† Year Eight, Day Seven †
With the years came the experience, and with the experience came the conviction. Not once did Lancelot fail one of the Lady's trials, he overcame each foe and mastered each hurdle. He learned the basics of marksmanship and held his own in any fight, unarmed, with clubs or axes, with flails or maces. But when the Lady showed a little generosity and allowed him free access to all the weapons at his disposal, he chose either his sword or his spear, and with these trusted tools, he knew no one who stood a chance against him.
With one exception: Sir Jonathan of Liez.
His mentor denied Lancelot another duel, no matter how many requests and threats he hurled at Sir Jonathan. The sycamore atop Avalon's hill had seen uncounted clashes of their swords, but during the past two years, the sand in its shade had remained unruffled. When the song of sharpened steel reverberated across the island, it accompanied a slaughter rather than a training session. None of the knights Lancelot defeated challenged him to the same extend as Sir Jonathan had. He wanted to go into battle against the King of Chaos – and yet he couldn't even surmount his mentor.
"What's with that grim face?" Morgan asked and pulled Lancelot out of his thoughts. She sat amidst a field of white peonies she had conjured from the earth and let a handful of petals twirl above her outstretched palm.
"I've been thinking about whether I'm really capable of what I promised you to do."
Morgan abandoned her petals and stroked his bare arm. A strange feeling radiated from her touch, and Lancelot's eyes lost focus for a moment.
"You are capable," she said. "I've watched you fight. No knight will be able to defy you, least the puppet king Arthur. He's the husk of a man and not half the fighter you are."
"How come you always seem to watch me even when you disappear for days on end?"
Morgan smiled a smile devoid of answers. "I told you I'm never far. And if my words aren't enough to convince you of your worthiness, remember that you hold the power of the lake at your fingertips. One thought, and the world around you adheres to your will."
"Only that I won't face Arthur here in Avalon. Out there, my link to the lake's magic won't get me far. Provided the Lady of the Lake lets me leave in one piece."
"With the necessary magic, you can leave at any time."
Lancelot eyed Morgan, but if she was messing with him, she had mastered the ability to ban all signs of deception from her face.
"I tried," he said. "Multiple times. The only way out of Avalon I know is through a premature death by drowning. Weren't you the one to discourage me from throwing my life away?"
"That was before I knew you could use the magic of the lake. The barrier that traps us in Avalon can only be broken by a specific kind of magic, the purest yet most impure one. Parts of this power are hidden among all the other currents in the magic stream around us. I can't reach out to it. But it will accept you as its master."
Lancelot refocused on sharpening the blade of his spear. The magic Morgan talked about had offered him a hand a few times, but he shied away from its might. Something otherworldly, something unnatural clung to this magic, a force of will beyond his wildest imaginations. How could he even begin to stack up against that?
Morgan saw through his hesitance, rose to her feet, and extended a hand towards him. "Come, let me show you something."
A little baffled, Lancelot allowed Morgan to lead him away from the flower garden and towards a gentle hill outside the complex of castle ruins. The grass blades stood erect; no gust moved them. When she reached a spot a few yards below the hillcrest, Morgan raised her arms. The ground rumbled, a cacophony to alarm every living creature on the island, and out of the depths, two stone pillars emerged. Born out of nothing more than Morgan's thoughts, they grew, twisting and spiraling and modelled with ornate patterns across the limestone surface. Once they measured twenty feet in height, the pillars stopped their growth and leaned towards each other like two friends who hadn't seen the other in years. Their stone arms met in the middle, and thus an archway was born on the hill.
Morgan hugged Lancelot from behind and directed his eyes to her creation. "Imagine this is the door back to Britannia. Now all you have to do is ask the magic barrier for safe passage and step through the gates once the magic opens them for you."
Lancelot awaited the sound of footsteps, of a dark cloud clawing out of the earth, or a stream manifesting into a humanoid shape. But nothing happened. Morgan's breath caressed his neck. The Lady of the Lake had no reason to let him go without a fight, she had gone through all this trouble to restrain him for years, and he had in no way more control over the magic of the lake than she did.
No, to break free was an illusion, just like the vast forest which haunted his dreams. Reality would not grant him a door because he wished for one. Reality was painted and paid for with blood, sounded like the last breaths of the people Lancelot had faced, smelled like sweat and steel, and looked like red spots on the ridge of his blade.
Morgan reached for his hand and forced him to face the entreaty dripping from her lips. The peony Lancelot had created for her blossomed above her ear, as beautiful as on the day of its inception.
"You promised to go to any lengths for me," Morgan said. "You gave me your word that you would free Chaos and kill Arthur."
"I cannot allow that."
Lancelot and Morgan spun around to meet the owner of the voice. On the hill, between them and the archway stood Sir Jonathan. His drawn claymore haloed in the pale sun, and his posture had never carried a conviction this strong, a conviction to defy fate and gods.
"I might not think fondly of King Arthur," he said, "but what you suggest is the coldblooded assassination of a royal leader. There is no honor in such a deed, and every decent knight would condemn you for even considering this act of treason."
"You have no business here," Morgan hissed. "May you rot in Purgatory."
"On the contrary, my lady, I have business here that requires my immediate attention. Lancelot, you have made me an oath to see whether you are fit to speak judgement over me. My sins have not vanished. I call upon you to stay true to your words and face me in armed combat at once."
Morgan chained Lancelot by his arm, but he broke free of her grip. All he had done, every battle he had fought, every crime he had committed and every criminal he had judged had led to this moment. This was the crossroad behind which either absolute failure or the long-sought victory waited.
Lancelot raised his chin. "I accept your request. May the better knight do with the other's life as he chooses."
Sir Jonathan adjusted his footing and built his defenses the way Lancelot had seen him do a hundred times. "I have tolerated your actions for far too long. In my inattentiveness, I have allowed this witch to ruin you, my young friend. Not anymore."
Lancelot forged his stance into a mirror image of his mentor's. One breath brought him calm, and his muscles resumed the tension of battle. Absolute failure or victory. No time to hesitate now.
Before Sir Jonathan could think to make the first move, Lancelot flung his spear and charged right after. Sir Jonathan evaded and rebuilt his focus in time to block Lancelot's chain of swings. A series of blows assailed his left side, and each one left a scar on the polished armor. Sir Jonathan twisted out of the hailstorm; his foot scraped the green tufts.
A mistake.
Lancelot exploited the opening and dove for his second weapon. Reequipped with his spear, he kept his mentor at a distance with precise thrusts for his feet, for his neck, for his knees. Sir Jonathan sidestepped with the finesse of a solo dancer. He hoed for his partner, desperate to split the spear below the blade. But Lancelot denied him a pause; no chance to strategize or anticipate the next trajectory.
His sword slashed open Sir Jonathan's left arm, below his shoulder plate, and crimson stained the earth. A stumble for the cover of the archway, uncoordinated, sloppy. Lancelot slid forward and aimed for Sir Jonathan's side, but his haste proved ill-chosen; his mentor spun sideways. Lancelot's sword gazed the other's breastplate, and he paid for his mistake with a blunt jab to his hand. The gilded pommel of Sir Jonathan's sword cracked his knuckles. His spear plummeted and before Lancelot had a chance to seize it, his mentor forced him into a staggered retreat.
Back and forth they pushed each other over the hill, and neither held the upper hand for long. Lancelot might have sharpened his abilities against other knights, but Sir Jonathan had perfected his technique down to every twitch of a muscle. Whenever Lancelot thought to see an opening in his mentor's defense, he came out at a loss. Whenever he thought to have him cornered, Sir Jonathan used his momentum against him and reestablished distance.
Lancelot's blows held more force, enough to axe a mighty oak tree, but he exerted himself faster. In the still air, the sweat collected on his forehead. His feet slipped on the trampled grass. Each combination Sir Jonathan bombarded him with costed him more effort to parry. For each light wound he dealt out, he collected two. And after he had fallen for the trick once, Sir Jonathan no longer allowed him to retrieve his spear.
Blood ran down Lancelot's arm, and his left leg quivered with each shift in body weight, but he swallowed the pain and stood upright once more. Giving up equaled death, equaled treason, equaled absolute failure, and Lancelot had sworn to prevail.
The King of Chaos awaited him in his castle of delusions.
But determination only triumphed over a superior technique for a short while, and adrenalin could not make up for blood loss. Swords jingled anew, edge to edge, locked in a stalemate. When Sir Jonathan put his body weight forward, Lancelot turned his wrist too far. The force wrenched at tendon, muscle, flesh, and bone, and Lancelot bit his tongue to muffle a scream. His defense collapsed. With a desperate kick to Sir Jonathan's knee, he escaped his undoing.
Burning pain throbbed in his arm, the shame filled his mouth with the taste of iron, and raising his sword consumed his reserves without remorse. His knees buckled. But he stood up straight.
Deep lines formed at the corners of Sir Jonathan's mouth. He readjusted his grip twice and still his thumb twitched. After a heartbeat of hesitance, he pursued Lancelot with a squall of swings, from right, from left, uppercuts and downward slashes, a succession of fatal blows that left him no moment to breathe. Lancelot stumbled backwards, and his right fingers surrendered. In a last attempt to turn the tides, he tossed his sword into his left hand and struck after his opponent's injured knee.
But the one who had taught him this trick was immune to the surprise. Sir Jonathan pushed the sword aside with his own, and his metal-gloved hand connected with Lancelot's jawbone. White spots exploded before his eyes, stole his sight, rendered him blind and helpless, and before his senses returned to him, the back of his head crashed onto the ground below.
He couldn't breathe. His sword lay out of reach; his fingers couldn't find the comfort of the hilt. The white spots expanded, and one after the other, they poisoned his view until Sir Jonathan's grim expression disappeared.
Lancelot choked, but the air refused to find its way into his lungs. With his injured and his uninjured hand, he reached for his throat, but he couldn't ease the pressure, he couldn't tear the hands away as they squeezed the life out of him.
Sir Jonathan tightened the stranglehold. "I'm sorry it had to come this far. I failed you, but I will make it up to you, on my word. Don't fight it. It will all be over soon, and then you will be free of the pain and the web of lies she trapped you in."
His chest twitched, but there was no air to keep Lancelot alive. Soon, his fingers would give up the fight, and his heart would collapse not long after. Every trial he had passed, every human he had killed, every sweet lie of encouragement Morgan had tossed him would be for nothing. Seven years later, and he was still a failure. He had failed Jericho. He was about to fail Morgan. And at the end of the road, he had failed his own belief.
To right all wrongs, it required a strong will. Someone with the power of the lake.
Despite his dwindling field of view, Lancelot focused his entire being on the magic coursing through the sky and the earth. Its warmth welcomed him with open arms, and so did its cold. Light and darkness stood to attention, the might of plant and earth alike brimmed at his fingertips.
And then, the pressure around Lancelot's throat disappeared as Sir Jonathan fell backwards. A spear made out of ice stuck out of his shoulder. He gazed at his fragmented pauldron and the expanding red spot on the hauberk beneath.
Lancelot pulled in a lungful of oxygen and climbed to his knees. The magic burned within him, singed the pain, and intoxicated him with new energy.
"May the lake lend me strength, and may it guide my hand so that I shall right all wrongs."
And the lake responded. A second spear manifested out of the sky and bolted towards Sir Jonathan to pierce his leg and pin him to the ground. The next one severed the wrist from his arm.
On his knees and without any means to defend himself, Sir Jonathan looked up at Lancelot. If the Demon King himself had risen from his deathbed to face him, he could not have worn an expression more dismayed.
"I have surpassed you. You can no longer treat me like a child. After all the times you called me your young friend, I have finally proven you wrong." Lancelot picked his sword from the ground and limped forward until he stood a mere foot away from Sir Jonathan. "Admit that I bested you. SAY IT!"
But in a last act of defiance, Sir Jonathan regained his calm demeanor and faced Lancelot without a hint of fear. "Speak your judgement and make it quick. Go ahead. Kill me for my loyalty to Edinburgh and prove that your understanding of the world is as narrowminded as it has always been."
"It's not your loyalty to Deathpierce you have to atone for. No, your true crime goes deeper than that. Tell me, what happened to the town of Liez?"
Sir Jonathan's eyes widened. His heart spilled the secrets he had wanted to bury alongside the ashes of the New Holy War, showed the clusters of small buildings and the people there. Through Sir Jonathan's heart, Lancelot walked down the avenue of Liez. Past the cramped vendor shops, past the blacksmith's trusted anvil and the tavern with its green lattice windows. Fresh loaves of bread passed the counter of the bakery, while tufts of thyme dangled from the doorframe. There, the great fountain sprayed water into the air, here the local bard recited the folktale of the Fisher King. The house with the blue door and the woman living there; Sir Jonathan's heart lingered beside her the longest. A happy little town with happy people.
And it all went up in smoke.
Sir Jonathan swallowed three times before he produced an answer. "The Demons destroyed Liez."
Lancelot saw the truth. But he wanted to hear it aloud, the dying man's confession before judgement. "And the people of Liez? What happened to them?"
"They all died."
The roof of the house with the blue door stood ablaze, and with a painful rumble, the support beam snapped, and the walls crumbled inwards. The woman inside screamed.
"Then tell me, Sir Jonathan of Liez, how did you survive? As the town's most revered Holy Knight you should have stood in the front line to battle the advancing Demons. You've proven your skills in combat time and time again, you carved your superiority into every word you said to me. Surely a man such as you could have stopped the Red Demon before he set fire to the houses. To protect the innocent and to fight evil is the code of a Holy Knight. But you did neither. You fled to safe your own skin. You are the one who betrayed the knight's creed. I saw your heart. You are a coward."
What little calm Sir Jonathan had maintained burnt under the images of his home engulfed in smoke and flames and screams. Tears shimmered in his eyes.
"What could I have done? The Demon army would have sent reinforcements before I could have driven them off. No one had seen the attack coming, the fire spread so quickly, I would have never reached there in time to make a difference."
"You didn't even try."
"I wanted, I wanted to go back and save her, I knew she was scared, all by herself, I knew she wouldn't make it out alone." The tears streamed down Sir Jonathan's face, tears for his home, for his beloved, for himself. "I told her to flee and that we would meet under the ash tree outside the village. She didn't come. No one did. I wanted to go back. But I couldn't."
"And that is your true crime. Because of your cowardice and your inability to act, people died. I cannot close my eyes to this sin. Never again."
Lancelot felt the weight of his sword as he raised the steal, he struggled under the load of all the little moments he had spent as this man's apprentice, but the lake guided his hand and sword without fail. Sir Jonathan nodded and with his final breath accepted his fate. His head rolled from his shoulders and came to rest at the feet of the stone archway.
The voice of his heart fell silent, but the images of Liez persisted in Lancelot's head. Never would he allow for such a catastrophe to repeat itself. Everyone with the power to intervene but who chose to allow crime, calamity and carnage had become his enemy, and Lancelot would not rest until he repaid their mistakes. Whether it required their blood or his.
The bittersweet taste of victory filled his mouth, and in search for the words of approval he needed and longed for, Lancelot turned towards Morgan. But he found no kindness there. Shadows submerged her face, and she held her stomach as she laughed.
She laughed with a voice too booming and too deep to belong to her, and the ground trembled alongside her, rocked by joy or madness or both.
"A single deed born from absolute compassion and absolute hatred." Morgan no longer spoke with her own voice. This voice was Lancelot's nightmare, his tormenter, his worst enemy. "You ended his life for both the people he let down and your own selfish desire. The purest light and most impure darkness all in one. After all this time, after three thousand years, Chaos' perfect creation finally reveals itself. How long have I waited to see the true potential of his genius, and then it comes to me in the form of the one creature he hasn't foreseen: a hybrid. The image of perversion and perfection, the image of Chaos himself."
Another roll of laughter shook Morgan, and then her face disintegrated. Darkness ripped the skin open, shadows tore away her features, her eyes disappeared, and she grew. Her dress blackened, a garb woven from the darkest of nights, stained by red lines, rivers of blood. The ruins caved in, boulders rained from the collapsing towers while the shadows overtook the island with the force of a tsunami. Under the sound of bones cracking and low giggles, Morgan's hands split and reshaped until each her finger was its own black hand. And still more hands appeared, born from her dress and her hair, and all of them twisted under the sick delight of their master.
Instead of Morgan, the Lady of the Lake stood before Lancelot.
"You exceeded all my expectations," she said, and the hands reached out to envelop him in an embrace where too much of her swallowed too little of him.
Lancelot froze. His stomach twisted, but instead of his breakfast, he spit out the only question on his mind. "Why?"
"Why I deceived you?" Morgan, the Lady of the Lake, giggled. "Oh, you may recall that I only lied to you once, when I told you I hadn't met you before. And I nearly paid for this mistake with your life. Otherwise, I have held my end of the bargain. Where the Lady demanded your servitude, Morgan gave you kindness, and where the Lady bestowed gifts on you, Morgan took promises from you as payment. Is this not the nature of Chaos?"
Tears tickled his eyelashes, and Lancelot trembled, but he did not cry. The revelation left him deformed, empty, but unable to shed these tears. He had sworn to kill the Lady of the Lake because of the people she abducted, and he had promised to return happiness to Morgan because of the endless isolation she endured.
Now he could do neither. All he could was shake his head and beg for this illusion to fade.
"Why did you choose me? What am I to you?"
"You are the prince of the lake, the future king. You are the peak of Chaos' vision. Everything you did has shaped you into his image, and today you have proven how right I was to select you. The light cannot shine without the darkness, and only the darkness can restrain the light. One cannot reach its full potential in the absence of the other. Merlin never understood this. That's why she selected a weak, goodhearted boy as her champion. But you, Lancelot, you my dear, will show her the errors of her ways."
"By serving your wish?"
"By serving your own. Our goals align. Chaos has arranged it this way. All you need to do is follow the path you have chosen."
Morgan's hands caressed his skin, stroked his hair and the scar on his forehead, and Lancelot had no strength to push her away. He had come this far, hadn't he? Every duel he had fought had brought him one step closer towards the status as the strongest knight in Britannia, and with his victory over Sir Jonathan, he had taken the final leap before the finish line. And at this finish line, at the end of the road, waited the most powerful of them all: The King of Chaos. With his death, no one would stand in Lancelot's way, no one would prevent him from condemning all evil. No, he would hold the power to purge the evil before it occurred.
The one true purpose of his existence lay at arm's reach. There was no turning back, no crossroad to falter at. He had made his choice a long time ago.
A smile hummed in Morgan's voice when she spoke. "I know you won't fail me."
From the very beginning, she had known his wishes and desires, had read in his heart like other people read books. None of that had changed. She forged his body and his mind until he could do nothing but act out her will. And so, he served her. Only through her would he reach the justice he dreamt of.
Lancelot embraced her darkness, and she held him the way she did her lover.
For his victory over Sir Jonathan, Morgan awarded him with a set of armor, and each plate was more valuable than the riches of a king. And when the steel would show its first dents they would come from the King of Chaos.
1/24/21 - I'm curious, who called this twist beforehand? I think I dropped enough hints as to Morgan's true identity, including her love for Chaos and her obsession with Lancelot's "perfection". Or the fact that she and the Lady of the Lake have never shared a scene. Was it too obvious?
