A/N:

Hello!

I'm just gonna give you the chapter and talk at the end.

Enjoy!

Ilandrae

Disclaimer: Don't own anything Merlin. But these original characters of mine have made me fall in love again.

The City of Camelot - Art POV

Camelot was preparing. People swarmed the city and citizens dashed here and there gathering supplies. Those on the streets could barely hear themselves think as people shouted and screamed. Everyone was preparing for the coming day. A day they always looked forward to.

And a certain young Prince stood at the window of his chambers watching the chaos. Not quite seeing why it was necessary.

"I really don't know why they kick up such a fuss every time," Art complained softly. "It's my birthday, not like it doesn't come every year."

"Sire," his man servant smiled while he folded his Prince's freshly washed clothes, "it's their prince's birthday tomorrow they want to show they appreciate you. Let the people celebrate."

"But every year Terry!" the prince huffed. "And this year! After everything that's happened?"

Terry smiled. The fifteen-year-old had been serving Art since the Prince was five and he ten and though the red headed servant still took his duties seriously, he had been one of Art's closest friends for just as long. And he happened to be the only one other than the queen to have known about the prince's magic. Specifically selected for his druid heritage though he wasn't capable of magic himself.

"Oh, stop whining Princeling!" Mel huffed when she entered without knocking and startling Art from his brooding.

"I feel like we should have knocked." The lanky, raven-haired man that followed Mel in closed the door that she'd left swinging wildly. "Also, I feel like you shouldn't call him Princeling. Or that I should really be here. Why am I here Mel?"

"Because Marcus," Mel threw herself onto Art's bed and Terry frowned. "You told me last week that Camelot carnivals are fun, and I've never been to one. And if you lied to me, I want you near so I can push you in front of a cart."

"No, I mean in Prince Arthur's bedroom."

"Oh. You were wondering around like a lost puppy, and I took pity on you."

"Right." Marcus turned to Art and Terry. "Good afternoon, Prince Arthur, Mr Terry. I'm Marcus of the Darkling Wood Druids, apprentice of the High Druid Isildir and kidnappee of this here Village Girl. Pleasure to meet you both."

Art shook his offered hand. "You helped find Willis and his cult."

Marcus shrugged. "I just passed on some information."

"So why were you wandering around like a lost puppy?"

"Isildir thought it would be a good idea to have another sorcerer on hand tomorrow seeing as Emrys still can't use his magic properly."

Art sighed. "That's another reason why I don't know why we're doing this. The city has barely recovered from the Dark Sorcerer's invasion, Merlin can't use half of his magic and my birthdays don't have the best track record."

"In what way?" Mel sat up on Art's bed, interest piqued.

"As far as I can remember?" Art grimaced. "Two attempted kidnappings and one successful one. Ended up accidently throwing the culprits off a cliff last year."

"They got what was coming Sire." Terry put the folded clothes in a cupboard. "They nearly killed us."

"Maybe…" Art wasn't convinced.

"No maybe about it Art," Mel said. "From the sounds of it they probably deserved the drop."

Art leaned against the wall picking at his nails. "It didn't exactly help that one of them turned out to be some Prince going through a rebellious phase, they still haven't quite gotten over his death yet."

A contemplative silence filled the room. Marcus then looked to the door as if hearing something. "Sorry to interrupt this lovely story, your highness but Emrys is summoning me." Marcus waved a lazy goodbye and vanished without another word. Terry also excused himself to arrange the prince's lunch.

In a matter of moments Art found himself alone with Mel who once again was lying on Art's bed, her feet dangling off the side. She looked over to him, "Are you really that worried Art?"

He went over and fell back on the bed to lie down next to her, his own feet swinging. He reveled, as he always did, in the way she completely ignored his rank. He never felt more free.

He could feel her eyes turn to him as the silence stretched on.

"Like I said my birthdays never seem to go well." His words were quiet, and his fingers fiddled with the bedspread. "There's always the big festival, the big celebration. There's always chaos and the screaming. And someone always dies."

He turned to see her raise an incredulous eyebrow. "People die all the time Art. What's that got to do with your birthday?"

His hands, still searching for something to do, idly summoned a small ball of light and bounced it between his knuckles. His eyes remained firmly fixed on it as he spoke. "The first one I remember was my sixth birthday. Now, I know that the harvest had been thin that year. But then, all I knew then was that my nursemaid, Terry's mother, got trampled in a riot. On my seventh, I woke up to a dagger at my throat when a rival kingdom tried to kidnap me. My temporary tutor walked in and alerted the guards but got stabbed for her trouble. The year I turned eight, it was some rebel group who tried to kidnap me. But my guard at the time gave his life stopping it. I turned nine when my favourite hunting hound got shot by a stray arrow on a celebratory hunt. And last year, Prince Hilden of Deira led a gang that kidnapped me for ransom. Terry got caught up in it and when they were going to kill him, they got thrown off the cliff instead. I couldn't control my magic."

He continued to watch that small ball of light bounce as Mel digested his words. In recent years he'd thought his birthday to be cursed. Every year there was some incident. Every year there was some death. And the way this year was already going? Dark Sorcerer at large, Merlin only working at barely half his strength? Who knew what would happen this year.

He remembered when Prince Hilden had been about to push Terry of that cliff. That terror that it was going to happen again. But then Terry changed to Merlin, then to Lancelot, then to Mel. He had so much more to lose now. So much more that could be taken from him.

"Yeah, well that was those years," Mel said matter of fact. "Things change every year. I mean, now Emrys is here. And Sir Lancelot, and Lady Isolde, Sir Tristan and even Marcus. I'm here too. Don't think we'd all stand around and let people die. It's kind of the reason we've been learning all the sword and the magic stuff anyway, isn't it?"

Art's whirling thoughts came to an abrupt halt at her words. She was right, as she seemed to annoyingly be most of the time. He did in fact have more, not necessarily to lose, but to help. Maybe in the recent weeks there had been bad moments, but they didn't outweigh the good ones.

He didn't answer her question. Instead, he sent his magical light up to illuminate the roof of the bed canopy. Lighting up the space just like he used to do with a small lantern when he needed some reassurance.

Mel's mouth fell ajar as she saw the canopy roof which he'd painted with his mother a few years ago. A blonde-haired figure scaling a sheer cliff, a crimson cloak hanging in taters from his shoulders. The figure's grimy hand reached towards a single small and lonely flower. A seething mass of spiders writhed in the depths below, while a shining blue sphere glowed above, bathing the scene in its light.

They'd painted it there as a fun past time, the favourite scene from his favourite story of his father. One of the secret stories his mother had shared with him, one of magic.

But when Art looked at it in times like this... it was to remind him.

To remind him to follow his heart even when everyone told him it was stupid. To remind him that every life is worth saving whether it was a commoner, noble, or sorcerer. And to remind him that even if you are lying unconscious, fighting for life as poison spreads through your body, as long as you keep fighting, you can still help others.

So even if bad things had happened in the past. Even if his past birthdays had not gone to plan. It didn't mean he should stop fighting. It didn't mean that it would happen again. And even if it did, he was a lot stronger now and he had a lot more friends to help this time.

He smiled at Mel as she gazed at the image above their heads in wonder.

"Thanks Mel."

No one was dying this year.

Camelot City - Leon POV

Leon was stressed. Very stressed. He'd spent the past week dashing from one meeting to another, to knights training, to Art's tutelage, to yet another meeting and back again. Eating on the run and only sleeping in brief snatches.

Currently he'd just finished up a meeting with the new Councilman Redgard, Willis' replacement and the new head of the city guards.

They'd spent the past two weeks systematically rooting out Willis' supporters from the city. Including having to rehire approximately half of the city guards, about a third of the city officials and to Leon's greatest disappointment, a handful of knights. This of course was done with considerable assistance from Mel, Mithian and Isolde, the latter of which had accepted Tristan's considerable and heartfelt apology with a sly smile and a pat on her husband's head.

Whereas Mithian was now practically dancing from room to room. Fixing problems left and right with a smug smile on her face with no one being stupid enough to suggest she didn't know what she was doing. Not to mention being a downright distraction to the younger knights, more than one of which had made advances that she politely declined. She then proceeded spend considerable time laughing about it with Gwen and Isolde mere hours later.

Then there was Mel. He'd been paying more attention to the girl of late. And he'd realised she was a lot stronger than she'd been when she first arrived. And more than one morning he'd seen her and Art walk laughing from the forest, not to mention Lance being late to morning trainings and Merlin looking far too pleased with himself. It wasn't hard to figure out what was going on. But it gave him an odd sense of satisfaction that she'd already started her training, while Art's sudden increase in horsemanship now made sense. And just like the others, since the cult incident the girl was more confident. All three of them were almost daring people to try and hold them back again.

However, it all only served to remind Leon how important Art's birthday festival tomorrow was. He and the knights of Camelot had a lot to prove, to themselves, to Camelot, and to their Prince.

He knew how much this all bothered Art. How his birthday had always seemed to end in loss and death, especially last year. They were still in negotiations with Deira over their prince's death. Though the King and Queen accepted that Hilden's fate had been an unfortunate consequence of his rebellious and irresponsible actions, the prince's elder and younger brothers still held a grudge and considerable influence over their people. He only hoped the rumours about what those two Princes in question were doing weren't true.

But it seemed that his wandering and stress addled thoughts had summoned the objects of his thoughts. He walked into the armoury to check the stores only to find Mel and Art leaving with practise swords in hand.

"Sir Leon!" Mel jumped trying to hide her sword behind her. Art also stepped a little in front of her as if to conceal it.

Leon smiled at the attempt. "I already know you two, don't bother."

"You what!" Mel squeaked.

"You more than caught my attention after your escapades with Albion's Purge." He paused, seeing an opportunity. "How much training have you done?"

She shrugged, looking at her shoes.

But Art piped up. "Do you want to see Sir Leon?"

"What!" Mel squeaked again. "He won't wan—" Mel started babbling but Leon considered it. This had been his last task of the day... and he was more than a little curious.

So despite Mel's reservations he agreed and let the two kids lead him to their usual training ground, choosing not to mention the scorch marks he saw on the edges. Nor the fact that Mel immediately sat on Excalibur's stone with zero hesitation.

"How are we doing this without Emrys?" she asked.

"We'll just spar ourselves." Art started to clear a space of the usual forest debris that littered the ground.

"But I've never done that before"

"What does your training usually entail then," Leon asked. He wasn't sure how else one could train with another.

"I usually fight magic," Mel shrugged, and Leon's eyebrows shot up. "Or Sir Lancelot runs us through sequences and fitness courses. I prefer the magic though."

"You fight magic?"

"Merlin and I attack her with magic," Art explained, "and Merlin spells her sword so she can deflect and absorb the magic."

As Leon was trying to absorb that fact, Mel readied herself for her, apparently first, non-magical sparing session.

When they were ready, the knight called the start. Unsurprisingly, Mel made the first move, coming at Art with a rather graceful side slash which he blocked. She immediately pivoted to avoid his counter and shifted into an overhead. Art sidestepped, swinging as he did, and she pulled back to block him.

For the next few minutes, they slashed and parried and Leon was surprised to realise that they were equally matched. Art had been training since he could walk whereas Mel couldn't have held a sword for longer than a month or two. But the girl was well and truly a natural. Each move flowed to the next and she instinctively shifted between positions and strikes based on Art's counters and openings.

It was only Art's greater stamina that allowed him to gain the advantage and end with what would have been a killing blow.

As the prince helped up his friend Leon made up his mind.

So, help him, this girl would wear Camelot red.

A/N:

So, hi. It's been a while.

I found this again and fell in love with the story which has so much to give. Darkness Rising is actually the first story in a three-story series. And it's very nearly finished. I've actually written up to chapter 36 and am going to try and have a little bit of a schedule to get it out there. So, plan is: one chapter update every fortnight (I even set a reminder in my phone). Wish me luck.

Hope you enjoyed Art and Mel being adorable again.

Thanks,

I ;)