Explanations are coming, very slowly...
They stopped the session for lunch. Arthur's arm was aching a little, after learning to load so many guns, fire them off and impressing Lancelot no end. Arthur wasn't sure about the sword thing that Lancelot mentioned, but he didn't ask further. At least Arthur gleaned that after lunch there would be a briefing, where he actually might find out some information.
Going into the dining room, where there were sandwiches ready, and cakes, he was pleased to see Merlin, who beamed at him.
"Hi, are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm okay."
"Let's be quick about this," Uther said. "We have much to do."
"So, everyone grab a plate and we walk to wherever you want us to go," Arthur said. Uther turned and glared at him. Arthur picked up a plate and stuffed a sandwich in his mouth, and he shrugged.
"I want this over with, I want to know what is going on."
"We eat first," Uther said and stalked from the room.
"Fine," Arthur yelled at him. "I'm not the only one getting the disapproving vibe from him right?" he asked everyone else.
"No, you're not," Gwaine said.
"Fucking wanker," Arthur snarled and then looked at Gwaine, who was glaring at him. "Not you, him!"
He pointed in the direction that Uther had gone.
"It's not easy for him either," Merlin said, poking an egg sandwich unenthusiastically. Then he reached for a cheese and ham and stuffed that into his mouth.
"Yeah, I feel a huge amount of sympathy," Arthur drawled, nicking the egg sandwich off Merlin's plate. Merlin let him, and reached for a cake instead.
"He hasn't been able to find you for twenty years, despite trying everything he could to. It's a long time, and he never gave up. You probably don't match the expectations he has, and he probably doesn't match yours."
"I don't think I had any, I always thought he was dead. Mum constructed it so well she even used to take me to a grave. I'm not finding it hard to understand."
Merlin stuffed the cake in his mouth, getting all of it in with one go.
"You'll get hiccups," Gwaine warned him. Merlin pulled a face, mouth still stuffed. Arthur snorted with laughter and picked out another sandwich, eating steadily. Within ten minutes the group had cleared the plates in front of them, Morgana looking at the men with awe, and making sure the last slice of cake was hers.
"I cannot believe the amount you lot can eat."
"I get hungry," Lancelot said.
"It's habit, when it's there I eat it," Arthur said. "I don't always get regular mealtimes."
Morgana raised her eyebrows, but didn't answer, Uther came storming back, sweeping the group with his steady gaze.
"Gaius wants us down in the lab, now!"
With that he stormed off. Merlin and Morgana followed, Arthur swiped another can of cola, popping the top open and sipping as he walked. They headed down into the west wing again, going up a level, this time. Arthur walked along calculating things in his head.
"This place has got to be expensive to run," he commented.
"Expensive enough," Morgana said.
"What? Like some sort of secret government department?" Arthur asked. She turned her head, but kept walking, her heels clicking sharply against the stone floor.
"You obviously watch far too much television."
"Don't own one," Arthur said. "I can't remember the last thing I actually watched. I do read an awful lot of crap though. The guy who runs the café on the corner of the main street is a bit of a conspiracy theory nut."
"And let me guess, he's up to date on it all."
"Yeah, and he leaves all these daft magazines out. You lot are making it seem very plausible at the moment."
Morgana smirked. "No government involvement, this is a private enterprise."
"Who the hell pays for it?"
"I do," Uther's voice rumbled as he pushed open a door. Morgana followed him, Arthur paused. Merlin sidled round him to catch the door before it closed. Gwaine gave Arthur a gentle push on the shoulder to get him moving again. As he stepped through the door Arthur stopped again, looking around the room in shock.
It looked a little like something from the natural history museum, if it had a freak-show section, Arthur mused. Directly in front of him was a dais, raising the serket's body a foot or so off the ground. The serket was carefully held in place by wires, the sting curled up in prime position. Arthur walked up to it, looking the creature dead on and then he stepped up on the dais and crouched down between it's claws.
"Be careful!" Gaius snapped at him. Arthur reared back.
"Why? What's it going to do?"
"Nothing it's dead, idiot boy!" He backed that up back smacking Arthur on the back of the head. "It has taken me over two hours to autopsy her and another hour for her to be put in position. Be careful!"
Arthur flinched. Gaius said the last two words into his ear, by taking hold of it and pulling his head close.
"All right, for god's sake!" Arthur snapped and then looked back at the serket. He sprawled out on the floor in front of the dais, looking up at the beast and it's rather mangled head. Then he rose on all fours and shuffled back a little before laying down again.
"I was about here right, when I shot it?"
"Possibly," Lancelot said. "We could track the trajectory of the bullets."
"No, that's all right, it just looked smaller before," Arthur said. He got up onto his knees and shuffled up to peer at one of the claws, looking at the serrated edge on the inside edge. He reached for his can of drink on the dais. "Sorry," he said sheepishly to Gaius' gaze of disapproval.
Gaius headed off. Arthur moved around the suspended creature, looking at the tail. As he walked to the back he realised the scales had been prised apart and the intricate network of nerves, blood vessels and other things he didn't care to contemplate were on display. The scales were held apart by fish wire, wound around to keep them open. It reminded Arthur of opening up a prawn. Only this was much bigger and as he marvelled at that he turned around and looked behind him.
"Fucking hell!"
Two more things were on display, just a skeleton on the left dais. Arthur went forward and peered at the display.
"What do you think?" Gaius asked.
Arthur turned to look at him. "What do I think?"
Gaius nodded. Arthur shrugged. "I think it's fucking freaky."
"Enlighten me."
Arthur looked at the skull, the empty eye sockets and the teeth on the upper jaw, one long canine was the same length as Arthur's hand. The claws at the end of the four huge feet matched it. Arthur ducked under the neatly placed skeleton and looked up at it.
"Well, he looks like a cat, a lion I guess," Arthur said, and crawled under it and rolled over, lying on his back under it.
"Why do you guess that?" Gwaine asked.
"Well, it's big, it's bigger than the male lion in the zoo, and he's big!"
"What makes you think he's male?" Gaius asked. "This one. I presume the one in the zoo is obvious."
Arthur paused. He was sprawled under the skeleton and he had to wriggle further under to tilt his head back and looked at Gaius on the other side. The old man was clearly waiting for an explanation and he nodded at the skeleton that Arthur was sprawled under and since he wasn't being told off for sprawling there, he realised Gaius was interested in what he had to say. Arthur carefully pointed at the skull.
"The head's big."
Gaius snorted with laughter. Arthur knew his reasoning was sound, but his answer was wrong.
"Okay, it's female, I should have looked at the pelvis, although not exactly child bearing hips. Is no one going to help me here?" Arthur asked, raising his head a little to look at the others.
"No," Gaius said. "Look at the rest of it."
Arthur dropped his head back, rapping the back of his skull on the dais. The sound echoed around the room. The wood didn't sound heavy, the platforms were built for a purpose but they were backed up by wires to hold the heavy beasts. Arthur frowned as he looked at what he was supposed to see.
"The wings, the bones are attached here, on the shoulder blades and the wires here, the red ones," Arthur pointed at the network and looking around on the beast saw the red lines connected around the bones. "They aren't holding it up they're ligaments or tendons or stuff that connects things and the spine is splayed on both sides at that point. It was a cat with wings."
"It's known as a bastet, a creature that inhabits the world between the living and the dead."
"Okay, and it's a cat with wings because?" Arthur asked. Gaius paused and stared at him.
"You know, I never wondered that. I was rather more interested in the fact that the DNA samples that I have taken from it are, in fact, human."
"So?"
"What you are looking at, from that basic scientific analysis, is a human body."
"But it's a big cat with wings. Why would it be human?" Arthur wriggled out from his prone position under the beast and then he touched the shoulder and rib that was caved in.
"What happened?" he asked Gaius.
"I can assume the sword delivered a fatal blow. That injury killed it, and so swiftly that the creature never got a chance to change back. When the skeleton was found, it was naturally passed off as a hoax, but time has told us this was a curse afflicted onto someone. A female, although I cannot tell you more than that."
"So, it's like a gypsy curse or something, and this was a person. It doesn't look like it. When was it found?"
"In 1941, a bomb dropped a little way out of London, and this came up. People just thought it was a light-hearted hoax, which was placed in the centre of a bomb blast. The damn thing should have been obliterated, but it was there for people to find. For us to find."
"Again with the secret agency, superhero stuff."
"No, it was just a curse, caused by magic and that same magic protected it. No magic will allow anything to be destroyed. The creature was left there to be found."
Arthur blinked as he looked at Gaius. Who nodded his head at the creature behind Arthur.
"And that one?"
This one was presumably stuffed and mounted. The taxidermist that had done it must have had a field day. Arthur looked at the carefully constructed beast, the golden fur that ran over the well muscled body, the wings that were suspended by wires, and the head, at odds with the body but seeming to fit on it. The neck feathers spread out down the shoulders, but at the tips they turned to fur, melding into the feline structure.
"Cats appear to be a theme here, same body, and the wings, but head of a bird? Is this another curse or something?"
"No, that is a griffin."
"Is it human?" Arthur asked.
"No, it's unrelated to anything, although does hold cat and bird DNA within the structure. Although not exactly in the way that you would expect," Gaius mused. "Griffins are quite nasty creatures, very predatory, and they do eat their kills."
"Yuk!" Arthur said. He sat up and looked at the beast and then turned to regard the skeleton behind him. "Was that what the curse was about then? Were they trying to turn her into a griffin?"
"No, but the two creatures are related, I'd presumed so anyway. The griffin is a creature of magic, the bastet is something conjured from magic. I can't rule out that perhaps the bastet is based on the griffin but both are their own creatures."
Arthur was listening to Gaius, suddenly aware that no one else was contributing to the conversation. They all appeared to be listening to him intently. Arthur's breath hitched and he spat a small amount of cola back into the can.
"Oh shit! That's not why you are interested in me is it? As if I don't get enough to worry about, now I might have a sexually transmitted curse!"
Gwaine chortled with laughter. "Oh, I know a few people that would enjoy that thought."
Merlin smacked him on the arm, glaring at him in disapproval. "Shut up!"
That probably had no affect on Gwaine. He simply refused to be bothered. Since Merlin didn't looked to worried either Arthur figured it was just Gwaine's normal behaviour. Plus Arthur was starting to realise however much Gwaine dug at him, he only meant it because of Merlin. There was a subtle warning to it that told Arthur that Merlin was Gwaine's. He had looked after him for so long, they had been together for years and loved each other. Arthur had seen enough to know that, but experience made it difficult. Gwaine had probably been about a bit, however young he was, but Merlin had been younger still. Although he said Gwaine was the only person he wanted to be with, curiosity probably roused in him. Gwaine saw the threat, in Merlin wanting to stretch his wings, just because he wanted to, because he had never done so before. The worst part was, Gwaine probably understood the need, but that didn't stop him being pole-axed with emotion.
"No," Morgana said. "They are creatures of magic. Merlin is also."
"He's not a creature though, is he?"
"Yes," Morgana said. "He is, why can you not see a human being as a creature."
"I can," Arthur said. "I often get seen as less than that. So, you have a collection of freaky animals, some more over there I presume," Arthur pointed to the darkened room beyond an archway.
"And Merlin, who does stuff… best explanation I can think of, and you lot also hunted me down. I might apparently be your son, but I also guess I'm relevant."
"Yes, you are," Uther snarled.
"Why?"
"Magic was pushed from this realm, slowly and surely, but it is a force that exists in this world. It can be seen as energy, but only certain people hold the key to it," Gaius said.
"Like Merlin."
"Merlin is the ultimate key, he needs protecting as much as he is necessary for this," Uther said. "You are the same."
"What the hell do I have to do with it?" Arthur asked, taking a swig of cola. He regretted it a moment later as Uther glared at him steadily.
"Because you are King Arthur. The Once, and Future, King."
Arthur spat his drink across the carpet.