Chapter 13

That night Merlin had trouble sleeping. Dragoon had promised that today he would tell him more about his past. The last time that happened, Dragoon turned out to be an immortal dragonlord, so Merlin was kind of eager to hear what he had to say.

A knock at the door made him look that way.

"Are you decent?" a voice asked. It was Dragoon.

"Yes, come in," Merlin said.

Dragoon entered the room. He was carrying a bag full of food.

"So kid, are you ready?" he asked.

"What's up with that?" asked Merlin, pointing at the bag.

"We are going on a small trip."

Merlin looked again at the bag. It had enough food for days.

"How far are we going?"

"Why? Do you have somewhere more important to be?" Dragoon asked back.

"It took a lot of work to convince Arthur to give me the day off, and if I'm not back by tomorrow he said he'll make me clean the stables for a month. That's not something I'm looking forward to."

Dragoon let out a small laugh. "Don't worry kid, we'll be here," he said. "Now gear up, we are leaving in five!"

Merlin put together a travel bag and followed Dragoon. He also took the book, just in case they spent the night out. Outside two horses were waiting and Dragoon was already on one of them.

"So, where are we going?" Merlin asked, as he got up on the other horse.

"You'll find out when we get there, be patient."

Merlin sighed, but he followed without saying a word. As irritating as Dragoon was, Merlin's curiosity was far greater.

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They travelled for a while, going through plains and mountains, forests and rivers. Merlin was troubled, and not because he felt they were going in circles; he was troubled because Dragoon hadn't said a word since they left Camelot. Silent Dragoon was a scary sight. The one time he talked was to tell Merlin they should stop and eat something. When they had finished, he just got up on his horse and started riding again.

Not long after, Dragoon stopped again and Merlin took that chance to orientate himself. It didn't take him long. In front of him there was an endless wall of trees, stretching to both sides as far as he could see.

"We can't go in there!" Merlin said.

"Why not?" asked Dragoon with a smile on his face.

"That's the Impenetrable Forest!"

"And?"

"It's... impenetrable," Merlin said, stating the obvious.

"Kid, by now you should know that names aren't everything; the Almost Impenetrable Forest just wasn't as catchy."

Dragoon went among the trees and signalled Merlin to follow.

"I have to warn you though," started Dragoon, "with both of us here, there is a chance that—"

His words stopped when a little light started hovering in front of them and suddenly stopped on a branch in a near tree. As the light faded, Merlin could see a small fairy sitting on the branch.

"Welcome to my realm, Emrys," the fairy said.

"Who are you?" Merlin asked, which made the fairy smile.

"Why, I'm Queen Mab," she answered. "I am the spirit of this place. And all the places that bring despair to men hearts. Few have ever seen me Emrys, you should count yourself fortunate." She turned her head towards the other rider. "And who is this one that travels with y— Dragoon!? Is that you?"

"Hi Mab," Dragoon said, raising his hand in a wave.

"Do you know her?" Merlin asked.

Dragoon opened his mouth to answer, but Mab interrupted him.

"How dare you show your face here!?" she asked.

"So, I guess that means you are still mad with me," Dragoon said.

"Oh, let me see. I woke up one day and you were gone. Just gone. No goodbye letter, nothing! Of course I am mad with you!"

"Wait, wait, wait, wait... Wait. You and her?" Merlin asked, pointing at the tiny faerie in front of him.

"That's not her true form," Dragoon said, guessing what Merlin was thinking. "Besides, that was years ago!" he added, looking at Mab.

"So what!?" she asked. "That makes it even worse, all this time and you've never came back!"

"She kind of have a point," Merlin said.

"You stay out of this," Dragoon replied.

"Oh, no, let him speak; he is Emrys after all," Mab said, looking at Merlin.

Now they were both looking at him. Merlin didn't know what to say. He felt heavy, tired. Even the trees seemed blurry.

"You... everything in this forest, it's wildering," said Merlin.

Mab smiled. "The forest is one step of the journey."

"How do we find a way out?"

"Oh little one... you should not have to ask. Left is right and right is left. And the way behind is the way ahead. It is simple."

"Oh... simple," Merlin said.

"You have a mind's eye Emrys. You must learn to trust in it," she said. "This world may depend on that."

Merlin didn't know what to say. Luckily he didn't have to say anything:

"Are you taking him to see it?" Mab asked Dragoon.

Dragoon just nodded.

Mab looked at him intensely for a while. "Then I won't delay you any longer, that's not a place you want to be when it gets dark," she said. "Make no mistake Dragoon, we will continue this talk in your way back," she added, looking at him.

Merlin saw as Mab turned into a light and flew away, which Dragoon took as a cue to start moving again.

The path Dragoon was taking made no sense, sometimes he even turned completely around and continued like it was perfectly normal. However, if Merlin closed his eyes he could somehow sense that they were on the right track. Maybe that was the mind's eye Mab was talking about.

Merlin looked ahead. He was waiting for Dragoon to tell him more about Mab, but he hadn't spoke a word. That wouldn't do.

"So, you and Mab?" Merlin asked.

"I don't want to talk about that."

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight...

"So, you and Mab?"

"It was long time ago, I really don't want to talk about that."

One, two, three, four...

"So, you and Mab?"

"Kid, really, it doesn't matter; it was just a fling," Dragoon said.

The second he said that, they heard a cracking noise and a colossal branch fell were Dragoon would have been had he not use a time slowing spell.

"I think she disagrees," Merlin pointed out.

"I know she disagrees! That's why I left," Dragoon said.

There was an uncomfortable silence after that. Merlin wasn't a big fan of silences.

"Still, you could have left a letter," he said.

Dragoon sighed. "Why don't you better look where we are?"

Merlin looked around. How had he not noticed? There were trees no longer. Instead, an endless plains was all they could see. As he moved forward, Merlin realised that what he first thought were imperfections in the ground, were actually dead men. Hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. Skeletons laid half covered with dirt, their sharp swords and spears pointing out of the ground.

"What is this?" asked Merlin. "Where are we going?"

"There," Dragoon said, pointing forward.

Merlin looked that way. At first he didn't see anything, but then a small black dot appeared in the distance.

"What's that?"

Dragoon looked directly at that dot and took a deep breath.

"What I'm going to tell you happened a long time ago, before the Great Purge, before me and Mab, before everyone you know was born. Hell, even before Camelot.

"At that time, all of Albion was involved in a war that had been going on for decades. Hundreds of innocent people died every day. It was horrible. And I didn't care. It's not easy for me to say that, but it was the truth. There had already been many times when I tried to help people, to teach them that war led nowhere, but they never listened. Maybe I could get them to be at peace for a few years, decades if I was lucky, but in the end they always went back to their old ways. I was tired of men and I was ready to give up on them. Then she appeared.

"She saved my life you know? Two times. The first time was when she found me bleeding in the middle of a field. I was there to fight a small band of thieves who turned out to be a large conclave of sorcerers who were experimenting with corpses. I managed to defeat them, but at that time I wasn't as amazing as I'm today. I was badly wounded and I probably wouldn't have make it if it weren't for her. I still find it hard to believe. She, a woman who lived by herself, brought back a injured man to her house in the middle of an ongoing war. I asked her once why had she done that, why didn't she just left me there to die. She answered that it had been because I had kind eyes. I never fully understood what she meant by that. The second time she saved my life was when she married me.

"It happened a year and a half after we met. The war seemed to be ending and hope was starting to return to the people. We decided to start a life together in the town she had been born. While she didn't have magic, she did have some knowledge of potions, so she worked as the town healer. At that time I worked as a bounty hunter, catching criminals and dangerous magical creatures. I was happy, truly happy. Not a year after that we had a beautiful baby girl; I couldn't ask for more.

"The next time we heard about the war was almost two years after that. Some men wanted Albion all for themselves and they had soldiers stupid enough to die for them. It was a massacre. If things kept going like that, all of Albion was going to be destroyed. So, once more, I tried to help men. I went to every leader, trying to talk sense into them. They didn't know who I was, but when I showed them my powers they listened. I told them I had seen the future and the destruction that would come if the war didn't stopped. Lies, of course, but it still worked. After a few months I managed to arrange a meeting among them. Actually it was Bruta, who would become the first King of Camelot, who made that possible. He didn't like magic, but he knew that none of them could win that war without first losing all of Albion. The meeting had its ups and downs, but in the end peace was achieved: the six kingdoms were born."

"Wait, what do you mean?" Merlin asked. "There are only five kingdoms."

"I'm getting there," said Dragoon, raising his index finger. "So, as I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, the six kingdoms were born. It was a time to celebrate, so I went back to my wife and child."

Dragoon went pale. "The first thing I saw was the smoke. At first I wasn't sure where it came from, but when I was closer I realized it came from the town. All the houses were burnt down. The streets were filled with corpses of friends and neighbours. I yelled their names, but no one answered. All you could listen was the fire eating away the wood. When I finally reached our house I rushed in and that's when I saw them. I was too late."

"Dragoon, I'm sorry... I didn't know..." Merlin said, in a low voice.

"When I finished burying them," continued Dragoon, ignoring him, "I went to what it used to be the middle of the town and I used a spell to glare into the past. There I saw who had been the ones responsible. While one of the leaders signed the peace treaty, his men destroyed all I hold dear. And it wasn't even because of me; I had made sure no one knew who I truly was. No, it was just a random attack to a random village in a stupid war started by stupid men. Someone had to pay.

"It wasn't long when I was outside the gates of his castle. All around, people laughed and danced. My wife and child had died and they just went on like nothing had happened. I made my way towards the new king who was having a drink with his men. He recognized me and said something, but I didn't listen. I told him all about what had happened. All about my wife and daughter. All about the village and his men." Dragoon stopped and made a sad smile. "If you could see his face kid... I had never seen such fear. He apologized again and again, but what is an apology against the lives of those you love the most? He promised he would punish his men, even kill them. That wasn't enough. Nothing was. He could see that in my eyes, and he commanded his men to attack me. That was when everything went from bad to worse.

"I screamed, but not with sound. I cried, but not with tears. I fell, but was still standing. All the pain that I had, it just exploded as magic. Everything began to tear itself apart, and I liked it, so I fuelled that with even more pain. The world was becoming exactly how I felt it should be. Ugly. Broken. Reality had become just a suggestion and magic was running rampant. The first thing to disappear was the king and his men. They just vanished. The next thing to disappear was the castle. Then everything else.

"When I finally came to my senses I was completely alone as far as I could see. There was no king, no castle, no homes and no people. Whatever had I just done had wiped out an entire city. Instead all I could see was a deserted plains, and in the middle of it there was that."

Hung up in the story, Merlin didn't realize they were now only a few minutes away from what once had been the black dot. Instead, he could see a tower shaped like a cylinder. It was black as night and it reached endlessly towards the sky.

Merlin thought about asking him more about his family, but Dragoon seemed really distressed. It was obvious that it wasn't easy for him talking about them. He decided to let the subject go, at least for now.

"How far does it go?" Merlin asked instead, looking at the tower.

"No one knows," Dragoon answered.

"This doesn't make sense," said Merlin, "a tower this high should be visible from all Camelot."

Dragoon smiled. "Someone once told me the tower is not a real place. It is the heart's rest. The mind's deepest fear. The stillness in a humming bird's eye... Basically, you can't see it from afar because it doesn't really exist."

"Then what are we seeing?" Merlin asked.

"I think it's a scar. You see kid, my story didn't end there. After doing what I did I couldn't live with myself. In my anger I had killed hundreds of innocent people, exactly what I had spent all my life trying to stop. I went to the others kings and explained what had happened. I turned myself so they would find a punishment fit for what I had done." Dragoon took a deep breath. "They thought I had gone crazy. None of them remembered anything about the sixth kingdom, to them there had always been five. I talked to merchants, peasants, soldiers, even dragons, but it was always the same: no one remembered. Do you understand what I'm saying? I didn't just destroyed the kingdom, I erased it entirely. Whatever I did created a hole in the very fabric of reality, and when it close, it left the entire kingdom on the other side. I think the tower is an echo of that spell, a scar that was left when the breached closed.

"I'm not sure exactly what I did or how. Even now, with all my training, my magic is nowhere near enough to do this again. To be honest, I don't think that any sorcerer, no matter how much he practises, could ever do a thing like this at will," Dragoon said, but then tilted his head. "Well, maybe one," he added.

Merlin didn't like what Dragoon have just implied. He looked at the building ahead of him. Had it been anyone else who had told him that story, he wouldn't have believed them, but with Dragoon anything was possible. He tried to imagine the pain he must have felt losing his wife and child. A pain so great that it can tear the world apart. His mind went back to when Nimueh almost killed Gaius and his mother. Merlin had instinctively summoned a lightning bolt and blown her to pieces. What would happen if that same scenario repeats today? What would he be able to do?

"All this isn't just to tell me about your past, right?" he asked.

"Of course not. This is a warning, one I wish I had had," Dragoon said. He gestured at their surroundings. "This is what happens when you let your powers control you, instead of the other way around."

Merlin looked ahead and took a few deep breaths, assimilating everything Dragoon had said.

"Are we going to go in there?" he finally asked, nodding towards the tower.

"Are you kidding me? Not a chance," answered Dragoon. "That place is creepy as hell."

"Then what was the point of coming all this way?" Merlin asked, confused.

"Would you really have believed me if I have told you this story back in Camelot?"

Merlin smiled and nodded. "I would have had some doubts," he agreed.

"Exactly," Dragoon said. "And now that you do believe me, we better go back; it's getting dark."

They were almost entering the Impenetrable Forest when Merlin spoke again.

"What was the name of the sixth kingdom?" he asked.

Dragoon looked at him and smiled. "You know what kid? I can't remember."

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Merlin was setting up camp right outside the Impenetrable Forest. He finished lighting the fire and turned around towards the wall of trees. Dragoon had stayed there to try to make peace with Mab. Merlin had expected some kind of explosions, fires, yells or loud noises, but instead all he could hear were a few crickets in the distance. He was thankful for that, he had already had enough excitement for one day. He sit next to the fire and open his bag. To his surprise the gem of the book was flashing red. Green starting a conversation was a very unusual thing. He opened the book and turned to the last written page.

"Are you there?" she had asked.

"Yes," Merlin answered. "Sorry I didn't answer you before, Dragoon had me occupied."

"What are you doing?"

"Believe it or not I'm camping outside the Impenetrable Forest."

"Why would you go there? It's impenetrable..."

Merlin thought for a second. He couldn't tell Green about the tower, it was too dangerous. Besides, it wasn't his story to tell.

"Do you know who Queen Mab is?" he asked.

"Of course I know; she is the guardian of that forest," Green wrote.

"Alright, you won't believe this; I just found out that Dragoon and Mab had something in the past."

"You are kidding! He and Mab?"

"Apparently."

"So Dragoon is there with you?"

"Right now he is inside the forest talking to her."

"Are you sure they are just talking?" Green asked.

"I haven't see any explosions so I don't think they are fighting," Merlin answered.

"That's not what I meant."

"What did you m—" Merlin went red when he understood what she had implied. "Oh, I haven't thought about that. I don't think so. They seemed to have broken up a long time ago."

"This is incredible... to think that Mab would chose a mortal... Blue, what do you know about Dragoon?"

"Not much more than you really. Powerful wizard, makes silly jokes, thinks highly of himself. Why?"

"No, nothing. It doesn't matter. I need to ask you for a favor," Green wrote.

"Sure. What?"

"Snowflake got sick, something she ate I think, and I need a few herbs to make a healing potion. There are fairly common, but I have no way to get them. Could you ask Doc to give me a few? I'll pay for them, of course."

"Do they work on a cat?"

"I hope so."

"Which herbs?" Merlin asked.

Merlin read the list as Green wrote it. Like she had said, those were your everyday herbs and, as far as he knew, they couldn't be used for anything bad. He didn't think Gaius would miss a few.

"I can get them for you, and don't worry, I won't charge you anything."

Merlin finished writing that when he realized something huge.

"Wait, does this mean we are going to see each other?" he asked.

"Of course not!" Green answered. "You are going to leave the herbs somewhere in the forest and I'll pick them up later."

"What if I hide and wait for you there?" Merlin asked, teasing her.

"Don't! Promise me you won't do that," Green wrote.

She sounded afraid of he seeing her. Shouldn't this be the other way around? He was the one with the secret. Still, he did say yesterday he wanted to help her but didn't know how, and here she was, asking for his help. It didn't get much more obvious than that.

"Alright, I promise," Merlin finally wrote. "Do you have a place in mind?"

"I think the Ancient Temple would make a good hiding spot. Do you know where that is?"

"Yes. I'll leave them tomorrow at noon and you can picked them up after that, is that fine?"

"It's perfect. Thank you Blue. Really."

"Magnanimus, remember?"

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A/N: I hope you liked it!

Poor Dragoon u_u.

I took some liberties with the dark tower, both in its origins and its shape. Also, this Mab is a little less crazy than the original :p.

Kind of short chapter with lots of talk, but the next one makes up for it ;D.

Next chapter on the weekend! (probably Saturday)

Thanks Patiku, CHARLES CHUKU, mersan123, Lady Flurryous and Guest^2 for the reviews =D