A/N: Thank you GuestM Live, PadrePedro, and SnidgetHex for reviewing! Yes, I did envision the movie balrog for the demon. XD


Chapter 5

Gwen walked through the castle halls, her mind and emotions in turmoil. She wasn't unfamiliar with this type of helplessness, had grown up under it in the worst way. But they had come so far, not just with the light dome protecting them here in Camelot, but the way their light spinning powers had evolved, given them more control, more might. To be rendered useless again was a heavy blow to all of them.

She had checked her chambers but Arthur wasn't there, so she was now heading toward the council chambers. As she neared the doors, she heard shouting, which gave her pause. Having Uther intrude upon their lives had been hard on her husband, and she was torn between giving him privacy and providing a stable support. But a raucous crash spurred her into action and she hurried into the room. It was quiet now, and Arthur was just standing there, a strange smile on his face. The mirror had been shattered, shards littering the floor at his feet.

"Arthur, are you all right?" she asked in concern, hurrying toward him. She didn't see any blood, but she took his hands to examine them anyway. He stiffened under her touch.

"I'm fine," he said curtly.

She looked from him to the broken mirror, then softened her tone. "I heard yelling. What happened?"

He flicked his gaze to the shards for a moment, then said, "Yes, I was…letting out some frustration."

She gave him a sympathetic look. "What did Uther say to upset you?"

Arthur withdrew his hands. "Nothing. He couldn't help us anymore and it was time for him to move on."

Gwen nodded understandingly. "It's probably for the best. You don't need his presence making things more difficult for you."

Arthur didn't say anything to that, just stared at her with a somewhat unnerving intensity. Then he surged closer without warning and pressed his mouth to hers. At first she thought he simply needed the comforting contact, but then he was pushing more insistently, more hungrily. One hand grabbed the small of her back, and the other groped her chest. She was so shocked by it that she shoved him away, but he tried to hold fast.

"Stop!" she exclaimed.

"Why?" he growled, and it was so uncharacteristic that Gwen was stunned frozen as he tried to force the intimacy again.

"Arthur!" She twisted out from his hold and gaped at him. "What is wrong with you?"

"I want to be with my queen," he retorted, but there was a frightening coldness in his tone. "What's wrong with that?"

"At a time like this?" she spluttered. "Merlin is dying and there's a demon out there we're unequipped to fight!"

He huffed and finally took a step back, his expression going blank. "Of course. Forgive me, my passion overcame me."

Gwen just blinked at him in stupefaction. "I'm glad you got rid of Uther," she said, her own tone taking on a cool note. "I don't like the mindset he puts you in."

Arthur's eyes flashed almost dangerously for a split second, and there was something frightening in it. But then he schooled his face once more and waved a dismissive hand. "Leave me. I have work to do."

Gwen felt the dismissal like a punch to the gut. In all their years together, as friends and lovers, through all the trials and devastation, Arthur had never behaved like this. She stood there, torn between reaching out and begging him to talk to her, to open up and let her in, as he had done for her the night before. But another part was hurt and confused and a little angry.

So she turned and left to give them both space to cool down for a bit.


Arthur found himself thrust into a barren wasteland shrouded in darkness, frequently lit by lavender lightning that suffused through the black brume above. He went rigid in horror as he recognized the Veil. Looking down at himself, he saw an almost translucent coating to his body, pale blue wisps fluttering from his skin. He pressed his hands to his chest—he could feel himself, his own limbs didn't pass through him the way specters in the Veil had before. But it was clear he was a ghost himself. He was…dead.

His breath caught in his throat—or would have if he'd had lungs to breathe. But he didn't. He was a spirit without its mortal shell. The shock of it left him reeling, and he sank to his knees. Uther had traded places with him. Had tricked him… He looked down at his wrist where the bracelet had burned. It was gone, yet he was still wearing a facsimile of his earthly clothing, the fabric just as pale and amorphous as the rest of him. He was dead and in the Veil.

Hot fury welled up that he had trusted his father, that he'd thought, for one split second, that Uther might have truly cared for him and wanted to make amends. But it was a trick from the beginning. Emotional manipulation. Arthur was such a fool.

And what was his father's plan? Surely he wouldn't get away with masquerading as Arthur; he didn't know anything about his son to be able to pull that off. His friends would realize something was wrong. Gwen would realize.

Fear gripped Arthur's heart at the thought of her. Uther had sacrificed his own son to the Veil to regain a body in the mortal world; what would he do to protect it? He would kill Gwen without hesitation, Arthur was sure. And any of his friends who tried to get in Uther's way. And Arthur had no way to warn them. He looked around the desiccated vista, wondering if one of his friends would appear in this place, victim to Uther's machinations. His chest hitched as he thought of Merlin. Was he here already? His soul sundered from his body when his dragon was destroyed?

Arthur sat on the hard rocky ground for a long time, not knowing what to do. There wasn't anything he could do. Unless…he could try to make contact with his friends the same way Uther had. But how? He'd had the help of a dead sorcerer. Could Arthur somehow track that person down?

He pushed aside his overwhelming despair and forced himself to his feet, turning in a slow circle. Everywhere was darkness briefly lit by silent lightning. In the distance, though, he heard the echo of screams. A shudder went through him as he remembered the tormented souls that had tried to take Gwen when she'd fallen through the Rift. Horrible banshees on their way to becoming Wraiths. Arthur turned and hurried the opposite direction. He didn't know where he was going or whether it would even make a difference. Every inch of him hurt, his very essence throbbing with the pain of grief and fear and the violence of his "death". He wasn't even a Lightspinner who might conjure a guardian spirit to stay with him so he wouldn't be utterly alone.

But neither was Uther, and he had managed to survive all these years in this place without losing himself. Whether his sanity had suffered further compared to when he was alive was a question Arthur didn't want to wonder about. He had already gotten a glimpse of how the same madness could be running through his own veins.

He kept moving; he had to just keep moving. But this hellscape was as endless as the known world. Did the terrain run parallel with the realm of the living? Was Arthur traveling further and further away, sabotaging his chance of ever coming back? The uncertainty was enough to paralyze him with doubt and indecision, but the screams would start drawing closer, and he would spur himself onward.

And then at some point, he noticed everything had fallen silent. He slowed to a stop, something prickling the back of his neck with unease. Arthur slowly turned around, then stiffened as a coil of icy dread curled down his spine. There, standing under a gnarled tree, was the specter of a little girl. Her posture was hunched unnaturally, and her eyes were black as pits yet still managed to stare right into Arthur. He swallowed hard.

"Morgana…"

Her head cocked to the side like a bird, stringy hair hanging in tendrils of seaweed down her shoulders. There was a predatory aura about her, despite the child form.

Arthur carefully raised a hand non-threateningly. "I'm Arthur. I'm…I'm your brother."

Her head jerked again, a preternatural tic that didn't break her piercing stare.

"I know what Uther did to you," he went on. "I'm so sorry."

At the mention of their father's name, Morgana opened her mouth and let out an ear-splitting screech. Then she rushed him, moving faster than his eye could track, a smoky blur that closed the distance in a second and then surged right through him. The glacial wave was like a bolt of lightning, and Arthur dropped to one knee with a ragged gasp. He clutched at his chest, non-existent lungs heaving for equilibrium.

Morgana came out the other side and stopped, turning to stare at him again with that feral madness. He held out a shaky arm to stay her.

"P-please," he stuttered. "I'm not him."

She screamed again, a blood-curdling, animalistic sound that reverberated through Arthur's sternum, and then she was bombarding him again. In and out, in and out, shocking his system with her searing contact, like dry ice poured down his throat. He fell forward onto his hands and knees with screams of his own. He tried to crawl, tried to stagger to his feet to run, but he couldn't escape. She punched straight through him over and over, and each time he felt the intensity of her hatred, her pain. It felt like his bones splintering every time.

Arthur collapsed onto his side, arms up over his head futilely. "Stop," he begged between sobs. "Stop!"

Then there was stillness. Arthur lay there shuddering for several long moments before he managed to open his eyes. Morgana stood over him, head once again cocked with that vulturine glare. This was what she'd done to Uther, this was the vengeance she had enacted upon him when they were both dead.

Tears would have been pouring down Arthur's face as he lay there wracked with sobs. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he blubbered. "I'm so sorry for what happened to you. I'm sorry I couldn't take you with me the last time I was here. I wanted to, I really did. There's just…there's no way to bring your soul back. Your body…" His chest hitched with a broken sound. "Your body is long gone. I'm sorry."

She crouched down, those beady eyes boring into him.

"Please," he pleaded shakily. "I'm not him. I'm not him."

She stretched out her hand, and Arthur tensed. It was the first human like gesture from her. Could he get through to her? Was there still that little girl somewhere inside this creature?

But then she curled her fingers into the back of his hair and yanked his head up.

"No," he sobbed as she raised her other hand and then punched an icy fist straight into his sternum, to the core of his essence. She grabbed hold and squeezed with supernatural might, and Arthur threw his head back and screamed.


Freya's hand lay loosely in Merlin's. She'd discovered she didn't have to keep a white-knuckled grip on him in order for her light to continuously flow into his body. But she knew the moment she broke physical contact, his heart and lungs would stop.

Gaius had instructed her to try infusing Merlin with her light and releasing it, to see if it would take seed. But it didn't, and those heart-stopping moments in-between had left her nerves raw. She'd decided she wasn't going to let go again, not for anything. Because what if the next time she tried, she couldn't bring him back?

She eventually fell asleep, head pillowed on the side of the mattress. There was an odd awareness in the back of her senses of the light still shining between them. Her hand may have been relaxed, but her mind was holding on as tightly as it could.

"Freya."

She stirred at the sound of her name, but the voice was far away and faint.

"Freya."

She twisted around in a muted, blurred world with no orientation. "Merlin!"

"Freya!"

"Where are you?" She struggled to wade through the thick mire of whatever realm this was. Then she spotted him in the distance, his expression urgent and pleading. His mouth moved but this time she couldn't hear what he was saying.

The fog abruptly rushed in, swallowing him whole.

"Merlin!" she screamed as he disappeared, and the next thing she knew, she was bolting upright in Gaius's chambers. She frantically glanced down at her hand in Merlin's, the light suffusing steadily.

"Freya?" Lancelot's soft voice penetrated the panicked haze.

She blinked up at her brother, who was standing over her in concern. "Bad dream," she replied hoarsely.

He grabbed a cup of water and held it out to her. She took a sip and then set it aside. Despite the assurance of the light in her hand, she leaned over Merlin's mouth to check if he was still breathing. The puff of air against her cheek was faint and shallow but there. A fresh wave of devastation washed over her, and she bowed her head over their joined hands. It had just been a dream, though something about it had felt real. Maybe it was prophetic. Maybe no matter how hard she held on, she was going to lose him.