A/N: Thank you for your absolutely wonderful reviews! You are all amazing. Seriously.
Disclaimer: See, the fact that I was so annoyed about season 4 not having started already that I wrote my own version of it suggests that maybe I don't own it at all…
"She took Arthur." Merlin muttered. He was pacing almost frantically, gaining speed with each step. The inside of the command tent was quiet, with Sir Ector seated on a bench with a cup of mead clutched in one hand, and his other clenching and unclenching his sword hilt. His armor was still spattered with blood.
"But why?" Kai rumbled. He was standing. He hadn't been wounded very badly in the battle.
"You don't understand." Merlin spat. "We need Arthur. It's his destiny to unite Albion and unify the land in peace, and no one else can do it. Without him, the troops fall apart. The Kingdom falls apart."
"Surely we can…" Sir Ector trailed off helplessly. No, they couldn't. The men had just won a hard victory, and as elated as they were, they would scatter without the golden leader. "Is there any chance Arthur is still alive?"
"He is." Merlin's hands were fists. "I would know if Arthur was dead." And he would know where. Merlin was as certain of that as he was certain that the sun would rise and fall. If Morgaine dared to kill Arthur, he would instantly know where both of them were located, and no force in heaven or earth would stop him from vengeance.
"So we get him back." Lancelot said. "The knights of the table."
"We don't have Percival." Gwaine pointed out. His voice had a curious, tired, quality. As if he almost knew, in the back of his head, that his mother would never give up so easily. "And Elyan is badly wounded. He'll be lucky just to ride a horse in two weeks, let alone ride out on a rescue mission."
"I'll make up their places." Kai said sharply.
"No." Merlin shook his head. "You're needed here. You and your father understand how to manage the men until we get Arthur back, no one else can. Leon, Gwaine, Lancelot. You three come with me."
"Great." Gwaine growled. "I nearly lose my hide in battle for the wanker, and then I get to have the rest of me chopped into little itty bits." His face lit in a smile. "This is just like old times."
"So, where did she take him?" Leon asked. His body ached all over, and his muscles still felt the vibrations of blow after blow landing on his armor. Despite it, he pushed himself to his feet.
"Avalon." Gwaine said instantly. He and Merlin traded a grim look. "Morgaine has a shelter there. That's where she could be guaranteed safety."
Looking at Merlin, all in the tent thought that Morgaine was greatly overestimating the safety of this place.
"But she lost." Kai repeated. "It will take generations for the Saxons to recover from this defeat. Her own men are fleeing. It's over."
"Arthur is the only heir." Sir Ector said tiredly. "I always wished that Uther would remarry and produce a few more, or wed Morgana off so she could breed and give us a few young men who had claims. But now there's no one, and all of Albion will split into civil war."
"No, it won't." Merlin repeated. "We go to Avalon and get her back. Kai watches the men and tells them that Arthur is wounded, but not fatally, and that his physician is attending on him. With any luck, we get him back and kill Morgaine before they know that a thing is amiss."
"How do we get into Avalon?" Leon felt fear prickle on his arms at the mention of the place. His mother told him stories of Avalon when he was very little, about the faeries who lived there and the green ladies in the water who cut off the arms of men who leaned over too far. She stopped when Arthur was born, but the memory of a nameless fear remained.
"Water." Gwaine and Merlin said at the same time. Gwaine looked at Merlin and spoke. "Morgaine can go there with a special path of her own spell work, but I'd not put foot on those stones. An Aughisky will take you over."
"Then we leave at once for the fens." Merlin turned and walked out. Gwaine and Lancelot followed, putting chain mail back on and grabbing swords. Leon paused a second to bow to Kai and Ector before hurrying after them, a slight limp in his stride.
"I believe a servant just made a battle plan and we agreed to it." Sir Ector said with a weak chuckle. "Has the world gone mad?"
"Probably." Kai nodded to his father and went to lie to the assembled soldiers.
They pushed the horses too hard. There were no fresh beasts in camp, and these were loyal steeds. They would run for miles, until their sides bellowed and flecks of blood flew from their nostrils with each breath.
Gwaine looked around his homeland as they flew past it. He recognized the ramshackle huts where disease so often lurked and the ditches along the side of the roads, and the places where thick wilderness sent gnarly roots across the path to trip travelers. The closer they came to the heart of the North, the thicker these roots became.
The first horse to drop was Leon's animal. It went down without warning, legs giving out and ending in a graceless tumble. Leon managed to throw himself off before he could be trapped, but it jarred his already sore muscles.
"Leon!" Gwaine flung himself off his horse and crouched next to the other knight. His horse laid down next to Leon's, and it was clear that the animal would not get up again that day. "Are you hurt?"
"No." Leon took a deep swallow of air. "Is it just me, or does the air taste different?"
"No." Lancelot muttered. He dismounted and patted the neck of his poor steed. The horse took a shaky step and collapsed. They had covered miles and miles worth of track in blurred hours. "I feel it too. Have we sunk down?"
"Perhaps." Merlin got down. He was the lightest of them, and the only one not wearing mail. Still, his mount was driven to exhaustion. "It's magic, too."
"Aye." Gwaine said darkly. "We're in the bog lands now. The horses could take us no further." He looked down the road. "This only leads us to the castle, and the moat. The fastest way to the river is to cut through these swamps."
"Can you lead us?" Leon asked, doubt ringing in his tone. He would not have doubted Arthur.
"It doesn't matter." Merlin said. His eyes flickered around them. While they rode, the wilderness had risen around them, and now twisted limbs encircled them. They couldn't see more than a foot off the path. Wisps of mist covered the path itself. "We go whatever way seems like the most dangerous path."
"That would be about right." Gwaine agreed. He unsheathed his sword. "Keep your swords about you. Things tend to leap out."
"Right." Leon said. He got to his feet with a grunt. "Will the horses be safe?"
"If they're able to move at any time, they'll go along the path, and that's the closest thing to safety in these parts." Gwaine replied. Lancelot held his sword tightly, eyes searching the mists. Silence seemed to echo around them. "Eastwards."
Gwaine plunged off the road. Merlin walked next to him. Lancelot and Leon followed. The lands here were strange. There deep morasses of green sludge, ones which Gwaine leapt across. He cautioned the others to not place their feet on the stones which poked up through the moss, that these were false. Once the sludge got a hold on your foot, it would suck you down. Not necessarily quickly.
"Good God." Lancelot muttered, as Gwaine skirted around the edges of a pool of scummy water. "You and brothers played here as children?"
"It wasn't this bad. That pool used to be so clear you could see clear down to the bottom, and sometimes there were water spirits who told us stories." Gwaine murmured. They all knew, instinctively, to not speak loudly here. The knobs sticking from the sickly trees were too like ears. "Don't touch any of the vines on the trees. They can wrap around your wrists and pin you until an animal comes to eat you."
"How cheerful." Lancelot whirled as a noise came to them. "Did you all here that?"
"Yes." Leon breathed. He moved to be in front of Merlin. "No one move."
They stood like statues. Cracking noises sounded. Some beast was lumbering towards them that had no qualms for the fearsomeness of the swampland. Something that was perhaps big enough for no pit to hold it.
"Troll." Muttered Gwaine. "We have to hide. Their hides are tougher than steel, and they have the strength to snap a man's neck in one fist."
"No." Merlin was calm. "Just be still." He closed his eyes. Beneath the lids, they turned to liquid gold. The troll lumbered past them, all muddy green skin and slabs of muscle. It's foul teeth protruded from it's upper lip and made the creature wear a dullard's grin. Black eyes gazed over the knights, and did not see them.
Merlin opened his eyes when the noise faded, and they were blue again.
"By Christ." Leon whispered. "That thing would need the whole table to kill it."
"We have to hurry." Merlin flinched as a feeling came to him like cold stone on his back. "She's going to do something to Arthur. Curse him, or something."
"Keep to the East and the North." Gwaine said grimly. "The colder the mist gets, the closer we are." They trooped onward. The tendrils of mist grew to cold fog. Lancelot had to slice the vines off a tree because they wrapped around Gwaine's arm and left deep welts. It was a pattern like tentacles might make.
Merlin barely paid attention. The swamp wouldn't touch him, not with it's creeping plants or it's wildlife. It sensed a different sort of magic in Merlin than that which resided at it's heart, and had the sense to shy away from him.
"This wasn't here." Gwaine said. Merlin was snapped out of his thoughts, wherein Arthur was being buried in a cave. Gwaine was frowning at a large tree, one thicker than all three of their torsos. It stood in a deep pool of muddy water, where it's bulging roots made a cave. "I would have remember a tree this big, we probably would have investigated the roots."
"You and your brothers just had a death wish, didn't you?" Lancelot asked. Gwaine shrugged and stalked toward it. "Gwaine!"
"We can't go around!" Gwaine hissed back. "Whenever you go around an obstacle, you get lost. That's the first law of any enchanted place!" Leon nodded in agreement and leveled his sword at the seemingly innocent tree. It looked vaguely like a willow, with even a few bits of green on it's fronds.
The green should have been their first clue that it was all wrong. Nothing that was truly alive could exist on this side of the path.
Leon screamed as a hand snaked from the water and grabbed his forearm with a grip like iron. Long fingers, with skin of a sickly yellow color, dug into his mail. Gwaine rushed forward, sword swinging in an arc. It sliced off the arm at the elbow and the forearm dissolved into yellow liquid. As it flowed away, it burned away rings of Leon's armor.
"Come down to us, handsome knights." voices crooned from around the tree. Lights seemed the glimmer on the surface. "You are weary. You walk though your wounds ache. Let us wash away your wounds. The ladies of Neid are gentle mistresses."
"L-Lancelot." Gwaine's voice shook. "This wasn't here."
"How old were you when you left?" Lancelot asked hoarsely. A womanly shape was emerging from the roots, mist barely concealing her nudity. Green mire dripped off her breasts and down her hips. "Perhaps this one only shows itself to the developed type."
"Come. Let Jenny Greenteeth take you. It will be sweet." The thing opened her mouth, revealing rows of pointed teeth the color of seaweed. Lancelot swallowed. Gwen was the farthest thing from his mind, though the woman had dark curls like her, and nearly identical proportions.
"Lancelot." Leon said in a low voice. "That thing is made of filth and muck, and you're still taking it's hand." Lancelot looked down. Was he? He could somehow see two versions of his hand, one that hung innocently by his side and another which was in the grip of another hand, this one wet and green. "Lancelot, you need to let go."
"Why don't you cut her arm off? I'd do it for you, you know. I did." Lancelot's voice came out from his mouth slowly, and the words were half formed. His legs were cold. Was he already knee deep in the pool, or was he standing on the edge?
"Because I can't move." Leon was still. Vines were creeping over his mail. They couldn't penetrate it. It was wrought of iron, by Elyan's father, and Tom had bragged that nothing would ever find a hole in the links. But if the vine snuck much further around it would find the tear that was there, that had been created when a Saxon with a battle axe got in a lucky blow.
Leon didn't want to think about what happened after that. When creepers found warm blood, perhaps winding along through his veins until they found his mind, and then they would bursts from his eyes and the blooms would be bright red.
"Father?" Gwaine's voice echoed. It sounded like he was getting farther away, for some reason. "Father, wait! You weren't at the battle! I only want to talk to you!"
Someone ought to tell him. Lancelot thought. That King Lot tried to get out of the castle through the swamp and that Jenny's friend got him, that he's resting in a patch of ferns now and there are beautiful little bugs munching on his eyeballs.
Lancelot could not say how he knew this, but somehow the wench had told him in her song.
"Lancelot, it's going to get me." Leon said tightly. A tendril was wiggling along his boot now. There was a gauntlet covering his shin, but apart from that, there was nothing but soft leather. The vines were squeezing tighter now. "Something is wrong with Merlin. I've been good to all of you, I haven't asked how he knows all this, but you need to help me now, because I don't think he can use magic."
"What?" Lancelot turned and frowned at Leon. "What do you mean, Merlin can't use magic?"
Oh, God. He was standing up his thighs in cold water, water that was thick and ugly and turned black only a few more steps in, and the creature leading him in was not only the foulest being he'd seen yet, but she was not Guinevere.
"Come with me Sir Knight. Your whore back home will not mind." Lancelot's mind went red.
"She's not a whore!" Lancelot whipped his arm back, detaching himself from the slimy grip. Jenny Greenteeth hissed, a serpentine tongue flicking out. She lunged for him, devilishly fast in the quagmire, and Lancelot sensed that if he got in deep enough for his crotch to touch the substance, it would be over. "How dare you!"
She made an inhuman noise and lashed out with yellow fingernails. Lancelot backed up, catching her forearm against the flat of his blade and pushing. She melted around it, eyes narrowing to slits. Lancelot took several careful steps back. He must not trip.
"Silly knight, your prince will never come back, I saws Her leading him away and his eyes were dead. Your worlds belongs to us now pretty knight, and whens the swamp stretches all the way to the white city, then I'll take your whore to my embrace. We's can see if she likes it as much as yous did." The corner of Leon's mouth twitched up. She'd just made a mistake.
Lancelot attacked in a fury. His sword hummed in the arm, first chopping a massive cut in Jenny's abdomen then moving up, splitting her through the middle. She let loose a wailing cry. Lancelot twisted the blade and thrust, his eyes completely clear. He could see Guinevere sitting back in Camelot, watching for a messenger, and a sudden heat flared beneath his breastplate where he carried her ribbon. It flared along his blade and into Jenny, and this time her wail reverberated through the swamp. It made Gwaine turned from his father, eyes confused.
Jenny dissolved into pale yellow liquid, her teeth falling down into the muck. Lancelot scrambled back out and swung his sword in an arc, chopping through the vines which held Leon.
"Thanks." Leon took a guttering breath. "Gwaine?"
"Father?" Now there was real bewilderment in Gwaine's eyes. He looked from Lancelot and Leon to the retreating image of his father. He recognized the armor, and besides, King Lot was holding a bright white light. When Gwaine was little it was always father who took them inside, who ventured surefooted onto the muck and led his boys back out. He was smart, always smart, just blinded by the creature he married.
"Gwaine?" Leon said in a low voice. "Gwaine, there's no one there. And you're a step away from a mire." Gwaine blinked hard and looked at the ground. The mist covered it well, but he saw a tree trunk. Besides his father had walked on it, and King Lot weighed a good thirty pounds more than Gwaine.
"But father." Gwaine gestured. He couldn't explain the simple, childish urge to follow his parent, to go back…back to a freezing cold fortress where the winds howled in the eaves, where he ate overcooked roasts with his brothers in front of the hearth in the main hall while mother led father upstairs, and then father came down and ate and ate, spraying food over the halls. His brothers were not in that castle. They were in Camelot. Safe. They would be safe as long as Gwaine returned with Arthur and Merlin.
"What?" Gwaine said sharply. He whirled around, sword at the ready. "What are we fighting?"
"Everyone." Leon responded grimly. He shook out the bright red cloak he wore. The vines had torn long gashes in it. "And everything."
"What's wrong with Merlin?" Lancelot asked. Nothing had touched Merlin. He was simply watching the sky. The sun had gone down, and a slice of sky could be seen through the mist and the treetops, one that was spangled with stars and galaxies. "Merlin?"
Merlin didn't answer. He was watching. Watching the stars tell the story of the past and the present and the future. He was floating in the magic of the swamp. Lancelot and Gwaine glanced at each other. It was Gwaine who stepped forward.
"Merlin. Arthur needs you." Merlin snapped out of it. His eyes regained their awarenes, and with them horror.
"Gwaine…" He pointed. Gwaine whirled. There were shapes coming from the mist. Some were bowlegged shadows and wielded blunt weapons, the sort of weapon that shattered kneecaps. Others were nothing more than shadowy slivers, but light glinted on their long silver blades. There were more and more, all different aberrations of nature that had bred in Morgaine's shadow. "When Jenny shrieked, she brought every creature in the swamp here."
"Go." Lancelot said. He shifted to a fighting stance. Beside him, Leon did the same. "Go and get Arthur. That's the quest. Get Arthur, and bring him back."
"Don't worry." Gwaine grinned. He tossed his hair and raised his blade, falling into place next to his comrades. "I always wanted to die a heroic death, and I always hoped I'd have real friends to go down with."
"Arthur is my King." Leon said simply. He looked Merlin in the eyes. "None of can save him. I probably can't even enter the magical world. But we can give you time. Let us."
Merlin turned, the weird lights from the creatures casting shadows on his face. Then he was gone, and the knights of the table prepared to make their stand.
Branches whipped past his face. Merlin was following a feeling now. A great curl of nausea that started in his stomach and moved up from there, making him want to vomit and at the same time take in all the power that embracing that sensation could give him. At this point, the swamp was deserted save for the morasses and the roots, and those Merlin avoided with deft grace. He was on a greater quest, and this swamp would not dare stand between him and his King. It left that to it's creator.
Merlin slid to a stop and lifted his head. There was a breeze. The mist was curving away from something. Merlin turned to the right and ran, his sword bouncing against his leg and adding to the bruises already covering him.
The mist curved away from one spot. It stood like walls around it instead. Merlin dove through the wall that had been created, feeling rock under his fingers.
He scrambled over slimy boulders, and landed in a hollow. Ferns that came all the way up to his knees covered the ground. It was a perfect circle, surrounded by protective barriers that had to have been created.
There was a sickly whining sound, and Merlin turned to the center of the ring. The word trap flashed across his mind but the boulders weren't marked with powerful enough sigils to keep him in, all they could do was keep out the mist and dissuade the creatures of the swamp.
There was a single tree, and in that tree hung Morgana. She was skinny. Scraggly branches wrapped around each of her arms, pulling them tight against the rough tree bark and exposing her to the elements. Her legs were similarly bound, but with thinner branches, so little trickles of blood ran where they cut her like whips. Her hand hung in a tangled mop around her, but the same branches kept it back, so that the sun must wake her every morning and she must never have the option of not seeing. Her dress was thin and worn to be nearly transparent. Her throat showed milky white and with the faintest of lines across it, as if a particularly cruel person had made like they would cut her throat and instead only nicked it.
Her eyes flickered open. She blinked once or twice, then found a cracked imitation of her usual voice.
"Merlin?" Merlin stepped forward, distracted for a second from his quest for Arthur.
"Morgana? How did you get here" Morgana coughed and tried to turn her head. The twigs in her hair kept her firmly in place.
"Morgaine. I tried to help her sons escape, and she put me here in punishment." Morgana tried to shudder, but didn't have enough freedom of movement. "I see things pass me every night, but nothing has ever attacked me. I think they're waiting for me to starve."
"That witch." Merlin said in a low, furious, voice. Morgana cracked out a laugh.
"You found a person you truly hate?" Merlin whirled around, his mind racing.
"Did Morgaine pass nearby here?" Morgana blinked at him. "She's captured Arthur. I need to know if I'm going in the right direction."
"No." Morgana's face had gone even paler. Perhaps now that she had seen Morgaine, and therein true evil, she had grown more sympathetic to her half brother. "I've not seen Morgaine since she bound me up here. But Merlin, there is someone who could help, some warlock…"
"Argh!" Merlin let out an inarticulate cry of fury and lashed out with magic. The tree shattered, all the magic that once held the prison together dissipating back into the swamp. Morgana fell to the ground on her knees, with a crash. She stared at Merlin in shock.
"You."
"Me." Merlin paced furiously. "Did you really think that all those threats that just disappeared into thin air could have been gotten rid of by anyone but the person in a position closest to Arthur?"
Morgana closed her eyes and shook her head. Her tense muscles screamed in pain.
"And now she's taken him, and I don't know how to find her gateway!" Merlin roared. Morgana flinched. She had no magic left. But she thought. Morgana had always had an intelligent mind.
"Go up the boulder with the red moss." She said. Merlin froze. "That way are water fields where Aughiskies graze." She just barely held up under Merlin's stare. "Gaheris told me. He said that mother never noticed them while she was leaving for Avalon."
"Thank you." Merlin took two steps toward the boulder, then turned back. His eyes turned bright gold. Morgana felt her muscles unclench and strength return to her limbs. A pinch of color appeared in her cheeks. Merlin clumsily unbuckled his sword and tossed it to her. "Gwaine, Lancelot, and Leon are in battle against the swamp. Fight with them."
Morgana nodded and got to her feet. She and Merlin both knew that once in Avalon, mortal swords were as helpful as a paper lance in the jousting match. The feel of the blade was still familiar to her, and it gave her both comfort and the urge to fight.
Morgana ran to fight by the knights of Camelot. Merlin ran to save the King.
Merlin fought his way through brambles that tore away his clothing until he reached the water fields. They were exactly as the name described them. Somewhere out of the swamp animals, beavers presumably, had dammed a brook. The water had since flooded from the original streambed and over the clearing, covering the whole thing in a foot of water. Grass still grew beneath.
Merlin looked around. At first glance the field was deserted. But from here he could hear the rush of running water. The river. Come hell or high water he would cross that bridge into Avalon, and if he had to do it alone then so be it.
It was then that he heard a whinny. Merlin turned.
It was an Aughisky.
The beast was white but almost grey, with a long mane and tail. There stopped the resemblance to a unicorn.
Unlike the unicorn, the Aughisky had the build of a draft horse, with hooves the size of dinner plates and broad shoulders. From the fetlocks grew pale white hairs. They floated in the water around the Aughisky's hooves. Around the same joints dripped weeds from the marshes and muck from the mire. The horse - that was the closest approximation, though no horse Merlin ever knew had canine teeth and sea green eyes - flicked it's ears at him.
"Hello, there." Merlin murmured. Gwaine had told him tales of Aughiskies. He had called them intelligent, as smart as a dragon and as apt to turn on you. "My name is Merlin."
The beast whinnied and came no closer. Merlin could never chase it, even if he wasn't exhausted and cold and desperate. It was faster than he would ever be and it knew the land. He changed his language to a language that was half the guttural tone of the dragons and half Gwaine's strange northern accent.
"I need your help to cross to Avalon." Merlin said. He walked towards it, hands out in supplication. "I need to rescue King Arthur Pendragon." The Aughisky stared at him for a moment, holding Merlin with it's deep, surprisingly aware, eyes. Then it turned and offered Merlin one side. An invitation to mount.
"Thank you." Merlin croaked. He yanked himself up by the mare's mane (he could see that it was female now) and wrapped his arms around the tree trunk neck. He prayed that he had in fact been granted permission to ride and not been tricked.
The aughisky began to move in an odd sort of trot, unprompted. The noise of the river grew louder. They crossed the water field and went through a grove of silent trees, then they were on the river bank. Merlin stared in despair.
The river was enormous. White water churned around rocks and into hollows. A horrifyingly fast current dashed that same water up against the banks of the river and hurled it through the sudden dips. It was as broad as one of the main corridors in Camelot. Dark weeds clung to the bottom where the water was clear, doubtless making it treacherously slippery.
The Augshisky plunged in like it was nothing more than a puddle, her legs churning steadily. Water soaked Merlin's pants. He clung to the mare with all his strength, sensing that to fall off was to drown. The water was ice cold and Merlin could feel his legs numbing, and his cheeks tingling where it sprayed up to splash his face.
The world blurred. That was the only way to describe it. Merlin shook his head. They were in a large river, yes, but it was calm for all it's depth, and the current tugged at his legs rather than try to rip him from his steed. On either side were fields of dark green grass, and the mist that cut around him was like clouds of tiny, exquisite, crystals.
Merlin had seen where the river went, and that was down through more rapids. A horribly crawling feeling was twisting around his gut.
They were in Avalon.
Leon's arm ached every time he reached up to counter a blow. He must have strained a muscle (getting too old for this) or done something to his shoulder, because it was not unlike the throb that came from the knee he hit going off that poor horse every time he braced it. Blood and muck was splattered over his face and his red cape.
Huh. He'd gone for nearly ten years in Camelot without ever even tearing that scarlet garment, and now he had completely ruined it. Leon slipped his blade out of one of the squat things and whirled to chop the wings off a gigantic fly. His companions were not faring much better. Gwaine had been hurt in one elbow and was favoring it. It took away too much of the advantage he usually had fighting two handed and against these odds, you needed an advantage. Lancelot was covering him as best he could, but even he was getting tired.
Oh well. As long as Merlin had time. Leon had a deep seated and quiet faith that Merlin would save the King, and that if he died here, it would not be in vain.
Still. He really didn't want to die in a foreign swamp, amidst a swarm of foul creatures who would kill him and desecrate his body.
He heard a battle cry. Leon wanted to turn his head but couldn't. He couldn't spare the attention from the current opponent, a thing as tall as a small tree but paper thin.
"For Arthur!" Leon could spare attention for that. His head jerked involuntarily to the side, with Gwaine and Lancelot. A new player had entered and was wrecking havoc. His mind recognized the Princess Morgana, recognized the beauty who wielded a sword better than the majority of the knights, but could not understand it. She fought her way to them and fell into place next to Leon, blade never stopping it's motion. "For Camelot!"
What the hell. Leon would try to understand this later. He raised his own blade and charged into the fray afresh, battle cry on his lips.
Merlin went deeper into Avalon on foot. He left the mare grazing by the bank. Merlin trusted that she would be there when he came back with Arthur. If she wasn't he would just…figure something out. That was usually the plan anyway.
He was following two things. The crawling feeling in his gut, that became fouler with each step he took towards a large rock pile. And the occasional drips of blood on the ground, blood Merlin could identify as Arthur's but could not say how he knew.
There was no sunlight. His vision came from his magic. Anyone else would have tread through here blinded by a white fog bank, but Merlin placed his feet on the grass with more steadiness than he could employ in the mortal world.
Morgaine was here. Arthur was here. Merlin could no more waver than he could wish himself back to years ago when he was first talking to a dragon in the dungeons and had no idea what Arthur would become.
The mists abruptly cleared. The rock pile was across from him. Arthur was slumped on the grass, blood still dribbling from the wounds he sustained in the battle. Morgaine was with him.
Merlin looked upon his enemy in person for the first time. She was tall. Taller than he. No vision in a bowl of water or description from her son's lips had prepared him for her utter loveliness. She held a knife in her hand and moved busily, laying out patterns in the grass for some complex ritual.
"If you stab him with that blade, I will kill you." Merlin said. Morgaine froze, then turned to face him.
"You managed to find a way into my domain. I'm impressed boy." Merlin shook his head.
"It's not yours. You have no domain. You lost Morgaine. There's no one left in the world who calls you queen." Her lips twisted up in a manic smile.
"Not without the King." Her eyes glittered. "Without him there is civil war, all of Albion breaking up and the lands ripe for the picking. I don't need sons or jewels. All I need for that is power, and you and this fool will provide an ample supply."
"By killing us." Merlin felt dull. Water had numbed him and tiredness was fogging his brain. But he had gained power, incredible power, from killing Nimueh, he just barely remembered that, and he supposed that the same might happen for the one who killed him.
"Who wouldn't cater to the sorceress who killed Arthur Pendragon? Who killed Merlin?" Morgaine's eyes turned to two cold crystals. "I'll have my Kingdom. I don't care by what means."
"Not Arthur." The words gave him strength. Merlin lifted his head and focused properly, bringing magic together. "You will not harm him."
"If you have to die first, so be it. It's a waste, but I will do it." Morgaine raised a hand and began to chant. Merlin could not understand the words. They had the same music as the song of Jenny Greenteeth.
Jenny Greenteeth was dead. Merlin felt better and blocked the magic, pushed back with his own will. Morgaine stumbled back. Her eyes flashed cruelly, hands closing around the silver knife. She lunged for Arthur and raised it high.
"No!" Merlin shouted. His hands flew out, eyes gold fire, and Morgaine went flying back, as Merlin flung himself to Arthur, pressing a hand on his chest to see if the knife did anything more than prick, looking into emerald eyes and that was wrong. Those eyes were never open when there was magic.
Winds began to whip around them. Merlin raised an arm and focused his will. Morgaine was screaming, hurling her power into a hurricane that whirled around Merlin and Arthur like it would strip their flesh from their bones. Merlin hunkered down next to Arthur - wrong wrong, there was shock and awareness in the emeralds - and countered.
Then Morgaine flung another ounce of power into her spell, and the winds sliced across Merlin's cheekbones and blood sprayed from Arthur's chest. Mortals weren't supposed to be in Avalon. Merlin screamed
For the first time in his entire life, Merlin turned his magic on a person and did not hold back. He glared at Morgaine with eyes that were more than gold flames, more than eyes, windows to all the magic in the world, and shouted something. He wasn't sure exactly what.
Whatever it was, it was not something that could be blocked or countered. Morgaine dissolved into gold motes and was scattered.
The enemy line broke. Leon stared, his breath heaving, as the creatures ran, dying as they went, sinking into the earth, clawing at their skin and their wings and shrieking. Morgana felt a strange surge within her, her magic reacting to something else. Gwaine knew suddenly and without a doubt that his mother was dead. Lancelot for a second didn't feel his wounds, only triumph.
At Badon Hill, thunder split the air. Sir Kai and Sir Ector looked at each other as the soldiers yelled to each other, prophecy and weather and old wives tales all getting mixed up, and neither understood.
In Camelot, three brothers sighed in relief but did not know why. Gwen dropped her load of laundry and felt wind whip down the servant's corridor, blowing her hair and her skirts.
Merlin staggering forward, his head buzzing. He had an arm around Arthur and was half dragging Arthur, half being carried by Arthur. They had to get out of here. They had to get to the Aughisky and leave Avalon. This part had been Morgaine's place, and Merlin had upset it, had splintered it.
The mare was waiting. Merlin pushed Arthur on and swung on himself, one arm wrapping around Arthur's waist and feeling calloused fingers gripping his hand and the other fisting in the rough mane. Then they were in calm river then in a torrent of water that threatened to drag his addled mind and frail body off the horse but something anchored him, then they were all out and everything faded to black.
A/N: Review? Please?