Good morning. Today I bring Chapter 24, Morgana's perspective. This chapter is important, but kind of long for me. I mean that there are more descriptions than usual, and as my English is not perfect, I don't know if it would be good. Nonetheless, I like how is going the story. This is only an important part of the story that will have a relation with Balinor, that will appear in the future (I don't know exactly how many chapters could it be). Well, I don't want to spoil, I hope you like it.

I'm not own from Merlin.

Morgana was out of breath and could see her heart in her throat, throbbing hard, as if it wanted to warn her of danger. Those two red dots gradually approached by darkness. Morgana didn't know who he was or what had become of Merlin, but she knew those red eyes meant nothing good.

"Merlin?" he asked more out of hope that the boy would come to her aid than anything else. There was no answer, and in the meantime, those eyes were approaching.

Why should Merlin have gone here? Why was Arthur's servant always in such trouble?

Morgana knew she should be running away from that eyes or running away, but her legs weren't responding. She was afraid. Deeply afraid. A fear she could not control and that made her paralyzed with a blank mind.

And so, the two seconds passed in which she saw those two points approaching: with terribly dread. And that dread gradually intensified every time she saw those red eyes closer to her until when she could easily see them within a meter of hers, Morgana screamed for the first time and that caused a burn of fire to emerge from the rocky ground, in which in a thousandth of a second she could perfectly appreciate who was hiding behind those red eyes: Merlin.

The light of fire bathed for an instant its delicate features and a smile never seen in it: a malevolent smile. And before the fire vanished, he remembered nothing else, leaving it with the macabre sight he had witnessed. Those red eyes on Merlin's beautiful face, this time without a kind and compassionate expression as he used to have, but diabolical and malevolent.

She hoped that all would have been just a nightmare.

She was in a crypt. A wet and narrow crypt, apparently located in the darkest depths of a castle, which seemed to give another side to what they taught on the outside as grandiose and divine. At first, everything seemed blurry and inconsistent, but as she looked at it more detailedly everything, she began to appreciate a place where he had already been: Camelot's crypts, in their depths. A place where a lady should not have been, that was the first thing; that had been attracted since she had arrived at the castle.

In front of her, a gray-haired woman with predominantly weak features and abundant wrinkles looked at her with a steely, fulminant look Morgana remembered seeing before. She had a hump and a wooden walking stick with which she held inconsistently, with her stick shaking under the knotty hands of the old woman. She wore all-black garments that reached her ankles and made her a great resemblance to an elderly widow at her beloved's funeral. Her body seemed weak as if at any moment she could still fall with her stick in her hand, and she seemed to struggle to stand. But those eyes showed the opposite: to someone determined and rigid, who seemed to not be there because of foolishness. A look that pierced even the inhuman. A look coming from another world.

It was only to see again those piercing eyes to remember who that old woman was and where she had seen her. She was the old woman who had been by the temple with her before she had gone to the depths of Wirgen. Yes, it was that same woman. But the question was: What was she doing there? What did she want from her?

It was then that she remembered that it was the same woman who appeared and disappeared just by looking away. That didn't have to be happening. What did that mean? Who was this woman? Morgana couldn't think much more, and when she wanted to say something, she couldn't even take her lips off her mouth.

The old moved her right arm, which was not resting on the walking stick, and cast aside a kind of small fountain with crystal clear water inside her arm. On a normal occasion, Morgana would have backed out or asked what this meant, but her predatory instincts worked earlier and made her move forward slowly and somewhat fluidly as if she was not really walking but floating on the ground.

She came to the fountain, and as if all this had been planned, and, as if she knew perfectly what she was doing, she went down to her head and looked at the crystal clear water, in which she could witness her face in it. It looked more like a mirror than a source of water since the water didn't seem to move, but it was thinking about it when the water moved to form circles in the crystal surface.

Morgana would have given a drowned cry if she could even take off her lips. Her image dissolved in the water like a sea of memories over the years, gradually fading, giving way to other images that Morgana was initially unable to discern very well.

New images appeared where her face was previously reflected. And she saw it. She saw the same scenes she had seen over the last few days in her nightmares: Merlin consumed by the fire of the Great Dragon... The dragon shouting Merlin's name... Merlin lying on the ground dead...

That were things Morgana had already seen several times, but which she had not set aside. For a moment she felt at peace in that source, but to be replaced that feeling with one of oppression in her chest and a bad omen. A feeling she had always felt whenever she got up from that nightmare, though always softly and inconsistently. In this case, on the other hand, it was a vehement and anxious feeling. That feeling indicated that something was going to go wrong in the future. Something that, perhaps, was already happening.

It was at that moment that the images Morgana had already been accustomed to, though no less concerned, were blurred to make way for a fuzzy image that gradually became sharper.

An image she would never have wanted to see. An image which she had never thought of that something like that could be real. An image that, even if she said to himself otherwise, she had already viewed.

A giant black crow flew with wings full of feathers of darkness towards her accompanied by a heartbreaking squawk, too gloomy to be true. And it was at that moment that the crow opened his eyes, previously closed, revealing in him a flame of fire in a sea of darkness in each eye. Two red eyes as malevolent as ardent looked at her with malice.

Then she remembered. Merlin with the same eyes. Those eyes that, if she had to choose the last person she would put it to would indeed be Merlin, burned with malice along with a disgusting smile. No, Merlin couldn't be…

Morgana raised her head, even with her heart in a fist and blood in her veins bursting, and dared to look at the old woman. She wanted to ask her about her nightmares, her visions, her feelings of bad omens, the crow, the red eyes, the darkness..., but, especially, she wanted to ask her about Merlin. But, again, her mouth did not let himself open, as if there were not even opening or lips in it.

The old woman fulminated her with that scathing look that characterized her and for a moment the stiffest silence ever seized the crypt. It seemed that that look that was thrown through the woman's eyes had paralyzed time and made the atmosphere tightly strained with a rope about to break.

When she spoke, the words bounced majestically through the crypt, as if she were reciting a glorious text.

"The time has come, Morgana. It is your time to decide what to do with your destiny. You are the only hope for everyone. The Black Crow is going to rise again, and nothing will be like before. Make up your mind, Morgana."

The last words the woman uttered seemed as if the wind were taking them away. And then everything turned dark and hazy, consumed by a type of shadow that made the crypt become darker. Everything seemed to decompose except the old woman who kept looking at her with a stern gesture. Morgana wanted to scream, but by the time she thought about doing it, all dissolved into impenetrable blackness.

Morgana opened her eyes and took a deep breath of air. She looked where she was, but everything was too dark to see anything. It was touching the wet, cold ground of a cave to find out where she was lying.

And it was then that she knew what to do as if she perfectly knew what was right. A sensation that whispered in her ear how to do things correctly. Morgana got up and went where her hunches indicated.

In all her life she had never felt so sure of herself.

At that time, she knew she would do what was right.

What will happen next? You will know in the following chapters. If someone has any doubts about who that woman is, is actually only like a vision. It is not an imagination but not exactly real. And if someone had a doubt about the fountain and all about it I have only to say that it was like a "Destiny Vision". I don't know how to explain it, but I think it is clear.

Nonetheless, if you have any doubts you can tell. It is true that the story will have a lot of roots and subplots, and because of that, it could happen that something is not really clear or something is wrong in terms of sense. I am completely aware of it. It is not easy to make such a story.

What do you think? Tell me what you want. Also, I will be very happy if you comment to me errors (I mean of the story or something like that) or something you don't like.

Thank you!

LegolasHV