~30~ Dreams of the Wild
The woods were dense, unkempt, the mossy trunks of ancient trees seeming to go on forever around him. It wasn't ominous or frightening, and actually enveloped its visitor with a comely sense of peace. Merlin recognized it not, but he felt like he'd known the land, had craved it, all his life. Bodiless, he slipped between the ranks of trees, searching...searching...for what?
This way, a voice whispered. This way...
As though time flew forwards, Merlin travelled swiftly through the vaguely familiar woods, dodging around trunks just before he slammed into them. For a second, time allowed him to glance at a lonely statue, swarmed by the mosses and ivy of decades, of a hooded, black-handed man with an owl on his shoulder. Then Merlin was whipped away again, pulled though a gorge, and at last stopped for a second and final time.
It was a small glade, the brown forest floor carpeted with decaying leaves that would have softened his footfall if he had one. There was more sunlight than usual beaming down in silvery rays, casting oblong stars upon the ground. It wasn't unfamiliar, for he had seen it several times during the past couple weeks, all in his dreams. Only this time, he had been shown the way to reach it.
Merlin felt strange, but then, he always felt strange there. He wasn't sure why, or what it was exactly, but the area embraced him like no other place could. Not in the Valley of the Fallen Kings, not the Isles of the Blessed, not even Avalon. Almost instinctively, he had called it the Wild.
But what is this place really?
There was motion in the corner of his eye, and when he looked, he saw a unicorn step free of the foliage.
All at once, memory surged into his mind.
It was the place where Arthur had slain, then later revived, a beautiful unicorn almost eight years ago. Most of his attention had been on the gorgeous creature that was the unicorn, but he was positive that this was the place. The Forests of Agmar.
Why here? he asked, but of course, there was no reply from the creature.
He blinked, and the unicorn became a stag.
Then fangs burst free of his mouth, his body sprouting hair and rippling muscle, and he was a wolf.
Merlin became aware of the warm scent of loam and the sweet sounds of dawn songbirds before he even realized that he was awake. He was warm and comfortable, at least until he moved.
He cried out unwillingly as scabbed wounds reopened and pulled muscles felt like they were being torn to shreds. Tears sprung into his eyes and he stuffed a fist into his mouth to stifle further wails. Moaning, he crawled from the low ground tent he had commandeered from the poachers the night before – oh yes, he remembered that quite vividly – and tried to stand. His limbs wobbled precariously, and it was only because of the animal strength granted by the cursed werewolf blood that he was able to get up at all.
"Ooow."
Groaning, he finally straightened and tried to flex his arms. His left, bound in a makeshift cast, was useless. His right still ached from the arrow wound, which he had Healed earlier, but at least he could move it. His broken ribs throbbed dully.
Merlin heard a small sound, a whimper, and glanced over to a man who had been bound and gagged with rope. It was second of the two poachers, the first having escaped on horseback. This one's eyes widened in sheer terror when Merlin's gaze fell on him, and he tried to crawl away with his hands tied behind his back and his feet roped together, looking like a massive, grotesque slug. If the warlock wasn't in such pain, it might have been comical to see.
"Learned your lesson?" he said, eyes narrowing. The poacher nodded so fast, Merlin thought his neck would snap. He tried to speak through the gag with little success. Striding towards the cowering man, Merlin untied the ropes and pulled off the rag before crouching and glaring into his eyes.
"I know your scent," he growled. "If you ever come here again, I will kill you."
"Y-y-yes, s-sir! I mean, yes, m-my lord! I'll never come here again! I swear on my mother's head!"
Merlin flicked his head. "Get out of here."
The poacher tried to move quickly, but his feet, numbed from poor circulation, sent him staggering into trees and bushes like a drunkard. Still, he managed to send leaves flying up behind him with what speed he could muster. Merlin watched him until he could see and hear him no more.
"Thank god for small mercies," he muttered, then grunted and clutched his arm. He realized that he was breathing heavily and sagging with exhaustion. The sleep had done him a little good, at least.
But that dream...
The glade, the unicorn, the stag, the wonderful sensations of feeling free...He thought about it, about what it meant, about its purpose.
Do not fear the Wild, Emrys. To do so would be to fear your own salvation.
That had been the parting words of Gabriela, the Druid shaman and Silverblood outcast, in Mistwood.
When Merlin had first dreamt the glade, he'd given it the name Wild because it seemed so fitting. But now that Gabriela mentioned it, as though that were its rightful title and that it was a real place...
Do not dwell on dreams, he thought flatly. There's no time for that now.
He found more food and another water skin in the abandoned saddlery, and satiated himself, curbing the hungry rumbles in his belly and sandpaper-taste on his tongue.
And now it's time to find Arthur.
The first step he took shot a bolt of agony through his body, and he moaned, freezing solid.
Ignore it. Think about what's at stake. Arthur is in danger.
He took another step, winced, but took a third. Eventually, he started making real progress, and the pain was smothered in his sense of urgency.
Wait...Where am I going?
Merlin paused, blinking. What was the point of being able to walk if he hadn't even thought about where to go?
He turned around, scanning the camp as though it might be hiding some secret to Arthur's whereabouts. Limping back to it, he bit his lip, still holding his arm as he glanced around uselessly. He tried sniffing, hoping that his enhanced senses would catch something, to no avail. The wind picked up, however, and he perked at the sound of baying dogs. Then the wind faded, as did the baying.
Dogs? That couldn't be good.
Merlin strained his hearing, but the breeze brought no further enlightenment. He sighed, then grimaced, teeth gritting together.
I'll just go back the way I came, then.
He turned slowly, eyes closed against the pain, and when he opened them again, he was stopped short.
A male stag had stepped out of the bushes and stood at the edge of the camp. It stared at him impassively, and he stared back, aghast. It was the same stag that had come to him and Gabriela when they went to the shrine of Larentia to find a cure for the werewolf curse. And it was the one he saw in his dream. He didn't know how he could tell, he just did. Perhaps it was the beast's smell, or because of the fact that it was no more afraid of him than the other stag was.
It flicked an ear, then turned and started to walk away.
"Wait!" Merlin hastened after it, only to stumble and groan in pain. "Come back, please!"
The stag looked back at him, hesitating, but then continued, head held high and proud. Merlin followed it as fast as he could, swallowing pain and fighting to remain on his feet.
For over an hour, he tailed the creature. He suffered in silence, using magic to numb the agony when it was proving too much. He kept such usage to a minimum, wanting to reserve as much energy as possible for what might lie ahead.
What am I doing? he eventually started to think as he stumbled over a tangle of ferns. I'm following a blooming deer.
Then he stiffened, sniffing the air. Horses? He could smell horses!
The stag broke through the last of the thick foliage to where birch trees grew more spaced out. Between these trees were five picketed horses, which squealed and stamped in Merlin's presence. The warlock recognized Gwaine's horse immediately, and Percival's large stallion. One, the quietest of the five, he didn't recognize at all.
The stag's tail flicked as it stared at Merlin, expectant. Then it turned and bounded away, faster than Merlin could follow.
"Hey, wait!"
But the creature was already gone.
"Wonderful," Merlin growled, turning back to the unnerved horses. "Now what—?" He sniffed, then sniffed again when he caught the familiar scents of his friends, and that of Sophia, the Silverblood assassin. Beneath them all, Arthur's musky werewolf smell. The king had passed this way.
Realization warmed Merlin like a hot bath. He glanced up at the trees. "Thank you," he said to them, hoping that Larentia would hear him.
He limped over to Sophia's horse, which tolerated his presence ten times better than the other four, being trained to face creatures such as werewolves. He pulled the reins free of the bush and tried to soothe the steed with a few strokes on its silky neck.
This is going to hurt.
He mounted the horse and gasped, muscles screaming. His ribs were on fire. Yep, I was right.
"Let's go," he said to the horse, but before he could steer it and nudge it into a walk, he heard the baying of dogs yet again. And this time, they were accompanied by the hollers and shrill whistles of men.
Hunting parties.
Merlin paled. They must be from Camelot, the vengeful civilians venturing to stamp out the beast that had killed so many of their own.
"Go!" he cried, nudging the horse's flanks. He saw stars as the beast leaped into a canter, tearing through the thick foliage that had stopped the knights from riding the night before. His eyes watered as branches snapped across his face like a thousand little whips, but, just like the rest of his pain, he ignored it as best he could, knowing that there was something a bit more important than his comfort at stake.
His urgency only reached paramount when the smell of Blackhands accompanied those of the knights and Arthur. Merlin came across the flattened area where a mighty struggle took place, and, judging by the lack of Blackhand corpses, the knights had lost.
"So much for small mercies," he grunted, kicking the Silverblood horse back into a canter.
Ͻ Ϫ Ͻ
Arthur was on the verge of dying when he woke up. He knew this, and just lay there, gasping as fire coursed through his body in place of blood. His body was torn open in more places than he could count, all bleeding, all deep and all potentially fatal.
Then why wasn't he dead?
Because the beast within wasn't ready to die.
And because the Blackhands who found him weren't finished with him yet.
"The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit – it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward!" ~ Rocky Balboa
