not have a courtyard. But now, it had surely become something more like a fort.

Morgana had not stopped her efforts to turn their humble abode into something significantly less than humble, she would create more and more rooms. Towers. Everytime he left, she'd conjure an entire construct, that would take hundreds of builders and stone masons weeks to build; into existence out of a whim. She had become highly skilled, and Merlin had had to wonder whether this regimen of advance conjuration would be useful one day for something beyond her entertainment.

But as of now, she'd created the gardens first, but they were far from done. Then the walls, 'for protection' she said, probably against errant squirrels or enormous arachnids. The place was unlikely to be found and consequently breached, by anything else, men could not see the cave. He conjured the first version of her fort when he'd gone out to Camelot, the first time, it had been a small cabin, the sort of which he'd grown up in.

Not a month into her arrival she had toppled that and begun conjuring, she had great difficulty at first, but slowly she learned. And then there it was, small as far as forts were concerned, huge as a cabin in a dreary cave…

He wasn't sure what came next, the unnecessarily huge hall with the constellations in the walls that followed the actual stars… or the single tower in the middle of it all. He'd left for a while after that, which had meant a dozen other towers, the enormous waterfall, the first incarnation of a reliquary and her first vault.

She would never stop building. It took her hours but she liked it, always modifying their place as she liked, honestly soon their little chattel in the mountain would be impossible to breach. And would not be a cabin. Cabins, as he had, told her, didn't have an armory full of deadly weapons. Which was now a full blown barracks, hers, which he doubt anyone would ever use. For one, their architecture was devoid of humans, and secondly weapons made of silver were definitely not for use in battle.

Merlin had definitely found it ridiculous. There was no need for such opulence… but he kept it mostly to himself, he very much preferred the Morgana who created unnecessary elaborate closets. than the one who preferred to destroy what he loved.

The few times he'd stated his opinion, after getting lost in his own home, for Goddess' sake. It ended in arguments. So after arguments about walls, battlements and the placing of a single statue that he had recovered from the Isle of the Blessed, of all places… he'd understood that he could argue with the priestess about her architectural interests, or he could join in on the fun. Besides, he did not want to be outdone by Morgana Pendragon.

So he had expanded her surprisingly small library, he prepared big kitchens, a ball room (which was soon modified by the priestess, to his dismay), then an alchemy lab for her birthday, it too had been modified quite impressively, he built barracks which were expanded while he slept, and as he saw Morgana modifying anything he design he began working on a village, she had not modified that yet so it was only Merlin's. Perhaps anything that pedestrian would be overlooked by her, at least for some time.

The cave kept getting bigger and bigger. Either by physical modification, magical expansions. Or even by opening holes in the mountain by hand, or in their case by telekinetic force.

The tower he needed now had been her design, and one of the firsts, it was a huge spire that disappeared on the roof of the cave and went beyond that, to catch the moonlight. There, an elegant design that was clearly something that she'd built with great dedication. A circular area, with unbearably rich floors that would have cost him more gold than he ever had had, with an open roof and a basin made of brass, big enough to swim in, when filled.

But the risk of being turned into a fish if he ever chose to use it for a bath was too great, hence he had created one for that purpose. Which Morgana had expanded and he was sure she had practiced her expansive magic for it, for no matter how deep he dived he never found the bottom.

This tower however. Why she had chosen to dabble in scrying magic out of a sudden was anyone's guess. The tower had appeared overnight and the priestess had subsequently disappeared for a month. Which Merlin had used to educate the twins without Morgana's disapproving glare embedded in his mind as he left for Camelot

The tower would be very useful to him. This was how he was gonna undo the work of war that had torn the closest semblance to family he had, beyond his elderly mother and uncle, into tiny little pieces.

He did not want to accept that he'd lost Arthur's twin sons. He knew he could find Llacheou's brother. The war between the two had been short and horrid, but he knew his princes, Loholt was not dead. He could not be.

He refused to believe it.

His hand raised towards the basin and he closed his eye in concentration. "Sméae. Begín ēage se fruman; āċyrrest mé."(3)

He expected the pool to awash in light. But nothing happened, he frowned. Had Morgana changed the words again?

"Don't look for ghosts, Merlin." He turned, frustrated. He almost wished she had changed the words, instead… he really did.

(1) Serfs

a term that I used before. Once again, it very loosely means servants.

(2) Caldur was Morgana's Brother in the Arthurian Legends. He was a friend of Arthur's. And if am not mistaken his existence is more evidenced than Arthur, Merlin or Morgana's.

(3) Open the eye of the source and turn your gaze to me.

That is it for now. If there are any mistakes, please point them out. Beyond that, let me say that these flashback chapters are necessary as they are building blocks for Merlin and Morgana's AU.

Beyond that anyone get the Video Game Reference in the last chapter? I wanna know how much of a gamer you people are!