"Me, Arthur and her. She wanted to come with us and we couldn't stop her. We needed fire and wind to destroy the Afanc, Arthur had the torch, and I created some wind at the right time so it died. Unfortunately I'd caught Nimueh's attention. But she still didn't know my true name – only Merlin."

"That's not your proper name?" Gwaine asked.

"Let's get to that ... later." Arthur thought he knew Merlin well enough to know that Merlin wanted to say either much later, never or under extreme duress. It seemed this caused Merlin embarrassment, guessing from Merlin's reddening cheeks. Perhaps it was to do with what Arthur had overheard in the forest. Probably. He would remind Merlin of this conversation topic later – he wanted to annoy him as much as possible.

"Then she wanted to kill me for interfering so she intercepted and infiltrated King Bayard's service when they came to celebrate the treaty with Mercia." Arthur thought it said something about Merlin when Arthur was this surprised at him using words longer than six letters – the length of his name. Perhaps that was why he used Gwen instead of Guinevere. "She was disguised as a serving girl and –"

Gwaine again interrupted, "What did she look like?" Trust Gwaine to be thinking about women at a time like this.

"About twenty-one. And very pretty."

Gwen gave a sly grin. "That Kara girl? The one you decided was pretty for a princess never mind a servant." Arthur decided he really should stop being surprised at Merlin's apparent attraction to women – one he'd never seen before.

Gwaine laughed and visibly stored the information to tease Merlin with – later. Arthur glared at him.

Later.

Percival spoke up. "Can you do that – disguise yourself?"

Elyan asked, "Why would she need to disguise herself – wouldn't she have aged?"

Merlin neatly avoided Percival's first question of the day by answering Elyan's. "Nimueh had so much power that she didn't age much at all – very slow aging and she could still be killed, obviously." From the title's he'd heard this applied to Merlin as well. How unfair. Merlin looked almost the same as he had on the day they'd met nearly six years ago. Several people seemed to have realised the same thing. Gaius, seemingly realising where the conversation was going and not liking it, said, "So she came with King Bayard."

He would ask Merlin about that later as well. He needed some parchment to write this all down.

"Yes. She tricked me into thinking that King Bayard had poisoned the goblets so when I announced that, and Uther made me drink from them, I realised that's what she had planned. She tried to kill me and frame King Bayard to create war, simultaneously."

"That's when I had to go off and get that flower thing right?"

"The Morteus Flower."

"From a deep, dark cave. Where I nearly got killed by giant spiders and some woman."

"That woman was Nimueh. She hadn't realised who you were either. Well ... she knew who you were – Uther's son – but not who you were." It was then that Arthur both appreciated and loathed the fact that Merlin was no less of an idiot, or any more understandable now he knew about the magic. How very irritating. If slightly comforting.

"And that is supposed to mean ..."

"Again, conversation topic for later. I don't want to inflate your ego. The general gist of it is that you're supposed to be a great King."

"And with the Questing Beast?" Arthur asked.

Gwaine interjected yet again, "What is a ... Questing Beast?"

Arthur replied shortly "A creature. Whose bite is very painful. And generally lethal."

It seemed. However, that Gaius could not suppress his instinct to share knowledge. "A Questing Beast is in looks a giant wildcat with the head of a snake. Its appearance is supposed to foretell a time of great upheaval – in this case it did. The last time before that it was seen was the night Queen Ygraine passed away."

"Anyway it was seen in the outskirts of the Kingdom," Merlin continued, "And we hunted it. Unfortunately Arthur was bitten by it." Arthur winced, vividly remembering the sharp intense pain, Gwen stroking his forehead and telling him how much she believed in him. He'd almost forgotten that. "Once he was down, I killed it with magic – the same magic I used on the griffin."

Leon interrupted, "I thought ... Lancelot killed the griffin."

Merlin's eyes darkened with grief and Gwen's fingernails almost drew blood with their tight grip on his hand. "He did. I just enchanted his lance. He found out about my magic that night – apparently glowing blue flames are a bit hard to miss." Merlin tried hard to make a joke but his eyes were still clouded with pain at Lancelot's passing.

Desperate to alleviate the solemn aura of the room, Arthur said, "So Lancelot knew before me? And the rest of us already knew the glowing blue flames were a bit difficult to miss."

Merlin smiled gently, appreciating Arthur's attempt. "Lancelot only knew because of the griffin, and as I've already said I used the same spell in front of you and you completely missed it."

"I'd just been bitten by a potentially lethal creature!"

"That's a pathetic excuse. Dollop head."

"Idiot."

"Prat."

"I'd like to see you try it." Arthur unconsciously relaxed at this familiar banter – normality. Where Merlin wasn't a stupidly powerful sorcerer, warlock.

"I did. The poison almost killed me and I still ended up fighting in a battle less than twenty-four hours later."

"When –"

Gaius broke in here before they could get any further off topic. "Back to the Questing Beast."

"So, Arthur had just been bitten and I'd killed the beast. I got the Knights and we took Arthur back t Camelot. Everyone really thought Arthur was going to die. Again. Why does that always happen? Anyway, I found out that there wasn't a proper cure for the bite of a Questing Beast. But there was one thing I could do."

Gwaine was bouncing with excitement. "Which was?"

"I went to the Isle of the Blessed, the centre of the Old Religion, and saw Nimueh. I traded my life for Arthur's." At this plain statement, everyone but Gaius reacted with shock. Arthur couldn't believe it – a magic user he'd known for less than a year, had treated, admittedly, poorly and not particularly liked (back then), for offered to save his life at the expense of his own. He was also now sure that there would forever be an imprint of Gwen's fingernails in his hand; she was gripping them so tightly. It actually hurt. King Arthur, in physical pain due to a woman.

"Sadly Nimueh had found out who I was. She accepted my 'offer' but cursed my mother's life instead. When Arthur started to heal, I thought I was going to die, but she turned up at Camelot's gates deathly ill. I tried to go back to exchange my life for hers – remember Arthur, when I gave you that speech 'I'm happy to be your servant until the day I die', that one – but I'd told Gaius my plans. He beat me to the Isle. I got there right after Nimueh had killed him."

Gaius shuddered slightly whilst the rest of the room looked at him, some in concern, and others looking at him as though he'd grown another head. Merlin, Gwen, Leon and Percival were doing the first. The rest of the Knights were doing the latter.

Gwaine actually stuttered, looking like he wasn't trusting his eyes. To be fair, Arthur wasn't either. "A...and Gaius is still alive how?"

"I killed Nimueh and used her life force to bring back Gaius's. So really Nimueh's life paid for Arthur's."

"But wasn't Gaius actually dead? Everyone else was near death, but Gaius was truly dead."

"My magic is ...odd. But the main reason it worked was the fact that he was only very recently dead, we were at the centre of the Old Religion, and the intent. Nimueh was insane and had turned evil. Gaius is a physician and healer who saves many lives, even – before the Purge – with magic."

Arthur had known this already but watched the other's reactions. Leon didn't seem surprised – but, Arthur considered, he was probably old enough to remember before the Purge. The others displayed different variations of shock.

It was fun to watch someone else getting shaken by the day's revelations.

Two chapters in one day! Lucky you xx Now this update will probably take longer :( Have fun reading xx Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, with ideas or just to say you enjoyed the story :)