Chapter Twenty-Five

Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.

All that actually remained of old Camelot was a large, snow-dusted, grassy knoll surrounded by sparse trees and abandoned farmland, and that was upsetting.

But Arthur would concede that, at this particular moment, the sight of Nimueh's defenses as she dropped all her camouflaging spells was a bit more upsetting that his city and citadel being reduced to a hill in the middle of nowhere.

Apparently the former High Priestess had considered an encampment of lavish-looking tents on the hilltop enough of a base and hadn't bothered with making even a single solid building. But she had splurged on other things.

Several rings of thick bramble hedges with few gaps...To create bottleneck traps for us, of course...encircled the lower part of the hill, and a cloud of wyverns wheeled overhead. Where the hell do they keep finding those...do they magically clone them? Behind the brambles, hundreds of dark-clad soldiers stood in rows, drawn weapons visible from a distance as they glinted in the cold winter sunlight. Outnumbering us at least ten to one... Beyond them, a much smaller group of people stood, most hooded and cloaked. The sorcerers, most old enemies returned from the dead, some probably not...

Only one wore red.

Nimueh. How dare she take up residence on my ancestral home.

Arthur turned to Merlin, who stood beside him as always. "What do you think?"

"I think all the sorcerers are going to try to keep me occupied. None of them could take me alone. I'll deal with them, you handle the rest; Morgana can help you lot. Aithusa will take the sky. Once I'm done with the idiots, I'm going to find the Cup of Life and put an end to this."

"What if one of us finds it first?"

"Then knock it over, prat. It's not that hard."

A fleeting grin passed between them, then they turned to face their own army.

Leon, Lancelot, Elyan, Percival, Gwaine, Everard, Elwin and Haralda. Adults still confused by living myths and magic but ready to do anything to protect their families. Teenagers who barely had paid jobs and now face a battle like no other. Morgana. Merlin. And a dragon. Can't forget her.

Most didn't have complete sets of armor and carried spears and clubs as opposed to swords. Elyan and his apprentices did the best anyone could have, given the circumstances. Most had mere months of training behind them. Time has been against us...With the exception of Aithusa and Merlin, everyone looked afraid.

And it's my job to prepare them now. Arthur took a deep breath, counting on his decades of experience in leading armies to battle to aid him.

"All right, everyone, listen up! Merlin will be taking on the sorcerers; do not attempt to engage them unless they attack you first! The rest of us will concentrate on the non-magical forces, spreading out to surround the hill if possible; we don't want to be flanked. It looks like we're going to have to fight through some likely-magical hedges, too."

A few nervous laughs rang out, and Aithusa rumbled, "I can burn wider paths through them on my way to fight the wyverns."

"I can help with that, too," Morgana called.

"Thank you, Aithusa. We've left what horses we have behind at last night's camp with the medical personel, so this is all going to be on foot...which is probably a good thing as most of you don't have experience fighting on horseback anyway...but the good news is most our enemies will be on foot as well. The plan is to go in fast and fight like hell. And if anyone finds the Cup of Life...it's a big silver goblet with some blood in it, can't miss it…"

"Knock it over!" Merlin snapped. "That should kill Nimueh. It had better."

"Exactly. But defeating her is primarily Merlin's task. The rest of us are to take down and scatter as many of her forces as possible."

He hesitated then, his mind straying back to Anglesey, where Gwen was with those of their people who could not fight. Ruling and protecting our people in my absence, as she always has done. "Look...I know you're all scared. I'm scared. I've fought battles similar to this before, battles that defined the history of Camelot, even...but that was different. We always knew what to expect, whatever the outcome. These last two years...Most of you lost everything you had ever known. Until this past year, most of you didn't even know that magic was real. And now...we truly don't know what the future holds, if the earthquakes will return, if the weather will resume its changing by the minute, if we'll ever hear from anyone beyond our shores again. But there is one thing I am certain of...It is that I am proud to fight beside you all now, for our families, for our friends, and for the future that we still can hope for."

He paused, finding Morgana at the front of the crowd. She gave him a tiny smile and nod.

Continuing, he said, "Back in the old days, we used to shout 'for the love of Camelot' as we went into battle. Given that it's now nothing but a hill, maybe that doesn't make sense anymore. But to many, Camelot was more than a city, more than a kingdom, more than the legend you may have heard told as a child. It was an ideal, something to strive for, to fight for. And I'm going to proclaim my love for that one more time today."

He almost smiled then, feeling his "modern self" coming through for a moment. "But you can yell about whatever you want, I won't judge. Whatever it is that matters most to you. Running into battle silent is usually not helpful."

I never had people chuckling at my old speeches.

Actually smiling now, he shouted, "Let's finish this!"

Anglesey's army responded with a roar.

As they charged towards the enemy-held hill, "For the love of Camelot! " was shouted by more people than him, but it was mixed with " For the love of Anglesey! ", " For freedom! ", " For the future! ", and the names of myriad loved ones. Arthur thought he even heard a " For Bernicia! " mixed in somewhere. Pretty sure that's Haralda.

All in all, it was a strange series of events that had led to this moment, but if this was their last hurrah, Arthur figured it was a rather glorious way to go.

As always, the battle felt a lot less glorious about an hour in.

The hedges, which had displayed an unfortunate tendency to literally reach out and grab people, were mostly ashes due to Morgana and Aithusa's teamwork. Multiple unpleasant monsters had appeared out of the bushes as well; most had been dealt with, but not without cost.

Not long after most of the brambles had gone up in flames and many wyverns had fallen from the sky, a couple sorcerers had split off from the main group to harass the dragon while another went after Morgana. The last Arthur had seen of his sister, she was dueling a reincarnated Alvarr on the north side of the hill. Over on the east side, Merlin and the remaining sorcerers were still locked in a fierce, spell-filled battle. The sheer number of lightning bolts and fireballs hurtling through the air in that area was terrifying.

I bet some of those sorcerers are dead already...Probably not Nimueh, unfortunately...

Across the rest of the hill's slopes, the Knights of Anglesey fought an uphill battle against mainly-mortal enemies, although the occasional shade did pop up. Arthur ran himself ragged rushing from skirmish to skirmish, trying to take the undead soldiers out before they could harm too many of his people.

As his weariness almost cost him his head yet again, he felt a wave of relief as Gwaine appeared from who-knew-where and dispatched his attacker. "Always saving your life, eh?" he said, smirking and shaking his hair out of his face, seemingly more himself than he'd been in a while.

Arthur snorted. "Don't get cocky!" he retorted, raising his sword as another knot of enemy soldiers rushed at him.

The next time they had slight pause, he joked, "What, no magic, Gwaine?"

"Used it as much as I dare already," was the rueful reply.

Fighting back-to-back with Gwaine made Arthur a bit nostalgic for the good old days of Camelot melees. More importantly, it also meant a higher chance of surviving, so they continued to stick together as the battle raged on.

I'm not even sure if we're winning , Arthur thought as he took a few precious seconds to catch his breath. We're more organized and adaptable, but there's more of them… Their enemies did seem scattered enough by this point to rule out a flanking maneuver. At least we don't have to deal with that...but we can't try it, either…

The sound of Lancelot shouting his name yanked him out of his muddled thoughts. He and Gwaine took off at a run around the hill to a body-strewn area due south of the tents, where they found an injured Lancelot battling not one but two shades, identifiable by their blank expressions and lack of blood from visible wounds.

Lancelot scrambled out of the way when he saw the other two men coming to his rescue. It took a minute, but Arthur managed to take the first one down; seeing that, Gwaine spun away from the other shade he had been fighting, leaving it open to Arthur's attack, which went faster than the last. Two more down. Hopefully not too many more to go…

"Nice one, Princess!" Gwaine laughed.

"Not bad yourself!" Both of them turned to Lancelot, who had ended up on the ground. "You alright?" Arthur asked. "Do you…"

Seeing something behind him, Lancelot lunged to his feet and yelled, "Look ou…"

Someone behind Arthur shouted a spell, and Lancelot and Gwaine both went hurtling through the air, landing with cries and groans of pain several yards away.

Arthur spun around, only to feel Excalibur wrenched from his hand by another spell.

"Arthur Pendragon," Nimueh purred, her red dress and intricately-braided hair pristine despite the battle. "We meet again."

"You." Arthur grimaced. "Been a while." Not since that cave, so long ago...

"Quite an understatement, don't you think?" Her vivid blue eyes stared into his, seeming to bore straight to his soul.

He glanced around. "I thought you'd be fighting Merlin."

"I was. As the fight became precariously close in odds, I decided I had better things to do with my time." She lifted her hand, a fireball blooming to life in her palm. "Like killing you."

Stunned into silence for several seconds, Arthur finally stammered out, "I...I thought you'd never…" Merlin even said…

"You thought I'd never kill you? You weren't destined to die by my hand before, Arthur; I told you that. And why destroy something I'd created anyway? But that was in another life. I've been reconsidering recently...We can choose different paths now, Once and Future King. And I've decided that the best way to defeat Emrys, even if I lose the battle, is to kill you."

"Everyone seems to have that idea." Arthur muttered. I don't see anyone near to help... Somewhere up the hill, he heard something explode. Some tents, maybe? Hope that's good for us...Maybe if I keep her talking Merlin or Morgana will show up to save me? "So if we can choose different paths in this life...Why did you choose to be evil again? Didn't work out so great for you last time around."

For the first time, Nimueh's smug expression twisted into a furious one. "Enough!" She threw the golden-red fireball, which seemed to spin in slow-motion through the air like a miniature sun...

And straight into Gwaine's chest as he jumped in front of Arthur.

He slammed into Arthur as he fell, knocking them both down. As the Pendragon struggled to sit up, he froze, staring at the man now laying beside him, face-up, eyes open, expression slack.

Arthur had seen enough corpses in his lives to know when he was looking at one.

No, this can't be happening…

It just didn't make sense, even in a battle. Gwaine and death didn't mix. Not like this.

As if from far away, Arthur could hear echoes of screams, of explosions, of weapons clashing still. He thought he even heard Lancelot yelling again, somewhere nearby. He heard, distantly, Nimueh's growl of frustration and saw, as if through fogged glass, her creating another fireball.

Then, from just up the hill, a voice carrying the weight of a thousand years rang out. "Stop!"

Arthur turned to look.

Standing above them, silhouetted against the burning encampment, silver chalice in hand, the very air around him crackling with magical energy, was Merlin.

He did it.

"Looks like you're going out the same way you did last time, Nimueh!" Merlin laughed wildly and lightning shredded the gathering clouds above. "Restoring balance to the universe!" Holding the Cup of Life aloft, he tipped it over.