Chapter Seven
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
It turned out to be a good thing that Everard hadn't convinced anyone to eat Turquoise and Jasper, because they sounded the alarm first. Their barking roused everyone before the familiar tremors really got strong enough to wake anyone up.
Gwaine's reflexes had him out of bed and on his feet before he completely realized the floor was shaking. As the twins yelped and stumbled into consciousness, he realized, There are no pauses between tremors. And they're getting worse by the second. Just then, his bedside table crashed to the floor.
Grabbing both teens by their shirts, he shoved them towards the door. "Get out, now! " Images of a sinkhole devouring the entire cottage made him backtrack for his father's long dagger and the winter coat laying on the end of his bed. Then he was rushing out after the twins, nearly colliding with a terrified Heidi as she left her room. He didn't even think before seizing her and hauling her out of the crumbling cottage.
Everard and Leon were outside with the now-howling dogs, struggling to keep their balance as the ground rippled under their feet. The many patches of snow left after the most recent thaw were being tossed around in icy showers.
"Where the hell is your brother?" Gwaine yelled at his cousin, only to get a loud "Here!" from behind him. He dropped Heidi and turned to see Ethan hurtling down the steps with a goddamn lizard in his arms. Malachite the iguana? Seriously, Elwin?
Elen and Hayden were right behind, both with various objects in hand. "We have to get further away!" Hayden yelled. "The entire hill is buckling!" To prove his point, one of their useless cars tumbled into an opening crevasse only yards away.
They all started running without argument. "There's a lot of fields down the road!" Gwaine shouted, taking the lead and raising his voice above the groaning and cracking of the earth. "No trees to fall on us!" And hopefully no rock slides. This hill couldn't be steep enough, surely…
The next few hours felt like a long visit to the depths of hell. A n out-of-season thunderstorm, unnoticed before, turned the eastern half of the moonlit night sky a sickly shade of greenish-black and a hot wind swept over the roiling earth. The tremors turned out to be less strong in the flatter landscape below the hill, but getting there involved constant painful tumbles and near-misses with flying trees and rocks. Gwaine heard Heidi scream as she fell and almost went back for her; he saw Leon pick her up and continue on before he could.
They scattered across the grassy fields, running from any obvious ripples in the ground, only able to see in patches of moonlight and in the moments when lightning tore through the night . Finding himself closest to Ethan, Gwaine grabbed his arm and refused to let go; the boy didn't intentionally pull away once. It took a long time for him to notice that the teen was crying, tears streaming down his face.
When the tremors began to fade and there was nothing to do but huddle in the nearest patch of bushes as the thunderstorm took over the entire sky and rain came hammering down, Gwaine let his fatherly instincts take over. I remember a few times when Caldwell and Holly were in a state like this...With those memories at the forefront, he held a still-sobbing Ethan like a much younger child until the storm cleared and dawn lit up a shattered landscape.
They found Leon and Heidi first, the latter trembling and wrapped in the former's coat. Fortunately, the thunderstorm had chased most of the chill out of the air, and Leon seemed comfortable enough in his t-shirt. "What was that about the weather going weird again?" he said to Gwaine as Ethan hugged his little sister so tightly that she squeaked.
Gwaine laughed shakily and gave his old friend a quick hug before turning to his cousins. "Ethan, you're strangling her. Are you okay, Heidi?"
She nodded, pulling out of her brother's embrace. "I'm okay," she whispered. "Where's everyone else?"
"Over there, I think." Leon pointed towards the east, where three figures could be seen silhouetted against the sunrise. "Let's go make sure they're okay."
He hurried off with Heidi in tow, but Ethan held Gwaine back for a minute. "You stayed with me."
"Well, yeah, what else was I going to do? Leave you under a bush and go looking for the others in the dark?"
The teen huffed. "I don't mean just now, I meant...The skirmish. The one where I...You didn't leave me."
Gwaine stared, his insides going cold at the memory of finding his cousin laying bleeding, broken in the aftermath of a battle with invading northerners.
"Gwaine, go...you have to...follow the survivors, chase them down…"
"I'm not going anywhere, Elwin. I'm staying here until I know you're okay."
Swallowing, he said, "You died in my arms."
"I know. It wasn't so bad…" Elwin let out an unsteady breath. "Everard...He took it badly, didn't he?"
"Yeah," Gwaine said quietly. "He was never quite the same after."
"And my wife, Kenna?"
"She...she remarried; I think she was happy in the end. I mean, she loved you, but…"
"I understand. I'm glad. She deserved happiness." Shaking himself, Elwin said, "We should go check on the others."
The dogs had predictably followed Hayden and Elen, and like the couple they looked fine but waterlogged. Everard, also in one piece, held a very disgruntled-looking iguana. "You dropped him, Ethan," the former king said sourly.
His twin just looked at him for a moment. Understanding dawning on Everard's face, he set down Malachite and in two strides had his brother in a fierce embrace. " I wasn't there," Gwaine heard him say. "I'm so sorry."
"It's okay," Elwin replied. "I wasn't alone."
Elen gave them a long look as she disentangled herself from Heidi and came to give Gwaine a hug. "Elwin's back, then?"
"Elwin's back." Only Heidi is still in the dark now. I think. I hope. For her sake.
The entire hill looked like a giant had tried to squash it, and the cottage was a complete loss.
With the aid of a little discrete magic, courtesy of Elen, the adults managed to safely salvage some useful supplies from the rubble while Heidi and the twins held a funeral for poor Agate and Quartz, the bearded dragons. Gwaine wondered vaguely if Malachite cared that his fellow lizards had perished when the roof collapsed. He doesn't look bothered; then again, he's an iguana. At least the wyverns gave pretty clear indications of how they felt…
"Maybe I could've saved the cottage," Elen complained during the salvage operation. "Stabilizing spells aren't my forte, but maybe…"
"And maybe you would have drained yourself trying to hold the building together, passed out, and been killed as you fell down a crevasse," Hayden pointed out. "Don't blame yourself, love; it's not worth it."
Leon walked by with an armful of dirty but intact blankets. "He's right, you know. Sometimes there's nothing you can do to stop a tragedy."
He's probably thinking about how Arthur died. Leon had been present at the Battle of Camlann, when the druid Mordred had attacked with a foreign army. Gwaine hadn't been there, but he could remember the sick feeling in his gut when he'd heard the news of the Pendragon's death. That was the beginning of the end of the Golden Age, I suppose.
And now, he wouldn't be surprised if the grand prat was supposed to return. Maybe he's back already...Reincarnated like us, perhaps, or just appearing and wandering the countryside...Oh, I'd love to see his reaction to all the cars and technology laying around…
Hayden's next words caught his attention. "We're not going to be able to fix this. We don't have the tools, the supplies...And if we're looking at another year like the last…"
"We're going to have to go somewhere else," Everard said, approaching with Elwin; Heidi was sitting with the dogs a distance away, looking tired and miserable. "Leon mentioned a possible sanctuary, right? The Isle of Anglesey? We should head there. It can't be worse than here."
"But we should also be looking for answers," Gwaine insisted. "Leon knows where Gaius might be, and that's a start, right?"
"Yes," Leon said. "Finding Merlin should also be a goal, but that will probably be a lot harder."
"We can't risk everything on maybe finding someone who might have answers," Everard snapped. "I say we head straight for where we have a chance of being safe. Survival is more important than knowing exactly what's going on with the world." Elwin shifted uncomfortably beside him.
"Those two things don't have to be mutually exclusive," Hayden said.
Eyes flashing, Everard said, "I didn't ask you, Wyverndomitor ."
"Everard!" Gwaine and Elen exclaimed together.
This could get ugly…
Hayden merely tilted his head. "You're not King Everard anymore. You do realize that, don't you?"
Scoffing, Everard said harshly, "I have the memories of reigning for decades, and I…"
"You have the memories of a grown man," Hayden interrupted. "But you still have the body, hormones, and emotions of a teenage boy. And you don't have a kingdom anymore."
Everard looked ready to punch him. Seeming to notice this, Elwin put a hand on his arm and said, "Why can't we do both? Get answers and get somewhere safe? I overheard you guys talking about Gaius once...Didn't understand then, but Leon said he could be in York? That's kind of on the way to Wales, right?"
"Further east than a direct route, but yes," Leon agreed.
"Close enough," Elen said. "And if we can't find Gaius reasonably quickly…"
"We head on to Anglesey," Gwaine finished. "Can we all agree on that plan?"
Everyone except Everard gave a verbal agreement, and he didn't protest further. And so, after months of tense waiting, a plan was abruptly in place.
Now we just have to survive the few hundred miles of God knows what in between us and our destinations.