Happy New Years! Here is a chapter for 2013, the first one I have submitted this year.

Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin, only my beloved OCs and this mysterious storyline.

If you want the full affect of this chapter listen to Two Steps From Hell's Photos in Darkness. That's what I listened to while I was writing.

Hope you enjoy.

We Only Wanted to Play

Alone. The feeling was terrifying our prince. He had once thought that nothing could scare him. He was courage and he would go on no matter what, but this time was different. Watching the small ghost being ripped away from them and then Merlin slipping through his fingers had rocked him. It had all happened so quickly as well. Now he had himself pressed up against one of the cold walls, shivering. Was he shivering with fear or was it simply because it was cold? Arthur couldn't tell anymore.

When he had been younger he had hungered for adventure and had sworn to Morgana many times that nothing scared him. For a while it could have been true as well. There was the odd thing or other that made him jump, but there had never been anything that had left him frozen before, completely lost for what to do next. All he wanted was to run from this house and get as far away from here as possible, but he could no longer see the door they had come through at the end of the hallway. He would have preferred to do the running with a certain clumsy servant at his side and could not very much return to Camelot without him.

With that thought in mind, Arthur managed to push himself up and away from the wall, but he didn't get far before the creaking of an old door opening stopped him in his tracks. He didn't want to look but knew that there was nothing else he could do. So as slowly as he could the prince turned around to face whatever horror would come running at him next with his hand on his sword.

The door opening had been the one right next to him while he had been stuck to the wall. The haunted wood creaked as it opened ever so slowly to reveal…nothing. There was no monster standing in the doorway licking its chops as it eyed its next meal. There was no dark apparition either like the one that had suddenly lunged forward and taken Jay back into the darkness with it.

Instead there was nothing, absolutely nothing. Arthur peered into the room and found that it was empty. It was a simple wooden room with no windows and no persons to speak of either. So what was Arthur to do? Walking down the endless hallway had done nothing for them before. All the doors had been locked before and now this one was opening right in front of him. Jay had warned him that this was the Old Mother's territory. So what if she had opened the door wanting Arthur to step through it, knowing full well that his death lay on the other side?

But Arthur could see nothing of the sort. It was just an empty room. Then came to question of if it was just an empty room then why would he go in at all, one might ask? The house was a maze and what looked like an empty room could be something quite different.

Arthur took a step towards the empty looking room and stumbled over something he could not see. He stumbled right into the room, the door slamming shut behind him. His heart pounded furiously inside his chest. It quickened its pace as he heard something drop to the ground just behind him. Again, he did not want to turn around, but he would not show such cowardice as to let the enemy stab him in the back.

He thought of an honourable death as he turned around to face the fiend. Then he stopped. It didn't look like a fiend at all. She was just a little girl in a simple white dress and a white ribbon tied into her dark hair. Arthur almost sheathed his sword, but then he had the thought that if he hadn't noticed the girl then what else had he missed.

"Hello." He said, lowering his blade from the child, but she merely stared back at him with her wide dark eyes not saying a word.

"Has the Old Mother trapped you in here as well?" Arthur asked, trying for any kind of response. The child's silence and continued stare was beginning to unnerve him.

'Trapped?" She finally said and the room seemed to vibrate as her young, innocent voice rang out.

"How long have you been here?" Arthur tried, accepting his small success. Though the affect her voice had on the room was strange. He didn't know what to make of it.

"We've been here for what seems like eons." She began, her eyes darkening. "We've been waiting for so long. Alone."

"We?" Arthur looked around in search for the other that she spoke of.

"We." The girl nodded, dark circles forming around her eyes. "We." She repeated, but this time her voice was colder and less innocent as if the girl who spoke now was completely different then the one who had first spoken to him.

"I don't understand." Arthur took a step back away from the strange child.

"No one ever understands us." She tilted her head to the side at an awkward angle. "They fear us and they cast us away." Her face suddenly turned sad and the dark circles disappeared from around her eyes. "Even mommy told us to never come back." She spoke with the first voice.

"I'm sorry." Arthur took another step backwards towards the door.

"Sorry?" She looked surprised, her eyes widening and her head snapping up again. "None of them were sorry." The dark circles returned around her eyes and he knew the other side of her had returned. "We made them a promise before they hung us up. We said we'd make them sorry and we don't break our promises."

"Hung up?" He didn't understand their strange voices.

"They killed us!" Her eyes were furious and in a second she had closed half the space between them. Arthur backed away further, not wanting her to be so near. "They had no right!" She shrieked. "We had done nothing wrong. We only wanted to play."

"I'm sure you did." Arthur tried to speak calmly, not wanting to anger her anymore.

"Mommy once told us that it is right to forgive." The first innocent voice spoke. "But we can't. We cannot let it go." Her head shook and the dark circles were back. "We don't want to let it go. She said that none of them would care if one day they couldn't remember us anymore." She looked angry.

"She?" It clicked in Arthur's mind. "You mean the Old Mother."

"The hag!" She screamed. "Do not mention her name to us."

"Sorry." Arthur said quickly, taking another step back. The girl began to sway back and forth as if by some unseen wind. He looked down and noticed that her small pale feet were not touching the ground at all, but just hanging there. Her head suddenly fell forward and he heard a terrifying crack. The room was filled with silence.

The girl's small body swayed back and forth as if some invisible rope held her up. All Arthur could hear was his own heart pounding in his chest as if any moment it would rip out of him and run away as he so desperately wanted to. He didn't notice but his grip around the hilt of his sword had tightened.

"They killed us." Her voice was soft, but she did not look up. "Why? How could they do it?" Then her neck snapped up and she gasped, dark circles again around her sunken eyes. "How could they?" Her voice filled the room and everything seemed to darken.

Arthur backed away from the floating girl even more. He knew the fear on his face was obvious.

"Do we frighten you?" Her eyes were wide and her dark irises were small in the sea of white. "We frightened them too. Do you mean to use that sword on us?" Her ghostly pale finger pointed at his sword. "Do you want to kill us too?"

"No." But his voice was not sincere.

"We don't believe you." She said it like she was singing a demented song. "You're just like them aren't you?" She started to float closer, without a sound.

"No, I'm not." But he couldn't back away from her anymore with his back up against the door. He fiddled for the handle. When his trembling hands finally closed around the cold metal though he wiggled it and it was locked. He tried again but it wouldn't budge.

"Are you trying to run away?" Her voice had become more menacing. "Why don't you stay and play with us?" She reached out her cold dead hand towards him.

He had to get out. He had to get away from her. The fear of not knowing what she would do when she reached him was horrifying. A whole number of possibilities ran through Arthur's mind and he didn't like any one of them. He tried the handle again but it wouldn't budge and she was still coming ever closer. Her slowness built up the fear dripping off of the walls in the room, the silence adding to that.

Finally giving up on the handle, he turned back to the spirit and razed his sword at her. She stopped for a moment. Her face showed shock at the sight of the blade, but then it melted away and her sunken eyes fell on him, her neck making a chilling cracking sound as it moved.

"You're no different." The voices seemed to mix now as a ghostly tear fell from her dark eyes. "We only wanted to play."

"I'm sorry for what happened to you. I really am." He tried, not lowering his sword.

"Don't lie to us." She shook her head very slowly. "We don't like to be lied to. Mommy lied to us."

"I'm not." He swore.

"Yes. You. Are!" She screamed and ran at him. Arthur gasped and closed his eyes. But she never reached him.

Suddenly the door behind him opened and a hand pulled him through, shutting the door on the demented girl, her screams disappearing. Arthur gasped and puffed on the carpet of the hallway. Whoever had pulled him out did not stay to see if he was okay. Arthur got to his feet in time to see someone in a bird's mask running down the hallway away from him.

"Wait!" He called out, running after them. The person in the bird's mask stumbled a little, glancing back before disappearing through another door.

"Who are you?" He grabbed the door they had dashed through and swung it open. The question died on his lips, as he was met not with another room but a forest. He didn't notice when the door shut behind him. He quickly spun around but the door was gone and he was surrounded by nothing but trees.

Where was he now?

Thanks for reading and please REVIEW!

I did theme this as horror for a reason. Maybe now you know why.

The reviews so far have been fantastic along with the support for my rewrite of I Will Never Forget. Please keep writing because I could really use some suggestions for what will happen next and how I will add in the characters from my other stories.

By the way, does anyone know who the person in the bird's mask is?

Hope you keep following because Arthur isn't out of the woods yet, in fact he's right in the middle of them.

For anyone who it may concern. Here is a list of the names I am changing in I Will Never Forget. Please comment and tell me what you think or if any of them need to be changed. Suggestions are welcome.

Uther=Ultar

Arthur=Altor or Al

Hunith=Hootina or Hootie

Merlin=Jay (I know that is the name of a character in this story but I wanted his name to be the same as a bird's. Does anyone have a better one?)

Aida=Ida (This was how it was originally meant to be spelled but I just did it wrong the first time and didn't realize until later.)

Joone= Joone Tellar and Joone Ardent

Theo=Leo (I have very good reasons for changing this one)

Nimueh=Psyche

Camelot=Atlaltal

Albion=Pentimentaire

Sir Galahad=Sir Gij

These are the ones I've changed so far.

See you all next time.