"The Legend of the Black Armor"
Chap. 03: Sins of the fathers.
Griffith the griffin didn't really know how to feel at that very moment.
"Did you see that? Did you?"
"Yes, Bors, we have been seeing it since first hour in the morning."
If he had to pick an adjective to define his present state of mind, he would say… "tired".
Tired because these… human pups were quarreling. Again. For the umpteenth time in a single morning.
Urgh…
"And do you think it's normal?"
A not-so-amused snort.
"I don't know, Bors. Why don't you ask her instead of pestering us?"
"I'm not asking anything to that highlander."
"Then stay with the doubt."
"You aren't being of much help, Lucius!"
How can they be still quarreling after two damn hours?!
His Master, however, atop of her monstrous black Nightmare was having the nap of her life. It had been pretty comical: she had risen the first in the morning, she had gone to the call of nature, then she had been munching a piece of dried meat a good ten minutes before proclaiming to which way going… to, immediately, rest her head frontwards over her mount's mane and… start snoring soundly. Luckily the intelligent equine beast did actually know which direction to take, because its horsewoman was being everything but helpful.
After a while, half-awake from the incessant quarreling, Medraut raised her head and inhaled briefly before yawning in a very inelegant, unladylike way.
"Quit the stupid argument already." – she said with a sleepy, raspy voice – "I wanna doze a bit more…"
And Bors went immediately to provoke her.
"Aren't you supposed to be our guide, huh?" – he growled – "The one who will point us which direction to take?"
A slight tsk. Then another yawn, this time bigger than the previous one, if possible.
"Daredevil will guide you." – she answered groggily.
"Who?"
"Ma horse…" - gods… she wasn't even vocalizing correctly.
"What?! You must be kidding!"
"Nope…"
"Did you hear that?! Lucius, Galahad?! She said the damn horse is going to guide us! I can't believe this! This is the drop that fills the glass!"
Griffith rolled his feline green eyes and sighed heavily, fed up of these pups and their nonsensical quarrels.
Soon, a hand went to his powerful neck and scratched him. He felt immediately better.
"Try to block your hearing." – the child's voice was this closer to his bat-like ears and so calm and low that it brought immediate comfort to the mythical beast – "I know you griffins have high developed senses. This must be uncomfortable to you."
Griffith purred, pleased to receive such candorous attention. Until this day, no human had been this… affectionate with him.
He could get used to this.
"'Uncomfortable', you say, druid calf?" – he hissed, both of pleasure as the kid scratched his ruffled feathers, and weariness as his sensitive ears were assaulted with yet another rant – "That is not precisely the term I would use but rather… 'painful' would do for an accurate definition."
Loholt, sitting atop of the griffin's spine, horseback style, as Medraut had allowed it, worked a bit of his magic creating a small barrier to insulate background sounds from the creature's hearing.
Griffith sighed in relief.
"Aaah… much better, druid calf." – he said – "Much appreciated."
Loholt smiled and said nothing. But soon he jumped from the booming voice that assaulted him from behind.
"Sorcery again!" – it was Bors who, having witnessing the boy's workings to create the barrier, now a slight bluish film around them, got infuriated – "Retire that immediately, boy! NOW!"
But, as activated by a spring, Medraut straighten up on her Nightmare as if she had been burned.
"As long as it is undamaging towards the whole group, the kid can do whatever he damn pleases with his magic stuff." – she said calmly but with a dangerous edge in her voice – "He had had enough of bullies like you hunting them like deer and burning their homes for no other reason than being blessed with the 'gift'."
"They are dangerous!" – protested the knight.
"Says who?" – she challenged – "Imagine yourself being chased day and night until someone puts you on a stake to burn you alive. You would fight to defend yourself, right?"
"I would surrender and commend my fate to God's judgment."
"Yeah, sure, whatever…" - Medraut finally capitulated, leaving him for impossible. She couldn't put some sense into somebody who refused to open his eyes – "Wait until somebody would try to put your head in a pike and let's see who's willing to die."
"I'm willing to die for what I think it's fair and good. God will guide my sword."
"Yeah, yeah, sure thing."
Bors' blood boiled but, since he received quite the telltale looks from his two comrades to shut up and let it be, he kept his thoughts to himself. She would never understand, for she was the unfortunate daughter of some betrayer who happened to use sorcery as a means to overtake Camelot and whose wife, the girl's mother, had been discovered a witch by Gaheris and, instead of accepting the aid the great Merlin had lent to her, she had sided instead with those three demons whose evilness had been legendary since his own grandfathers were children. Maybe even before that.
She defended magic because she had been raised amongst it, but she hadn't been present when he… had raided Camelot.
While she clearly wished for a father she'd never knew, Bors had been six and he, his mother and his old father had been present when the infamous Red Knight had successfully infiltrated Camelot with Lady Julianna and her daughter as hostages.
Since the very second the later Lady Kayleigh had emerged from the wagon shouting that it was a trap, chaos had ensued.
Bors and his mother, Lady Evaine, had been with other women inside the castle and, as soon as the monstrous northern red-headed man had bursted inside the castle mounting that same Nightmare the girl proclaimed it will guide them, the women and the servants had fled.
Everybody had fled… but the little Bors.
Inside his infantile mind, somehow it had worked, to plant face against the huge barbarian armed with a tiny adorned dagger his father had gifted him with in his fifth birthday.
But he had been small, and the highlander atop that monstrous equine had been like a hurricane: giant, unstoppable… devastator. He hadn't seen the small child who had thought that could beat him. But the said child's mom had seen her only son in the way of a mad horseman who could crush him like a bug under his mount's hooves.
His mother had run to push her kid outta the Red Knight's reach and, instead, she herself had been end wounded under the monster's hooves.
And the man who had been leading the beast had simply directed to her the coldest look little Bors had ever seen before continue his mad cavalcade. He had never been able to forget those cold, reptilian green eyes regarding her as she had been… nothing.
His mom had needed several months to recover from such an encounter… and, unfortunately, said encounter, with her belly stomped under the beast's hooves, had been irreparably damaged, leaving her barren for the rest of her life.
Bors could never forgive himself for what had happened and he had sought to be the best son his mother could ever wish, to always strive for goodness, for justice.
For never witnessing again a monster like that trampling over a defenseless woman again.
That coupled with the harsh wounds his father had sustained from the battle against those unnatural spellbound metallic men the highlander had brought with him, not to mention the murder of that older brother, Lionel, he had never known and whose memory his father secretly mourned over even still to the present day, had molded Bors to hate the name of Ruber of the High Lands as he grew up, loathing sorcery in all its sides and despising everything that had something to do with pagan people who didn't adapted themselves to the Christian change, resisting the eradication of the Old Ways and its barbarism.
And now this girl, this stupid, murderous girl mantled in everything he had sworn to fight against, came saying that sorcery was okay? That the murder of the King Arthur was justifiable to avenge the memory of a monster of a father she had never known?!
Perhaps the girl was just a victim of the circumstances, just as Bors' mother had been that fated day; maybe she was just misled… but her hands were, invariably, blood-stained.
She wasn't different from her father. Not even a bit.
However, when Bors eyed the little shit atop of that black winged monstrosity again, he… felt startled. For he saw it.
The fear.
It was so primal… so raw in those eyes that Bors, somehow, saw himself reflected on that boy, frightened against what Arthur's knights represented to him.
Could that be true? That she was part right and they didn't hold the absolute truth?
That they could be wrong?
Such a thought gave him nausea.
Medraut on her own ignored him completely and, even tired as she was, having slept very little in many days, started to distract the child by needling him amicably, tickling him, gaining surprised squeaks from him as he twisted atop of a sighing griffin.
And she continued doing the same all the day, distracting the kid, gaining his attention, not giving him a chance to look at the others. So at the end of the day she found herself resting her head against the as well resting griffin while Loholt lied in her arms, worn and overtired.
"This will be the last night, Mastodon." – she said after a while, being she and Bors the only ones left awake – "Tomorrow you wouldn't have to worry about me and the kid. We will disappear and you will have your blessed mental peace. Is what you want, isn't it?" – she kept speaking, as in a dream, her words surreal as the present conversation… or rather monologue went on – "You will return to your home, help to unify the kingdom again and be a hero, huh? No need to worry about garbage like us, right?"
She was speaking like she was trying to reassure herself rather than him.
"With your new religion, paganism will slowly dissolve amidst Avalon's mists and your people will forget us along with their roots and History. We will be a bad nightmare nobody will bother to recall." – she continued, her voice a mere whisper in the dark – "You will drown human's nature under those dogmas you love so much to keep people nice and good… subdued… brainwashed… ignorant… happy… So… very… happy…"
"You think you can just get out of this as if nothing had happened?" – he replied at last, unsure if she had fell asleep or not – "The blood you have spilled will follow you wherever you go like Black Death."
A long silence followed and Bors felt himself like following to sleep without even bothering to wake one of his comrades to take the next watch, knowledgeable that if she would want to harm them, she would, no matter their resistance.
And they couldn't kill her, he knew she had been awake these nights and now with that hybrid half eagle, half lion guarding her slumber, the chance was even slighter. Besides, he wasn't so sure he wanted to kill her anymore; the motive escaped to him entirely.
But as tiredness washed over him, in the middle of his trip towards sleep waters, he heard something that froze his blood. A reply. Her reply.
"I know." – were her words.
Guiding her horse towards the beginning of the infamous Forbidden Forest, a place she thought she wouldn't have to set foot in for the rest of her life, a mature and very tired Lady Kayleigh prayed silently to find one of those leaves she, many years ago, had found growing in the magic land's soil to mend the wounds of the same person she now held while on her saddle.
Garrett. Her Garrett.
After fighting against Mordred's forces, she and her husband had been painfully searching for their son, Lucius, in the following days after his disappearance until the dead, friends and foes equally, had started to raise, blades in cold dead hands and blind eyes glowing green, to start killing any form of life that went in their way.
And that had included the two knights.
Garrett first had refused to leave the battlefield until he'll found Lucius alive or… rather undead given the circumstances. But the ghoulish forces had been too much and the couple had been forced to retreat to Camelot to only find more and more reanimated corpses rising from the wet, blackened soil. They had battled valiantly to defend their land, and then their solitary position as they had entrenched within the old castle with their elder knights companions until dead had conquered life. And amidst everything, Garrett, swimming through waves and waves of spellbound corpses, had sustained more wounds than his body could take and Kayleigh had ended running away spurring her horse almost cruelly and making pressure over her husband's ugliest wound, preventing him from bleed to death.
Camelot had been surrounded by the undead and there was not a safe place in the whole kingdom… except, perhaps, the only alternative both, in their desperation, had left: the Forbidden Forest.
It wasn't the best idea she had ever formulated, but Garrett was getting weaker and whiter and whiter each minute his wounds went without the due treatment, so the choice had been evident.
Guided by the always loyal and strangely long-living Ayden, Garrett's silverwinged falcon, Kayleigh found a small cave and, after improvising some bandages with part of her undershirt to prevent Garrett to bleed further, she followed the falcon in search of the magical leaves.
And she prayed now to whoever happened to listen above their heads (Christian or pagan god, she couldn't care less right now), that she found them quickly.
They arrived the next day at Am Parbh or "Cape Wrath" for Britons, with the sun at its highest point.
Far Northwest in Sutherland, Am Parbh had the tallest cliffs, Clo Mor, in all the mainland and it was believed Vikings used the cape as a navigation point where they would turn their ships.
Inhaling the fresh scent of marine saltpeter deeply, Medraut guided her companions to a road that allowed them to descend the huge cliffs without making a suicide move.
"Learned this path after a few days inspecting the area." – she explained after seeing the look of concern in Lucius' eyes after taking a look at the height difference between where they stood and the beach – "Never got to a new place without learning its geography a little."
The descent went without further trouble.
"Well, gentlemen, it's been a mix of pleasure and utter displeasure…" - Medraut started as they reached the boat, eyeing matter-of-factly a frowning Bors after her last statement – "… but our ways splits from here on forward. So the kid, my oh-so cute fluffy oversized pet…" - she eyed Griffith maliciously as the creature rolled its eyes in annoyance – "… and I myself bids you farew…"
"Oh, no, no. Not in your wildest dreams, highlander." – the oldest knight intercepted – "We're going with you. I will not believe you have returned the armor until I see it with my own eyes."
Before she could form a proper, mordacious reply to the stupid big lump with peas for brains, Galahad intervened.
"It would be an interesting journey for us as well, my lady." – he said gallantly – "Besides, I myself would like to visit such a fabled land as Avalon is."
Medraut's nostrils flared. These guys didn't know when to hit the road, didn't they?
"Please?" – Lucius pleaded, eyeing her with something suspiciously close to…
… Motherfucking puppy eyes. – Medraut thought, wanting to facepalm herself and sending a 'I hate you' look to him before grudgingly grunt her approve – Urgh…
Soon they discovered, to the girl's great frustration, that all of them barely fit in the boat, so it was deemed that Loholt would travel on Griffith's back while the great creature followed them flying up close.
The horses were left behind as they would give nothing but trouble aboard the boat besides the already stated lack of space. Medraut's Nightmare, Daredevil, galloped far away as soon as its rider took bridle and saddle off its back.
"Why is she not rowing at all?!" – exclaimed a very indignant Bors after a while when each boat passenger had been taking turns to make the vehicle advance through the water but Medraut herself.
"You insisted on accompany me, you do the hard work while I pick my nose." – she responded, smiling shamelessly – "Duh."
"AAARGH!" – Bors exclaimed, wishing he could hit her with one of the oars he held in his hands – "I hate her! I really do!"
But then they noticed the tenuous mist that had been building upon their path was starting to be denser and denser.
"Griffith!" – the redhead exclaimed – "Fly at water level and keep your eyes on us! This is getting blinding for moments!"
"Yes, Master!" – was the immediate answer she received from the creature, who followed obediently her instructions.
Loholt secured himself farther on the creature's back, plunging his face in its feathery neck. The growing dark magical energies he was detecting each meter they advanced filled him with dread.
"Fear not, druid calf." – Griffith assured to the scared boy, believing it was the flight instead of the surrounding magics he also was detecting – "My eyes can keep them tracked at this distance even in complete darkness."
And, as if accompanying his words, a mantle of total blackness engulfed them.
"What in the name of God…?!"
"Keep rowing and don't pronounce that name here, Mastodon! This is the Sisters' territory!"
"Wh…?!"
Suddenly, the boat's bottom hit something solid and the progress reached a dead point. They had reached solid ground.
And just as quick as it came, the surrounding darkness evaporated in tendrils of gray mist.
In front of the valiant companions, a large gray esplanade full of sharp rocks unveiled before their eyes.
"Welcome home Medraut, ungifted child." – three disembodied voices greeted the redhead as the earth under their feet trembled slightly.
Griffith landed and sniffed the air. Loholt descended quickly from the creature's back to immediately run to Medraut and, after colliding with her leg, he held her armored waist with both of his frail arms, all of him trembling.
Surprised at first for the boy's behavior, soon she put a hand over his head in a soothing gesture.
"Hey, kiddo." – she said, looking down at the small child while she was almost six feet tall – "Hey, look at me."
Loholt raised his head to look at her. His innocent, crystalline blue eyes big and scared. This child was too sweet and too shy for his own good.
"Nothing's gonna happen while I'm here." – she said reassuringly, patting his head – "Just stick with me and watch your step. I promise no harm will come to you, 'kay?"
The boy blinked a couple of times and dedicated a small smile to her while assenting with his head. He resorted to grab her black cape with one of his tiny fists while he conjured a light sphere to enlighten their path.
"Nice trick, kid." – Medraut complimented before Bors could complain against the use of magic.
Griffith stood by the boy's side, mesmerized by the glistening bluish orb floating in midair.
"Now what?" – she heard Lucius inquiring.
"Now we walk." – she answered straight – "They like to play difficult… sometimes."
"So, this is a test?"
"Sort of, yeah."
So they walked. But as the denser the dark mist got, the more nervous the companions became, the griffin included.
"So… this is Avalon then?" – said Lucius to fill the strange silence around them – "I imagined it to be more… I don't know, magical? Colorful? Alive?"
"We are not in Avalon." – said Medraut while unsheathing her sword slowly – "I don't know where we are, but I don't like the looks of it." – at her words, Loholt grabbed her black torn cape tighter – "Stay on guard and keep your eyes open."
Nobody dared to contradict her on that point.
After a while walking with no signs to reach any end, Lucius spoke again.
"We should go back…" - he whispered, feeling how hard he had to fight against trembling.
But a sudden set of laughs echoed around them.
"Such a wonderful sight, more knights of the Round Table stepping in our domain!" – said one of the voices, all female, while the companions turned around violently, nervousness clear all over their faces.
"Not long ago there were many of you walking the land in the name of a blind cause." – added a second voice – "Years of fruitless search, your fathers grew old and desperate, just as the King in the golden castle slowly faded away."
"Some abandoned the search, others fell prey of age, diseases and madness." – sentenced a third – "But there were many others that reached this very point, the Land of Nowhere, the eternal limbic spiral between life… and death."
Inhaling sharply, the companions ended with their backs against each other's, blades and claws ready to act in self-defense.
But soon the monotone background changed and, instead of an endless gray esplanade, they saw a forest, a forest of black, dead trees whose long, sturdy branches supported…
"NO!" – Bors cry of denial filled the air while the clinking sound of his claymore hitting the ground echoed through the infinite space.
It had been hard to find the leaves, and harder to ignite a bonfire in a place where the very wood itself was alive. But what Kayleigh had found more difficult and utterly tiresome had been to keep her husband warm the entire night. He was getting so pale and cold that she feared he wouldn't live through the next day.
She had the basic knowledge in first aid, specifically in regard of mending wounds and disinfecting them, for that was part of the training a knight of the Round Table usually undergone in order to serve their land and their King as efficiently as possible… but thing is… that she, right now, lacked the means.
And her treacherous heart was telling her what her brains didn't want to accept just yet.
"Kayleigh…"
Soon her trembling hand found his.
"Yes, my love?"
Because this man, this amazing, wonderful, valiant man was the love of her life and it could never be another one. Now she understood why her mother had never wanted to marry again.
Nobody could fill the void your other half leaves within you. Nobody.
"There's not much time…" – Garrett said, his voice barely a whisper – "I… can feel it…"
"Shhh…" - she shushed while kissing his hand, his rough, cold hand – "Rest, Garrett, rest. You need to recover your strength."
But his hand, if disheartening cold, had not lost its strength just yet. Not a little bit.
"Kayleigh… listen to me..." – he said, but feeling his wife's struggling, stubborn and clearly not accepting what was now inevitable, he insisted with a firmer voice – "Listen to me. Please, Kayleigh." – his wife's hand lost strength in his and he knew that she didn't want to reason if her quiet sobs were any indicative – "I don't have much time left… and I would like you to make a promise to me…"
Kayleigh's fingers closed tightly around his, indicating that she was listening. Through their hands there wasn't need for words, for a deep understanding had always fluctuated between them, whether during their little adventure in the Forbidden Forest many years ago, when she had dissipated his fears and, later, his self-loathing towards what had happened to Lionel far many years prior; whether at Ruber's mercy, when she had given the signal; whether he had caught word about her insecurities about marrying him, when she had asked him if he loved her and he had answered by taking her hand and putting it above his heart:
"What does it say to you?"
She hadn't needed words, for his lips had been more sincere than any words said aloud, easy, practiced, devoid of the raw, authentic emotion that fluctuated between them.
And now it wasn't different. They knew each other, they understood each other.
And that was enough.
"Kayleigh…" - his eyes… oh, his eyes were so alive in their blindness, so powerful, so pleading… - "Promise me… promise me that you will find him…" - he coughed and a thin trail of blood escaped from his lips – "… Find Lucius… find our son and put him at rest… bury him here, away from the evilness that has taken our friends… allow him to rest in peace…"
Kayleigh's tears couldn't have been colder than now. Garrett's rough hand went to her face, tracing her features, the familiar angles and roundness, the beloved delicate lines that woven her beautiful, prematurely aged visage. He cherished that face in his blind memory as the preciousest treasure.
"He is alive, Garrett…" - she mustered, fighting against her trembling voice.
"Kayleigh…" - Garrett's voice was tinted with the slightest hint of resignation.
"He is alive." – she repeated stubbornly – "I can't explain it… but I know he's safe, Garrett… I simply know… a mother knows…" - she insisted, more for her own sanity than to reassure him.
The blind knight smiled weakly.
"Then find him." – he said – "Find him and… keep him safe… as far as you can get him from this dead land… Would you promise me that?" – he asked, weak, hopeful… dying.
She took his hand and kissed it lovingly.
"I promise." – she said – "'Till I exhale my last breath, Garrett. I promise."
And he died in her arms, a smile upon his lips.
Kayleigh wept a long time. She didn't know how much, but she wept until no tears came to her already burning eyes, she wept until her voice went rough and wasted, she wept until she felt completely empty, she wept until her soul unburdened of her great sorrow.
She wept until resolution won over grief.
So, as she got up slowly, falcon perched on her shoulder, tears dry on her face and reddened eyes set on a determined scowl, Lady Kayleigh steeled herself for what was next now that she was alone.
For she had a mission.
She had only one purpose to fill, a single reason to be still alive: to honor the promise she had just made, find her son and put him in a safe place away from Camelot and its horrors.
Away from this bitter land.
"Now you understand, old friend? What I tried to prevent all these years?
I did not betray our kin just to save hide, but to prevent the rotten powers of darkness infested our land, poisoning our souls and orphaning our children… Because if saving what is most precious to me means to give up my powers… the very essence of what I am… the only reason to why I was brought to this world in the first place… I would do it without giving a second thought to the question.
Now it is your turn, my friend: what path would you, even in death, take? Will you remain quiet and asleep before the grief our quarrel have brought to our children… or will you rebel against Them, the Weavers of Fate?
The choice is yours. It has been always."
In front of them, held by the throat by a rope, a full display of armored corpses replaced the rotten leafs that should've been decorating the black trees from the dark grove that now surrounded them.
Loholt plunged his face against Medraut's back, scared and not wanting to see that, while the griffin hissed, its highly sensitive senses overwhelmed by the foul stench of rot and decadence.
Gulping what felt like several liters of saliva, Lucius contemplated the grotesque show with trembling lips and watery eyes, fighting against the terrible need to weep like a child. Soon, Medraut's armored hand reached his and Lucius basked, if briefly, in the smallest comfort that simple gesture offered.
Galahad was the most composed of all, limiting himself to look upon the bizarre sight with frowning lips.
And Bors… well, Bors' huge frame was trembling.
Trembling in denial, fear, sadness… and rage.
"Bedivere… Griflet… Gawain… Tristan… Lamorak… Dagonet… no… this isn't happening!" – he exclaimed, still in denial, observing with incredulous eyes the still recognizable dead faces of his comrades – "This isn't real! I am dreaming… I must be dreaming!"
"They were looking for that thing they call the Grail, but they weren't worthy enough."
"They were burning with thirst after so many years of search, crossing the wasteland where they had found only sorrow… and death."
"They were tired… so tired that they were quite eager to receive whatever small mercy that could lie upon them. And we complied."
"Lies… you speak lies…" - hissed Bors, perturbed and revulsed after witnessing one of the many crows cresting the gray skies plunging at one dead eyesocket with its beak – "These are not my comrades…"
The three disembodied voices laughed again.
"You would be surprised at what a desperate man could agree after enduring so much unrewarding misery, Bors the Younger, son of Bors the Elder."
"We know a great deal about that."
"These men were just as desperate as your King… though his druid counselor, Merlin the half-breed incubus, prevented us from making a pact with Arthur."
"Lies!" – exclaimed the young knight, his dark eyes ablaze – "How dare you taint our King's good name with your twisted tales, you evil creatures?!"
"He silently begged for a release that never came. And ours were the only ears that heard his impotent pleas."
"Arthur had been wading through dark waters from the very instant his wife decided to stab his pride and taint his honor. It is so easy to put a man on his knees just by disdaining him…"
"Just as his evil knight, the one who protected our kin from prosecution and banishment, treaded through misery and madness from the very instant Arthur chose to ignore his pain product of the many battles he was forced to fight in the name of an Order that never recognized him as one of them."
Medraut's right eye twitched slightly to this mention.
"He was desperate when he came to us pleading for his people, ashamed to even mention to his wife what he planned to do."
"He offered us to reinstitute our sacred rightful position within this land's fate, should he won his battle against Arthur, in exchange of a means to consummate his revenge."
"But he failed! And the debt he left behind had been left all these years unfulfilled… 'till now."
A sudden scream broke the chilling stillness that went after such a declaration and Medraut turned around to catch the tiny shoulders of the boy as he trembled uncontrollably while the powerful sound escaped from his throat.
Loholt screamed and screamed while his thin hands drew angry red paths down his face, as if he tried, somehow, to placate an unbearable pain.
"Stop!" – exclaimed Medraut, fighting against the child in order to contain his hands from self-harming – "That's enough, kid, that's enough!"
"They're inside me!" – he cried, his big eyes glowing bright blue were filled with tears of terror and pain – "They want to rip my mind from me! They want my blood and my soul!" – he grabbed the girl's armored hands and looked directly into her eyes as if searching into her very soul – "Make them stop! Please, make them stop!"
"You, Medraut, ungifted child of Nowhere, have fulfilled your part on the bargain we had made. Now it is the time to also fulfill the debt your father left behind."
"What?!" – the girl shouted at the empty air while holding the boy in her arms, restraining his jolting – "Which debt?! Nobody has told me anything about a fucking debt!"
"Oh, but there is a debt, you see. Your father promised something he wasn't able to give us besides the undertaking of conquering Camelot and reinstitute our sacred position."
"Make them stop!" – Loholt cried; his suffering evident even to the griffin, normally an indifferent creature towards the mortal grieves – "It hurts!"
"Your father promised to give us… the blood of the Pendragons."
Suddenly, the world started to spin too fast around her and Medraut felt like throwing up, nauseated of what her gut told her and her mind insisted to deny.
Those eyes…
Wide open as her spear had penetrated skin, muscles and organs, reclaiming her rightful revenge. The eyes of a King.
Limpid bright blue, like a clear sky…
He had been old, desperate and slightly crazed.
But those blue eyes had been the eyes of a child, impotent and frightened knowing the imminent fate lying in the silvery waters of Camlann.
She had known all along, her instincts and her senses unrestrained due to being grew up amidst the supernatural.
Those very eyes whose pain had been something that had been haunting her nights, an unwanted guilt that followed her like disease.
Then the boy had tried to help her, the first human being since her arrival at this hostile land that had genuinely wanted to help her without asking anything in exchange, without suspecting her at first, without the due fear her black armor usually instigated among the bravest men.
She had taken him under her wing, promising no harm would come to him as long as she breathed.
All this time… she hadn't noticed the resemblance, the crystal clear evidence painted in those blue eyes unlike any other eyes that she previously had ever saw.
Now, looking again into those frightened eyes, into those innocent eyes… the truth came unveiled before her.
And that same truth froze her to the very marrow of her bones.
"No…" - she rasped, still in denial – "No!"
"Now you understand." – spoke, again, the first of those three voices, whose preference, it seemed, was to always speak in order - "Power attracts power, no matter the circumstances."
"We knew the threads of fate would intertwine the Armor's path with Pendragon's blood, just as the Sword did in the past."
"Uther cursed his own lineage with his pride and recklessness wielding an instrument forged with the fires of the dragons of old, when the world was still young, for his own selfish purposes. By locking the Sword on the stone, he reclaimed it for himself alone, binding its arcane essences with his blood so nobody but him could wield it. His audacity cost us much power."
"But…" - Medraut raked her brains in search of a logical, plausible explanation for the present madness she was engulfed in – "But… the Queen… I saw her die many years ago! She was a nun! A NUN, for fuck's sake!"
This elicited several gasps from the other young men present, their existence but briefly forgotten in the redhead's feverish mind.
"The cursed blood always finds a way to propagate through generations, one way… or another."
"It has nothing to do with the lovingly mother who carries the new life within her."
"No matter the man or his feelings on the matter, the cursed blood has its own ways to prevent a single link from breaking the chain. For without continuity, there's no curse."
That last statement made Medraut behold the trembling child in her arms with renewed eyes, feeling the sting of tears threatening to crumble her hard exterior.
"But now that the father is dead and the son is still a child, a gap in generations had been formed; an opportunity has arisen to strike down Uther's prideful mistake."
"Here is where your bloodline enters, Medraut, daughter of Ruber the Red Knight."
"To pay the debt your father left behind, you must fulfill the pact we made with him."
"No…"
"Do this, and you will be largely rewarded."
"You will earn your place in Avalon among many Kings and warriors of old."
"You owe nothing to this land, nor its people."
The magic energies woven throughout the black armor started to whisper into Medraut's psyche as well as its power ignited her already green eyes with greenish light.
Kill him.
No…
He's that bastard's son, the very blood you swore to spill!
He's only a child…
A child that can become a threat just like his father was.
He was innocent of whatever sins his father… and his grandfather did in life. A father's burden should never be…
She violently stopped herself before she formulated that thought. She was no-one to speak about a father's burden.
So, with her eyes filled with that arcane, venomous glow, she got up and raised her sword. Lucius, Bors and Galahad's bodies suddenly held by evil forces like invisible, vicious tentacles that prevented them reaching for their weapons and try to stop what their hearts feared was about to happen.
Medraut looked at the frightened boy under her nose with a hatred… she knew it wasn't meant for him. They have taken her mother and her childhood from her; they will not do the same to him.
"Over my cold, dead body, you deranged crones." – she hissed before taking the boy in one arm and jumping on the griffin's back – "Griffith, take us outta here, quickly!" – and turning to the three young knights, she added in a rush – "Run! Run to the boat, NOW!"
A deafening cry that multiplied tenfold in their minds pierced their senses, releasing them from the spell, until they knew no more but the desperate adrenaline kick that went with the primal instinct of survival.
In their run they saw pieces of images from the past, the present… and the future.
They saw their lives passing in a wave, how their steps had guided them to this point, how the land was being filled with death and desolation as the hordes of the undead killed everything, how a single rider stood amidst the black earth, falcon perched in one forearm, sword ragged and proudly held in front of the enemy, eyes settled in cold determination.
"Mother!" – Lucius screamed.
"Don't let them trap you, Knight-Boy!" – Medraut exclaimed – "They will distort reality to confound you!"
They saw an old man dying impaled by the blade of an undead, a dear friend of his that had died in his arms and had risen to turn against him.
"No!" – Bors yelled – "FATHER!"
"Don't look at it!"
Then Medraut herself saw something that was meant for her eyes and only for her eyes.
A man.
A man so unfamiliar but yet so…
He was struggling with something… a sword locked in a glowing stone. But the sword didn't belong to him.
As the bluish and greenish energies woven their paths from his right arm along the rest of his body, igniting his circulatory system, they started to burn him from inside, disintegrating his body in ashes as the sword remained untouched, still locked in the stone.
And in his last moments, before vanishing, his eyes caught Medraut's eyes.
And those eyes, those green reptilian eyes were her own frightened eyes.
A shrilling cry pierced the gray, storming skies from Nowhere and escalated to the very point of blocking the three disembodied voices weaving spells around them, breaking the illusion.
And, before everything went totally black, Medraut was aware that cry… was hers.
After that, darkness engulfed the companions.
Blue threads of energy reached hesitantly to barely touch the contained, fading green glow that waited on the other side, deep in the entrails of Mother Earth, behind the maws of the Great Dragon, a constant vital torrent of life and death where all the arcane flows collided.
"The choice is yours, old friend… It has been always."
Then, after barely a second, the venomous green glow met its blue counterpart and, together, wove the next tendril that would shake Fate itself… forever.
The first conscious sensation Lucius felt was an overwhelming wave of nausea that ended with him on all fours vomiting miserably on the ground. After that, still trembling from nausea, his sight got clearer.
The sunlight wounded briefly his sensitive eyes before many pairs of boots surrounding him caught his immediate attention.
Raising slowly his tired eyes, following the muscled legs that followed those boots he found himself with several blades and spears pointing at him while a low murmur rumbled painfully through his ears.
"Sorcery!" – exclaimed one voice followed by many, hissing, yelling at him – "He appeared out of thin air!"
"Kill the sorcerer!" – they cried angrily.
"Death to the Vile Arts!"
But then, another powerful voice, one Lucius thought would never hear again, cut the air, effectively silencing the others' voices.
"Who art thou who dress in the knights' of the Round Table garments and crest? I do not know thee, neither have I seen thy face before." – as Lucius raised his head, his eyes filled themselves with tears of fear and joy by looking upon the visage of a man he would swear his loyalty, a deserving, noble man who had nothing to do with the old carcass that had been sitting in the Throne since he could remember – "Speak now on thy behalf, young man, or I shalt cast the due judgment upon a faulted man bearing what he had not earned by himself."
Lucius swallowed and grabbed this man's tunic with one trembling hand.
"My Lord…" - he said, filled with emotion, his eyes meeting the sober, limpid blue eyes of the other – "You don't know how glad I am by just looking at you and seeing you alive… my liege… my King…" - he sobbed, remembering all the misery he had been forced to witness on his last moments awake, running from the hell of Nowhere – "And if this means that I'm dead… There's no other I would serve more gladly in the afterlife… O' Arthur Pendragon, rightful heir of Uther Pendragon." – he finished to, following his words, fall unconscious again.
A/N: yeeep, now we're getting to the marrow of the story. Liked the little reference at one of the few children whose paternity was adjudicated to King Arthur in Arthurian Myths? If you search thoroughly as I did to write this, you will find that Loholt, along with Amr are two names that are always associated to be King Arthur's sons besides Mordred, obviously, who in this story is not his child.
Now I hope you liked this TOO long chapter and the twist I've made. Cheers!