Oh, thank you thank you thank you, to DifferentShirley, Fiwen9430, IndiaMoore, Tolleren, caldera32, Rachel McN, and wolvesarecool for your fantastical reviews! Because of all y'all, I can update sooner than I can usually afford :D


~27~ No Time for Pain

The knights and queen fled down the hall as they heard Merlin turning into the feral beast they had all come to fear. Gwaine charged far ahead, racing towards Arthur's chambers, the place the servant said he'd left the Silver Heart to stop the king.

It was risky, they knew, to let two werewolves run free, but if Merlin could stall Arthur and lead him to a place where Gwaine could reach him with the Heart, there was a chance of capturing them both and escorting them from the city, minimizing bloodshed.

Over the din of the warning bells, he heard Merlin's beast howl. Gwaine ignored the sound and concentrated on getting to Arthur's rooms as fast as possible. He took the stairs three at a time, ignoring anyone who tried to stop him and ask questions.

Just a little further...One more hall...There!

His boots slid on the floor as he halted before Arthur's private chambers, but before he even straightened, his heart plunged to visit his toes.

There was no knapsack.

He glanced up and down the hallway, but only saw a fallen torch and an axe, oddly enough. Gwaine, near panic, checked inside the room, then around the corners at either end of the corridor. Nothing. The Heart was gone.

Ͻ Ϫ Ͻ

Merlin leaped from the window and landed in the castle square, an irrepressible howl emitting from his maw. He crossed the courtyard and bounded up to the portcullis, but stopped when he saw that it had been shut. With minimal effort, he climbed, swift as a monkey, up a scaffolding and over the wall, scaring the sentinels on the battlements. He had to get to Arthur.

The warlock-turned-werewolf ignored every screaming person in his way as he followed his nose deeper into the city. What he saw littering the streets appalled him – Arthur had left many mangled corpses in his wake. He saw dead soldiers, farmers, peasants...It was a massacre.

If the people learn the truth, the city will tear itself apart, he thought, jumping over a knot of guards and surprising them all. Reaching an abandoned square, he decided that this place was as good as any.

Trying to ignore the alluring scent of fresh blood, Merlin threw back his head and howled as loud and as challenging as he could. To follow Arthur would take too long and more people would die. He was going to have to draw Arthur to him. For several moments, all he heard was the clanging warning bells and the faded screams of the horrified, but then his wolfish ears perked at the sound of a return cry. He roared back, roughly in the direction from where the king's call came, somehow knowing the exact right pitch to issue a challenge to the rival beast.

As the second retaliation split the night, Merlin took a single bound and landed on the chimney of a smithy, where he scanned the the rooftops for his adversary, once friend. It didn't take long for him to see the golden-furred werewolf charging up a nearby street, bypassing all he came across in favour of an enemy alpha.

Merlin wished that it had never come to this. To fight his best friend when only he himself knew what was truly going on was a nightmare come true, but he had no choice.

Arthur skid to a halt in the centre of the square, snarling to the high heavens, his ivory teeth dripping the blood of innocents. Merlin pounced.

Ͻ Ϫ Ͻ

Percival and Leon were astonished when the werewolf, once Arthur, suddenly stopped charging towards them and listened to the howl echoing in the distance. Then the king retaliated with a challenge of his own, and set off towards where the initial cry had emerged. The two knights glanced at each other, then kicked their horses after Arthur, tired and depleted as they were.

They had hoped, when they first started to chase the werewolf, that they would be able to stall him long enough for him to change back, not knowing that there would be several hours before that would happen. Their blades had hit the beast numerous times, but they, along with everyone else who had tried, could not penetrate his thick hide, and their attempts had only made Arthur more angry.

"Gwaine nowhere in sight, and therefore, no Silver Heart. But now Merlin has turned, too," Leon moaned, as his horse hurtled over a spilt cart of potatoes. He winced when his injured leg jerked painfully. "Hell on earth."

"Hell on earth," Percival agreed, and did not slow.

They heard before they saw the fight, and their hearts grew heavy as the horrific sounds of the battling beasts filled the air like a storm. Rounding a bend, they saw the whirl of golden and black fur in the centre of an abandoned square, clawing and biting and tearing at each other with wild abandon. The two knights cursed, unable to do anything. Street dogs they could handle, but this...

The black werewolf, Merlin, batted Arthur's golden form as the king tried to latch his snapping jaws around the others' leg, knocking him down slightly. Then Arthur slashed across Merlin's chest, and the servant growled before jumping and kicking him back several paces. Before the king could recover, Merlin lunged forward and commenced a sequence of scratches and bites that put his opponent on the defence.

"We have to stop this!" Leon yelled helplessly as Arthur recovered and lashed out in retaliation, his own attack making Merlin yelp in pain. Then the king latched salivating jaws on the back of his servant's neck and bore him to the ground, trying to force him into submission. But Merlin bit the other werewolf's foot and refused to let go until Arthur did, which didn't take long as the paw tore open.

As the terrible, painful spectacle raged on, the knights noticed several people emerging from homes cautiously to watch in open astonishment.

"What the hell are they gawping at?" Percival growled, trying to control his dancing horse.

"I'm sure they don't know themselves," muttered Leon, deep in thought. How were they going to stop this? He saw no obvious solution, let alone an obscure one. Not without Gwaine. Where the devil was he?

Just then, Merlin yelped and made a full retreat, supporting a slashed forearm, from whence gushed an alarming amount of blood. Arthur's werewolf snarled in triumph and didn't let the other get far before continuing his relentless and brutal attack. Merlin fell into a duck and weave tactic, which surprised the knights. It was almost as though the beast was thinking.

"We have to do something!" Percival snapped. "They'll tear each other apart if this continues!"

"Thanks for pointing that out, detective!" Leon barked back, just as Merlin renewed his battle in a frenzy. The only way they could now tell the werewolves apart was their different coloured fur. If they were in their right minds, if they knew what they were doing...

"My lords! What should we do?"

The two knights jumped and turned to see three soldiers with spears at the ready. They looked terrified, but prepared for anything.

"That's what we're trying to figure out," Percival replied grimly, facing the fight. Merlin was attempting to pin Arthur down, while the king was working on biting out the others' throat.

"We could distract them," plotted Leon, brow creased in concentration. "If we can separate them, then we can trap them, and then..." He winced as Merlin had his ear torn, and the servant whined and growled as he ducked away. "Gods..."

"Sergeant, order your archers to line on those rooftops," Percival barked to the middlemost soldier, recognized by his crest. "Aim and fire on my orders."

"As you command, my lord!" the sergeant saluted, and departed.

Percival ignored Leon's incredulous look. "They won't – can't – hurt them. Like you said, we need to distract them and get them apart."

"With what?"

"I'm still working on that bit."

Ͻ Ϫ Ͻ

Merlin tried to ignore the tearing pain in his left ear, unable to tell if the whole thing had been ripped off by Arthur's gnashing teeth or not. His upper body dodged back as the king tried to slash at him, then lunged forward, jaws snapping, forcing the other to retreat.

Come on, Gwaine, he growled inwardly, battering his master back across the square. Get your drunken arse down here! It was getting harder and harder for him to retain control over the werewolf, but he had to. He had to.

Arthur feinted beneath the next blow and managed to claw three deep gashes in Merlin's abdomen, but he tried to suppress the pain beneath his determination. He had been covered with countless scratches, but so had the king, their claws able to do what regular weapons could not. That doesn't necessarily make it a good advantage.

Arthur was limping heavily now, due to the damage the warlock had done to his paw, but he seemed to be immune to the pain, a dark hunger and a desire to bring his challenger into submission hard in his eyes. Merlin didn't want to feel any more pain, nor did he want to inflict it on his oldest friend. He retreated, step by step, forcing himself to not meet Arthur's gaze. He wasn't surrendering, only trying to show his wish to halt the conflict. As he suspected, it didn't work, and he received a new slice across his face for his troubles, just missing his eye.

A flash of the werewolf within caught a foothold and forced Merlin to shoot forwards and latch his jaws around the others' shoulder, close to the neck, but then the servant smothered it and kicked Arthur away from himself, snarling ominously. The warning was discarded. The king shot forward and then jumped, bloodied teeth bared. Merlin dodged to the side and the other beast flew past him, crashing into the wall of a house. Yelping once, Arthur swiftly recovered and turned, snarling. If a werewolf could feel embarrassment, then this one did.

A young girl had screamed when the king crashed into the building, and she screamed again as he turned towards her, standing in the doorway of a house. The werewolf snorted, and Merlin saw his muscles tense for a pounce. With a warning yowl, the warlock intercepted the king's route just as he lunged at the girl. Air whooshed from his chest as they collided, and they both fell to the ground in a tangle. Arthur's tufted wolf tail was wavering slightly before his eyes, and he had the sudden inclination to bite it.

The king howled and tried to leap away, only to yelp again as his body went one way and his tail remained in Merlin's jaws. The warlock held on in the awkward position while Arthur attempted to run away, with minimal success, of course. It must have looked quite comical, but Merlin wasn't about to start laughing.

Gwaine, where are you, dammit?

Ͻ Ϫ Ͻ

"You want us to find a knapsack, my lord?" asked the guard, who was trying to not appear baffled.

"Yes, a knapsack. A large pouch to hold things in with straps for your shoulders." Gwaine didn't mean to sound rude, but why was it so difficult to get people to help him find a knapsack?

"What does it look like?" the guard asked. "What colour?"

"It's...Well, it's...I don't know what colour it is! All I know is that there's something inside," the knight replied impatiently. "A silver animal statue. About this big, of a wolf. Find it, quickly!"

The three guards hurried off, all failing to conceal their irritated confusion, but Gwaine didn't care. The Heart must be found!

He hurried back to Arthur's chambers, planning on having one last look. The sack couldn't have just picked itself up and walked away! He'd already checked the royal suite, just in case that was the room Merlin meant, but the place was neat and tidy, whilst Arthur's private rooms showed signs of a struggle. If the Heart was anywhere, it was there. Unless it was taken.

It was during the latter thought that Gwaine saw a flitting figure dash across the entrance to his corridor, dark and furtive. If that wasn't something to be suspicious of...

"OI!" he called. "Stop!"

He ran, rushing around the corner just in time to see the figure disappear into another hall. Hot in pursuit, Gwaine soon came to realize that his quarry was unfamiliar with the castle, for she quickly found herself trapped at a dead end. There was something in her hands.

"Stay where you are," Gwaine ordered, drawing his sword and squinting to see into the figure's hood. He'd known that she was female by her figure, but now he saw the stag emblem on her front. She was a Silverblood.

"I mean no harm," she said quickly, holding up a knapsack before her with one arm. The other one looked stiff, as though in a cast. "I came for this."

"You took Merlin's knapsack!" Gwaine barked, striding forwards to take it. The Silverblood let him snatch it away, and made no move to arm herself.

"I took it because of what it contains," she said, but Gwaine cut her off.

"Your actions have wasted irreplaceable time!" he snapped. "Have you any idea what you've done?"

"I was trying to help!" she protested, throwing her hood back. Gwaine didn't recognize her.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Sophia Silverblood. I was trying to get the Heart and stop the werewolf, but I got lost. I didn't know you were after it, too."

"How the blazes did you get in here?"

Sophia shrugged. "Not that difficult really. Especially with the guards in a mess." She glowered. "Well, what are we waiting for? Merlin needs our help!"

"Wait, you know—?"

"Come on, you fool!"

Gwaine let her run with him as they headed for an exit, conscious of how much time was wasted, not knowing how much they had left.

Ͻ Ϫ Ͻ

Merlin winced as claws like razors sliced down his back, but still he did not relinquish his hold on Arthur's tail. Ridiculous as it felt, it was stalling the king, letting Gwaine draw ever closer with the Silver Heart.

Hurry, hurry, hurry!

Suddenly, Arthur kicked back with his uninjured foot, and the warlock felt more than one rib give as the paw contacted his side. He could not withstand the pain this time, and released the king's tail, yelping. With a howl of triumph, Arthur whirled around and knocked him over, pinning him against the city square's cobblestones. Merlin tried to kick him away. Despair clouded his vision as the king attempted to rip his throat out.

It's me, clotpole! he roared inwardly, knowing that it wouldn't matter. Please, stop!

His side throbbed, his ravaged shoulder bled, the cuts and bruises bombarding his body gave him the illusion of having tumbled down a ragged mountain. But he fought on, both holding the werewolf within under control and preventing Arthur from disemboweling him. He kicked him away, and then prepared to keep him back.

That was when Rowan came.


The presence of the third werewolf threw the first two to a standstill. The silvery-grey veteran perched majestically on the roof of a tannery, fur gleaming in the moonlight, howling a challenge at them both. Arthur quailed, clearly remembering his last encounter with Rowan, but then he stepped away from Merlin, eyes never straying from the newcomer. The warlock, in turn, refused to show his pain and stood, growing deep in his throat warningly.

"Fire!"

Merlin flinched as half a dozen bolts twanged free of their crossbows and zipped straight at Rowan. The quarrels struck, but did minimal harm, and the grey werewolf merely snarled at the inconvenience as he yanked the only arrow that managed to pierce his hide out of his chest. Then he jumped from the roof gracefully, landing on all fours in the square and barely pausing before bounding straight for Arthur.

Without thinking, Merlin shot forward to intercept the bigger beast. He was easily swatted aside for his troubles, and he hit the cobblestones as Rowan jumped on the king, yowling for blood.

Already stirred into a frenzy, Arthur fought back veraciously, yet he was still outweighed and out-experienced, and Rowan would have ripped him to bloody pieces if Merlin hadn't intervened.

Roaring furiously, the warlock pounced on the stronger beast's back and clung on like a limpet, jaws latched around his mane of silver fur. Rowan tried to shake him off, but was distracted by Arthur's reprimanding assault. For a moment, Merlin thought that they would be able to beat the new arrival into submission together, but then a second wave of bolts hit them like a deadly rain.

One quarrel pierced Merlin's arm, and he couldn't help but relinquish his hold on Rowan in agony. The other werewolf seized the opportunity to throw him like an unbroken horse would, ignoring his own arrow-induced injuries.

While Rowan was distracted, Arthur whirled into a frenzied attack, startling his foe for the span of a few seconds.

Have to stop this! Merlin thought anxiously. Dash it all, where's Gwaine?

Finally, as what inevitably comes with all wild animal fights, one werewolf surrendered and made a full retreat. It could only be expected that it was Arthur, for he was too weak for Rowan, too green. His once golden fur, the same colour as his human hair, was matted red and black with the congealing blood oozing from countless wounds covering his muscular body.

I did that to him, Merlin thought nauseously, frozen in place as Rowan chased Arthur to the rooftops. Then he realized what was happening and flinched. No! They mustn't get away!

With one final scan for Gwaine, hoping in vain that he would emerge from any of the streets at that moment, he bounded once and landed on the nearest roof. From there, he tailed Rowan and Arthur, ignoring his cracked ribs and throbbing body. There was no time for pain.


"We are both part of the same great game, Gabriel. But we need not find ourselves on opposing sides of the board!" ~ Count Dracula (Van Helsing)