As promised, now we'll find out what Morgause is doing with Merlin. I'll warn you now that it isn't pretty, so you don't have the stomach for psychological torture and nasty things being done to our favorite sorcerer, you may want to skip this chapter.
For disclaimer purposes, this was inspired by the Dark Tower episode of s5, but with my own twist since, as was the case with a lot of the later seasons, I wasn't terribly crazy about the original sequence of events.
Merlin felt like he was losing his mind. Morgause had thrown him in a gloomy, rat-infested cell similar to Gwen's, but the unpleasantness of his current environment was nothing compared to the agony of being cut off from his magic. Magic was the essence of his being, the thing that made Merlin who he was, and he felt crippled without it. He also had no way of knowing how Morgana fared without his magic, and that was worse because she was even more important to him than magic. He had willingly subjected himself to this hell to protect her after all.
His cell's rusty door screeched open, and Merlin instinctively looked up although he knew it was only Morgause. He'd seen no one except her since his capture, and even though her visits were his only break from the monotony of imprisonment, he had grown to dread them. "What do you want?" he snapped before she could begin taunting him once again - it seemed to be a favorite pastime of hers.
Her eyebrows lifted in a parody of surprise. "Why so surly, Prince Merlin? I only thought to offer you company, and perhaps feed you. My guards have a habit of feeding prisoners inedible offal - I thought you might like some proper food."
"Laced with hemlock? No thank you." Morgause wasn't wrong in calling the stuff Merlin was given to eat in her dungeon 'inedible offal', and after a day or two (according to his best estimate; keeping track of the passage of time in this place was almost impossible) of it real food sounded very appealing, but he wasn't going to fall into whatever sadistic snare she meant to set for him so easily.
"If I wished you dead, I would not need to resort to such a crude method as tricking you into consuming poison; I could kill you with a flick of my wrist if I wished it. That I have not done so means you are more useful to me alive. I do not wish to throw away your potential usefulness by letting you starve, so get off the floor and come to dinner with me."
Merlin couldn't argue with her logic, so he got up and followed her to her private dining area, a depressing, windowless stone chamber with a high, vaulted ceiling that was shrouded in shadow due to the inadequate torchlight. Morgause ate sparingly, preferring instead to watch Merlin, though she did take enough from the common serving platters to convince him that the food was indeed free of poison.
"Was your meal satisfactory?" she inquired politely when he had finished eating.
"It was, although eating it was a bit difficult." He held up his hands, which were still bound with Morgause's magic-suppressing chain; using a knife and fork with one's hands shackled together wasn't easy.
"I apologize for the inconvenience."
Merlin scoffed at her apology.
Morgause leaned forward. "I take no pleasure in this," she said earnestly. "I would be only too happy to remove those chains from you this very moment, if you would do one small thing for me in return."
"What 'small thing'?" Merlin asked warily.
"I would like your assistance in reclaiming what is rightfully mine, yet has been denied me all my life: the throne of Camelot."
"You," Merlin said flatly, "are insane if you think I'd ever help you steal the Pendragons' throne."
"I too am a Pendragon - I've just as much right to Camelot as the tyrant who rules it now! His throne could have been mine if not for the birth of that brat Arthur! It should be mine!"
"No, it shouldn't; Arthur is the rightful heir, not you. You may be Uther's firstborn, but you're still a bastard."
"I wield power that little upstart could never even dream of!" Morgause seethed. "I am a priestess of the Old Religion-"
"You were a priestess of the Old Religion," Merlin cut in, "until Nimueh cast you out, just as you were cast out of Camelot. Have you ever stopped to wonder why nobody seems to want you around? Personally, I can't imagine why anyone would want to deprive themselves of your delightful personality..." Morgause slapped him. "Ow!" One of these days I'll learn not to mouth off to a maniacal sorceress who has me in chains…but who can blame me? It isn't like I've had a lot of practice at being a good captive!
"Uther banished me because he was ashamed of his indiscretion - as he should have been. As for Nimueh, that old hag was simply jealous and afraid, afraid because she knew that I and I alone have the strength and the will to free our people from oppression and lead us to our rightful place as the true monarchs of all the lands!"
This time Merlin held his tongue; he'd heard about Morgause's grand vision of magical domination of Albion, of those without magic forced into servitude under their 'natural superiors', too many times to be provoked into reacting. "All right, I can see that you're very…misunderstood," he said when she had calmed herself. "Still, you've done well for yourself. You are queen of Escetia-"
"A title I gained only by marrying a man I should have crushed beneath the heel of my boot the moment I first laid eyes on him," Morgause snarled.
"I can't believe King Cenred is much of an encumbrance to a woman such as yourself. In fact, I've scarcely heard his name mentioned since I've been here; the guards all seem to defer to you."
Morgause smiled slyly. "I married Cenred in the manner prescribed by my religion, binding myself to him by magic as well as by law, yet the bond of magic disagreed with the besotted fool. His health has been declining for years now, so naturally I have done my duty and taken over the running of his kingdom."
"And once you finally put him out of his misery, Escetia will be yours officially, though in truth it's yours already. Must you reach for Camelot too? Can you not be satisfied with what you have?"
"I cannot," she said frankly, "because it is less than I am entitled to. All of us with magic are entitled to more than what we have - we are entitled to a world in which our superiority is recognized, in which impotent, pompous braggarts like Uther Pendragon do not hold knives to our throats."
"We can have a world like that." Merlin leaned toward Morgause, eyes wide and solemn as he attempted to reason with her. "Arthur is a better man than his father; in the time since our kingdoms made peace, he has learned to see the good in magic. I believe when he takes the throne, he will treat all citizens of Camelot equally-"
"But those without magic are not our equals, Merlin," Morgause said softly. "Why should we allow them to pretend they are? We are their betters, and under my rule we will be recognized as such, you and I. My conquest will be so much easier, so much bloodshed will be spared, if you join me. Together, we could crush any resistance instantly; there would be no need for a protracted, bloody war like the one Uther visited upon your people. And afterward, we would rule together, side by side, as king and queen."
"I already have my queen, and you are not her," Merlin coldly retorted. "If I live long enough to become king - of the kingdom that is mine by right, nothing more - none but Morgana will rule by my side."
"Because your father decreed it so? You and Morgana did not choose each other. Should you not have the opportunity to select your own mate?" They had already drawn near to one another in the heat of their debate over magical dominance versus coexistence; now she leaned even closer and said in a low, seductive purr, "I can please you in ways that would never even cross the mind of a naïve little girl like Morgana."
Merlin leaned so far back from Morgause that he almost fell out of his chair. "Whatever game you're playing, I don't want any part in it. In fact, your highness, I don't think I'd want you if you were the last woman on earth."
Morgause's face twisted in displeasure, and for a moment Merlin was sure she would slap him again, but she restrained herself. "Very well, you little ingrate," she snarled in a voice that shook with barely controlled fury. "You will serve me one way or another, though I could have made it very rewarding for you. Since you have refused my kindness, I shall have to force your obedience - the hard way. Guards!"
A pair of burly Escetian guards entered, seized Merlin, and, at Morgause's direction, dragged him out of the dining room after her. She led them all the way to the other side of the castle and up a seemingly endless flight of stairs into a tower even taller than the one where Morgana's magic lessons had taken place.
"What is this place? What are you doing?"
"Fulfilling a promise," was Morgause's blithe answer. "I said I would take you into oblivion, Merlin, and so I shall. During your stay in my tower, I wish you to remember that you chose this fate for yourself, and you have the power to end it whenever you wish. All you need to do is stop fighting. Lock him in," she ordered her guards.
They threw Merlin into the single small room in the very top of the tower, and he heard a thick door slam shut…and then nothing. The room was shielded by the most extensive silencing spells he'd ever encountered. It was also completely dark; Merlin expected to be able to see something once his eyes adjusted, but after about ten minutes he realized it wasn't going to happen. The darkness was absolute, and while human eyes could adjust to even the tiniest amount of light, its complete absence rendered them useless.
With nothing to stimulate the senses he most often relied on, sight and sound, he tried to explore his new prison through touch and smell instead, but that proved equally fruitless. There were no scents in this room, and the walls had been spelled with some cushioning enchantment so that Merlin could never tell when he bumped into them…if he ever did. Maybe the room was larger than he'd thought, and he had never found the walls. Maybe they weren't there at all.
Merlin had never before realized that reality was not a solid, objective thing; it existed only through a person's perception of it, and since he had no way of perceiving the walls around him, they might as well not be there. After a while, he became aware that the floor had been enchanted for the same effect - he couldn't feel it under his feet, hear it under his boots, or anything. He only thought there was a floor under him because he didn't seem to be plummeting through empty space, but in this vacuum of sensory deprivation there was no way to be certain. Perhaps he was falling.
"I could be falling to my death and not even know it," he said aloud - at least he thought he'd spoken aloud, yet he heard nothing. That disturbed Merlin more than anything else, because if he couldn't hear the sound of his own voice, maybe he didn't have a voice.
He pinched his arm, just to reassure himself that he was really there, that the abyss hadn't swallowed him - and to his horror, he felt nothing. Not the pain of pinching himself, nor his own skin under his fingers. He couldn't feel, hear, or see himself any more than he could sense the room - even the stench the dungeons had left in his clothes had disappeared - so maybe… Maybe he didn't exist either.
He tried to remember things about his life, things he had seen, touched, felt, experienced, heard, but here in this void where nothing seemed real, he couldn't recall what those sensations were like. All the places he'd been, all the people he'd known were mere phantoms; the only inescapably real thing was the black emptiness all around him. He had made up everything else to get away from the emptiness, he had-
Who was 'he'? Who had made up all those things? There was no substance, no real person, here. Just a disembodied consciousness with no name. There was no way to prove he was anything more.
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When Morgause finally opened the dark tower and took him out, the tiny, flickering light her candle provided was blinding, her gentle touch agonizing to his over-sensitized skin. As she observed the way he flinched away from her, the queen for whom nothing was ever enough allowed herself a rare moment of satisfaction; her experiment had worked better than she'd dared to hope. The Teine Diaga had never been attempted on someone like Merlin - mandrake root-induced hallucinations might have sufficed if all she wanted was to break the simple mind of some peasant girl, but a sorcerer of Emrys' unmatched power required a more subtle touch. Morgause had spent months fretting over how she would bend him to her will before she ever made a move toward capturing him, yet in the end the solution had been remarkably simple. A sharp, inquisitive mind like Merlin's needed constant stimulation - all she had to do was deprive him of all such stimulation and his mind, and therefore his will, would atrophy until all that remained was an empty shell.
It had taken far longer than she'd anticipated - whereas most victims of the Teine Diaga succumbed within three days at most, Merlin had held out for ten - but now, as she gazed into the glassy, vacant eyes of the most powerful creature of magic who had ever or would ever exist, Morgause knew she had triumphed at last. He was hers. First Emrys, then Camelot…and then the world. My fool of a father will rue the day he dared turn his back on me! she vowed to herself.
"Come, my pet, there is much to be done."
As Morgause led her new puppet away from the tower, she failed to notice Gwen watching them from the shadows.
Next up: Gwen and Morgana try to save Merlin, but can Morgana break the spell without revealing her own magic, or will it finally be time for her and her bff to have that awkward 'I'm a sorceress…hope you're cool with that even though magic killed your father and all' chat? And can this story make it all the way to 50 chapters?
I have to say, when I first started this project I had no idea it'd turn into the epic-length monster it's become, or have such a wonderful audience. I'm really amazed, happy, and just generally blown away at how many of you have stuck with me this long. Thanks so much, guys!