Hi there, so it's been…oh dear, three years. Yes, three whole years since my last update. Well…*cough* Ah, apologies for that. Life kind of swept me away. Anyway, better late than never, right? So, here's chapter three. Please enjoy, and I promise not to make you wait so long for the next chapter!
They'd only guided their horses a small ways into the woods when they began to feel unaccountably unsettled, as if something important was just slightly out of place.
For a while they continued forward regardless, the urgency of locating Merlin more pressing in light of this unsettled feeling in the woods.
It was Elyan who eventually hit on it: the still silence.
Usually, the forest was teeming with animal noises, the chatter of squirrels and birds, the rustle of long grass where the weasels and rabbits hid. Even the buzz of the insects was gone from the air. Only the gentle rustling of the wind through the leaves and the thumping of their horses hooves assured them that they hadn't stepped into some frozen illusion.
"It must be some form of sorcery," Arthur declared, eyeing the surrounding undergrowth with suspicion, hand moving back to rest on the hilt of his sword.
Lancelot shifted uneasily in his saddle, and Arthur couldn't blame him for seeming alarmed. Whatever sorcery this was, it had left the forest as empty as the currently unoccupied dungeons–and even in the dungeons, there were at least rats!
"What would a sorcerer want with all the wildlife?" Elyan asked. "I doubt squirrels would make a very effective army."
"I dunno, mate," Gwaine cut in. "If you've ever got naked, slathered in honey, rolled in birdseed, and dropped in the woods, you might change your mind about the little buggers."
"That's…a very specific example, Gwaine," Lancelot said, pulling his horse a step or so away from the grinning knight.
"Aye," Gwaine replied easily. "Never cheat a resourceful woman in a game of cards. Lucky there was a swift stream nearby, else I might not be here today."
The rest of the search party wisely chose not to encourage further details. For sanity's sake, if nothing else.
"Squirrels aren't the only things in these woods," Arthur pointed out. "Farther north of here, there's a fairly large wolf pack. Wild boar are nothing to take lightly, either. Venomous snakes would make excellent assassins, and even mice could spoil grain or chew through tack and gear."
Sobering, the company considered all the chaos an army of woodland creatures could potentially cause.
"Do you think this sorcerer has Merlin?" Percival asked gravely, speaking up for the first time since they set out.
"We can't know for certain," Arthur said. "But if he was in these woods when this sorcerer cast their spell…"
The others mirrored his grim expression, spurring their horses forward, now even more determined to find their missing friend.
Only Lancelot seemed to harbor some serious doubts, anxiously hoping that, whatever trouble his magically endowed friend had gotten mixed up in, they weren't about to make things even more difficult for him.
PS. I know a lot of you were hoping that the knights + Arthur would actually run across Merlin in this chapter, but I needed to set up their expectations before I got that far. Now I just need to figure out if I'm going to transition to Merlin's POV for the meet-up, or whether I should just stick with the knights…