A/N: WE HAVE NOW REACHED 30 CHAPTERS, HUZZAH MY FRIENDS!
59.
It's not till now that Merlin realizes Arthur never before spoke of the spirit as his father.
For all that Uther has been the topic of discussion, his son never once used the name, or even directly referenced his father. Merlin never noticed, because everyone else had not hesitated, but he wonders now how he'd missed such a thing.
Even when it comes to ghosts, apparently Arthur has to see it to believe it.
Arthur strides quickly towards a door Merlin recognizes, even in the dark, and looks at Merlin a moment to warn, "Brace yourself." Then he twists the knob, and the door creaks open.
Merlin squints his eyes, stepping back in surprise.
The room is shrouded by shadow and gloom, further darkened in contrast to the flames burning on Gwen's four poster bed. On the wall, just above the headboard, a word has been engraved.
RECOMPENSE, the flickering light illuminates, before Arthur hands the torch to Merlin and quickly stamps down the flames, smothering it and folding the sheets in half. "Arthur . . ." Merlin starts, not sure how he'll finish it, but Arthur thankfully interrupts him.
"There's wax all over the bed," he says in a clipped tone. "Which means my father knows what we're after, and destroyed the candles before we arrived. The last place I can think of is the kitchens-if there aren't any in there . . ."
The kitchens. Merlin resists gulping. "Okay, alright, to the kitchens it is then," he replies offhandedly. "Not as if we weren't already going down there to our deaths for the matches."
Arthur nods, not smiling at the joke. His eyes are trained on the engraved word in front of them and do not move until Merlin puts a hesitant hand on his shoulder.
"Arthur?"
"Right," the other man nods slowly, and then snaps his head away to walk swiftly out through the door.
Now that Arthur seems to accept what—who—they're truly facing, he is careless, walking down the stairs loudly and speaking to Merlin in a voice that carries to the floor below them. "Hurry up Merlin, we haven't all night!"
Meanwhile Merlin, the caboose again, hurries to catch up and simultaneously keep an eye on the shadows behind him. Something moves, in the corner of his eye, every time he turns his back.
He keeps his eyes forward for the last stretch of stairs, till both him and Arthur have reached the entrance hall, and whips his head back up to the stairs.
Something is there, hidden deftly by the shroud of dark night the second he looked back. Merlin narrows his eyes, ignoring the wild thumping of his heart, and hurries to catch up with Arthur's impatient "Merlin!"
The kitchen is much too silent; all of the appliances are dead, off thanks to the electricity outage. The staff have left everything impeccably clean, however, and it appears Uther deemed the room not worthy of destruction. Arthur crosses quickly to a back closet, pulling a plastic container from a shelf. He has Merlin hold the flashlight over its contents as he rifles through it, the box obviously an emergency kit. Merlin spots another torch, and makes a mental note to grab it once Arthur has found the other supplies. In less than a minute he holds in each of his hands two fat candles, a lighter, and a box of water-resistant matches. Merlin and Arthur smile at each other in triumph.
That is when, of course, the first cupboard door slams.
They both jump, naturally, though Arthur is quick to dismiss it. "Let's go," he says simply, just before a cupboard drawer even closer to them opens and slams shut loud enough to simulate a thunder clap.
"Good idea," Merlin replies lightly, scrambling from his knees and pulling at Arthur's shirt to get him up as well. Without hands to support him however, Arthur stumbles and the supplies all go rolling opposite ways across the wooden floor.
"You get the candles!" Arthur shouts as he dives for the matches, and that's when all the cabinet doors above them flip open and a host of pots and pans begin avalanching down. Merlin goes for the candles anyway, biting back a yell when a large, metal pot hits the back of his neck. He grabs it where it clatters to the ground and, not able to hold in a hysterical laugh while doing so, puts it on his head like a child about to space travel.
It's effective though; anything else directed towards him bounces off his metal helmet, and Merlin grabs blindly for the candles till he finds first one and then another hidden underneath a pan. "Got them, Arthur!" he shouts over the dying clatter of metal hitting the floor.
"Run, then!" his employer replies from across the kitchen. "I'm right behind you!"
Merlin doesn't have the time to think twice about it. Throwing the pot off his head he sprints for the exit, not slowing down once he gets through, smacking into three different walls, till finally he recognizes the grand dining room in the near pitch black.
"Merlin?" a voice calls from the hallway, and Merlin frowns, stopping.
"In the dining hall," he calls back, and a moment later a body smacks against his.
"Watch it," Arthur's voice says irritably, and Merlin huffs in disbelief.
"I'm the one who should 'watch it?'" he asks indignantly. "Who's the one with our only light source, hmm?"
The silence after is much too long; Arthur doesn't respond, though Merlin can hear his intake of breath.
"You don't have it?" he says slowly, and Merlin's heart drops several degrees in temperature.
"You don't have it?" Merlin repeats, realizing their predicament: either continue without any light, or go back for the torch in the dark, in the kitchen.
"SHITE," Arthur shouts into the black night.
My sentiment exactly. Merlin sighs, ready for this night to be over already. "Let's just keep going, Arthur. We got the candles, the matches, I presume you know this place well enough-"
"The candles," Arthur stops him, voice slow but less angered. "The candles . . . the matches, Merlin, the candles and the matches, you idiot!"
Merlin understands rather quickly then, though he does not get how that makes him the only idiot here. Arthur doesn't give him a moment to protest though, having already struck a match and, as it flares up, holds it towards one of the candles in Merlin's hands.
He holds the wick of it out, and in the next second the flaring light dies to a steady single flame. Merlin is able to make out Arthur's face just barely as he strikes another one for the second candle.
They head back to the stairs, this time with the third floor as their destination.
Two down, one to go.
60.
Arthur opens the door to his room with obvious trepidation, probably just as curious as Merlin as to how wrecked exactly his quarters have become at the hands of his father.
A rush of air escapes immediately, cold and slightly moist. Merlin barely manages to protect his flame from being put out as they enter. And they both do, Uther's hand obvious in the state of the room.
All three windows, two on either side of the grand bed, have been left open for the rain to rush in. A lot like Merlin's room in that way, though none of Arthur's things had been strewn and ripped. No. But his window's faced the opposing side of the storm's force, and the entire room is being rained into. So far back, Merlin and Arthur get a little spray of it where they stand inside the doorway.
"It'll only take me a moment," Arthur says grimly, jaw set as he steps forward and walks to a large wardrobe at their right. Merlin watches worriedly as the other man rifles through the contents of the top drawer, pulling something out that glints slightly in the candlelight.
He makes to move past Merlin, ignoring the mess behind him. "Arthur, shouldn't we-" Merlin gestures toward the wide open windows, and Arthur doesn't even glance back at them. He looks at Merlin out the corner of his eye and says, "Leave it."
So Merlin shuts the door behind them, turning back to Arthur only to see him staring down at the object in his hand. Merlin's eyes bug out at the sight of it. "The knife that almost killed us?" he asks in disbelief, moving closer only for the ornate handle to confirm his suspicions. "The knife? Why a knife, Arthur? Isn't there something-"
"Merlin, you asked me to think of an object with great significance to me," Arthur snaps back, lowering and hiding the knife away defensively. "That was your only requirement. You have to understand, I . . . this. It was given to me, by my father."
And then he almost killed you with it. Merlin would say he despises Uther even more than he already did, if that is possible.
Still, a knife in the midst of a Summoning Circle, especially one for summoning a malicious, murderous spirit, is one of the biggest unspoken no-no's for any medium out there. Merlin can only imagine how Nimueh will be rolling in her grave if he agrees to this. Or how many things could go horribly, terribly, fatally wrong.
"Alright," he concedes, anyways, because how else will the Circle be strong enough to hold Uther? An object connected to both him and Arthur, that is the best Merlin could have asked for. Never mind that it could also easily be their deaths.
They trek down the long, freezing hallway, toward the last door up ahead that gapes open, waiting to swallow them up. A continuous, arctic stream of air blows at them as they near, and Merlin's teeth are close to chattering by the time they reach the pitch black room. He immediately gestures for Arthur to step back, and kneels on the icy wooden floor. From his pocket he pulls out Mordred's chalk, and begins by drawing a large circle around where he kneels.
Arthur watches in silence, never interrupting as Merlin moves around the floor and draws the intricate lines and runes. It usually takes him close to half an hour, though he manages it in half that this time. When it is finished Merlin leans back on his haunches, breathing out a sigh as he surveys his work.
"The bark and leaves," he says, breath puffing out in the air as he holds out a hand. Arthur takes the items out of his own pockets, and Merlin sets them up in the middle. Without prompting Arthur then moves opposite him, placing his candle in the correct position and then the knife, in the spot directly across from Merlin. He sits down, nodding at Merlin to get on with it.
"The point of this is to speak with the dead, to call them to us," Merlin whispers, feeling for whatever reason the need to speak the soothing, familiar words of explanation he's used to before a summoning. Arthur doesn't stop him. "It requires two different people-the messenger and the affected. I will be the messenger; you the affected. And now we'll begin."
He takes the candle nearest him and begins to drip the melted wax in a redundant pattern over the Circle, stopping finally to let it drip into a hand-sized pool right in front of him. Merlin puts the candle down, then, and sears his left hand against the still-cooling wax, melding him and his clairvoyance to the summoning grounds.
The room is deathly silent; Merlin notices a growing feeling as if there are eyes on his back, staring straight through him, but he ignores it. With three, steadying breaths, he chants, "Spirit I summon thee, evoco lemures, by the Old Religion I bind thee, larvae manes, and call thee to reveal thyself this night. Ostendo ego."
For a moment nothing happens; then, the tiniest of sparks flares in the bark and leaves, and Merlin lets out a silent breath of relief. Across from him Arthur shakes his head in silent wonder, apparently still fascinated by that part of the ritual.
Please work. Please work. He can think of nothing else, willing the chant to do its work and the Circle to be strong enough to let it. The knife glimmers where it lays in front of Arthur in the added light as Merlin continues with three more breaths. He reaches out for Arthur's hands, who silently clasps them together across the Circle. "Spirit I summon thee, evoco lemures, by the Old Religion I bind thee, larvae manes. This night, I call thee to reveal thyself. Ostendo ego."
Merlin never needs to chant it again. Immediately the small fire snuffs out, though the candles remain alight, and the last wisp of smoke curling from it suddenly blows horizontal, stinging Merlin's eyes and itching his nose. He coughs once, pulling from Arthur's grip to rub his face, and blinks open watering eyes only to see-to see.
The spirit of Uther Pendragon stands next to the Circle, between them both, and the hollowed eye sockets of his skull-like features seem to be directed entirely at Arthur. "My son," the spirit breathes, and a racing chill moves down Merlin's spine.
He knows that voice well.
A/N: Yep, so Uther looks a little bit ghoulish in spirit form. There are two/three chapters left of this fic, depending if I do an epilogue or not (probably will). But yeah, I hope you all enjoyed! I just creeped myself out again writing this - not that this part is necessarily hardcore horror or anything, but I was in a dark part of the library listening to (haunted) music and jumped because I felt something brush my arm.
. . . it was my other hand. I know.