A/N: Not beta'ed and IDOM! Thanks for the reviews, alerts, etc.! If you know the date of The Day without peeking to the bottom of the chapter, you earned yourself a cookie! :)

Chapter 1: The Day And After

It was a dreary and cold day. If Merlin didn't know better he would have guessed it was November instead of June. Since the last week of May the weather was trying to convince everyone it was Autumn already. Not that Merlin cared one way or the other but he did dislike being soaked so after cutting some more wood – really this was England, he should have been prepared for this spell of bad weather – he hurried back inside his quaint cottage.

The small house was perfect for him. On three sides there were clean rectangular windows with shutters on the outside and curtains on the inside. There were rather bigger than the usual style of this type of house but Merlin needed a clear view on the lake. Opposite of the heavy wooden door, against the other wall, was a hearth that warmed up the whole place in all seasons – including summer something that had slipped his mind.

There was a small kitchen area that was still very medieval as he had no electric appliances with one notable exception. Across the kitchen was another door that led to his bedroom. The door was opened now so he could see his bed adorned with colourful quilt that he bought on the local market last year. Other furniture were a couple of bookcases, a rickety table, a few chairs and one really comfortable one that was placed right beside the fire. The truly rare stuff that he had horded and collected over the years was stocked one floor up in the attic.

It was not much and nothing special, but for Merlin this place was home.

He kicked off his boots and hung his sodden socks on the metal grate in front of the fire. The wood was a bit wet of course and it sizzled when he put another log on the fire to keep the humidity out at least. By the time that he had changed into a dry woollen jumper and started to towel his dark hair the room was nicely warm once more. Magic might have helped…

With a content sigh of one who had everything he needed within reach Merlin sank back down in his comfy chair and stretched his bare feet in front of him on the rug. The rough fabric felt familiar and thus comfortable and after a golden flash of his eyes his previously abandoned cup of tea boiled again. Careful not to burn himself, because after all this time he was still pants at healing his own hurts, he sipped the hot liquid.

In the background the radio was playing. There would be another coronation today* and even Merlin, despite his aloofness nowadays, couldn't ignore everything that was happening outside. Besides if he really wanted to remain a hermit – scruffy beard included – he shouldn't have purchased the modern device. But he loved the music or even the sound of the radio hosts because then living here didn't feel so lonely.

He'd been living in his own house as the newly returned grandson of his older self for seven years now. And as always his lie had been accepted without problems. The only thing he hadn't calculated in this time was that since England just came out of a yearlong war, young men in backward villages like the one on the other side of the lake were rare. So he had garnered some unusual attention.

The girls however, no matter how beautiful or friendly they were, were nothing more than mayflies compared to him. And while he had lived as a hermit for the better part of his immortal life he hadn't exactly lived as a monk. But he never made promises he couldn't keep – learned that the hard way the first time – so now after seven years he was once again left to his solitude.

A sudden noise disrupted his thoughts. The radio seemed to falter. Something was interfering with the man's voice just as he was reporting about the start of the procession. Merlin got up reluctantly and dragged his feet to the radio set while making a note to get himself some dry socks since the floor was cold.

He switched the radio off and on and turned the buttons left and right. The noise stayed the same although now he could hear garbled words that made no sense. Merlin sighed knowing very well that using magic wouldn't solve anything. His last set might have exploded that way. So he picked it up, turned it over and over and then shook it as a last resort. He supposed it helped a bit. The distorted noise was louder now.

It was by chance that he looked out of the windows right then. The gesture was such a habit that Merlin never really thought about it twice. He never had seen the lake do that though. A second later the radio crashed to the ground broken beyond repair but Merlin hadn't even noticed. He hadn't even noticed that he ran out without shoes or socks clumsily stumbling through the high grass to reach the lake.

The hem of his trousers were soaked with mud by the time he reached the shore. And a sudden wave drenched him almost completely as the lake had turned into on big mass of reeling water more white than black at the moment. Merlin stepped back in awe just in time before a second wave crashed at his feet. He had no idea what was happening and with a grin he couldn't quite hold back he waited, nervously anticipating what would come next.

There was a strange noise swelling in the distance like the sound you hear when you're standing to close to an arriving train or a overflying aeroplane. He frowned half expecting to hear the air raid sirens next. What he didn't expect was the Tor to suddenly disappear from the middle of the lake. One moment it was there and the next it was gone, swallowed up by the earth and water.

Instinctively Merlin crouched down filling his sight with a golden haze as a heartbeat later an enormous mass of water passed over his quickly formed bubble. He tried to keep himself steady on the ground but the soft mud sucked at his feet and before he knew it he was falling.

He didn't know where he was falling towards but being buried under tons and tons of dirt was not acceptable. He tried to cry out a spell before the air ran out, before swallowing a lungful of mud hindered him. For the first time in centuries Merlin felt fear for his own life. A ridiculous distraction as he couldn't die.

That thought didn't reassure him at all when the dark mass of water, dirt and rock pressed into him from all sides, when he had no longer any notion of what was up or down, when the suffocating burn of water and bile filled his nostrils…

Merlin startled awake with a sudden painful gasp and the feeling that he had just been trampled on by a horde of angry griffins, a comparison that lost its meaning ages ago. So he blinked his eyes open forcing himself to wake up completely. It wouldn't do to dwell on what was lost. It was still light so with some luck no time had passed at all. He sincerely hoped that he hadn't been unconscious for a day or even longer.

Groaning he tried to move so he was laying down less awkwardly. His left arm had been twisted underneath his back and the joint popped noisily when he pulled it out from under his own weight. He couldn't move his legs but as he could wiggle his bare toes he wasn't too worried yet.

After a while, when his headache had eased a bit, he felt steady enough to drag himself up. Moving still hurt but Merlin was positive that he only had some small cuts and bruises. It was still raining listlessly though and he shivered. His drenched clothes didn't warm him at all and soon he would need to find shelter or he would be sneezing for days. First things first, where was he?

Nothing looked even the slightest bit familiar. As far as he could see – without using his magic since he felt too drained – there was nothing but destruction in every direction he looked. Using the lighter spot in the clouds where he suspected the sun was as the only means to orientate himself Merlin turned around on his axis. To the north and west he saw the flattened ruins of a forest. Nearly no tree was still standing upright and the splintered wood was half buried under, half sticking out of the mud.

To the south were faraway hills. The distance between him and those hills was filled with strangely shaped things and puddles of mud. Merlin squinted his eyes which widened a second later as he recognized one of those nearest odd things as a upturned lorry. But it was what he saw to the east that made him reconsider the idea that he was awake after all.

A colossal chasm stretched out right in front of him, easily a few miles wide in every direction. Water streamed over the edges like murky coloured waterfalls taking whatever debris on its way down with the flood. There was a loud groaning sound when first the heavily leaved crown and then the root of an ancient tree were pulled into the ravine just a few yards from where he was standing.

He was in shock Merlin belatedly realized when it took seeing another dozen trees to disappear to snap him out of this frozen trance. The edges were caving in. Seeing nothing of use within reach he turned around and hurried as quickly as he could towards the west. The sound of the earth swallowing up everything that had been home to him haunted him for miles to come.

As he walked on and on, forcing one foot in front of the other, his thoughts quickly narrowed to the point where finding shelter was the only thing that mattered. Time lost its meaning as he struggled through the devastated landscape. In the end he stumbled upon it by chance. Makeshift tents had been pitched amidst ruined houses and fires were lit as people waited to be rescued. When Merlin walked into the small camp he was immediately handed a blanket and a hot bowl of soup. The questions came later.

Where did he come from? Did he saw other survivors? Are we the only ones left? Did he know anything about what was going on out there? What did he think happened? Was it just an earthquake or did the soviets do something?*

Merlin had no answers. So far as he knew the twenty odd people here were the only ones left. The radio was silent and so was the television. One of the men tried to repair a radio set but all he received was noise. The phone lines were dead and roads inaccessible. The next day a family of four arrived. Now the camp counted two children. Merlin considered it a small miracle. He wasn't being picky at the moment.

Food was running out quickly though and it became quite clear that nobody was coming to their rescue. So after stretching his aching arms and legs Merlin began giving orders and was surprised to be obeyed without hesitation. In hindsight he should have known that everyone was waiting for someone to give directions.

Scouring the nearby ruins was an ungrateful task. Just like burning the bodies he found along the way through the wreckage. And when someone recognized one of the deceased, Merlin felt like a complete outsider amidst their grief. He never realized it but part of the reason why everyone accepted his leadership so easily was that he remained so stoic. To be honest, he just felt numb.

Finding a black oilskin jacket and a pair of boots that nearly fitted on his explorations was another small miracle. With two pair of thick socks they almost felt like his own. It was pathetic though. He had caused thunderstorms and earthquakes in the past, feats that were completely undesirable now, but he couldn't make his shoes fit perfectly with the use of magic.

Months passed and slowly the lingering miasma of death evaporated. Their small camp grew with twelve more people. Eleven walked into the camp the same way Merlin had during the first week after the earthquake. Nobody arrived later except the twelfth which was a tiny baby boy Merlin helped deliver when the time came, another small miracle.

Living for more years without than with modern tools Merlin succeeded in organising their little settlement to survive their first winter. The days grew colder and colder however and when the first snow fell it wasn't white but grey. His magic was acting up as well making it utterly unreliable at times. That more than anything else wasn't a good sign.

One freezing night on what he estimated was the beginning of February, one of the lookouts woke him up urgently. Merlin hurried to the edge of the camp careful not to slip on the patches of ice. On the horizon a red glow loomed threateningly. There was an odd breeze in the air and the next moment he smelled it: smoke. Before first light they were packed and moving away.

Nobody can outrun flames on foot however. So when he saw no other choice Merlin "found" a cave in the middle of nowhere and if someone saw his eyes glow golden as the fiery storm raged above them, they didn't say a thing. After the fires ravaged the abandoned lands, Merlin dared to hope that it was over. Surely this nightmare would end?

How Merlin cursed his optimism later…

One of the children was the first to become sick. How it happened was a mystery. Maybe this sickness had lingered in a shallow pool or droughty cave? Or it came with the rain or the wind? Or their food or water? Or perhaps the child had simply weakened without anyone noticing? Nobody knew what was going on except that it was contagious.

For three days the child ran an alarmingly high fever and coughed up bloody mucus. Desperate not to lose any of those under his protection Merlin didn't even hide his magic anymore. He shouted spell after spell, tried every trick he remembered from as far back as his days as Gaius' aide. But nothing helped. It was useless. He was useless.

The boy died and Merlin was forced to bury the child himself as both of the boy's parents had caught the same sickness. They were so delirious they never even knew they lost a child before dying as well. Nine days passed and in the end there were four people, himself included, who survived that particular hell. It was something that boggled his mind.

For instance there was no explicable reason why the infant had survived as both the young and the old were always the most susceptible to diseases. He and his young mother however never even became sick. The other survivor, a young man who could have been his own age if Merlin had been normal, became feverish but not as severely as the others. He recovered completely except for a lingering cough.

The four of them roamed the cold countryside living on the things they found in ruined towns, never settling anywhere for more than a few days. There were weeks when there was no difference between the days and the nights. Both were cold, dark and gave them the feeling they were alone on the world as heavy clouds blotted out the sun.

They weren't. Big black birds screeched as they flew over. Merlin found tracks of large dogs, or at least hoped they were from dogs, but at night when his mind was in that odd place between resting and dreaming he could've sworn he heard howling. Neither animal caused him to worry too much but sometimes the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly rose without reason. At those times he could've sworn that they were being watched.

He never shared his thoughts with his travelling companions, in fact he rarely spoke to them. Living was hard enough without the added burden of his special brand of paranoia. Merlin suspected he appeared quite mad at times. He sure felt crazy.

For now they were headed towards London. Merlin estimated they were getting closer to the city every day and the odd road sign that survived seemed to support that thought. Maybe in the capitol more people had survived? At least this region of England had been more populated in comparison to the handful small villages and towns near his lake.

An enormous chasm forced them to turn back however. It was at the very least ten times bigger than the one at his lake and walking around it to the city could be only called a hopeless endeavour. Merlin suspected that a large part if not all of the County of London* was buried in that seemingly bottomless pit. To be honest, Merlin could see the bottom, it was just so far down that it made him dizzy and nauseous.

They wandered on aimlessly after that.

Meanwhile the infant was growing into a curious toddler who made all of them smile. And every time the boy giggled when Merlin conjured a shiny ball of light, the warlock felt himself healing a bit. He knew the others felt the same. More than a year had passed since the earthquake and by now Merlin was sure the natural disaster hadn't struck just Great Britain or even Europe. What exactly had happened was still a mystery but that it had been a global event was something Merlin was certain about.

That theory of his became even stronger when the weather turned deathly. One day the wind picked up. Not even an hour later the three adults were struggling to remain upright as the storm grew worse with every passing minute. By then Merlin had cradled the child safely to his chest, thrust into his hands without hesitation. Later he had always wondered if the mother knew.

He didn't know when exactly he lost sight of her or the young man. One moment they were just gone.

He waited for days in a hastily fabricated shelter burrowed into the ground as the storm raged on. The boy cried silently for his mother and Merlin felt powerless. Once he might have been the greatest sorcerer to ever walk the earth but, truth to be told, this forsaken place didn't feel like the earth he'd been born on. The storm quieted after a week and if it hadn't been for his magic they would have starved to death. They headed north again this time.

Late one night, when he kept watch over the sleeping child and made the flames of their campfire take the shapes of extinct creatures, Merlin allowed himself to think about his cursed destiny. The weight of waiting just left him bone-tired by now. And rationally he knew that all was already lost. The lake was gone and with it Arthur's last resting place. He looked up from the fire when an impressive shower of shooting stars passed overhead. This phenomenon had been a rare occurrence in the past but ever since that pivotal day they were as common as… He sighed as he ran out of ideas to compare it to.

When another shooting star crossed the sky Merlin wished it all to be over.

So basically this was the most depressing part of the story, it will get better! Next chapter: Scavenger...

* The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was on 2 June 1953. (and now the date where the world as we know it ceased to exist…)

* While Stalin died earlier in 1953 the West still feared the U.S.S.R. to conquer all... (This might be an exaggeration but this was during the Cold War.)

* The County of London precedes Greater London and was smaller, the later replacing the administrative counties in 1965. (which will never happen here…) Some trivia according to Wikipedia: in 1911 the territory of the county was 74,813 acres or 302.77 km² with a population of more than four million people. This would have dropped down significantly due to the two World Wars and people moving out of the urban areas instead of towards them. Still, imagine the scale of destruction…