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Chapter Text

Some say one's fate is tied to the land, as much a part of us as we are of it.

Others say fate is woven together like the threads of a tapestry, so that one's fate intertwines with many others.

It is a force that drives Kings and vassals equally; an unavoidable, potent power that decides the future of many, settling it on stone.

Or does it?

But when a single soul fights against this singular force, pursuing to cut the sturdy threads of this tapestry, the very course of History can be altered forever.

And not always for the better.

The High Lands.

Despite all these years listening to the low whispers back in Camelot's Court about hostile territory surrounded by harsh mountain ranges, a heart of ice even in the warmest summers and a persistent invisible web of arcane energies that acted as a protective carapace against any attempt King Arthur's army had done in the past to retain a land with a mind of its own since its last Lord, the fearsome renegade known as "The Red Knight", had fallen in disgrace; Lucius couldn't help but notice that the said land was… astoundingly beautiful.

True that the cold, mostly in the many nights he had spent sleeping in the wilderness, was a constant, relentless remainder about how resistance and brute strength were two essential, necessary qualities to endure successfully the impact this wild land did even in the most valiant of hearts.

But that didn't diminish the beauty of this fertile, lush soil even in the slightest.

Eyeing first the small bonfire they had prepared in order to roast the meager, skinny rabbits they had encountered in the mountains while searching for something that could make a good dinner, then his companion by his side, Lucius noticed just how sharp the sword's blade was becoming under the experienced ministrations with the hand whetstone.

"Where did you learn how to sharpen a blade?"

The said companion, green eyes and a pale serious face behind a wild mass of curly, bright red hair, stopped their movements briefly to immediately continue with the task. The still black steed with red ruby eyes by their right side showed briefly its sharp fangs. Were not for its constant presence by its rightful owner, Lucius would have felt… rather intimidated by that unnatural thing.

"I've grown amidst soldiers and magic practitioners." – the voice, a rough yet feminine voice answered – "Whatever task regarding combat, swordsmanship and maintenance of the armor and weapons I don't know, it doesn't exist."

"Bit boasting, are we?" – Lucius joked raising playfully an almost white eyebrow.

His companion's red brow, the brow of a girl, furrowed while her green serpentine eyes shone with amused malevolence.

"Boasting, you say?" – she repeated, a twisted yet charming smile upon her pale lips – Care to test my blade and its sharpness against yours to prove your point, Knight-Boy?

Knight-Boy. That had been her sort of pet name she had given to Lucius the second day of their shared journey towards the North, discovering new places and sharing suspicious glances in the dark around the fire.

They didn't trust completely each other, but they seemed to share a common unspoken sympathy for each other that lead, more often than originally expected, to amicable verbal banter.

She could be a girl, but talking with her was like talking to another boy, a dark, pensive, arrogant, yet somehow funny boy.

He could see with pristine clarity why so many had sworn their blades and their loyalties to this strange soldier girl.

Her aura, if a bit unsettling, had something so potent in its very essence that it screamed to the winds protection, victory… power.

For someone so young, she was powerful. Lucius had never encountered before someone with a soul so indomitable… except for his own mother.

Feeling a pang of sadness and nostalgia, Lucius still wore his mother's memory close to his coward heart. He remembered many evenings in his parents' chambers where his mother, the brave Lady Kayleigh, would teach him how to strike a pose and defend his flanks at the tender age of six while his father, the skeptical Sir Garrett, would laugh and lift him over his broad shoulders like a potato sack saying that it was Sleeping Time and no "no-no's" like to trench between their bed's covers and cushions or begging repeatedly and untiringly to the point of being annoying from a very rebel Lucius who asked for more time and a tale about warriors and dragons before unwillingly going grunting to his bed where he would dream to be knight one day just like his parents.

But that dream, as he grew up, was lost somewhere within him as he witnessed how dark and miserable the kingdom under Arthur's rule was becoming. Because he saw how many of the knights at the Round Table were look upon as the last hope for that diseased land that awaited for its sovereign to cure himself from his invisible illness.

And those high standards were held with the utmost rigidness, not a place for doubt or disobedience. Were you a knight at the Round Table, it was expected from you to literally die for your King.

And such a sacrifice for someone who had never instigated hope or even the minimum respect in the young man's heart was a sacrifice Lucius wasn't willing to do.

He now knew, deep in his heart, that without Perceval finding the Holy Grail and thus reawakening Arthur from his depression, Lucius eventually would have sworn loyalty to the bold Mordred, now sitting by his side as a girl and being, to his knowledge, the closest resemblance of a friend he had had in many months since Galahad's disappearance.

And he still didn't know anything about the fate of his childhood friend. It was disheartening.

However, as these thoughts reflected on his visage while an absent look put his eyes over the shadows around the bonfire dancing around him as a sort of spell, suddenly a hard nut collided with his cranium eliciting an unwilling moan of pain.

"What's with the long face, Knight-Boy?" – the rough feminine voice, her voice, asked – "We're not so brave when talking about crossing blades, eh?"

"I wasn't…!" – but noticing the almost impish smile full of sharp teeth she gave him, Lucius rolled his eyes – "My thoughts drifted to my mother for a moment. I wonder if she's okay or if she even lives."

Mordred… or Medraut as it was how she preferred to be called, looked at him with an odd mixture of feelings collected within her green irises that Lucius was unable to interpret at first.

"Sometimes I myself do wonder about my own mother's whereabouts when she doesn't appear before me to say what she needs to say to, immediately, morph into some weird animal and leave as soon as she comes." – she snorted, but something told Lucius that snort wasn't reflecting any type of amusement by her part – "She always does the same trick. Like those old hags she hangs with: you will never find them by your own means, they always find you, whenever you want it or not. That's the way of true witches, they never meddle with mortal affairs or mortals themselves unless they want to achieve something."

"Your mother is a witch?" – asked Lucius while throwing more dry wooden sticks to the fire and rotating the almost cooked rabbits.

"Sure she is." – Medraut answered gazing with those green eyes of hers the blazes in front of her, a sudden seriousness settled all over her knife-sharp features – "Ever heard about Morgan Le Fay?"

He had heard that name while hiding in Arthur's last moments conversing with the girl by his side… but he had never related that name to anything remotely close to sorcery.

True that name had been synonym, as long as he could remember, of bad augury and many blamed a somehow mythic figure of a woman clad in black as the source of the darkness that had been surrounding the land for so many years.

But nobody related that to a witch's doing. The whispers about this Morgan Le Fay were something more of a pagan legend than anything else. Perhaps an angry spirit or a spectral apparition whose sight was a sign of incoming death or something like that.

Until that very moment when Medraut had spoken this name in Arthur's presence, Lucius had always thought that this woman wasn't even real.

It had been just an unholy name, never to be spoken in his grandmother's presence, for it always brought a dark look on her gentle features. Lady Julianna had never been a keen enthusiast of local legends about spirits, and that one in particular had been always an unspoken "no-no" within Lucius' family.

Now he wondered why.

"So she's real then?" – the young man asked again, clearly intrigued – "Her name had been always a sort of ill omen for many peasants, but I've never thought said woman actually existed."

"That's another witch thing: to weave their presence among local legends, never confirm their true identity, neither their very existence." – Medraut said with a dark look while picking one skewered rabbit that looked crunchy enough and risked a bite – "Learned that long ago, when I started to ask questions whose answers aren't meant for child's ears."

With a pensive look, Lucius took the other roasted rabbit and, mimicking her, took a bite from the meat to, a second later, regret it dearly.

"Holy sh…!" – he exclaimed as his tongue and lips burned with the heated meat – "How in the Hell did you manage to eat that so nonchalantly?!"

Medraut laughed. And her laugh made Lucius forgot his pain for a brief moment. When she laughed he forgot the boy-notion he had towards her and saw the girl she truly was.

And he was unsure why that notion made him blush.

"The trick consists to tear the meat with your teeth without using your lips." – she explained while taking another bite – "The tongue thing is something you build up with time and many uncomfortable blisters 'till the muscle gets hard enough."

"Urgh…" - Lucius grunted – "And that's not bad for your taste sense? Y mean, if you charred your tongue…"

"Nah, it just gets you a sturdy, rough tongue. Nothing more." – she said between munches, offering a piece of her roasted rabbit to the monstrous black beast at her right side, his own dapple horse munching grass a few paces away nonchalantly – "Try eating some roots: the rougher you got your tongue, the easier is to palate and swallow them."

"Roots?" – he asked with a slight grimace of repulsion – "Why in the Heavens would you want to eat roots?"

"Awwwww, the Knight-Boy doesn't like roots for supper." – she mocked with a feigned sugary tone – "Does your momma know how spoiled you are, princess?" - she emphasized.

Blushing furiously, Lucius attempted to strike her with his rabbit on a stick, but she swiftly counterattacked with hers.

"Ha! Rabbit-on-a-stick duel, is it?" – she exclaimed pleased as a malicious grin spreaded all along her face while both struggled with their unsuspected weapons intertwined – "Challenge accepted."

So this way, Lucius found himself rabbit-on-a-stick-playing in a clumsy and caricaturized representation of a sword duel against an eager opponent who proved herself to be quite inventive even with such an unusual and ridiculous weapon at her disposition.

They'd got their duel, their meal discarded by the grass and, after such a strange display, their roaring laughs echoing through the dense, dark foliage of that mountain grove they were in.

And neither of them thought about their absent parents and their own loneliness when they went to sleep, tired and happy of having someone to laugh with.

After their evening prayers, the loyal congregation of Christian believers guided by the once dashing ex-knight Lancelot du Lac settled their camp near the swamp that had been the mute witness of Uryens' demise few weeks ago.

Lancelot felt unable to abandon that place, ashamed of his inaction towards such an injustice, paralyzed of what his old eyes had saw days before word ran around the kingdom about Arthur's death.

This black knight, this Mordred, had killed him.

But still nobody had claimed Camelot's Throne yet and many whispered about the sudden disappearance of Excalibur.

A King without a sword… the land without a King!

What will become of us now? – he thought, scared; still shocked of so many events unwrapped in so little time, still in denial about Arthur's death – My Lord, give me strength and enlightenment for my people, for they need hope where I cannot find it.

Futile attempt after another, for the Christian God wasn't a merciful one but rather this kind of deity that needed proof of your faith and repentance before showing you the light.

And Lancelot had been so many years wandering in the dark that he wouldn't recognize light even if it stabbed him between his ribs.

Pretty much like an unknown blade had just done with his midsection.

Feeling the pain with a slight delay until it reached his brains, the coppery taste of blood flowed within his mouth as his battered form fell limp right into the swamp mud.

He felt then a metallic sole of an armor's boot in his lower spine pry off with the sword that had gone through his lungs until the owner of said sword managed to unlock it from his body.

Knowing his strength was abandoning him quickly as the blood smeared the mud under him, Lancelot made a last effort to turn his weak body around until he was face to face to his killer.

And the eyes he found looking at him with disgust and hatred under a dark hood were like his own crystal blue eyes.

Then, a sudden spittle pearled his brow.

"Look at you, the mighty Sir Lancelot du Lac!" – exclaimed a soft masculine voice so full of venom that gave the dying man some pause, trying to discern his attacker's features under that hood while searching for something he couldn't place yet – "Now a pitiful, battered old man. How low your pride has befallen, you froggy* bastard."

"Who… who are you…?" – asked Lancelot, still unsure of what his instinct screamed crystal clear while his eyes were unable to tell about.

The face above him, the face of an angel of death, hardened its features while a thin thread of green glow ignited their eyes.

"You…!" – Lancelot exclaimed while choking with his own blood and bile – "You are… a warlock!"

Then a sudden, cruel smile plastered upon those perfect, cruel lips.

"Yes, magic is strong within our bloodline." – the other said with a tone cold as ice, metallic, unnatural – "But what should really trouble you is who are you looking at: do you recognize me?" – he asked before removing his hood.

Then after a quick examination, the pieces finally fit and a look of pure horror froze the ex-knight's features, leaving his corpse still with that same petrified expression after life had abandoned him.

"May you never find the peace in your rest, you bastard." – the soft masculine voice hissed amidst the swamp fog around their still forms – "For everything you have done to me, I curse your pitiful carcass to raise at my command. Raise, Lancelot du Lac, raise!"

As the battered body covered in blood and mud got up to behold its Master with empty, dead eyes, the warlock smiled cruelly at such sight.

"Come, my servant." – he said while evaporating amidst the growing dense fog – "For there's still much to be done."

"C'mon, Knight-Boy!" – her voice teased him from several meters fore him and his mount – "A snail would prove quicker given your progress through these woods' thickness!"

"Says the one who mounts a thrice-damned demon horse!" – he indignantly exclaimed, tired of zigzagging between a foliage so dense he barely saw a few palms beyond his nose – "I'm still wondering why in the blazes you've chosen this cursed path!"

Her laughter echoed in the middle of morning birds' chirping.

"Because the prize of taking hard paths is always more rewarding than following the marked roads!"

What was that supposed to mean? It was some kind of dark joke? Given her twisted sense of humor he wouldn't be so surprised if that were the case…

Grunting, hissing, cussing and making almost any kind of complaint, verbal or not, known by him, Lucius fought a while with the annoying lower branches of the huge trees he kept on colliding with, gaining indignant whinnies from his dapple horse until they reached (at long last!) a sort of a glade where a gigantic natural wall made of sharp rocks like pointed teeth emerging from the earth's gum gifted them with the powerful sight of a waterfall which start were at least one kilometer above their heads.

The rumbling noise of the water precipitating over the crystal-clear surface of an emerald green lake was deafening, powerful, and a pleasant sensation of freedom engulfed both youngsters atop of their horses.

"Wow." – said Lucius, speechless.

"Yeah." – agreed Medraut dismounting while still gazing at the imposing show in front of their eyes – "Wondrous sight, huh? Wait 'till we climb atop of the Crone's Tooth." – she added while pointing to a tall yet thin rock that reached few meters below the falls' start, like a very long finger pointing to the sky – "Sight gets better from above."

"Wait, wha…?" – Lucius did a quick check, measured by eye the said rock's height and went white as parchment.

In all these weeks being Medraut's companion, he had had not a single reason to remember how coward he was.

Now he remembered it like a hard slap in the face.

But she was already running around the lake, stomping over the tiny rocks at the shore like a swamp boar, finding the perfect spot to start wade the emerald waters until she'd reach the bottom of the said Crone's Tooth to start climbing it.

And all of this still embedded in that black armor of hers.

She was fucking insane.

But Lucius soon found himself getting rid of his own armor without a second thought, swimming out of breath like a fish towards her on his breeches and barefoot, observing her metallic silhouette gaining height by each step she took climbing that perilous rock.

Swallowing noisily, the young man grabbed unsurely a handful of moistened rock and, with trembling limbs, he started to follow her blindly, terrified but curious about what was all this about.

The cursed rock slide treacherously each time he tried to gain height and he was getting behind.

"C'mon, Knight-Boy, c'mon!" – she goaded him from above – "Give those wiry limbs some good use and climb as a salamander would do!"

During all this time, Lucius had worked up a good sweat and he was starting to feel a bit delirious because of the many little stabs and involuntary muscular tics his entire anatomy was experiencing under such a tiresome exercise.

"C'mon, you're almost there!"

Panting, with dry tongue and weak fingers, Lucius grabbed the next rocky ledge with a tremulous arm that, for a second, lost its strength and send the young man backwards.

But then, an iron grip grabbed him by the wrist and lifted his entire weight until his knees and toes were touching solid ground.

Panting hard, trembling from head to toes and sweating like a horse, once he squared his blurry sight he saw Medraut's face a few inches of his, her green eyes going through him, flesh, bone and soul.

But then, almost immediately, a hard clap over his right shoulder returned him to the real world.

"Good golly, Sir Folly!" – she exclaimed happily – "You did it! You've just did it!"

Raising an inquiring brow, Lucius were still panting. His throat dry as a desert.

"C'mere, Knight-Boy." – she said while taking him by the wrist again – "You've earned it."

And before he could formulate any half-coherent question, he found a sudden chill prickling on his naked palms as the force of the water precipitated right on his tender skin.

"Drink." – he heard among the watery roar.

And so he did. But in the very moment the moist freshness invaded his mouth, he was looking for more avidly.

Medraut observed him smiling, knowing by experience how it felt the first time.

"Refreshing, eh?" – she said as if she were talking about the weather.

"Oh my God!" – he exclaimed, air not enough to fill his lungs – "This is… this is the most delicious water I've ever tasted!"

"Of course it is." – she said with a feigned indifferent tone – "You're drinking from the mighty Fire Falls atop of Crone's Tooth. Only the ancient Kings of old were brave enough to climb it and taste the purest of waters."

Astonished, the young man first eyed the crispy water sliding between his fingers, then the fiery redhead with the impish smile in front of him, her messy mane like actual fire against the morning sun.

Then that was when he decided to look around him and, despite the insane height they were at, he got on his feet and admired the wild landscape that opened before his eyes.

Inhaling the chilly wind that brought scent of pines, moistened earth and wild roses, he felt like he could fly if he just tried.

"See? I was right." – she said after a while.

Lucius turned around.

"Huh?"

"Told you that the prize of taking hard paths is always more rewarding than following the marked roads. Remember?"

"Yeah." – Lucius turned again so he could continue admiring and feeling that peerless sensation.

"Well, this is the prize." – she said matter-of-factly – "Enjoy yourself."

So he did, closing his eyes and savoring that moment… until he heard something.

"What… what are you doing?" – he asked, baffled, as he saw how her strong form under the armor started to descend again.

Amidst the watery roar, he detected her laugh as a part of the very ambient noise surrounding them.

"I've already tasted the water and smelled my well-deserved freedom, now's time to return to solid ground. Or do you plan to live there forever?"

Eyeing first her fiery mane getting distant and distant below… suddenly Lucius realized how fucking far away the ground was.

And he felt… dizzy.

How in the Hell was he going to descend that monstrosity?!

"Oh, damn it…" - he whispered while kneeling on the rocks, grabbing the edge with tremulous limbs again – "Damn it, damn it, damn it…"

It had been so easy to follow her without looking downwards, always with the eyes fixed in the sky…

"C'mon, Knight-Boy!" – she exclaimed from below – "It's easier to get down than to climb up!"

Yeah... – he thought with a chilly sweat coursing along his spine – And it is easier said than done.

Still sore from the previous exercise, Lucius' steps downwards were more insecure, his muscles already protesting after few meters, his breath ragged, his perspiration abundant.

It was bound to happen one way or another.

So his foot found this slippery ledge, his own physical weight, if not considerable, acted against him and his sore muscles did the rest.

It took a while within his brains to process the pain product of his bruised side from the fall, the stinging from the violent splash against the lake's surface… and the emerald waters surrounding him while weight and gravity dragged him to the bottom.

Then a voice… a brief golden glint in the corner of the eye… mystic golden eyes, silvery long hair… a dress made of iridescent scales…

… The sword on her hand…

And the green arcane energies surrounding him; flesh, bone and soul united, propelled… and then…

An iron, darkened grip before the air went again on his lungs.

Somebody coughed beside him; then a dense, wet mass of bright red hair was the first thing his eyes saw.

"By the Gods!" – her rough, feminine voice found its way to his ears – "You okay, Knight-Boy?!"

Coughing as well, still feeling the sting on his left side, raw and tender but thankfully without any visible wound; Lucius eyed her with awe.

"You… you saved me…" - he managed to formulate.

"Yeah, and for being so damn skinny you're as heavy as a rock, geez…" - she complained – "Guess swimming with armor ain't a good idea, huh?"

Eyeing her with such intensity he thought his eyes would lose the ability to look somewhere else… until a deafening war cry raised his alert state immediately.

"MORDRED!"

And out of the blue, Medraut had unsheathed her sword from her mount's saddle, quick as thunder, to parry a monstrous claymore that came from behind.

Rubbing his eyes several times as if trying to convince that what he was seeing was real, Lucius beheld the powerful, fully armored frame of someone he thought he would never see again.

For he would recognize that armor anywhere.

"Bors!" – he exclaimed from his disadvantaged position on the ground, feeling a sudden pang of pain traversing his whole left arm and left side of his ribcage. The fall had been worse that he had thought in the beginning – "Stop it Bors! BORS!"

Bors the Younger, former knight of the Round Table as his father had been back in his day, at his scarce twenty-three years was a hulking mass of pure muscle and Medraut was feeling all the brute strength of the young man combined with how heavy her black armor felt after having take a swim with it.

They struggled a bit, their blades making small shrilling noises that made Lucius to teeth grinding.

"Great, just great." – Medraut hissed while fighting with her wet, now annoying long mass of red hair getting in the middle of her vision – "Another Arthur's bootlicker for breakfast. And a mastodon of all."

Behind his helmet's grid, Bors' eyes almost popped out of his skull.

"You… you're a woman?" – he realized after hearing her voice and studying her features more carefully, thunderstruck – "How…? No, this is not possible…"

Seizing her opportunity out of his evident confusion, Medraut's blade twisted around the hilt of Bors' claymore in a complicated maneuver that quickly disarmed him, leaving him defenseless before her.

"Oh, it is possible, mastodon." – she mocked while raising her blade with its sharp point against his throat – "Here you got the proof in front of your very eyes."

Bors' bulky frame knelt in front of her.

"Kill me." – he said, head down in shame – "I'm a disgrace to my Order. I've failed my King, I've failed my Brothers. I don't deserve to live."

Lucius held his breath for a moment until he saw Medraut first cocking a brow, then rolling her eyes.

"Oh, for fuck's sake…" - she grunted, clearly exasperated – "Quit the melodrama already, mastodon, and get the fuck up. Now."

Lucius blushed furiously not only after hearing her cussing so vehemently… but after witnessing again how powerful she could be.

He liked her powerful.

Confused, Bors lifted his face and carefully, making sure to not make any sudden move that could alert the fiery girl in front of him, took his helmet off.

Lucius sighed in relief after recognizing his comrade, the distinctive scar on his forehead the most prominent feature besides his squared mandible and thick dark brows.

A very late son of former King Bors, then Bors the Elder as the oldest knight in the Round Table, with a second wife; Bors the Younger had been born four years after the death of his by then only son, Sir Lionel, making Bors the Elder a father for a second time at the respectable age of fifty-three years old.

Technically a sort of a grand-uncle, Bors the Younger had been, since Lucius had memory, a sort of good-natured cousin that had been always there in his morning drills, being an integral part of his recent promotion of being a knight while many of them, their dying Order, kept disappearing or withering as the years left their mark upon the ill King Arthur.

Bors had been a support, almost like the big brother he never had. Lucius was glad to see him alive.

"Bors!" – he exclaimed again.

Diverting his sight from the strange warrior girl that had managed to defeat him, Bors blinked a few times.

"Lucius, is that you?" – he asked – "What is this… this highlander had done to you?"

Medraut rolled her eyes again. She knew the infamous nickname, and she wasn't willing to let it affect her like it affected her father, as her mother once told her.

Grabbing his now throbbing side, Lucius got up slowly and went to his relative's side.

"Well, you'll see…" - he began.

"You're wounded!" – Bors exclaimed, his eyes shining with anger directed towards the now nonchalant redhead – "Did she attacked you?"

Lucius inhaled deeply, feeling how the chilly sweat started to slid down his spine again.

"Erm… not exactly…" - he said hesitantly, his eyes nervously looking from Bors to Medraut – "We climbed up this rock and…"

"We?!" - Bors exclaimed again – "Don't tell me you're with her! Are you?!"

So, at that very point, Lucius swallowed. Hard.

"Well, what a touching reunion." – Medraut snorted with sarcasm – "But all this melodrama is making me nauseous. And bored since our good mastodon here clearly had been quite disconnected from the late news concerning Camelot, hmm?"

Eyeing her first with surprise, Bors then gave an inquisitive look to Lucius.

"What is she talking about?" – he asked, anxiety crystal clear all over his features – "Lucius?!"

The young blonde sighed. He had feared that much.

"Bors…" - he started carefully – "Around three weeks ago, Perceval returned to us to kneel before King Arthur: he had found the Holy Grail."

A sudden relief played on Bors' eyes.

"At long last…" - he said – "I myself was doubtful about the very existence of it. Two months away from the Court and my hopes had been waning, slow but surely. Thank God for His mercy and bless Perceval and his constancy."

But soon Lucius' hand grabbed his relative's wrist.

"I'm not finished yet, Bors." – he announced – "When Arthur drank from the chalice, his eyes cleared and his spirit returned to him."

"Thank God…"

"… But then, he decided to play war."

"With her, no doubt." – Bors gave a hard look to Medraut – "Continue."

Lucius sighed again.

"Our last battle was at Camlann, Bors." – he explained sadly, remembering such a butchering confrontation, not a soul left alive afterwards – "Arthur… invoked Excalibur's power… but he was old and…" - he stopped, unable to continue.

Bors' eyes held a deep sadness.

"He… he's dead?" – he mumbled absently – "After all these years… everything had been for nothing? Our Brothers… our people…"

"I'm so sorry Bors… I've lost much in that battle as well…"

"Who killed him?" – suddenly, the always good-natured gaze of Bors the Younger was filled with venom as he spoke – "Was it her?" – he asked as he pointed Medraut with his now furious eyes – "Where's Excalibur?! Does she have it?!"

But before Lucius could provide an answer, another voice surged from the foliage.

"She had Excalibur in her power, although briefly." – the serene tone of this new voice brought confidence and comfort to all of the presents, special as its owner himself was – "I saw how she threw the sword to the waters so nobody could wield it again."

The three youngsters raised their eyes until they localized the calm figure of a rider atop of a white horse, his armor shining as a sunray, his pose gallant and dignified, his crystalline, pious blue eyes framed by golden short locks of curly hair.

Were not for his distinctive masculine voice, the person in front of them could've easily been mistaken for a girl.

"Galahad!" – exclaimed Lucius happily, having his only and best friend by his side once more.

The dashing young man smiled, and his smile was as radiant as a morning glory.

"I'm glad to see you in one piece, Lucius." – was his greeting – "A mighty feat given the companionship you had been entertaining as of late." – he added directing a brief look towards Medraut. However, his eyes held no contempt against the redhead but an amicable curiosity – "I've been following the two of you at a prudent distance, for the lady here has the keenest senses I had the pleasure to test in a long time. You would make a fine hunter, my lady."

"As you would make a fine flatterer, Goldilocks." – Medraut snorted, amused – "What are you intending to achieve by following us? To lay an ambush? Pardon me if I say that this display makes an epic fail for an ambush. I can tell you are alone."

Galahad smiled again, his blue eyes shining in the sunlight as two gems.

"I mean no harm to you or my good friend here Lucius." – he stated – "But now, with Bors' interruption, I feel that now is time to talk, for there's much to discuss about what your intentions are towards the kingdom… Medraut, daughter of Ruber of the High Lands."

Chapter Text

"Let me see if I got this right." – Bors' face was quite the poem – "First you raised an army to attack Camelot, then you showed at the castle gates to throw your challenge against King Arthur…" - he was getting incensed with each word spoken – "… To, later, fight at Camlann, win the battle, throw Excalibur to a lake and just walk out as if nothing had happened?!" – he ended shouting, his squared reddened face a consequence of his anger – "You're a lunatic, highlander! That's what you are!"

Medraut was munching nonchalantly an apple she had picked from her saddlebags meantime a busy Galahad sat behind a contemplative Lucius while struggling to clean and bandage his friend's still tender scratches before they started to swell.

"First things first." – Medraut clarified between munches – "My original plan was to challenge Arthur in singular combat, but problem was that the old man didn't even deigned himself to show up at the gates to deal with me like a man in his position would."

"He was ill, damn you!"

"I ignored such a thing and nobody had the decency to tell me about it." – the girl said, furrowing her brow – "He seemed perfectly healthy back in Camlann. A bit old and desperate, yes, but healthy." – and then, a humorless smile spreaded by her lips – "He even gifted me with a short but intense fight. After that we talked, we stated our business and our reasons and he died. End of story."

Lucius swallowed discreetly, not liking a bit the turn this conversation was taking, while Bors' look of hatred did not diminish in the slightest.

"And Excalibur? And the kingdom?" – he pressed.

"Would you seriously think I would have thrown the stupid weapon to a lake if I intended to take the Throne?" – after finishing her apple, she dropped the wasted carcass to the grass and crossed her arms – "I've told you: I wanted Arthur's head, but the crown over it… I couldn't care less."

"And all of this for what? For a man you never knew?!"

Suddenly, Medraut's face darkened. That was a topic she was sensitive about and, nobody had the right to tell her what or whatnot her heart could claim.

And her heart said proud and loudly that she would have liked very much to grow with a father who, if he was anything like the man her mother spoke about, she would have loved him with all her might.

Nobody had the right to tell her otherwise.

"Listen, mastodon." – she began, her green serpentine eyes cold and authoritative – "You grew with a father and a normal, standard mother who had been loving you since your birth. You'd been raised among fucking amenities in an environment full of rich, cultured people and not surrounded by odd folks, mostly warriors and mages, out of only the gods know which dark chapter of History, in a strange land populated with stranger magic beings with a very, trust me, very short temper plus random spirits and crazed crones who like their magics a tad too much and whose word is law regarding when you see or you don't see your mom because, oh so fun-fucking-tastic, you're not "gifted" as they are." – as she went out of breath pulling out such amount of information (an information quite difficult to digest, by the way), the young man in front of her went backwards a little, guarded and impressed by her outburst – "So don't give me that crappity crap about "King Arthur was the goodie, your dadda was the baddie and he got what he was asking for. So deal with it, duh", for, precisely, you're not the most indicated to give me lessons in morals having been leading a life full of blacks and whites while there's an infinite spectrum of grays."

Bors' mouth shut immediately while Galahad raised his eyebrows, impressed, gaining a low hiss from Lucius when he pressed a bandage too tight. The girl wasn't a mere brute as the blonde knight had expected; no wonder she had Lucius so smitten to the point to even overlook the fact that she, technically, was the enemy. No wonder either that Bors looked so furious.

They were knights of the Round Table and Lucius, with his youth and naivety, was trampling unknowingly over their sacred duties.

"Grudges aside, dear Bors, I believe we should talk about what is the current situation that brought us together today: that black armor." – pointed Galahad, setting his friend's long white hair aside to work better with the bandages – "If your pretensions towards the Throne are genuinely indifferent, my lady, I find myself in the dire need to ask you about the fate you're planning to bestow upon such instrument of sorcery."

The girl blew a curly red lock that had gone to her face.

"Returning it to its legitimate owners: the Wayward Sisters." - she deadpanned.

Bors looked horrified.

"You've made a pact with those evil beings?!

Medraut rolled her eyes for the hundredth time that day."

"Of course I did." – she said – "I practically live with them, man."

"What?!"

"Have you not been listening? Where I come from, those three hags are, in a way, the maximum authority along with the immortal beings that populate Avalon."

"A… Avalon?!"

Lucius looked fascinated, Galahad pensive and Bors astonishment grew to new heights.

"Yeah, Avalon." – the redhead grunted as if talking with retarded children – "You know… fabled place, magical forces, fairies and stuff…"

"We know about the mystic land of Avalon, my lady." – said Galahad, finishing his work with the bandages and helping his friend to put his shirt on – "But my question is: being you not a sorcerer… how did you manage to get from Avalon, a kingdom beyond mortal sight, to this realm?"

"Boat and oars."

Silence.

"Care to elaborate?"

Medraut sighed in frustration.

"There's nothing to elaborate: they said 'here's your enchanted armor, here's a bag with some viands. See that boat with the oars? Good. Start to row 'till you reach a shore and go to the South 'till you see a golden-silver castle. Your fate awaits there and blah, blah, blah'." – she explained quickly, defensive and embarrassed by revealing such a lame part of her mighty campaign against Arthur – "End of story."

The three young men raised their brows almost at the same time, which produced a strange comical effect.

"Just like that?" – Lucius was the one brave enough to ask the question all of them had in mind.

The redhead facepalmed herself, wishing the earth just swallowed her right now. Great, twas the awkward reminder she just needed to finish the day. At that moment she wished she had been a minstrel, for she wasn't very good at adorning stories and speaking the truth, it seemed, raised more questions than easy, accepting smiles. Urgh.

"Yeah, just like that..." – she grunted after a while.

"And no magical intervention?" – seconded Galahad.

Medraut then sent him an inquisitive look.

"You ask far too many questions about the switch between realms, Goldilocks." – the girl stated with a suspicious glance – "Too many questions regarding the magical and supernatural… for being a Christian believer."

Galahad barely blinked.

"I'm just trying to understand the mechanics of traveling between realms because, as you previously stated, that armor belongs to the Sisters."

"Yes, and?"

"And I'd very much like to know how you plan to give it back to them without a clue of how to return to their territory." - he reasoned – "You yourself said that you're no magic practitioner and you arrived to our land by row; a means, if you allow me to say, quite mundane."

"Versed on the topic, are we?" – she mocked – "Interesting…"

"Don't you dare to accuse a knight of the Round Table of sorcery or knowledge of the Vile Arts, highlander!" – Bors exclaimed, incensed again and raising at the minimum opportunity against the redhead.

Medraut's nostrils flared for a second. The stupid big lump was starting to be offensive and very annoying.

"For being a mastodon, you're a little high on your horse about Camelot's knights and their striving for imaginary perfection." - she counterattacked.

"Repeat that if you dare!"

"Or what?" – she challenged – "You're going to pick that rusty claymore of yours from the ground and push your luck with me and my armor a second time?" – she gave a tap to her dark metallic carapace with a prideful, yet malign gesture – "Believe me: with this armor, I can take down the three of you without even breaking a sweat. Plus, you're big, slow and your technique is a bit clumsy."

"How dare you!"

"What? You're going to cry?"

"ENOUGH!"

After such a deafening yell echoing in the middle of the quietness of the woods, both Medraut and Bors turned around to look the slender Lucius with big eyes.

"You're quarreling like children and this is not going to get us far!" – he exclaimed – "Don't you see? We need to work together to get that thing where it belongs!"

"Lucius speaks the truth." – seconded Galahad with a serious gesture, foreign in a face so affable like his – "That artifact, like Excalibur itself, shouldn't be in anyone's hands that could abuse its power."

"Like she did?" – said Bors venomously.

"I renounced to your stupid kingdom and Arthur's stupid sword, you idiot!" - Medraut exclaimed indignantly – "So shut the fuck up!"

Lucius sighed loudly and Galahad pinched the bridge of his nose tiredly.

"Anyway…" - continued the Apollonian knight, his blue eyes squinted – "It is clear that we cannot destroy it, so if the lady's intentions ring true, which I believe they are, it is in our best interest to get that armor out of our realm. It could prove dangerous in the wrong hands. We must find these witches, and soon."

Nobody said anything more, for an unspoken truce of companionship was forged on that very moment, with Mother Nature as witness.

For they, if still confronted against each other and with very different interests guiding their steps, knew this temporal allegiance was for the best.

Although they, as four young, silly and temperamental folks, each had a very different definition of 'what was for the best'.

Six days, she had said. Six days was the time they would be spending through these woods until they reach their destination.

"And which destination is that exactly?" – Lucius, unspoken declared speaker for every question the three young men had regarding this strange quest since Galahad was too soft-spoken for Medraut's tastes and Bors… well, best not to talk about Bors.

Now that the young pale man thought about it, he hasn't asked Medraut where they were going since he had known her. He had simply allowed himself to be dragged alongside with her impetuous spirit and with little more than almost blind trust.

A trust, his knight comrades had told him in private, that was entirely misplaced.

"The shore where I left my boat hidden a year ago." – had been her short answer.

"So, your plan is to get on that boat again and start rowing until you reach Avalon's shores by a strange, fated coincidence?" – had been the immediate response she had got from Bors – "Now that's the worst possible plan I've ever heard."

And her counterattack had been equally immediate.

"Got a better idea, Mastodon?" – she had hissed, dangerously close to being pissed off, and for her life she knew she could be pretty nasty when she was pissed – "Go on, let's hear it." – and seeing the hesitant expression in Bors' visage, she had smiled with self-sufficiency – "Thought so."

In truth, her plan was purely based on her own hopes that the old hags would be so eager to recover their artifact that they will put the necessary means at her disposition so she could return to Avalon with it wielding her victory as a banner.

Besides, she wanted to return to Avalon as soon as possible.

She had taken that decision the very first night she had spent in the others' company and all of them had gotten tasks to set a camp.

She had taken the task of getting some dry wood for the bonfire they had improvised and she was carrying proudly a good pile of broken branches that could've put in shame even that stupid mastodon's strength. With such an amount of wood, the bonfire could last a good part of the incoming night.

"I don't know about the both of you, but I don't trust the highlander in the slightest."

However, at the very moment she had got close to the area where the other three were doing their assigned chores, she had heard the cursed big lump speaking in a voice so low that it was clearly intended not for anybody else's ears than the ones from his two companions.

But she, together with many other physical enhancements the black armor provided for her already strong body and keen senses, had a pretty sharp sense of hearing.

So, she had approached them quietly, her soul shaken and her thoughts darker with each word spoken.

"That detail, dear Bors, have been quite evident since your blades crossed." – Galahad's voice, calm and gentle, had replied with an undertone of slight amusement.

"Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she disarmed him quite easily." – the third voice, Lucius voice, teased – "Don't be mad, Bors. She'd kicked many arses before yours."

And maybe that tiny pearl could've put a smile on Medraut's lips if not by the sudden course the conversation took.

"Watch your tongue, Lucius." – said Bors with a warning edge in his tone – "For I'm still displeased and very disappointed at you given the side you have chosen in this war."

"What are you talking about, Bors? The war is over! It has been over weeks ago!"

"Your naivety, if sometimes endearing, will prove one day to be your undoing, Lucius." - Bors' voice had grown very serious by seconds – "But I can understand that you only see a girl around your age instead of the real enemy she truly is. Without that helmet she looks like a kid, just like you. But maybe she's not."

"What are you trying to say, Bors?" – questioned Galahad softly – "Speak your mind."

"What I'm trying to say, Galahad, is that I don't buy her story." – he stated – "Avalon, the Lost Kingdom beyond our earthly world? I don't know; I wouldn't believe such a preposterous affirmation given not the evidence of her armor."

"So?"

"So maybe she's telling us the truth about her origins, maybe not, but what it is crystal clear is her affiliation with an unholy power so dark and ancient that had secured her victory against Arthur and Excalibur. That makes her dangerous and not a much-loved figure in our lands, precisely." – continued the oldest knight somberly – "She's stupid if she thinks she's safe after what she has done. And, even if I find her brash, vulgar and insultingly arrogant, I don't think she's stupid at all. Were I in her shoes, I would try to eliminate any possible witnesses that could relate her with the name of Mordred. That includes us."

The silence that followed clearly meant that they were weighing his words carefully.

Still silent and shrouded in shadow, dry wood on her hands, Medraut's pupils flickered briefly while her fingers inside the black gauntlets closed a bit forcefully around the wood, cracking slightly the rind.

"Have you ever wondered why she allowed you to accompany her on her journey? Did she take off her armor in your presence even once?"

She hadn't. But that was due to her own weird sense of propriety and… well, that she didn't trust the young man's intentions towards not just her, but the armor.

Many had tried to rob it from her in the past year, even surrounded by her own army. Treachery threatened from each corner and the old hags had already warned her that the black armor in the wrong hands would prove incredibly destructive.

It was a dangerous artifact not meant for human's greed.

"As much as I hate to acknowledge it, Bors' reasoning is solid, Lucius. To her knowledge, 'till today you were the only one left alive who had seen her face in the battlefield."

The armored arms around the dry wood trembled slightly while a familiar tension built in the muscles of her neck and shoulders.

"I suggest we decapitate her while she sleeps."

The dark metal over her clothes and naked skin vibrated slightly as a pulsating buzz filled her brain. Like needles sinking on her circulatory system and making their way through the blood, the arcane energies within the artifact transferred themselves to her skin and started to tint it with a faint green glow.

Then the intrusive thought.

Kill them.

"Bors! Have you lost your mind?!"

"It's the only way, Lucius. While she wears that armor, she's invincible… but I doubt very much that she sleeps with the helmet on. It's our only chance."

Kill them.

"I think this is too hasty a decision to undertake, Bors. We still don't know about her true intentions."

"Not you, Galahad, not you too. Remember who we are talking about: Mordred, the one who raised an army made of Brothers and their vassals who betrayed us, the Kingslayer!"

Kill them all. Before they kill you instead.

"For God's sake, Bors! She spared your life, damnit!"

"I think you have spent too much time in her presence, Lucius. Her disgusting language is now on your lips as well as her influence within your heart. Would you betray your Brothers and your King for a barbarian like her?"

"The King is dead, Bors! As well as all of our Brothers!"

"Watch that mouth! I don't care if you're my brother's grandson, Lucius, for I will punish you as a betrayer deserves!"

The shot of adrenaline was becoming so unbearable that she thought she would run on them and impale the throat of the big stupid lump with one of the branches between her arms.

She… she wanted…

Kill them. NOW!

"Stop fighting, you two." – Galahad's voice reprimanded them severely – "We are here to ensure that armor disappears from the mortal realm. That should be our sacred mission as Brothers, not to fight over things that can't be helped."

"But…!" – Bors' voice started to protest.

"Besides…" - the Apollonian knight continued, calmed and indifferent about his obvious interruption – "I believe we, as knights of the Rounded Table, swore an Oath to always pursue the truth. Killing someone without having been discovered the truth in her words, is a murder in cold blood, not justice."

After that, silence followed. A silence so long and heavy that when she made her presence known, they had already calmed and she… she had her impulses and the armor's magic under control… but barely.

"Took your sweet time, highlander." – Bors grunted, still venomous from earlier.

Medraut's eyes couldn't be more frozen than they were when she glanced towards him.

"I would like to see you picking the right kind of wood amidst the darkness of the foliage while taking care of not walking in a tree." – was her cold answer as she walked towards her Nightmare mount, whose red eyes searched her while showing its pointed teeth, looking for a cuddle, a piece of raw meat to eat or maybe both.

The girl left the pile of wood beside the bonfire and threw a branch or two before rotating their dinner roasting on the fire silently, her hunched silhouette sat far away from everybody; the black, demonic horse's snout with ample nostrils over her head, inhaling her scent.

Nobody said anything that night and Lucius felt that he had been the only one who had noticed the sudden change in Medraut's vocabulary. Just like when she had talked with the King, just like when she had thrown Excalibur to the lake. Her colloquial vocabulary had been surfacing slowly as the days together had woven their shared journey through the land.

That had been her true self.

But now, even if it has been just one day, since Galahad and Bors' apparition, she was starting to be less and less herself. And Lucius truly missed her tomboyish, cocky, funny side.

So, as they eventually went to sleep, Bors volunteered himself for taking the first watch although his motives were clearly to have an eye on her. Medraut, on her own, did not sleep even a bit. Her eyelids half-closed but never entirely, trusting her own safety on her senses and her trusted mount that kept her company providing heat during the night.

But, as the following days went the same, with Bors taking the first watch every night, her tiredness started to show its signs when her answers went from short to curt, and her mood went from guarded to paranoid. And, as they kept advancing, while the three young men had an easy, friendly companionship between them, she kept herself always apart, quiet and bitter while she observed with a pang of hurt and jealousy how they were having fun while she struggled for staying awake.

Just like the past year.

She remembered how many times she had discovered that some of her soldiers regarded her armor with envy and greed, knowing the invulnerability it provided to its owner.

That, plus hiding behind her helmet the fact that she was a woman, for everybody assumed by her unusual for a girl tall height and the metallic, sexless voice that the said helmet produced, that she was a grown man.

"Mordred" had been a defense mechanism to add more masculine features to her hiding identity. That name was close enough to her own, and it was a powerful, male name from end to end. The perfect front.

She remembered how she had found herself with her hands, more than often, full of the blood of her own allies who had become insane by the armor's influence and had tried to kill her to get it. Like when she, stupidly, had honored the death of a deserving foe like Uryens by removing her helmet to show him her face before he expired his last breath. After that, the men who were riding by her side had tried to kill her and she had been forced to rip them apart after trying to reason, sadly with no avail, with them.

She also remembered how the few runes of protection that her mom had taught her had been just one of the many defenses she had needed to put around herself when she bathed or slept.

But with the Knight-Boy everything had been different. Somehow he was… immune to the armor's dark arcane energies. She had known it the very instant he had started to converse with her like any regular person and, with the passing days by his side, he hadn't tried even once to make the killing move to get the armor or to avenge his King.

True that those weeks, while in his companionship, she had kept her defenses raised when she bathed… but not when she slept. She had been sleeping very well despite the recurrent nightmares she had after a whole year spilling so much blood.

In Lucius, she had found the closest thing to a friend she had ever known in all her short, mostly lonely life.

But now, that uncertain friendship had been shattered with the intrusion of the other two. Now she was alone… again.

Alone and absolutely paranoid, as she felt that one night she would fell asleep out of exhaustion and she would never raise to see another sunrise.

On the fourth night, her distress was so great that, feeling how her eyes twitched each minute trying to fight the luring call of sleep, Medraut had risen from her sleeping bag.

Feeling the mute, questioning glance the still awake Bors was regarding her with, the redhead moved quietly half-asleep towards the foliage, feigning she was going to pee to, instead, start to walk aimlessly in order to clear her mind a bit.

That way had been how she had ended, ten minutes later, pretty lost and walking by pure inertia as if in a trance.

She thought she would fall asleep standing until she saw them.

The bluish mystic lights of will o' the wisps floating in midair a few paces from where she stood.

While being a child she always had this silly hobby of pursuing chains of will o' the wisps back in Avalon, where the souls of the deserving and mighty dead were as real and tangible as any other living creature there.

Her mother would always dedicate this thin smile to her, saying that she wished her father were among those dead so, at least, Medraut could have met him.

The woman evidently had been deeply in love with her husband and Medraut secretly wished her father would have been a better man or, at least, worthy enough to penetrate the mists of Avalon and have his other life by their side.

But he hadn't earned his place among the mighty dead, the ancient Kings and Lords of old. He had died a betrayer and twas the memorial he had left to his family.

Now that she thought about it she felt depressed. She was the daughter of a man her mother insisted he had been, if not a good man, the most authentic person she had ever met. A man so authentic that his indomitable soul, ultimately, had brought him to his own demise at the hands of fate itself.

A man many still remembered with spite and fear.

His mightiness had resided on his evilness towards a world that had forsaken him since the very moment he had chosen to live following his heart instead of the rules.

She had avenged his memory by killing Arthur… but that didn't mean that the deep emptiness she felt in a place within her heart that only a father could have filled didn't hurt now.

So, in an attempt to erase those intrusive, sad thoughts from her soul, Medraut followed the chain of will o' the wisps smiling weakly as they kept disappearing as soon as she tried to touch them.

Then she heard the voices.

A disembodied chorus of chants reached her ears until their singing made sense.

" A naoidhean bhig, cluinn mo ghuth,
Mise ri d' thaobh, Ó mhaighdean bhàn,
ar rìbhinn òg, fàs a's faic
do thìr, dìleas fhéin."

" Little baby, hear my voice,
I'm beside you, O maiden fair,
our young Lady, grow and see
your land, your own faithful land."

She knew that song. Her mother had been a Britannian noble lady, so her knowledge of her husband's native language was a bit limited, but that song she knew to heart.

" A ghrian a's a ghealach, stiùir sinn
gu uair ar cliù 's ar glòir.
Naoidhean bhig, ar rìbhinn òg,
mhaighdean uasal bhàn."

" Sun and moon, guide us
to the hour of our glory and honour.
Little baby, our young Lady,
noble maiden fair."

The lullaby her mother usually sang to her when she was little, trying to infuse her daughter courage and the love she was often deprived of when the coven called her mother far away from her and she would roam Avalon alone as a spirit who intertwined her very essence with the dead and the arcane energies she had not born with.

" A ghrian a's a ghealach, stiùir sinn
gu uair ar cliù 's ar glòir…"

She wasn't a gifted child, so the Sisters had dismissed her from her mother's side at the tender age of seven. From that very point on, she scarcely saw her and their meetings were too intense as well as too brief. Her mother was a creature of the night while Medraut was a creature of Nowhere, for she had been the first human child to born and live in Avalon's soil without having earned the right to be there.

Somehow she felt… undeserving, just as her father had been.

" Sun and moon, guide us
to the hour of our glory and honour…"

Following the bluish gleams, many tiny laughs and whispering voices filled her ears in the still of the night, blurring the borders between the mortal realm and the spiritual one as she walked between consciousness and unconsciousness, between dream… and nightmare.

" A ghrian a's a ghealach… sun and moon… stiùir sinn… guide us…"

Full moon over her head, whispers in the dark amidst the deafening silence.

"…  Gu uair ar cliù 's ar glòir… to the hour of our glory and honour…"

Her boots sinking in the grass and the mud, the beating of her heart as a war drum in the background.

"Cliù 's ar glòir!"

Suddenly, she found herself in the very center of a cromlech circle.

Then, the next thing she heard was the flutter of heavy wings. Raising her head towards the sound's origin, her blood ran cold in her veins.

" Glory and honour!"

A second after the pain, she realized she was being attacked by a creature only her dreams had conjured before: a griffin.

Black and majestic, with venomous, feline green eyes, the imposing beast salivated while observing its prey under its claws, trapped between its great weight and the ground, struggling for freedom.

Terrified under the creature's bulky weight, Medraut suppressed the wave of panic that washed over her and instinctively grabbed one of the griffin's front legs to sink the pointed ends of her gauntlets on its skin.

Shrieking painfully loud, the beast's grip around her middle section loosened to, immediately after seizing her opportunity, receiving a hard punch under its beak from the fiery redhead whose strength was greater than many.

Prying the creature's great weight with her free legs, Medraut managed to turn around the black beast, trying to restrain its violent jolting. But the griffin, being the clever beast it was, fluttered its black wings until it rose above the girl's height, planning to rip her head from her shoulders with its powerful claws.

Then Medraut, quickly predicting her foe's moves, dodged the first attempt rolling over the grass and, when the beast tried it a second time, using the speed of flight and gravity on her favor, she grabbed one of its paws and forcefully directed its whole body against the hard ground.

She punched and kicked the struggling griffin while maintaining it pinned tightly to the ground. In answer, the creature was viciously trying over and over to peck at her face with its sharp beak.

But she proved to be stronger.

With the bulky, dark frame pinned upside-down along with its wings with her legs, Medraut pulled out a wrestling move which was destined to suffocate her foe… 'till she heard the creature speak.

"Enough!" – it hissed – "Enough, human! I yield!"

"Why should I trust you?" – Medraut hissed as well, teeth grinding and sweating profusely – "Give me a single reason about why I shouldn't break your neck right here, right now, you fat bird."

The griffin hissed again, both offended and humiliated. It has been so many years since a human like this one defeated it in fair combat…

"I have been defeated." – it spoke once again, its raspy voice tinted with a humbling tone that gave Medraut some pause – "I yield before you and your strength, human. And because of that, from this night on forward, I swear to call you Master and serve you until one of us will perish, just as I did many years ago with the one who sired you. Ruber was his name."

Medraut's green eyes opened wide. It couldn't be…

"You… you knew my father?" – she asked, loosening her grip around the creature's feathery neck – "How?"

"I could never forget the power that emanated from his soul, just as it emanates from yours." – it replied, careful to not make a sudden move that could prompt her to strangle it again – "We griffins feel attracted towards power and we crave the flesh of those who have it in the hopes to absorb part of it."

"Ewwwww…" - Medraut grimaced – "Gross."

"But if we are defeated by those whose flesh we sought…" - the griffin continued – "… we are obligated to die by their hands... or serve them. And I very much prefer servitude, if possible."

She hesitated a few moments until she, finally, released the powerful being.

Getting both up and looking into each other's eyes, Medraut silently assented while the griffin bowed its head respectfully.

"Got a name, bird?" – she suddenly asked.

The griffin observed her confused.

"A name?" – it repeated – "We griffins do not need a name to identify us, that is a human notion."

"So, I should simply call you "griffin"? Or do you prefer "bird", perhaps?" – she added with a cunning smile.

The powerful being hissed, offended yet again. Long human, longer tongue, it seemed.

"I very much prefer not to be called something I am not, Master." – it said after a while – "But I am not against being called by a human name of your choice."

"Hmmm…" - the girl pondered briefly – "Well, I suppose if you are a griffin the evident choice is to call you… Griffith. Is that okay with you?"

The creature nodded, looking pleased.

"An honorable name, indeed." – it said – "For its meaning, if I am not bad informed, means "Strong Lord". I thank you for this title you have bestowed upon me, Master."

"Uh, yeah, you're welcome." – Medraut mumbled, scratching nervously the back of her head, thinking about the very little ponder she had given to the name thing, looking for something close to the creature itself and not minding the true meaning of the name in question – "So…" - she started.

But she was unpredictably interrupted as noisy steps followed by several pairs of boots rushed inelegantly into the cromlech circle.

"Medraut!" – exclaimed a very disheveled Lucius, out of breath, several threads of his long, white hair stuck at the corner of his mouth as if he had just awakened from sleep and with half his armor equipped the other way around – "Are you okay?!"

By his left side, Bors grunted in disapproval while running a hand over his tousled dark brown short hair.

"Pity that she's still alive..." – he murmured.

Galahad seemed the most awake of the three, wielding his sword in front of him, eyeing the griffin with distrust.

Medraut observed them with a dopey expression that soon was replaced with astonishment.

"Wh… the fuck are you three doing here?" – she blurted out, noticing that they had been recently asleep and had gone in a rush to her aid… though, how did they even knew in the first place?

"Allies or foes, Master?" – said Griffith positioning by her side with venomous, hungry eyes – "Should I spare their lives or should I rip their heads off their bodies?" – after this, the three young men wielded their weapons with a bit more force.

Bors snorted sarcastically.

"Making new friends, highlander?" – he spat after looking up and down the strange, menacing creature – "I would venture that this kind of company is just your cup of tea."

"Oh, cut it, Bors!" – protested Lucius to, almost immediately, address the redhead again – "Say, is everything alright?"

Medraut assented slowly, still stunned.

"How…?" – she started.

"We don't really know." - said Galahad – "We felt… something at the same time and just ran towards this destination. I'd say that such an impulse was entirely unnatural."

"And you are right."

This new voice came from above their heads so, as they turned up their faces they saw a small silhouette sat on a tall branch of one of the nearest trees.

"Who're you?!" – Bors exclaimed – "Show yourself!"

The darkened silhouette dissolved itself against the starry sky like smoke.

"Wh…?" – but before Bors could complete his sentence, the same small silhouette outlined itself against one of the menhirs that compounded the cromlech circle, arm-crossed. And this time, the companions saw the nature of this new arrival – "Sorcerer!" – the older knight exclaimed pointing a finger towards this person accusatorily.

But Medraut only rolled her eyes.

"How typical: your fathers of the Round Table hated and feared the arcane energies so much that they never bothered to teach you the difference between a sorcerer…" - she said, closing the distance between her and the small hooded person leaning against the menhir – "… and a druid." – she finished as she took out the stranger's hood with her hand, revealing the strange truth behind it – "And… a druid child, no less."

The said child, a boy of not older than, perhaps, eight or nine years old frowned his freckled nose along with his eyes, his bright blue eyes, than betrayed the tiniest arcane glow within their irises.

"Hey there, kiddo." – Medraut greeted while lowering herself in order to be at the same eye level with the boy – "Twas you? The one who warned this trio of stupid tin cans?"

The said trio protested loudly while the child moved his head in an affirmative gesture.

"It was me." – he confirmed – "Not many who are challenged by a griffin lives to tell the tale."

"Sweet kid, aren't you?" – she smiled, trying to infuse courage to the small child whose big eyes were looking every ten seconds to the three knights with crystal clear fear no doubt product of the persecution his kin were subjected even before he had been born – "Well, I think I owe you some thanks even if their intervention was, besides LATE…" - she emphasized giving a hard look to the young men – "… totally unnecessary."

Bors huffed.

"Well, let's see how you fare on your own next time, highlander." - he spat.

"Sorry, but I don't talk donkey." – she replied without even looking at him – "Go play with your pals back at the farm and munch some turnips so you grow healthy and strong to be a good jackass."

"Why, you dirty…!"

While his comrades struggled to get him in his place before he attempted to strangle the mouthy girl for her insolence, the small child eyed them a bit guarded.

"Don't mind them, especially the big lump there." – Medraut said smilingly, addressing the afraid child like she would with any other. In all her short life she had seen very few children, none in Avalon, of course, and they were a curious sight to her. Especially a gifted one – "Much noise and little else." - she added jokingly – "Where are your elders, kiddo? Are you lost? Need some help to return home?"

The child shook his head vehemently while he was still eyeing the three young men with apprehension. He was evidently alone and too shy, not a good combination given the wild place where they were.

Griffith approached the boy slowly and the infant's shoulders went immediately tense. The creature inhaled briefly.

"Your scent… I have smelled you before." – it stated with squinted eyes – "But I was unable to keep you tracked, slippery one." – and it turned towards his now new Master – "This one is powerful, I can smell the energies that courses through his veins. No doubt a Converted."

'Converted' was the most popular term within the community of magic practitioners to appoint a child marked by fate itself since their birth and whose power was highly prized among the Sisters' coven. Many of these children tended to end in small druid communities in order to avoid proliferation of dark magic practitioners.

Even within the mages' community, the Sisters, although very respected, were also feared and avoided to the possible greatest extent.

This child was a result of such measures taken by responsible sorcerers.

Knowing by his expression that the boy feared but also found her new pet intriguing, Medraut suddenly took one of the child's wrists and put one of his hands over Griffith's thick feathery coat.

"See?" – she said – "He's not going to harm you. Not while I'm here. Understood?" – she said with a warning edge on her voice as she addressed briefly the mighty creature.

The griffin limited itself to sigh heavily. Great, just great: another bossy, harsh and temperamental Master. Like father, like daughter.

Sliding his hands all over the powerful being's dark feathers, amazed and still a bit guarded, the boy smiled a bit.

"So, what's your name, child?" – the redhead asked amicably – "Mine's Medraut of the High Lands."

He didn't answer immediately.

"Loholt." – he finally replied, still petting the griffin – "I'm… Loholt."

Chapter Text

Griffith the griffin didn't really know how to feel at that very moment.

"Did you see that? Did you?"

"Yes, Bors, we have been seeing it since first hour in the morning."

If he had to pick an adjective to define his present state of mind, he would say… "tired".

Tired because these… human pups were quarreling. Again. For the umpteenth time in a single morning.

Urgh…

"And do you think it's normal?"

A not-so-amused snort.

"I don't know, Bors. Why don't you ask her instead of pestering us?"

"I'm not asking anything to that highlander."

"Then stay with the doubt."

"You aren't being of much help, Lucius!"

How can they be still quarreling after two damn hours?!

His Master, however, atop of her monstrous black Nightmare was having the nap of her life. It had been pretty comical: she had risen the first in the morning, she had gone to the call of nature, then she had been munching a piece of dried meat a good ten minutes before proclaiming to which way going… to, immediately, rest her head frontwards over her mount's mane and… start snoring soundly. Luckily the intelligent equine beast did actually know which direction to take, because its horsewoman was being everything but helpful.

After a while, half-awake from the incessant quarreling, Medraut raised her head and inhaled briefly before yawning in a very inelegant, unladylike way.

"Quit the stupid argument already." – she said with a sleepy, raspy voice – "I wanna doze a bit more…"

And Bors went immediately to provoke her.

"Aren't you supposed to be our guide, huh?" – he growled – "The one who will point us which direction to take?"

A slight tsk. Then another yawn, this time bigger than the previous one, if possible.

"Daredevil will guide you." – she answered groggily.

"Who?"

"Ma horse…" - gods… she wasn't even vocalizing correctly.

"What?! You must be kidding!"

"Nope…"

"Did you hear that?! Lucius, Galahad?! She said the damn horse is going to guide us! I can't believe this! This is the drop that fills the glass!"

Griffith rolled his feline green eyes and sighed heavily, fed up of these pups and their nonsensical quarrels.

Soon, a hand went to his powerful neck and scratched him. He felt immediately better.

"Try to block your hearing." – the child's voice was this closer to his bat-like ears and so calm and low that it brought immediate comfort to the mythical beast – "I know you griffins have high developed senses. This must be uncomfortable to you."

Griffith purred, pleased to receive such candorous attention. Until this day, no human had been this… affectionate with him.

He could get used to this.

"'Uncomfortable', you say, druid calf?" – he hissed, both of pleasure as the kid scratched his ruffled feathers, and weariness as his sensitive ears were assaulted with yet another rant – "That is not precisely the term I would use but rather… 'painful' would do for an accurate definition."

Loholt, sitting atop of the griffin's spine, horseback style, as Medraut had allowed it, worked a bit of his magic creating a small barrier to insulate background sounds from the creature's hearing.

Griffith sighed in relief.

"Aaah… much better, druid calf." – he said – "Much appreciated."

Loholt smiled and said nothing. But soon he jumped from the booming voice that assaulted him from behind.

"Sorcery again!" – it was Bors who, having witnessing the boy's workings to create the barrier, now a slight bluish film around them, got infuriated – "Retire that immediately, boy! NOW!"

But, as activated by a spring, Medraut straighten up on her Nightmare as if she had been burned.

"As long as it is undamaging towards the whole group, the kid can do whatever he damn pleases with his magic stuff." – she said calmly but with a dangerous edge in her voice – "He had had enough of bullies like you hunting them like deer and burning their homes for no other reason than being blessed with the 'gift'."

"They are dangerous!" – protested the knight.

"Says who?" – she challenged – "Imagine yourself being chased day and night until someone puts you on a stake to burn you alive. You would fight to defend yourself, right?"

"I would surrender and commend my fate to God's judgment."

"Yeah, sure, whatever…" - Medraut finally capitulated, leaving him for impossible. She couldn't put some sense into somebody who refused to open his eyes – "Wait until somebody would try to put your head in a pike and let's see who's willing to die."

"I'm willing to die for what I think it's fair and good. God will guide my sword."

"Yeah, yeah, sure thing."

Bors' blood boiled but, since he received quite the telltale looks from his two comrades to shut up and let it be, he kept his thoughts to himself. She would never understand, for she was the unfortunate daughter of some betrayer who happened to use sorcery as a means to overtake Camelot and whose wife, the girl's mother, had been discovered a witch by Gaheris and, instead of accepting the aid the great Merlin had lent to her, she had sided instead with those three demons whose evilness had been legendary since his own grandfathers were children. Maybe even before that.

She defended magic because she had been raised amongst it, but she hadn't been present when he… had raided Camelot.

While she clearly wished for a father she'd never knew, Bors had been six and he, his mother and his old father had been present when the infamous Red Knight had successfully infiltrated Camelot with Lady Julianna and her daughter as hostages.

Since the very second the later Lady Kayleigh had emerged from the wagon shouting that it was a trap, chaos had ensued.

Bors and his mother, Lady Evaine, had been with other women inside the castle and, as soon as the monstrous northern red-headed man had bursted inside the castle mounting that same Nightmare the girl proclaimed it will guide them, the women and the servants had fled.

Everybody had fled… but the little Bors.

Inside his infantile mind, somehow it had worked, to plant face against the huge barbarian armed with a tiny adorned dagger his father had gifted him with in his fifth birthday.

But he had been small, and the highlander atop that monstrous equine had been like a hurricane: giant, unstoppable… devastator. He hadn't seen the small child who had thought that could beat him. But the said child's mom had seen her only son in the way of a mad horseman who could crush him like a bug under his mount's hooves.

His mother had run to push her kid outta the Red Knight's reach and, instead, she herself had been end wounded under the monster's hooves.

And the man who had been leading the beast had simply directed to her the coldest look little Bors had ever seen before continue his mad cavalcade. He had never been able to forget those cold, reptilian green eyes regarding her as she had been… nothing.

His mom had needed several months to recover from such an encounter… and, unfortunately, said encounter, with her belly stomped under the beast's hooves, had been irreparably damaged, leaving her barren for the rest of her life.

Bors could never forgive himself for what had happened and he had sought to be the best son his mother could ever wish, to always strive for goodness, for justice.

For never witnessing again a monster like that trampling over a defenseless woman again.

That coupled with the harsh wounds his father had sustained from the battle against those unnatural spellbound metallic men the highlander had brought with him, not to mention the murder of that older brother, Lionel, he had never known and whose memory his father secretly mourned over even still to the present day, had molded Bors to hate the name of Ruber of the High Lands as he grew up, loathing sorcery in all its sides and despising everything that had something to do with pagan people who didn't adapted themselves to the Christian change, resisting the eradication of the Old Ways and its barbarism.

And now this girl, this stupid, murderous girl mantled in everything he had sworn to fight against, came saying that sorcery was okay? That the murder of the King Arthur was justifiable to avenge the memory of a monster of a father she had never known?!

Perhaps the girl was just a victim of the circumstances, just as Bors' mother had been that fated day; maybe she was just misled… but her hands were, invariably, blood-stained.

She wasn't different from her father. Not even a bit.

However, when Bors eyed the little shit atop of that black winged monstrosity again, he… felt startled. For he saw it.

The fear.

It was so primal… so raw in those eyes that Bors, somehow, saw himself reflected on that boy, frightened against what Arthur's knights represented to him.

Could that be true? That she was part right and they didn't hold the absolute truth?

That they could be wrong?

Such a thought gave him nausea.

Medraut on her own ignored him completely and, even tired as she was, having slept very little in many days, started to distract the child by needling him amicably, tickling him, gaining surprised squeaks from him as he twisted atop of a sighing griffin.

And she continued doing the same all the day, distracting the kid, gaining his attention, not giving him a chance to look at the others. So at the end of the day she found herself resting her head against the as well resting griffin while Loholt lied in her arms, worn and overtired.

"This will be the last night, Mastodon." – she said after a while, being she and Bors the only ones left awake – "Tomorrow you wouldn't have to worry about me and the kid. We will disappear and you will have your blessed mental peace. Is what you want, isn't it?" – she kept speaking, as in a dream, her words surreal as the present conversation… or rather monologue went on – "You will return to your home, help to unify the kingdom again and be a hero, huh? No need to worry about garbage like us, right?"

She was speaking like she was trying to reassure herself rather than him.

"With your new religion, paganism will slowly dissolve amidst Avalon's mists and your people will forget us along with their roots and History. We will be a bad nightmare nobody will bother to recall." – she continued, her voice a mere whisper in the dark – "You will drown human's nature under those dogmas you love so much to keep people nice and good… subdued… brainwashed… ignorant… happy… So… very… happy…"

"You think you can just get out of this as if nothing had happened?" – he replied at last, unsure if she had fell asleep or not – "The blood you have spilled will follow you wherever you go like Black Death."

A long silence followed and Bors felt himself like following to sleep without even bothering to wake one of his comrades to take the next watch, knowledgeable that if she would want to harm them, she would, no matter their resistance.

And they couldn't kill her, he knew she had been awake these nights and now with that hybrid half eagle, half lion guarding her slumber, the chance was even slighter. Besides, he wasn't so sure he wanted to kill her anymore; the motive escaped to him entirely.

But as tiredness washed over him, in the middle of his trip towards sleep waters, he heard something that froze his blood. A reply. Her reply.

"I know." – were her words.

Guiding her horse towards the beginning of the infamous Forbidden Forest, a place she thought she wouldn't have to set foot in for the rest of her life, a mature and very tired Lady Kayleigh prayed silently to find one of those leaves she, many years ago, had found growing in the magic land's soil to mend the wounds of the same person she now held while on her saddle.

Garrett. Her Garrett.

After fighting against Mordred's forces, she and her husband had been painfully searching for their son, Lucius, in the following days after his disappearance until the dead, friends and foes equally, had started to raise, blades in cold dead hands and blind eyes glowing green, to start killing any form of life that went in their way.

And that had included the two knights.

Garrett first had refused to leave the battlefield until he'll found Lucius alive or… rather undead given the circumstances. But the ghoulish forces had been too much and the couple had been forced to retreat to Camelot to only find more and more reanimated corpses rising from the wet, blackened soil. They had battled valiantly to defend their land, and then their solitary position as they had entrenched within the old castle with their elder knights companions until dead had conquered life. And amidst everything, Garrett, swimming through waves and waves of spellbound corpses, had sustained more wounds than his body could take and Kayleigh had ended running away spurring her horse almost cruelly and making pressure over her husband's ugliest wound, preventing him from bleed to death.

Camelot had been surrounded by the undead and there was not a safe place in the whole kingdom… except, perhaps, the only alternative both, in their desperation, had left: the Forbidden Forest.

It wasn't the best idea she had ever formulated, but Garrett was getting weaker and whiter and whiter each minute his wounds went without the due treatment, so the choice had been evident.

Guided by the always loyal and strangely long-living Ayden, Garrett's silverwinged falcon, Kayleigh found a small cave and, after improvising some bandages with part of her undershirt to prevent Garrett to bleed further, she followed the falcon in search of the magical leaves.

And she prayed now to whoever happened to listen above their heads (Christian or pagan god, she couldn't care less right now), that she found them quickly.

They arrived the next day at Am Parbh or "Cape Wrath" for Britons, with the sun at its highest point.

Far Northwest in Sutherland, Am Parbh had the tallest cliffs, Clo Mor, in all the mainland and it was believed Vikings used the cape as a navigation point where they would turn their ships.

Inhaling the fresh scent of marine saltpeter deeply, Medraut guided her companions to a road that allowed them to descend the huge cliffs without making a suicide move.

"Learned this path after a few days inspecting the area." – she explained after seeing the look of concern in Lucius' eyes after taking a look at the height difference between where they stood and the beach – "Never got to a new place without learning its geography a little."

The descent went without further trouble.

"Well, gentlemen, it's been a mix of pleasure and utter displeasure…" - Medraut started as they reached the boat, eyeing matter-of-factly a frowning Bors after her last statement – "… but our ways splits from here on forward. So the kid, my oh-so cute fluffy oversized pet…" - she eyed Griffith maliciously as the creature rolled its eyes in annoyance – "… and I myself bids you farew…"

"Oh, no, no. Not in your wildest dreams, highlander." – the oldest knight intercepted – "We're going with you. I will not believe you have returned the armor until I see it with my own eyes."

Before she could form a proper, mordacious reply to the stupid big lump with peas for brains, Galahad intervened.

"It would be an interesting journey for us as well, my lady." – he said gallantly – "Besides, I myself would like to visit such a fabled land as Avalon is."

Medraut's nostrils flared. These guys didn't know when to hit the road, didn't they?

"Please?" – Lucius pleaded, eyeing her with something suspiciously close to…

… Motherfucking puppy eyes. – Medraut thought, wanting to facepalm herself and sending a 'I hate you' look to him before grudgingly grunt her approve – Urgh…

Soon they discovered, to the girl's great frustration, that all of them barely fit in the boat, so it was deemed that Loholt would travel on Griffith's back while the great creature followed them flying up close.

The horses were left behind as they would give nothing but trouble aboard the boat besides the already stated lack of space. Medraut's Nightmare, Daredevil, galloped far away as soon as its rider took bridle and saddle off its back.

"Why is she not rowing at all?!" – exclaimed a very indignant Bors after a while when each boat passenger had been taking turns to make the vehicle advance through the water but Medraut herself.

"You insisted on accompany me, you do the hard work while I pick my nose." – she responded, smiling shamelessly – "Duh."

"AAARGH!" – Bors exclaimed, wishing he could hit her with one of the oars he held in his hands – "I hate her! I really do!"

But then they noticed the tenuous mist that had been building upon their path was starting to be denser and denser.

"Griffith!" – the redhead exclaimed – "Fly at water level and keep your eyes on us! This is getting blinding for moments!"

"Yes, Master!" – was the immediate answer she received from the creature, who followed obediently her instructions.

Loholt secured himself farther on the creature's back, plunging his face in its feathery neck. The growing dark magical energies he was detecting each meter they advanced filled him with dread.

"Fear not, druid calf." – Griffith assured to the scared boy, believing it was the flight instead of the surrounding magics he also was detecting – "My eyes can keep them tracked at this distance even in complete darkness."

And, as if accompanying his words, a mantle of total blackness engulfed them.

"What in the name of God…?!"

"Keep rowing and don't pronounce that name here, Mastodon! This is the Sisters' territory!"

"Wh…?!"

Suddenly, the boat's bottom hit something solid and the progress reached a dead point. They had reached solid ground.

And just as quick as it came, the surrounding darkness evaporated in tendrils of gray mist.

In front of the valiant companions, a large gray esplanade full of sharp rocks unveiled before their eyes.

"Welcome home Medraut, ungifted child." – three disembodied voices greeted the redhead as the earth under their feet trembled slightly.

Griffith landed and sniffed the air. Loholt descended quickly from the creature's back to immediately run to Medraut and, after colliding with her leg, he held her armored waist with both of his frail arms, all of him trembling.

Surprised at first for the boy's behavior, soon she put a hand over his head in a soothing gesture.

"Hey, kiddo." – she said, looking down at the small child while she was almost six feet tall – "Hey, look at me."

Loholt raised his head to look at her. His innocent, crystalline blue eyes big and scared. This child was too sweet and too shy for his own good.

"Nothing's gonna happen while I'm here." – she said reassuringly, patting his head – "Just stick with me and watch your step. I promise no harm will come to you, 'kay?"

The boy blinked a couple of times and dedicated a small smile to her while assenting with his head. He resorted to grab her black cape with one of his tiny fists while he conjured a light sphere to enlighten their path.

"Nice trick, kid." – Medraut complimented before Bors could complain against the use of magic.

Griffith stood by the boy's side, mesmerized by the glistening bluish orb floating in midair.

"Now what?" – she heard Lucius inquiring.

"Now we walk." – she answered straight – "They like to play difficult… sometimes."

"So, this is a test?"

"Sort of, yeah."

So they walked. But as the denser the dark mist got, the more nervous the companions became, the griffin included.

"So… this is Avalon then?" – said Lucius to fill the strange silence around them – "I imagined it to be more… I don't know, magical? Colorful? Alive?"

"We are not in Avalon." – said Medraut while unsheathing her sword slowly – "I don't know where we are, but I don't like the looks of it." – at her words, Loholt grabbed her black torn cape tighter – "Stay on guard and keep your eyes open."

Nobody dared to contradict her on that point.

After a while walking with no signs to reach any end, Lucius spoke again.

"We should go back…" - he whispered, feeling how hard he had to fight against trembling.

But a sudden set of laughs echoed around them.

"Such a wonderful sight, more knights of the Round Table stepping in our domain!" – said one of the voices, all female, while the companions turned around violently, nervousness clear all over their faces.

"Not long ago there were many of you walking the land in the name of a blind cause." – added a second voice – "Years of fruitless search, your fathers grew old and desperate, just as the King in the golden castle slowly faded away."

"Some abandoned the search, others fell prey of age, diseases and madness." – sentenced a third – "But there were many others that reached this very point, the Land of Nowhere, the eternal limbic spiral between life… and death."

Inhaling sharply, the companions ended with their backs against each other's, blades and claws ready to act in self-defense.

But soon the monotone background changed and, instead of an endless gray esplanade, they saw a forest, a forest of black, dead trees whose long, sturdy branches supported…

"NO!" – Bors cry of denial filled the air while the clinking sound of his claymore hitting the ground echoed through the infinite space.

It had been hard to find the leaves, and harder to ignite a bonfire in a place where the very wood itself was alive. But what Kayleigh had found more difficult and utterly tiresome had been to keep her husband warm the entire night. He was getting so pale and cold that she feared he wouldn't live through the next day.

She had the basic knowledge in first aid, specifically in regard of mending wounds and disinfecting them, for that was part of the training a knight of the Round Table usually undergone in order to serve their land and their King as efficiently as possible… but thing is… that she, right now, lacked the means.

And her treacherous heart was telling her what her brains didn't want to accept just yet.

"Kayleigh…"

Soon her trembling hand found his.

"Yes, my love?"

Because this man, this amazing, wonderful, valiant man was the love of her life and it could never be another one. Now she understood why her mother had never wanted to marry again.

Nobody could fill the void your other half leaves within you. Nobody.

"There's not much time…" – Garrett said, his voice barely a whisper – "I… can feel it…"

"Shhh…" - she shushed while kissing his hand, his rough, cold hand – "Rest, Garrett, rest. You need to recover your strength."

But his hand, if disheartening cold, had not lost its strength just yet. Not a little bit.

"Kayleigh… listen to me..." – he said, but feeling his wife's struggling, stubborn and clearly not accepting what was now inevitable, he insisted with a firmer voice – "Listen to me. Please, Kayleigh." – his wife's hand lost strength in his and he knew that she didn't want to reason if her quiet sobs were any indicative – "I don't have much time left… and I would like you to make a promise to me…"

Kayleigh's fingers closed tightly around his, indicating that she was listening. Through their hands there wasn't need for words, for a deep understanding had always fluctuated between them, whether during their little adventure in the Forbidden Forest many years ago, when she had dissipated his fears and, later, his self-loathing towards what had happened to Lionel far many years prior; whether at Ruber's mercy, when she had given the signal; whether he had caught word about her insecurities about marrying him, when she had asked him if he loved her and he had answered by taking her hand and putting it above his heart:

"What does it say to you?"

She hadn't needed words, for his lips had been more sincere than any words said aloud, easy, practiced, devoid of the raw, authentic emotion that fluctuated between them.

And now it wasn't different. They knew each other, they understood each other.

And that was enough.

"Kayleigh…" - his eyes… oh, his eyes were so alive in their blindness, so powerful, so pleading… - "Promise me… promise me that you will find him…" - he coughed and a thin trail of blood escaped from his lips – "… Find Lucius… find our son and put him at rest… bury him here, away from the evilness that has taken our friends… allow him to rest in peace…"

Kayleigh's tears couldn't have been colder than now. Garrett's rough hand went to her face, tracing her features, the familiar angles and roundness, the beloved delicate lines that woven her beautiful, prematurely aged visage. He cherished that face in his blind memory as the preciousest treasure.

"He is alive, Garrett…" - she mustered, fighting against her trembling voice.

"Kayleigh…" - Garrett's voice was tinted with the slightest hint of resignation.

"He is alive." – she repeated stubbornly – "I can't explain it… but I know he's safe, Garrett… I simply know… a mother knows…" - she insisted, more for her own sanity than to reassure him.

The blind knight smiled weakly.

"Then find him." – he said – "Find him and… keep him safe… as far as you can get him from this dead land… Would you promise me that?" – he asked, weak, hopeful… dying.

She took his hand and kissed it lovingly.

"I promise." – she said – "'Till I exhale my last breath, Garrett. I promise."

And he died in her arms, a smile upon his lips.

Kayleigh wept a long time. She didn't know how much, but she wept until no tears came to her already burning eyes, she wept until her voice went rough and wasted, she wept until she felt completely empty, she wept until her soul unburdened of her great sorrow.

She wept until resolution won over grief.

So, as she got up slowly, falcon perched on her shoulder, tears dry on her face and reddened eyes set on a determined scowl, Lady Kayleigh steeled herself for what was next now that she was alone.

For she had a mission.

She had only one purpose to fill, a single reason to be still alive: to honor the promise she had just made, find her son and put him in a safe place away from Camelot and its horrors.

Away from this bitter land.

"Now you understand, old friend? What I tried to prevent all these years?

I did not betray our kin just to save hide, but to prevent the rotten powers of darkness infested our land, poisoning our souls and orphaning our children… Because if saving what is most precious to me means to give up my powers… the very essence of what I am… the only reason to why I was brought to this world in the first place… I would do it without giving a second thought to the question.

Now it is your turn, my friend: what path would you, even in death, take? Will you remain quiet and asleep before the grief our quarrel have brought to our children… or will you rebel against Them, the Weavers of Fate?

The choice is yours. It has been always."

In front of them, held by the throat by a rope, a full display of armored corpses replaced the rotten leafs that should've been decorating the black trees from the dark grove that now surrounded them.

Loholt plunged his face against Medraut's back, scared and not wanting to see that, while the griffin hissed, its highly sensitive senses overwhelmed by the foul stench of rot and decadence.

Gulping what felt like several liters of saliva, Lucius contemplated the grotesque show with trembling lips and watery eyes, fighting against the terrible need to weep like a child. Soon, Medraut's armored hand reached his and Lucius basked, if briefly, in the smallest comfort that simple gesture offered.

Galahad was the most composed of all, limiting himself to look upon the bizarre sight with frowning lips.

And Bors… well, Bors' huge frame was trembling.

Trembling in denial, fear, sadness… and rage.

"Bedivere… Griflet… Gawain… Tristan… Lamorak… Dagonet… no… this isn't happening!" – he exclaimed, still in denial, observing with incredulous eyes the still recognizable dead faces of his comrades – "This isn't real! I am dreaming… I must be dreaming!"

"They were looking for that thing they call the Grail, but they weren't worthy enough."

"They were burning with thirst after so many years of search, crossing the wasteland where they had found only sorrow… and death."

"They were tired… so tired that they were quite eager to receive whatever small mercy that could lie upon them. And we complied."

"Lies… you speak lies…" - hissed Bors, perturbed and revulsed after witnessing one of the many crows cresting the gray skies plunging at one dead eyesocket with its beak – "These are not my comrades…"

The three disembodied voices laughed again.

"You would be surprised at what a desperate man could agree after enduring so much unrewarding misery, Bors the Younger, son of Bors the Elder."

"We know a great deal about that."

"These men were just as desperate as your King… though his druid counselor, Merlin the half-breed incubus, prevented us from making a pact with Arthur."

"Lies!" – exclaimed the young knight, his dark eyes ablaze – "How dare you taint our King's good name with your twisted tales, you evil creatures?!"

"He silently begged for a release that never came. And ours were the only ears that heard his impotent pleas."

"Arthur had been wading through dark waters from the very instant his wife decided to stab his pride and taint his honor. It is so easy to put a man on his knees just by disdaining him…"

"Just as his evil knight, the one who protected our kin from prosecution and banishment, treaded through misery and madness from the very instant Arthur chose to ignore his pain product of the many battles he was forced to fight in the name of an Order that never recognized him as one of them."

Medraut's right eye twitched slightly to this mention.

"He was desperate when he came to us pleading for his people, ashamed to even mention to his wife what he planned to do."

"He offered us to reinstitute our sacred rightful position within this land's fate, should he won his battle against Arthur, in exchange of a means to consummate his revenge."

"But he failed! And the debt he left behind had been left all these years unfulfilled… 'till now."

A sudden scream broke the chilling stillness that went after such a declaration and Medraut turned around to catch the tiny shoulders of the boy as he trembled uncontrollably while the powerful sound escaped from his throat.

Loholt screamed and screamed while his thin hands drew angry red paths down his face, as if he tried, somehow, to placate an unbearable pain.

"Stop!" – exclaimed Medraut, fighting against the child in order to contain his hands from self-harming – "That's enough, kid, that's enough!"

"They're inside me!" – he cried, his big eyes glowing bright blue were filled with tears of terror and pain – "They want to rip my mind from me! They want my blood and my soul!" – he grabbed the girl's armored hands and looked directly into her eyes as if searching into her very soul – "Make them stop! Please, make them stop!"

"You, Medraut, ungifted child of Nowhere, have fulfilled your part on the bargain we had made. Now it is the time to also fulfill the debt your father left behind."

"What?!" – the girl shouted at the empty air while holding the boy in her arms, restraining his jolting – "Which debt?! Nobody has told me anything about a fucking debt!"

"Oh, but there is a debt, you see. Your father promised something he wasn't able to give us besides the undertaking of conquering Camelot and reinstitute our sacred position."

"Make them stop!" – Loholt cried; his suffering evident even to the griffin, normally an indifferent creature towards the mortal grieves – "It hurts!"

"Your father promised to give us… the blood of the Pendragons."

Suddenly, the world started to spin too fast around her and Medraut felt like throwing up, nauseated of what her gut told her and her mind insisted to deny.

Those eyes…

Wide open as her spear had penetrated skin, muscles and organs, reclaiming her rightful revenge. The eyes of a King.

Limpid bright blue, like a clear sky…

He had been old, desperate and slightly crazed.

But those blue eyes had been the eyes of a child, impotent and frightened knowing the imminent fate lying in the silvery waters of Camlann.

She had known all along, her instincts and her senses unrestrained due to being grew up amidst the supernatural.

Those very eyes whose pain had been something that had been haunting her nights, an unwanted guilt that followed her like disease.

Then the boy had tried to help her, the first human being since her arrival at this hostile land that had genuinely wanted to help her without asking anything in exchange, without suspecting her at first, without the due fear her black armor usually instigated among the bravest men.

She had taken him under her wing, promising no harm would come to him as long as she breathed.

All this time… she hadn't noticed the resemblance, the crystal clear evidence painted in those blue eyes unlike any other eyes that she previously had ever saw.

Now, looking again into those frightened eyes, into those innocent eyes… the truth came unveiled before her.

And that same truth froze her to the very marrow of her bones.

"No…" - she rasped, still in denial – "No!"

"Now you understand." – spoke, again, the first of those three voices, whose preference, it seemed, was to always speak in order - "Power attracts power, no matter the circumstances."

"We knew the threads of fate would intertwine the Armor's path with Pendragon's blood, just as the Sword did in the past."

"Uther cursed his own lineage with his pride and recklessness wielding an instrument forged with the fires of the dragons of old, when the world was still young, for his own selfish purposes. By locking the Sword on the stone, he reclaimed it for himself alone, binding its arcane essences with his blood so nobody but him could wield it. His audacity cost us much power."

"But…" - Medraut raked her brains in search of a logical, plausible explanation for the present madness she was engulfed in – "But… the Queen… I saw her die many years ago! She was a nun! A NUN, for fuck's sake!"

This elicited several gasps from the other young men present, their existence but briefly forgotten in the redhead's feverish mind.

"The cursed blood always finds a way to propagate through generations, one way… or another."

"It has nothing to do with the lovingly mother who carries the new life within her."

"No matter the man or his feelings on the matter, the cursed blood has its own ways to prevent a single link from breaking the chain. For without continuity, there's no curse."

That last statement made Medraut behold the trembling child in her arms with renewed eyes, feeling the sting of tears threatening to crumble her hard exterior.

"But now that the father is dead and the son is still a child, a gap in generations had been formed; an opportunity has arisen to strike down Uther's prideful mistake."

"Here is where your bloodline enters, Medraut, daughter of Ruber the Red Knight."

"To pay the debt your father left behind, you must fulfill the pact we made with him."

"No…"

"Do this, and you will be largely rewarded."

"You will earn your place in Avalon among many Kings and warriors of old."

"You owe nothing to this land, nor its people."

The magic energies woven throughout the black armor started to whisper into Medraut's psyche as well as its power ignited her already green eyes with greenish light.

Kill him.

No…

He's that bastard's son, the very blood you swore to spill!

He's only a child…

A child that can become a threat just like his father was.

He was innocent of whatever sins his father… and his grandfather did in life. A father's burden should never be…

She violently stopped herself before she formulated that thought. She was no-one to speak about a father's burden.

So, with her eyes filled with that arcane, venomous glow, she got up and raised her sword. Lucius, Bors and Galahad's bodies suddenly held by evil forces like invisible, vicious tentacles that prevented them reaching for their weapons and try to stop what their hearts feared was about to happen.

Medraut looked at the frightened boy under her nose with a hatred… she knew it wasn't meant for him. They have taken her mother and her childhood from her; they will not do the same to him.

"Over my cold, dead body, you deranged crones." – she hissed before taking the boy in one arm and jumping on the griffin's back – "Griffith, take us outta here, quickly!" – and turning to the three young knights, she added in a rush – "Run! Run to the boat, NOW!"

A deafening cry that multiplied tenfold in their minds pierced their senses, releasing them from the spell, until they knew no more but the desperate adrenaline kick that went with the primal instinct of survival.

In their run they saw pieces of images from the past, the present… and the future.

They saw their lives passing in a wave, how their steps had guided them to this point, how the land was being filled with death and desolation as the hordes of the undead killed everything, how a single rider stood amidst the black earth, falcon perched in one forearm, sword ragged and proudly held in front of the enemy, eyes settled in cold determination.

"Mother!" – Lucius screamed.

"Don't let them trap you, Knight-Boy!" – Medraut exclaimed – "They will distort reality to confound you!"

They saw an old man dying impaled by the blade of an undead, a dear friend of his that had died in his arms and had risen to turn against him.

"No!" – Bors yelled – "FATHER!"

"Don't look at it!"

Then Medraut herself saw something that was meant for her eyes and only for her eyes.

A man.

A man so unfamiliar but yet so…

He was struggling with something… a sword locked in a glowing stone. But the sword didn't belong to him.

As the bluish and greenish energies woven their paths from his right arm along the rest of his body, igniting his circulatory system, they started to burn him from inside, disintegrating his body in ashes as the sword remained untouched, still locked in the stone.

And in his last moments, before vanishing, his eyes caught Medraut's eyes.

And those eyes, those green reptilian eyes were her own frightened eyes.

A shrilling cry pierced the gray, storming skies from Nowhere and escalated to the very point of blocking the three disembodied voices weaving spells around them, breaking the illusion.

And, before everything went totally black, Medraut was aware that cry… was hers.

After that, darkness engulfed the companions.

Blue threads of energy reached hesitantly to barely touch the contained, fading green glow that waited on the other side, deep in the entrails of Mother Earth, behind the maws of the Great Dragon, a constant vital torrent of life and death where all the arcane flows collided.

"The choice is yours, old friend… It has been always."

Then, after barely a second, the venomous green glow met its blue counterpart and, together, wove the next tendril that would shake Fate itself… forever.

The first conscious sensation Lucius felt was an overwhelming wave of nausea that ended with him on all fours vomiting miserably on the ground. After that, still trembling from nausea, his sight got clearer.

The sunlight wounded briefly his sensitive eyes before many pairs of boots surrounding him caught his immediate attention.

Raising slowly his tired eyes, following the muscled legs that followed those boots he found himself with several blades and spears pointing at him while a low murmur rumbled painfully through his ears.

"Sorcery!" – exclaimed one voice followed by many, hissing, yelling at him – "He appeared out of thin air!"

"Kill the sorcerer!" – they cried angrily.

"Death to the Vile Arts!"

But then, another powerful voice, one Lucius thought would never hear again, cut the air, effectively silencing the others' voices.

"Who art thou who dress in the knights' of the Round Table garments and crest? I do not know thee, neither have I seen thy face before." – as Lucius raised his head, his eyes filled themselves with tears of fear and joy by looking upon the visage of a man he would swear his loyalty, a deserving, noble man who had nothing to do with the old carcass that had been sitting in the Throne since he could remember – "Speak now on thy behalf, young man, or I shalt cast the due judgment upon a faulted man bearing what he had not earned by himself."

Lucius swallowed and grabbed this man's tunic with one trembling hand.

"My Lord…" - he said, filled with emotion, his eyes meeting the sober, limpid blue eyes of the other – "You don't know how glad I am by just looking at you and seeing you alive… my liege… my King…" - he sobbed, remembering all the misery he had been forced to witness on his last moments awake, running from the hell of Nowhere – "And if this means that I'm dead… There's no other I would serve more gladly in the afterlife… O' Arthur Pendragon, rightful heir of Uther Pendragon." – he finished to, following his words, fall unconscious again.

Chapter Text

Thirty-eight years before…

Dodging the blade that was meant for his throat, the adolescent rolled over the mattress until one of the bed's sides ended abruptly, making him drop painfully to the ground.

After that, a succession of blows in the dark that always aimed for him forced the young man to roll over the cold stony floor until he managed to get on his two feet and manhandle his attacker with his sole strength.

They struggled a bit until the blade on the other's hand dropped to the floor, and he took advantage of it by submitting his attacker by brute force again until the two were on the floor where, with a knee over the other's chest to keep him pinned, the adolescent reached for the fallen sword and used it as a knife, stabbing sloppily the struggling enemy below him again, again and again until he felt that no more resistance came from the limp form.

After a few ragged breaths, silence came and the young man felt increasingly aware of the sticky sensation that stained his fingers and his bed clothes. An invasive smell of liquid oxide filled his nostrils as well as liquid warmth spreaded downwards his face. He wasn't that kind of emotional teenager who resorted to cry easily… but never before death had been a so close call 'till now. Even a grown man would spill some tears after his first encounter with death itself.

Trembling, he got up slowly before clutching the weapon close to him while he went to his bedside candle and ignited it.

He didn't want to look at it, he really didn't… but there was so much blood… and he also wanted to confirm a dread suspicion he had as of late.

The frozen, dead visage of his attacker wasn't the one he had feared to find, but rather one of the castle soldiers. Not an ordinary cutthroat sent by one of their many enemies from the other Clans.

One of his own men had come in his sleep to assassinate him.

And he knew what that meant before even vocalizing it.

"Radcliff…" - he hissed, conscious of his brother's presence much earlier than the other had come out from the shadows.

"What is it, brother?" – Radcliff said with a light, conversational tone, as if nothing had just happened at all; his huge, monstrous silhouette sliding strangely gracefully as he slowly circled him like a vulture circles the prey – "Something of the matter? Stranger encounters in the middle of the night had happened within this castle's walls before; surely a lad as trained as yourself can manage a few unexpected visits as I see you have done a few moments ago." - then his tone went darker, sinister – "Father taught you well, to never trust even… YOUR OWN SHADOW!" – he yelled before charging against him, sword in hand, until the adolescent managed to parry his oversized brother's attack with the dull sword his hands were still clutching.

They struggled a bit until he heard Radcliff's insane laughter and his powerful frame took a step back, releasing their locked blades.

"Strong, resilient lil' shit, aren't we?" – he mocked, his cold green eyes gleaming with a crazed, murderous glint his younger brother had grown to recognize quite well, for their father had the same glint each time he came to him reeking of alcohol, cracking his knuckles in preparation of the due beating he had in storage for him since he was a child – "I do wonder… how many tries will take to actually erase you from the map. How much time you can take going without any sleep."

"You're mad!" – the teenager hissed, his sword still raised – "That's why father never wanted to entrust you with the lordship of our lands!"

Radcliff laughed maniacally, not bothered by the insult in the slightest.

"I would kill you with my bare hands, brother..." – and the last word had a hint of venom – "… But mother would never forgive me for such a thing, so this is the deal: either you stay here and endure this until exhaustion takes the worst of you, or… either you make the smart move and just disappear out of my sight… indefinitely." – and he came out of his brother's chambers the way he had come – "Consult it with the pillow… providing you can get some sleep, that's it."

His deranged cackles were something he hadn't being able to erase from his memory from that day on.

That had been the first time he had killed a human being… and it hadn't been the last.

Ten years later…

Awaking with one of the biggest splitting headaches he had experienced in the last year, the red-headed man got up from the tangled mess he had become with the sheets in his sleep and sat awhile on the side of his assigned bed during his stay on Camelot, eyeing the stony floor groggily.

He hadn't got much sleep, as usual, and the few hours he had managed to doze a bit had been plaguing by nightmares.

They say that some people don't sleep much because their dreams haunt them… but his own demons were far enough for making the Devil himself cry.

He prided himself that his older brother's first mistake had been to underestimate his worth, and his second had been overestimating his own. When the time to confront him had come, the once scared teenager had become a full-grown man hardened and desensitized by war with very little qualms about beheading his mad brother and displaying his head in a pike as a warning.

But thing is that, as much as he prided himself to be strong… the reality was very different.

Death wasn't something to take pride in. Death was something he, in his ignorance, thought he had known how it was, but he didn't. Not until he saw it, 'till he really saw it. It was something that got under one's skin and lived inside one's soul.

And the sad part was, in the end, that there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing.

Nothing would change that his innocence had been lost for longer than he actually cared to admit, nothing would change that his brother had enjoyed torturing him with his threats and mind games and nothing would change that he, instead of looking for a diplomatic outcome, had resorted to kill Radcliff just as he had wanted to kill him.

That made him no better or even different from his abusive father or his brother. That made him just the same rotten fruit coming from the same blackened branch.

And that was no consolation at all for his troubled soul. Not at all.

Snarling quietly, stubbornly not allowing a mere headache to deter him, he got up, dressed himself and, after splashing some cold water to his frowning face, he ventured out of his assigned chambers and went, sword in hand, to the courtyard where the castle's soldiers did their daily drill.

He spent his good two hours going through his routine of sword exercises until the sun started to show up in the far horizon.

After the first cry of the rooster, barely sweating, he abandoned the area before it started to get filled with people he didn't feel like talking or dealing with, so he went to the stables to check his mount. He knew he had been pushing the animal far too much even these days as an honored guest in Camelot, so he checked the creature regularly.

But as he set a foot on the stables, a soft voice accompanied by the recognizable sound of a cane testing the ground importuned him.

"Hello? Who's there?" – then the kid, the thrice-damned kid made his appearance – "May I help you?"

He felt a surge of nausea as if someone had punched him in the gut as soon as his eyes saw the poor little bastard still dealing clumsily with his surroundings, still unfamiliar with the new state of blindness that cursing accident had rendered him months ago.

It was a pitiful sight: an orphaned blind peasant boy sticking stubbornly to his apprenticeship in the stables while it was clear to everybody that the stable master only kept him because one of Arthur's knights had ordered him so.

The boy was doomed to fail, and every time the man saw him struggling with the daily chores a normal person could do three times faster than he did, he found disgusting how his comrade in arms, Sir Lionel, was just humoring the boy, planting in him dreams of glory and knighthood he would never reach.

Wasn't enough to let the kid keep his job, as useful as a blind stable boy could be, to even encourage him to pursue knighthood, a title Arthur only bestowed to capable, noble men under his service?

That was the cruelest and sickening joke a grown man could conjure, toying with a boy's dreams like that.

He passed by, not saying a word to the kid, and he was surprised when he noticed how the boy was actually following him at good pace, leaving the respectful distance all servants must observe.

When he reached his horse's square, the boy went on a halt.

"Sir Ruber, isn't it?" - the boy's voice went a little terse – "Your horse was a bit overtired yesterday, so I cleaned him and doubled his ration. I hope you find him satisfactory to your needs."

Ruber turned to the now stiff boy and gave him the look-over.

"Good enough, I suppose." – he said after a while noticing how the boy's shoulders relaxed a bit.

After that, a strange silence ensued.

"Listen, boy." – Ruber spoke first – "You've got this job, even if you are at apprenticeship stage, and you know your way around here." – he inhaled – "Not many kids in your situation are as fortunate as you are." – what was he doing, giving advice to this child that meant nothing to him, anyway? – "Keep that in mind so you can grow a full man with some dignity and bread to eat everyday instead of a beggar whose life will consist on relying on the charity of others and mourning over your crushed dreams. Be a man instead of a shadow."

The lad swallowed, changing his weight from one foot to the other.

"Sir Lionel says…" - he licked his lips, insecurity tinting his voice – "… That I can be whatever I wish to be. I just need to work harder."

Ruber's left eye twitched.

"Sir Lionel was born noble, married a noblewoman and has already noble progeny." – he hissed, accentuating words, annoyed to see how truly blind the poor little idiot was – "His background and situation has nothing to do with yours, and certainly, to this day, Arthur has never bestowed the knighthood to a peasant, less a blind one." – and looking at the mortified, sad expression woven in the boy's visage, he pressed further – "Someone had to tell you how this society is established so you won't blame yourself in the future for not achieving what was out of your reach in the first place." – feeling disgusted by seeing tears flowing silently from the child's milky eyes, he directed his steps towards the exit – "Be glad it was me and not another rich milk drinker who will not hesitate to laugh at you while he shoves your face by the mud."

Then, suddenly, the lad steeled himself.

"'United we stand…'" - he stammered – "'… now and forever in truth, divided we fall. Hand upon hand, brother to brother, no one shall be greater than all.'"

The red-headed man's blood boiled.

"The Oath is a lie, boy!" – he exclaimed, his powerful voice boomed thorough the entire facility, startling many of its equine residents – "A bunch of pretty words said to build a legend! That's how legends get so great! From an adorned lie!" – and turning to the lad again, pointing his index finger towards him, even if he cannot see it, Ruber added – "Don't you dare resort to the Oath to me, because I am well aware of how it works!" – and exiting the stables, he kept walking, not looking back even once – "Gods know that I know how it fucking works…"

But his already worsened headache didn't get any better when, after a copious breakfast, the King summoned all the now present knights of his Round Table.

Ruber utterly ignored how the dutiful knights abandoned the breakfast table to join their King at the Round Table Chamber and procured himself a bit more of crusty pumpkin bread and warm bacon until he felt satisfied. After that he simply took other route to meet his fellow knights.

In all these years, he had been present on each new repairing the old castle that had pertained years ago to the deceased Uther Pendragon had undergone, so he knew his way within its walls pretty well. He knew many shortcuts through the kitchens and the physician's laboratory to the exterior arcades that leaded directly to the main corridor in the Round Table's path.

Once he got there in time, he wasn't in the least surprised to see Lionel tagging behind Arthur like the loyal, servile dog he was. That didn't help to improve his mood.

Once inside the chamber, the due sing-along that went together with the action of sit down neither helped to improve his mood.

But the drop that filled the glass happened when they proclaimed the equality of shares between their territories and he felt all the words he had prepared to help his and his people's cause deflated under a sudden wave of indignation and anger.

They wanted to take from him what was legitimately his! How dared they?!

So, as they listed, both shields and voices raised up, the attributes a knight of the Round Table should exhibit, he couldn't stand this hypocrisy any longer.

So he spat on "compassion", one of the most important qualities in a knight, and substituted it with what he truly cared for.

"ME!" – was his proclamation, a challenge against Arthur, a clarification to his comrades, an offering to his gods… an unconscious plea for his sanity, which seemed more and more compromised as the seasons went on and his inner demons were dragging him, slow but surely, to the deep bottom end he feared more than anything in his life – "Charming sing-along." - he hissed, mildly pleased as he saw the outraged looks from the other knights throwing darts at him – "Now… I would prefer to leave unnecessary pleasantries aside and get straight to business." - he stated, feeling powerful as he feigned ignorance towards the hard feelings lingering in the spacious room – "Did I hear something about redefine the borders of our territory? How is that I was not informed of this?"

The mighty King Arthur, sat in front of him several meters ahead in the far opposite side of the Round Table, sighed and drummed his fingers over the table.

"Sir Ruber…" - he said, shaking his head from side to side – "Always thinking of thyself."

Followed by the King's words, a chorus of recriminations followed as well as Ruber's nostrils flared briefly, though he said nothing. His thoughts alone would have prompt all the present men to point their blades to his throat if he dared said them out aloud.

"When we declared our unity…" - continued Arthur with his impassive, regal voice – "… we accorded to divide the land according to each person's needs. As knights of the Round Table our obligations art to our people, not to ourselves."

Said the man whose crown was gained through violence and war.

A war Ruber had won for him.

"Haven't we served you loyally?" – the redhead spat, leaning himself over the table, accusing Arthur with his tone alone of the treason he was being object of – "Haven't I served and supported you unquestionably?"

During the war against the Saxons he had been a respectable figure, a beacon of hope to turn to. He had been the General of Arthur's armies, the only one capable enough to command men and deal with the enemy.

The only one with enough stomach to make the hard and displeasing decisions nobody wanted to dirty their hands and their consciences with.

"The King has decided!" – exclaimed then Sir Lionel, hitting over the table with his bare fist, exuding indignation and rage from each pore.

Ruber's teeth gritted angrily, but he soon noticed the number of eyes over him at that very moment, some judging him, others agreeing with his point of view but too coward to spoke it aloud.

Then the dreaded paranoia hit him. Hard.

"Perhaps a King who fails to reward his best knights shouldn't hold such a title…" - he found himself saying without really thinking about the implications of his words as they filled the room with sudden silence.

Unexpectedly, he knew by instinct that his sentiment was shared at least by half of the men present there. That gave him reassurance enough to stand his ground against Lionel, who defended Arthur loyally 'till the last consequences.

"Would you make yourself a traitor?" – asked the knight calmly, though the anger that bled from his eyes was quite eloquent.

"A traitor?" – repeated Ruber as if the notion sounded utterly ridiculous – "There would not be treason were Arthur no King." – and then, he rose from his seat, this time directing his words towards everyone, making sure each one of them listened to him, appealing for reason and not stubborn, blind obedience – "Maybe now is time for a new King to govern us and who'll gladly reward the deserving." – many interested eyes now were over him – "And I vote for me."

He had finally said it, and it felt good. It felt good to defy Arthur's authority, to question his decisions as a King, to put some sense in these meek men who acquiesced to everything he said.

Maybe this way he could make a difference. He had no delusions of being voted King by all these men, but perhaps a bit of discussion would make the difference. Perhaps this way Arthur would understand how a council made of cultivated men of honor really worked, minding each opinion by equal means, reaching some kind of agreement...

But his hopes were violently crushed as Lionel meddled once again.

"I will not serve a false King." - the knight snarled.

After those words, something inside Ruber detonated.

Something cold and dark, like the many evenings spent in the wilderness eating bad and sleeping worse with the inhuman pressure of planning the next strategic move towards the enemy and dreading the following morning as he calculated how many good men would be sacrificed in the next twenty-four hours to ensure a new victory.

"Then…" - the Red Knight started to say dangerously slow, reaching for his trusted mace under the table.

But then, before he could end his sentence, a sudden blast of bluish-green light exploded outside the Round Table Chamber and penetrated violently through the colored stained glass windows, blinding briefly all the present men.

Recovering quicker than the rest, Ruber blinked a couple of times and eyed warily the spiked mace that he still held on his right hand.

Then it hit him. The horrendous feeling that had briefly possessed his mind and his heart, tempting him to do something he knew he would lament later dearly. It hit him what he had almost done.

And he felt ill, disgusted and… afraid.

Afraid of what he was capable of.

And he cursed inwardly his tainted blood.

"Your Majesty!" - Gawain's voice exclaimed, bringing all the stunned men back to reality.

Then, a tense silence ensued.

"What was that?" - Lancelot was the first voicing the lingering question, his gentle deep timbre echoing softly thorough the chamber.

After that, many voices rose with the same question on their tongues.

"An unnatural light!" - exclaimed one.

"What could have been the cause?"

"Hold on, I don't like this…"

"Neither do I."

Then, before anybody could collect their thoughts, Ruber's booming voice filled the whole structure.

"Those were arcane energies." - he said, circling slowly the Round Table, his mace still in his hand, to stop before the very Arthur – "No doubt."

Recovering his regal composure and dignified aloofness, Arthur eyed warily first the spiky weapon, then the man who hold it.

"Art thou really sure about what art thou saying, Ruber?" - he spoke after calibrate the huge man's body language and finding, relived, not a trace of his previous hostility – "Truly, it is magic what we art speaking about?"

Ruber eyed him with a calculating, reptilian gaze.

"I am sure." - he said – "I give shelter to enough magic practitioners to know."

A general gasp escaped from many lips, as well as a low murmur rumbled almost instantaneously between the knights.

But Ruber seemed unfazed as he addressed them with an indifferent tone deep inside charged with enough venom to kill a snake.

"What?" - he said – "Now you're going to deny that you are the very ones who chase those people away from their homes and send them to me?" - he gave them a whizzed, mirthless chuckle – "What do you take me for? Stupid?" - his pale green eyes hardened – "How convenient is to pretend that those people aren't entirely human, right? To feign that they are like wild, dangerous beasts without conscience so you can say that they don't have the same rights as the meek, ignorant peasants that work your lands, eh?"

"Enough, Sir Ruber." - Arthur sent him a warning glance as he took Excalibur from the back of his chair, the legendary sword still inside its sheath to sign his peaceful approach to the evident wronged knight. After all, highlander or not, Ruber was still part of the Round Table – "As knights of the Round Table, as I previously stated, our obligations art to our people. And our people need us now that the supernatural have crossed the walls of Camelot."

The very expected chorus of agreement ensued as Ruber's eyes rolled dramatically. Bootlickers 'till the end, the bastards.

"Lancelot." - Arthur called his trusted second-in-command, being Lionel himself the immediate step next after him – "Take half of our Brothers with thou, search for any clues that would lead thee to the origin of these energies and bring the culprit to me." - blue eyes darkened before adding – "No man, nor sorcerer would take lightly the justice in Camelot."

"I beg to dissent!"

As those words were spoken, Ruber's long muscled legs stepped in again, regarding Arthur with a stony look.

"The magic practitioners are mine, and only mine to judge and to deal with." - he said, defiance plastered all over his face – "My subjects, my laws."

"Who named you defender of the witches' cause?!" - exclaimed Uryens, an unspoken declared detractor of Ruber's manners, methods and everything in general regarding the redhead since their first meeting eight years ago, one as a humbled King at the service of other greater than him, the other as a rogue runaway noble covered from head to toe in Saxon blood – "Who are you to question our laws? Laws approved by majority and for very good reasons!" - to emphasize his words, he pointed an armored index finger towards the bulky man – "You surely remember, better than anyone present in this chamber, what happened four years ago when that crazy hag, the so-called Madame Ming or Ganieda, went out of the cursed Forbidden Forest and almost chopped half of our men with her damnable Vile Arts!"

Ruber pinched the bridge of his nose tiredly. He remembered well the crazy old woman and her shapeshift tricks which ended with him trying to contain different kinds of very pissed, oversized, and lethal creatures said witch, for hours, had been morphing herself into at the very gates of Camelot while his men, cowardly crouched behind not-so-safe stone walls, had crossed themselves praying for Merlin's apparition.

The blasted old druid had taken his sweet time before materializing himself in front of the hag, challenging her to a magic duel and, subsequently, wiping the floor with her ass and exiling her to Avalon for good.

The old man, despite being so damn bony and (apparently) physically fragile, could be truly frightening when he wanted to.

But not all the magic practitioners were like those two. The majority of them were only gifted people who were well-versed in herbs and medicine in general. They were a threat to nobody, but a truly blessing when it came to plagues, seasonal diseases and births.

They were useful, wise people who deserved more respect than what they got these days.

But Ruber didn't get any chance to expose this reasoning as Arthur had made a terminating gesture with his hand.

"We will discuss this later." - he had sentenced – "We will split in two, the first group, as I was saying…" - he pinned Ruber with his eyes, clearly addressing his current non-proceeding behavior – "… will be lead by Lancelot to address the situation inside the castle." - turning to the knight in question, he added – "The Queen is the priority. Do not let any harm come to her. Understand, Lancelot?"

The alluded bowed his head tersely before taking his leave silently followed by those who preferred to search the castle instead of doing the hard, dirty work the remnants would surely have to do instead.

"The second, with Lionel and me…" - the King continued speaking stoically – "… will be addressing the exterior courtyard while he soldiers from the castle would cover the rest…"

But even before he had finished his orders, he knew that Ruber was gone.

Arthur sighed. That man… that man and his sudden mood swings, his insulting honesty and his raw defiance one day would become more than his patience was willing to take.

And that day, he lamented, would be the shattering of an allegiance he felt proud of.

For the Scottish had been, by means of Ruber's pledged loyalty, the only ones among Jutes, Angles and the ferocious Saxons who had forged an alliance with Arthur on the country's behalf.

Losing Ruber would mean that Britons would be alone. Again.

And he would become something he utterly dreaded: his own father, Uther Pendragon, the so-called Betrayer King.

After a while jumping inside and out of a precarious balance between consciousness and the intangible world of dreams, Medraut awoke after being shaken for a while by two little hands while a soft, infantile voice found her heart amidst the deep sea of her own mind.

"Wake up!" - it exclaimed - "Wake up before they come!"

Wrinkling her freckled nose a bit and frowning deeply, the girl opened her eyes and, after a few seconds letting her sigh get clearer, she almost tackled the little boy whose worried, scared face was above her own.

"Kid!" – she gasped hoarsely, touching his bony wrists and shoulders, his rounded face and his wild blonde hair as if making sure that he was real – "You okay?! Are you hurt?!"

The boy's big blue eyes were watery, scared… but also relieved to see her alive. He had feared for a second that she would be nothing but a corpse lying by his side the very moment he had woken up on that new strange, unknown place.

So he bit his lower lip and shook his head from side to side vehemently.

Medraut's tense shoulders relaxed a bit and, after taking notice of their surroundings, she hurried herself to get up, putting immediately her black cloak's hood over her face since she couldn't find her helmet.

The griffin and the others were nowhere to be seen and the slight muffled ache she felt on the back of her cranium and column informed the redhead that they had landed instead of being teleported as she had hoped. This place still was not Avalon, nor the limbic gray Land of Nowhere, but unknown and a bit frightening still even with the sun over their heads.

"Stick with me." – she instructed in a voice so low that Loholt had to pay extra attention to fully understand what she was saying – "I don't know where we are, but the moment people start recognizing this armor, we are royally screwed." – she added while closing tightly her dark cape around her fibered frame – "Come." – she instructed, pointing with her green eyes the cape – "Keep close to me and hide your witchy charms and amulets." – and when she felt the little guy getting under her torn cape and taking her armored hand, she smiled briefly – "Good boy. Now let's walk. This place has to have an exit."

They had been lucky their landing place had been a solitary, shadowy corner just beneath the battlements of, if Medraut's recalling in architecture lessons was any good, a very huge fortress. Fortunately, they weren't in a classic bailey zone, otherwise many of the resident soldiers, servants and even peasants would have spotted them quite easily. They seemed to be in a rather narrow space between the said bailey and the exterior. A double rampart.

"Crappity crap." – the red-haired girl hissed – "We've got somehow inside of one of those monstrous fortresses with outer ward zone." – and sticking to the outer wall, she took note of the many watch towers and the quick metallic steps followed by nervous talk that filled the battlements from side to side at that very moment – "They know we're here, kiddo. You know how these 'Briton nobility' guys feel about sorcery and stuff, so you make yourself as inconspicuous as you can and I…" - she trailed off, licking her lips – "… Should any harm comes to us, I will act as a shield while you run and hide, 'kay?" – but as soon as she felt Loholt's thin arms circling her armored waist tightly as if saying he was not willing to let her go, she sighed – "No hero shit, you're the important one here. Understood?" – but sensing his hesitance, she pressed with a firmer tone – "Understood, boy?"

Under her cloak, Loholt shut his eyes tightly and nodded in silence.

Medraut allowed herself a brief moment of weakness and pressed the child's tiny form to her. This kid felt just as alone as she had felt a good part of her life, without parents to love and protect you, living in the middle of a hostile environment and learning real quick how to make your best with the scarce resources at your disposition.

She had learned how to swing a sword at eight, and this boy probably had learned how to use his powers since he could remember.

She knew him even less than she had known Lucius, and he was her enemy's son, but… somehow, she felt that protecting him was right, that to reciprocate his sweet kindness, the kindness of one so innocent and pure as a child could be, was not just a mere inner voice guiding her towards the right thing to do but… more like a duty, her duty.

And her duty said that she would protect this child 'till the last consequences.

No matter the cost.

So, valiant and proud on her heels, Medraut of the High Lands advanced silently with the many gifts the Black Armor provided to her, making herself one with shadow, soon becoming mantled with one of the basic protection spells her little companion summoned to avoid being taken by surprise.

But by surprise they were taken nonetheless when the cold hiss of a sword abandoning the cave of its sheath reverberated a few inches from the girl's back.

Soon, a monstrous serrated sword found hers in midair and both steels met amidst a rain of sparks like a thunder roaring before the real storm.

Under her big black hood, Medraut gasped as soon as she caught sight of her attacker.

If young Bors had looked like a mastodon to her, this one was the closest thing she had ever seen to a human mountain: widely surpassing seven foot tall; with trained, hiper-developed muscle mass even in the very brows that crowned the coldest eyes she had ever seen in a man, Medraut started to feel the inhuman pressure of his sword against hers, gaining ground each second he forced her blade downwards freehand with his sole strength.

On the very moment she felt her fingers and wrist ache, making her pulse slightly trembling, she knew she couldn't win this battle using her enhanced strength.

So, she maneuvered backwards, interposing her body between her opponent and little Loholt, and made an attempt to disarm him.

But he was stronger and certainly quicker in thought than she had initially predicted, for he evaded the maneuver quite easily while he gave her a short, raspy laugh.

"Nice trick." – he commented, his voice harsh but not unpleasant, thickly accented as he rolled some consonants in a way that felt oddly familiar – "But not one you should put on a foe twice as big and stronger than you."

After that, Medraut deflected the first and second blows… but the third she found herself gasping for a second time when her foe's blade attempted to pierce her shoulder's juncture as soon as she missed a strike.

It wasn't like his blade could harm her armor or the flesh beneath it in any way… but she now realized how vulnerable and exposed she was without her helmet. One well-directed blow with just the right amount of strength and her pretty head would roll over the ground like a soccer ball.

So, she started to sweat under her armor. Hard.

Her opponent was relentless, delivering blow after blow with an impossible speed given his monstrous physical breadth, parrying and deflecting again and again her attacks with a terrifying ease. No matter how strong, smart or quick she was, he always predicted her moves, making her sweat profusely under her armor as the minutes passed and more blows were exchanged.

Medraut's eyes were so preoccupied with her foe's sword than she wasn't really looking at his expressions to count with some vantage over his moves, for his height was so great that the angle her head would have to turn upwards to see him would have given away her precarious cover.

The small boy Loholt, since the duel's start, had run towards a shadowy corner and was observing petrified and utterly terrified how that titan was openly playing with his friend, tiring her like a cat tires the mouse before delivering the killing move.

And he, even frightened as he was, wasn't going to allow that man to harm his only friend in this world.

So, as he saw Medraut falter the briefest of the moments, he also saw the murdering gleam reflected on the other's eyes as the man rose his menacing weapon, ready to strike for good… and, against his best judgment, Loholt clapped both of his hands and, intertwining this gesture with ancient arcane words that spoke of a more ancient, magical world that each year was more and more obscured by Christianity, send an ethereal wave of bluish light that blinded the giant momentarily, giving Medraut the opportunity she needed to disarm him.

And she took that opportunity avidly.

However, as the serrated blade hit the ground, the girl saw, horrified, how her opponent had taken her sword by the blade, bare-handed, and had stopped her blow in midair.

As Medraut's incredulous eyes went from the tip of her sword, now pearled with blood that leak drop by drop soundly to the ground, to the arrogant smile the man wore at that moment… she finally took in his face completely as a whole and not separated, short-lived details in her brain; truly looking at the man in front of her.

With a strong, wide gullet supporting a stronger, proud and slightly inverted jaw, pale as snow, with thin, cruel lips full of sharp white teeth twisted in an unsettling smile, his face made something inside her stomach twist as her eyes went upwards, taking in all an unknown visage that made her very soul jump up her throat.

He had a thin nose with a pronounced bridge and flaring nostrils that ended upwards in a permanently frowned brow that crowned bloodshot, fiery… yet strongly familiar eyes.

Eyes as she, now in the aftermath of the battle, noticed that they were brightly green and reptilian as her own.

But it cannot be… he was dead. Dead long before she was even born.

But then she remembered what she had seen before losing consciousness. The man and the stone. The trap and the unyielding soul. The sword and the searing pain weaving arcane paths up the circulatory system.

This man… even as much as her rational inner self said otherwise, this man truly was…

He was… him. The one she had wished she had known, the one whose's hand she had never touched, the one whose voice she had never heard… the one she had wish she could have loved.

Wasn't he?

It had to be; her green eyes, her own bright red hair, her paleness and her northern features were boldly present all over him; no matter from which angle she wanted to look at it, his entire being screamed of familiarity, of kin, of flesh and blood.

She was in front of what her heart had wanted most since she could remember. Alive, tangible, breathing… talking…

Could she be dreaming after all?

"Game's over, pal." – he said after what seemed like an Eternity to the still dazed girl – "Now, gimme the butter knife you're using as a weapon and come with me, nice and easy. No need for a broken wrist or a bruised jaw, eh?" – he added perversely, clearly enjoying himself – "Let's all keep our heads, shall we?"

Medraut's eyes squinted. That was… a joke? Really?

She recalled her mother saying something about a very… peculiar sense of humor of his, but never young Medraut had thought it could have played this way under this kind of circumstances. When she had thought about how he could have been, she always tended to visualize him as a strong, reliable, opinionated and bold man… but not this human mountain with unsettling eyes and weird sense of humor.

This wasn't what she had expected.

But he hadn't done with talking just yet.

"You better tell your druid friend to stay still and no funny tricks." – he said with a tone she didn't like in the slightest – "For these gentlemen are less understanding than me when it comes to the Old Ways."

Feeling a chilling sweat rolling down her spine under her armor, Medraut turned her head around to see little Loholt surrounded by at least a dozen armed men restraining him like they would do to a full-grown adult and not the thin child he was. And many of their blades were pointing at his neck.

Her eyes found his, whose had turned from bright blue to dull gray as if misted while an ashamed look of deep self-blaming pleaded silently for her forgiveness.

For he had failed her, and because of that, both were trapped.

He had failed her trying to protect her.

Then, as if trying to persuade her to drop her weapon, one of the blades that were against Loholt's throat went a bit closer and drew a thin line on the tender flesh that started to bleed.

At the sight of his blood, her eyes flashed in anger and the arcane energies woven in the Black Armor penetrated her circulatory system giving her enough reflexes and speed to take one of her many hidden knifes and, with a deafening cry upon her lips, violently throwing it to the offending hand that wielded the offending blade.

The man dropped instantaneously his weapon while clutching his wounded hand and screamed in pain.

But no-one dared to avenge their comrade as they looked, petrified, to what was in front of their very eyes.

For the black knight's dark hood had dropped with the movement and a wild long mane of red fiery curly hair rippled freely in the wind.

And under such a lustrous, leonine mane was the face of a girl, not even a woman yet, whose strong northern features faced them with the scariest, righteous ire they had ever seen in a human being.

But what was most frightening of all were her eyes, venomous and cold as a drake's and filled with the green glow of the arcane.

Everybody held their respective breaths as her thin, bloodless lips opened as she spoke.

And her voice was terribly inhuman.

"Touch one single hair of his head again, and I will slit one by one all of your throats and present your heads to my Gods as an offering."

Many gasps of incredulous, frightened hearts filled the short space between them and this unholy female creature clad in black iron.

For there was nothing more terrifying to the Iron Lords of the Round Table than an ungodly, dark Iron Maiden mantled in the ancient powers they feared most.

But one of those scared men, the bravest, dashing of all, dark curly hair and beautiful blue eyes set in a face full of determination and holy devotion raised his voice in the name of his King.

For Lancelot of the Lake had never been a man of casting his eyes down in the face of the unholy.

"Who are you?" – he simply asked, holding her glowing gaze.

And then, her pale lips formed a sardonic smile that reminded Lancelot of someone else he knew.

Someone else who had said nothing since the girl had spoken. Someone else who was looking at her with a strange mixture of shock and recognizement painted all along his features.

Someone else whose hand was still bleeding from the blade she wielded.

Someone else Lancelot dreaded with all his might.

"You may call me… Mordred." – she answered, whispers from the inner darkness of the Armor seizing her tongue, her voice… her mind – "The one who seeks the One Truth." – but a rebellious wild beast she was, for she managed to reign once more over her mind, taking the venomous green glow from her eyes and leaving her sole steely gaze, planting face to these men and their unjust society, her voice powerfully infused with strength and beauty – "Protector of the blood of the Dragons and their righteous Head." – she added, giving to the small child an intense look of courage, of unwavering friendship… of devoting loyalty – "Cut the Dragon's Head, and its fire will engulf you all."

Chapter Text

Bors the Younger felt like total and utterly shit at that very moment.

He had been feeling that way since he had woken up trembling and found himself in the middle of an esplanade so vast and deserted that his sight couldn't reach the end.

Half delirious, he had thought for his good couple of hours walking aimlessly in the middle of nowhere that he had managed to angry the Old Spirits to the point that they had thought a befitting punishment to put him in one of those hostile, distant southern lands where everything was but scorching sand beneath the feet with a scorching sky above the head and where people usually covered themselves from head to toe and spoke in an exotic tongue preaching about the greatness of the One With Many Names, for they called Him Allah instead of the Christian Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

He had been pondering what to do with his misery and sorrow in solitude following miles ahead without hope or purpose… until he had reached suddenly the salted chill of the sea, greeting him with its pearly grayness breaking foam against the rocks.

His dark eyes had been filled with tears of joy as he had finally recognized this territory as his beloved land, Britain, as he had found two fishermen who, at the sight of his crest, had saluted him, blessfully in the Celtic tongue, with warm words and respect and had merrily invited him to share their meal and their flask of warm cordial.

Bors the Younger had never been a man keen of alcoholic beverages, for he thought that alcohol tended to numb the mind and bewilded the senses, but this one had the richest and most marvelous taste he would have ever the pleasure to drink.

"'Tis called 'King Arthur's Ambrosia', m'lord." - they said as young Bors sipped it gratefully – "Shepherds made it of eggs, cream, lemons, honey and strong waters. They say it will bring the dead to life and make barren women conceive."

"Indeed." - the young man agreed while palating the blessed beverage, feeling his spirits raise just a little bit. Under different circumstances he would likely have scolded the men for using his King's good name in some alcoholic beverage, but now he knew it wasn't his place to speak and the cordial was most magnificent, truly befitting for a King.

Thinking absently of this, spent and exhausted as he felt, Bors recalled the last year and the many months he had spent wandering the land in search of what Perceval had achieved in his place, and couldn't help but wonder what will be of him from now on forward.

He had no King, no Court and, likely, no Kingdom to return.

And if those evil creatures' visions had held any trace of truth, he didn't even have a father now.

What would be of him and his poor mother? He should return to their lands and see if he could pick up the pieces of his beloved land that the war had shattered after so much sacrifice on his elders' shoulders.

A sacrifice that, with Arthur's death, had been in vain.

All because of one selfish man and his accursed seed.

He recalled her fanged smile, her pale visage, her deceiving bright green eyes, her brash gestures… everything a remainder of who she was, to whom she owed such northern, angular features of hers; displeasing in her lack of manners and her raspy voice, ridicule and out of place with her tomboyish attitude, carrying herself with wide strides like she owned the air they breathe, not a single trace or the smallest indicative in her very essence that hinted of femininity, of prudent words and demure attitude.

He hated her because she made him feel small and inadequate, unsure how to treat a woman who did not sought his protection. A woman who didn't need his protection.

And this poor bastard of his nephew looked at her like she was the answer to all his prayers, the dainty maiden clad in white who soothe unicorns with her unearthly voice they all dreamed and hoped for.

They were knights, for God's sake! Protectors of the weak, seekers of the Truth; strong, reliable men that decent women dreamed and aspired to have as husbands!

What was a sword without its sheath? What was a knight without his damsel? What if said damsel… became the protector instead?

The damnable highlander redhead was an entity born against all the rules of nature! An abhorrent abortion of sorcery made by crazy old women who sold every day their integrity and their dignity to live like beasts, devoid of any rules that contained their sensuous, dark natures!

Ah…

Suddenly, as soon as the thought had invaded treacherously his mind, his gut had rejected it with all its bile.

Sensuous? Her?! She was the antithesis of what a decent man should find sensuous!

She was dark, she was brutish, she was… taller, wirer and uglier than a standard lass her age should look. What Lucius did possibly see in her, in a girl who would never… see him as a man?

And why in the blazes did that bothered him so much?

"Oi! Young Sir Knight!" – one of the fishermen's voice awakened him from his reverie with such violence that he felt slightly nauseous when he turned his head to address what looked like a newcomer and what his heart hoped to be a Comrade In Arms – "'Tis way!" – the man waved his hand as a lone figure atop a gallant steed stood a few meters above their sight, taking advantage of the darkness and the uneven terrain of the sandy beach – "M'lord." – he added, addressing the still dazed Bors – "'Tis a comrade of yours?"

And Bors' stomach formed a lump as soon as the newcomer took their helmet off and revealed a well-known frowned visage that made the other men gasp in incredulous astonishment.

"I'm not a man." – the easily recognizable, hard as steel, feminine voice of Lady Kayleigh wove its way through their ears. Her long, once lustrous and mahogany-colored mane of straight hair blowing in the wind as some sort of mythical figure, its few tendrils of white not diminishing her poise in the slightest – "Neither I am young anymore, I'm afraid." – she added as her determined gaze swept over the paralyzed men until it rested over Bors' shoulders – "You! Bors the Younger!" – she commanded, and the young knight almost flinched as if being severely reprehended by some old, bossy nursemaid – "By the power bestowed under His Majesty King Arthur's hand, I summon the privilege to call you as my Brother In Arms in my direst hour! Renew your vows and hail to me with a high head and a higher blade!"

While the fishermen eyed her, then him doubtfully and even a bit wary as they had never seen a woman clad in iron, falcon perched in left arm and reins firmly grasped by her right hand while sitting atop a warhorse in a very mannish way; Bors' heart dwarfed within his chest: this was another wonder of nature, a happy mistake happened long before he was knighted to a man whose sight was no more.

But this, if not a true lady, was the honored and respectable King's Damosel, Arthur's emissary during his unknown illness when securing the unity of the kingdom had been precarious at best.

She was a figure of authority, the only woman, besides the disgraced Queen, allowed to sit at the Round Table as an equal to any man.

"My Lady Kayleigh." – he saluted getting up promptly and bowing respectfully his tired head, his eyes and his soul befitting of an old man's while he spoke – "This knight hails you and welcomes you to his humble side, for I have nothing more to offer to you except my company."

"I demand your blade, not your self-pitying, Bors the Younger!" – the Lady's voice cut through his skin, cold and incisive, like ice – "For I have had enough of that these last years!" – and looking at the broad-shouldered young man before her who didn't dare to meet her eyes, she harrumphed briefly and thought about her dearest Garrett, how he would had soothed the lad with good words. How she herself would have soothe this young man years ago with the same words that won't come easy to a woman who had lost everything she cared about in a matter of a single day, at Camlann's twilight with Arthur's blood tinting the silvery waters of the lake – "Brother of my father, blood of my blood, hear me." – at that, Bors' eyes raised timidly – "Hope is the last thing to die, and that same hope has brought me here today, for I am looking for my estranged son."

Bors' temper rose at that briefly, recalling the nearly treacherous behavior Lucius had displayed since he entertained Medraut's company.

No, not Medraut, but Morded, the Kingslayer.

"I would refrain from finding him, my Lady, for Lucius has dishonored our Order giving himself to the enemy!" – he exclaimed, a sudden anguish building inside his chest – "He spoke of broken bonds, of Arthur's death, and defended Mordred in front of his friend Galahad and me myself. He's not the son that accompanied you to the battlefield."

A brief although violent emotion ran across Lady Kayleigh's features, but she composed herself quickly.

"He will be always my son, Bors." – she said with a grave gesture – "And if this Mordred has convinced him of the opposite, I will do my best to extract him from this wanna-be-usurper's grasp and deliver him the due slaps if he persists."

Bors sighed. She clearly didn't understand.

"I don't think that is possible now, my Lady. For you don't know the magnitude of Mordred's spell towards Lucius."

He hoped that remark would sink in Lady Kayleigh's good will.

But it didn't, for she clearly failed to grasp the connotations Bors hinted on that single word.

"So, a sorcerer, is it?" – she hissed, her memories bitter towards something in particular that had been an unspoken thorn inside her family since that sad day her mother Lady Julianna's hair had started to gray, almost eighteen years ago – "Why that doesn't surprise me?" – she murmured, more to herself than to the disoriented young man in front of her – "One way or another, I ask from you this one favor, Bors, and if it doesn't convince you, I would release you from your duty towards me and Lucius and you will be free to dedicate your blade to higher purposes."

"My Lady…?"

"Come with me, brother of my father, for I have in my power a means to reach this Mordred and free my Lucius from the Kingslayer's grasp." – her steely hand suddenly looked so promising… so tempting in such a dire time when Bors felt that he had failed and he would not have another opportunity to restore whatever goodness that this world has left.

Taking her hand silently, Kayleigh helped him hoist up atop the warhorse and, without saying goodbye to the fishermen, they rode for a while amidst gray sands and grayer distant waters until they reached a small mound protruding from the imprecise frontier between sand and grass that indicated the beginning of the inner lands.

"My Lady Kayleigh?" – Bors said after studying carefully his brother's daughter visage from close range, noticing the rather scandalous recent scars she sported on the left side of her face, for they were raw, reddened and slightly swollen, precisely carved on her flesh in the form of three straight lines, as if some beast had attacked her and clawed at her face – "Pardon my boldness, but how did you sustain such wounds?"

Kayleigh said nothing and pointed with a movement of her chin towards something that made Bors' blood froze on the spot.

Because at the top of the mound, the bulky form of a black beast screeched while several sturdy ropes contained its massive dark wings and beak, tightly tying it to the ground where several hooks held rock, preventing it to break loose.

And said black beast was something Bors had seen before.

A griffin. A griffin that he recognized immediately.

Marveled at how petite Lady Kayleigh had managed to trap such a wild and treacherous creature, Bors' eyebrows almost touched his hairline in awe and fear the moment the woman grabbed the beast by its feathery neck and pulled the thing against her, forcing it to face her.

"This murderous creature was a vassal from my former nemesis, Ruber of the High Lands, many years ago when he sought to kill Arthur and conquer Camelot by means of deceit and sorcery. You were but a child at that time, Bors." – she said coldly, eyeing the struggling griffin with disgust – "And I can tell this Mordred inherited the ability to attract and enslave these evil beasts if he is indeed a sorcerer himself. Isn't that true, you foul animal?"

The griffin hissed contemptibly, eyeing her with a murderous green glare of its unnatural eyes.

"My Master will crush your bones, flimsy human female." – it said with a strange, twisted pride tinting its raspy voice while its pointy tongue struggled inside of a partially closed beak, rolling the words slowly, venomously – "For the strength that coursed through the soul of the one who sired her also courses through hers. She is a Titan, born of a Titan's blood."

"She?" – repeated Kayleigh as if her ears were playing tricks to her – "What are you blabbering about, beast?"

The mythic creature laughed evilly.

"How pathetic and weak humans like you, who rely on traps rather than on honorable combat to face one of my kind, could really be in the end by hating and chasing phantoms instead of knowing your enemy well, hmmm?" – it hissed, gloating viciously as it savored the sight the petrified face of the woman offered – "Did you really thought you were facing my old Master again? He was strong and cunning, but his bitterness often clouded his mind. And his mate, the Dark One, if physically weak, had the strongest will and determination I've ever seen in a human." – it laughed again as Kayleigh's visage became paler and paler – "My new Master has inherited both their strengths, none of their weaknesses. And she is female, a bearer of life and a warrior, the thing most feared amongst your ilk, such as you are, but younger and wilder, untainted by your poisonous civilization that denies the Old Ways." – its eyes gleamed with malign mirth – "To my old eyes, she could not be more perfect."

"She's got my sister's visage, but she ain't my sister." – with a calm voice, very uncharacteristic of him, Ruber addressed the avalanche of questions, questions that disguised accusations, that the rest of the knights sat back at the Round Table were directing at him – "She's younger, taller and far stronger than my sibling. Far stronger than many men present here, I would say." – he added maliciously, enjoying the uncomfortable glances the knights exchanged to each other's – "Besides, I'm not that sure that she's an actual sorceress at all. The kid's a druid, alright, but so also old Merlin here present is." – he added, gesturing towards the quiet tall old man standing at an even quieter King Arthur's side – "I don't think those two are the source of the attack… if there was even an actual attack in the first place. As far as we know, there had been no harm done, no wounded people and no valuables were stolen during the confusion."

"What about the other one?" – asked Gawain, always the first eager to find a culprit, whatever the nature of the case would be – "The albino boy dressed in our crest?"

That raised a trail of murmurs.

"We are all present here. And no armor of us Brothers had been stolen." – answered Lancelot calmly, placating Gawain's temper a bit as he spoke – "Whatever the boy has done to obtain such an armor, it hasn't been done through murder or theft. Perhaps he's only a smith apprentice and he crafted the armor himself."

"But for what purpose?"

"Perhaps he only wanted to prove himself worthy." – Lancelot speculated – "He showed the due respect to Arthur's authority before passing away, isn't that correct, Your Majesty?" – he added, addressing Arthur himself.

The monarch nodded once.

"I have never witnessed a young man to be so lost, so frightened and so devoted at the same time." – he said gravely, remembering the hope that the pale boy's eyes had harbored before losing consciousness in his own arms, as if looking at him had been the most wonderful thing he had seen in a long time – "His eyes were clear and his voice rang true as he called me his liege and his King. I sensed no ill intention coming from him, but rather a desperate call for aid." – then, his blue eyes shifted towards Ruber again – "However, regarding the other two, the druid child and the girl who calls herself Mordred, I am not so sure about the intentions they harbor towards Camelot." – adopting his usual regal aloofness, he addressed the Red Knight – "Art thou certain this Mordred is not blood-related with thee, Ruber? In all honesty, the girl holds a strong resemblance with thee thyself."

Ruber snorted. Very typical Arthur to rely more on his bootlickers' opinions rather than trusting one of the few who dared to speak the raw truth to his face.

"Believe me…" - he started, knowing that such a plea would fall on deaf ears – "… the nobility in the High Lands are scarce and firmly controlled. My father, Lord Carados, took care of that many years ago, and my brother Radcliff followed his example when he took his place. No child of my family tree bloodline, legitimated or bastard, is neither anonymous nor unregistered in our books. It was a necessary measure we all had to undertake in order to prevent inbreeding." – he didn't mention that said inbreeding was already a sad reality among them – "But this Mordred gal ain't registered in our books and I personally have never seen her before. I can tell there's a resemblance for sure, I'm not blind, but she's not one of the McLeods. It has been several generations since one of our women has taken the sword and become a whole Shield-Maiden."

Many of the present men left incredulous gasps and a trail of murmurs come from their mouths.

"What? Don't act so surprised when you know very well how in the past Queen Boudicca let Romans know what she really thought about their Empire and the prospect of slavery that awaited her people. Oh, wait." – he mocked – "Silly me, I forgot that you now are all good Christian believers, a religion that came mutilated from the very Rome we all fought against of centuries ago, that made you conveniently forgot our 'barbarian' common roots."

"Enough, Ruber!" – Sir Lionel got violently up from his chair, slamming both fists over the Round Table – "This is not the time to discuss your personal grudges against the unanimous decision to establish Christianity as a means to unify our people under one and only faith! You know very well that the Old Gods have nothing to do against how the world is changing right now! Either we adapt to the changes and forge a strong, unified country, or we will succumb to invasion, annihilation and oblivion! We lived through Hell when Saxons invaded us taking advantage of our broken, divided status!"

"And why not?" – defied the red-headed man – "Don't you realize that, while you justify and defend the albino boy's motives as righteous and pure, you totally disregard the gal and the child just because they are somehow linked to arcane practices, thus, the Old Ways? You're all so terrified that this land would regress to its ancient self that you automatically condemn anything or anyone that reminds you who we used to be!" – and his voice got louder, passionate, because he felt that, for the first time, his cause had a solid backup evidence – "Those people who escape from your goddamned 'cleansings' led by the clergy and angry rednecks meaning stoning, burning at the stake, hanging, whipping, impalement and the like, come to me starved, abused and traumatized asking for shelter! And you're still wondering why I want more lands? Warmer lands? I have half the Briton and Welsh population freezing their arses out while occupying Sutherland territory! Sutherland, where not even the Kings of old would dare to build up their homes and castles, for fuck's sake!" – and looking to Arthur in the eye, he added – "Your father, Uther Pendragon, was well-known as the Betrayer King. Do you know how these people, the magic practitioners, call you?: Arthur The Cruel."

Arthur went still and paled visibly.

A sudden, tense silence ensued. Nobody the bolder to speak ill against what it was depicted as mass suffering and unnecessary cruelty.

"Forgive me, my King…" - Lionel began slowly, as if even unsure to be the one speaking now given the former animosity showed against the Red Knight since the previous council around the Round Table, where the issue had evolved from an apparent attempt to overthrowing Arthur's government to a serious Law injustice – "But… I cannot bring myself to disagree with Ruber if such is the reality going on his territory. Given that, I am willing to hand over my part of land share in favor of offering those people at least a deign place to live."

That sentence alone unleashed a hurricane of voices with divided opinions, from the ones who claimed charity and mercy willing to part with a portion of their lands to others masking their own greediness arguing fairness and equality while some others fearing a plot with Ruber acquiring power by means of controlling more territory and amassing an army of resentful witches and warlocks.

And there were even the most mercenary ones who didn't give a crap about how much territory they'll have in their power in the end as long as they obtained the promised riches (ergo, the monetary war's spoils) they had fought in the war against the Saxons for.

But Arthur had kept silent, watching in disbelief his Order of the Round Table regressing from valiant, good-natured men pursuing peace and ideals of fairness and kindness for all… to the greedy bastards that had been battling for supremacy during two generations after Uther's murder.

This… this was spiraling out of his control too fast, and there was still the problem with those three unexpected young visitors…

Slamming Excalibur in front of everyone with such force the sturdy wood of the circular table threatened to splinter, King Arthur Pendragon managed to get everyone silent, unsure of what was coming next and noticing the outrageous violation of their Code by presenting an unsheathed weapon on the very Round Table.

"This is what ye want?" – he boomed indignantly, reprimanding efficiently those who were about to open their mouths to protest – "Discord? Violence? War? Again?" – he berated – "Have ye learned nothing from all these years campaigning against the Saxons and all the friends, brothers, fathers and sons we have lost? Have ye learned nothing about the meaning of raising a sword and its consequences? Whatever ye think this sword is for?" – he exclaimed – "Excalibur was not forged by the dragons of old for petty skirmishes of a Brother against a Brother. Excalibur was forged to unify, to bring this land the much-needed hope and defense it is begging. Do not ye hear the land weeping for the blood that has been spilled? It will cost several generations before this land recover itself from its wounds, several!" – he boomed – "Our rule is still far from perfect, I am aware of that and I deeply apologize to those who suffered and are still suffering under it." – he said as he eyed Ruber directly, whose silent anger was still pretty much palpable – "For that reason, I shalt deal with equanimity and mercy with the three youngsters by granting all of them the benefit of doubt, for we cannot release them without clarify some questions that need to be addressed: who they are, how did they got inside our walls and what their intentions are." – inhaling deeply, he addressed his knights as a whole again – "For now, this will be our current issue to address. We will discuss, however, this other also serious problem Ruber has brought to us and how to face it properly as gentlemen, not as the pack of rabid wolves I have witnessed here today." - with that, he recovered Excalibur and, taking it by its hilt, he sheathed it again as a symbol of peace, of forsaking weapons in favor of dialogue – "I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, legitimate Heir of the Throne of Britain, declare this reunion officially hold up until further notice. Go now, and reflect upon thine words and actions that had taken place on this shameful evening."

The men rose from their respective seats and abandoned the Round Table chamber in respectful silence, not even Ruber dared to look back once the King was left only in the silent company of his counselor Merlin.

"Did I act fairly and justly, Merlin?" – asked Arthur after a while in silence, rising slowly and tiredly from his seat, rubbing his eyes with his fingers – "Did I take into consideration every single point of view today? Did I act as a good, impartial ruler this time, my friend?"

Eyeing the seat that had been occupied merely minutes ago by the infamous Red Knight without bating a lash, the old druid's pupils flickered with remnants of blue arcane energy.

"You did the best you could, Arthur." – answered the old man with his grave voice – "You do not need to torture yourself about today's discussion, as it was totally expected given the current circumstances." – then he started to walk beside his King, his protégée, the closest thing he had to a real son – "In fact, you should feel proud of what has been accomplished here today, for your Sir Ironside finally exposed what has been weighting his heart so much regarding you and your rule. For a man like him, this has been quite the feat."

"Sir Ironside?" – the King asked while walking peacefully side by side with the living soul he trusted most – "Thou mean Ruber?"

"It is the name he was destined for, but Fate stole it from him as well as his youth and the many things he could have been accomplished."

"Thou speak as if he were dead…"

"He was, Arthur. He had been a dead man much earlier than when this first morning meeting took place. But the Universe has a curious way to balance things, and what could have never been reached through violence and resentment, it had been sealed beyond death itself. His mother can be proud of the son she has raised; just as Sir Ector and his Lady can be very proud of the small boy they raised to be King."

Arthur raised his head, intrigued.

"Do thee know Ruber's mother, Merlin?" – he asked.

But the old wizard suddenly merged himself with the shadows, successfully hiding from his King the enigmatic smile that came to his lips.

"Let's say… that long time ago she and I were once acquaintances, even friends, who did not part in the best of terms, Arthur. We both are old bats, you see."

"Come'ere, ya filthy witch! I'll show ya how a true man's built!"

At first, it had been insulting and annoying, but now she was having a great time making those motherfucking bunch that worked as jailers at Camelot's prison shit their pants off.

"You come here, asshole." – she replied calmly – "I'll show you how we northern gals make scum like you lick our boots and kiss our arses."

"Whore! I'll make ya swallow yer teeth 'n tongue if ya don't hold it!"

"I'm waiting, you pussycat. You've got no balls. They left for good, huh?"

"Bitch…!"

But then, when she thought the idiot had risen to the bait, another shithead came to prevent him from opening the barred door.

"Don't'cha listen to tha witch, mate." – said the cautious one – "They said tha knights 'ad trouble keepin'er restrained. Tha slut's a friggin' wildcat, I tell ya."

It hadn't been that way, but let them to tell granny's tales and Penny Dreadfuls. Kept them entertained and with their pants conveniently shat.

"They said she 'as tha strength of ten grown men. 'N 'er eyes spits lightenin's."

"Yeah, and I've also a pretty nice magical hand to slap your papa to death, shitbrains!" – she yelled, clearly amused – "Go eat dung with your mates back at the pigsty, you swine!"

"Fuckin' lil' cunt…!"

"It's not worth it, mate! Let'er be!"

Having a laugh at her jailers' expenses, Medraut returned to her filthy cot made of even filthier hay to sit by the shrunken, scared kid laying over it.

"See?" – she said nonchalantly, putting an armored hand over the boy's messy hair – "They're not going to harm you. They can't. Before they can reach you, I'll be bashing their skulls with the point of my boot."

Raising his head a bit, Loholt got up to immediately hold her by her armored waist. He was so scared… and she looked so determined, so strong, so brave… he wished he had half her guts.

He had been always so dependent on the kindness of others. The very moment his own mother had disowned him as her own when she had noticed how arcane energies ran strong on him, had left four-year-old Loholt at the mercy of complete strangers.

His mother, an ambitious courtesan who sought to raise a child with Pendragon's blood running through their veins, the only way to have rightful possession of the One True King's symbol: Excalibur, had taken advantage of the old King Arthur's poor state of mind and, after getting close enough to him, which had proven quite the challenging task, through evil arts she had drugged Arthur making him believe that it was his absent wife, the fair Guinevere, the one who was lying with him.

He had cried, he had confessed his indolence, and he had asked for her forgiveness, that Lady Lisanor of Cardigan, which was the courtesan's name, had no inconvenience to grant him. They were only empty words falling on an ill man's ears, so why even not? In a matter of years, her child would be sitting at the King's Throne and half Britain would say that she was a harlot, alright, but the other half would see her and her child as saviors of the country.

But what she had not anticipated was that the child, a healthy, blonde boy with the same clear eyes as his father, would turn into the very menace Arthur and his knights had sought to eradicate for so many years from this land: the ones who were born with The Gift.

Lady Lisanor of Cardigan could have been a woman without an ounce of shame, principles, moral and decorum… but she hadn't been a killer.

So she had resorted to the only living being she knew could help her in such a situation: Merlin.

The old druid had been totally livid after hearing the horrid tale of Loholt's conception from the very Lady Lisanor's lips, but he had agreed to help the boy: he had consulted with the winds, and the few Brothers and Sisters that had not discarded him as the traitor the majority of druids and magic practitioners in general thought he was had answered.

Together, they had reached an agreement: the boy's safety and tutelage in exchange for Merlin's resignation from his position as Arthur's counselor and his willingness to leave Camelot immediately after said resignation took place.

And Merlin had agreed to meet their terms. And it had proven much later to be his undoing, or so the legend said, at the hands of the cunning Nimue.

That had been how little Loholt had been passing for many caretakers, some gentle and assertive, showing him the ropes of magics; others indifferent, even fearful of his power, unusually strong in a boy so small and untrained.

And every single one of them expected him becoming in time a powerful magician, meaning him becoming an advanced druid in sacred communion with Mother Nature… or rather a frightening High Priest necromancer if his will would twist that way.

With Arthur's knights searching the land in order to find the Holy Grail, the population had been starving for so long that, after suffering these knights' insistence and relentless search, not bothering in the slightest about their plight… to the point that the people, farmers and peasants, had started to turn unruly, feral like the hungry beasts the dire situation had turned them into.

These very human beasts had been the ones who had burned the druid settlement where he had been living to the ground while searching for supplies to feed their children's mouths, and Loholt was fairly sure that he had been the only remaining survivor.

He had to thank his old masters that he had managed to survive two whole weeks alone in the woods until he had crossed paths with this incredibly strong, passionate, honest, brave and kind redhead, who had jumped into the friend cart in no time. Without questioning.

It had been the first time in years that Loholt had felt truly safe with someone, and… it had been the very first time he had felt truly cherished for who he was instead of what he could become. Medraut had not placed high expectations on him, she simply accepted him.

So, he hated himself so much for being so coward, for being unable to return Medraut's braveness so both could endure this dangerous situation as best as possible.

It was his fault that they were in this situation in the first place.

"Eh, look at me, kid."

Raising his head to meet his eyes with her serpentine ones, stained with darkness and the shadow of an innate bitterness as well as enlightened with hope and an also innate kindness.

"You are not going to rot in here." – she assured – "We will find a way to get you outta this ugly mess, understand?"

And she was only talking about him. She was disregarding her own wellbeing in exchange for his!

"I'm… not going to… to leave you here." – he muttered, every word an insurmountable task to get out of his mouth – "You are my… my friend… Friends do not… leave each other…"

"Kiddo…" - she started to say as if trying to dissuade him from thinking such things, but he cut her in middle-sentence.

"We are friends… right?" – he asked, terribly unsure and dreading a bit the answer.

Medraut inhaled a handful of air. Then, she smiled slowly.

"Of course we are, kid." – she said, and she realized that she actually meant it – "Of course we are."

"Whoa, that girl is a wild kitten for sure!"

"She's got quite the filthy tongue, for being a woman."

"And most displeasing manners."

"Phah! She is clearly a peasant with delusions of grandeur…"

Trying to ignore the sexist, disgustingly posh comments about the female prisoner that Ruber was being forced to endure among his Round Table comrades while listening behind a wall in silence with his arms crossed to her impeccable exchange with those peas for brains of jailers, he found that he actually liked her. He could respect a woman standing for herself the way she had stood in front of those pieces of shit. Not to mention the way she had handled herself when sparring against him. She had been the most satisfying adversary he had fought with in quite a while.

If she ended being, as her features suggested, blood-related to him, he would be proud to share common ancestry with such a warrior. Blood of his blood.

"Where do you think she's got that armor of hers? It doesn't look like clean business to me. A woman should not wear armor."

"She carries herself like a man."

"Are we certain she is female and not one of those effeminate young lads? She is so ugly she barely looks like a woman to me."

Now, as the comments were escalating in boldness and disgustingness, Ruber felt his huge hands gathering into tight fists as indignation coursed through his whole being.

How could they be making such idiotic remarks about a true Shield-Maiden, in the Old Norse Skjaldmær, the most venerated women, besides the sorceresses, to his people?!

"She is not that ugly, we are talking about a redhead after all! Redhead women are tasty!"

Enough.

"What, would you court her like you will court a lady?"

ENOUGH!

"Nope, but that does not prevent me from getting… interested about what lies under that armor, you know?"

A violent punch on the wall that got its due slight cracking even if made of stone as it was and those whoresons' filthy mouths shut in glorious synchrony.

"You make me wanna puke." – he spat, clearly disgusted – "And you call yourselves 'knights'? Shame on you, you rotten airheads, reducing an honorable Shield-Maiden, capable of beating your poor excuse of arses 'til you spill your lungs through your mouths and noses, to a common trollop!"

A part of him knew that he was getting so angry precisely because she shared an astounding resemblance with his sister.

She reminded him of Rowena way too much, and these men talking about her in such a way made him so furious that he wished he could strangle each one of them with his bare hands… just like he had done years ago with Radcliff before chopping his head off moments after hearing him proclaiming before he died, blood oozing from his mouth and nose, a burst of mad laughter upon his lips, how he had treated their little sister while Ruber had been absent all those years.

"For once, I have to agree with him." – grunted old Uryens while twisting his hoary beard with pensiveness, directing them the same disgusted look Ruber had all over his face – "You are speaking like rabid pit dogs awaiting to sink your fangs on the next piece of meat. I thought we were all adults here. It looks like that is not the case."

"Come on, my friend!" – an also older knight with long hair, longer hoary beard… and a broad belly more prominent than most of the men present, palmed his shoulder amicably – "Let the boys be boys! Young men have lots of energy and it is healthy to burn some by means of saying a prudent amount of obscenities! They will not act upon them, after all!"

"Lord Bagdemagus." – interjected an also serious Lionel, his amberish eyes unusually steely – "Have you forgot that, given the physical resemblance, this Mordred girl could be part of Ruber's family? Were I in his place, I would demand some respect for a young woman that could be a sister or a cousin of mine. No matter how illegitimate the branch, blood is blood. Besides…" - he added – "… Are we not gentlemen above all things? I find this behavior most inadequate coming from young men and degrading towards a young woman. Women, as well as any man, deserve some consideration and respect. I have a wife and a daughter to answer for."

"Ah, you are not amusing either, my dear Lionel!" – exclaimed the old man while laughing again, followed suit by a taller, leaner, younger and dark-haired version of himself, his only son Sir Meleagant.

And Ruber was already starting to ponder breaking some bones to teach both of them, father and son, when to shut up… when a sudden silence ensued among the noisy group of men.

Directing his green eyes towards the direction almost all men now were inclining their heads with respect, he found himself face to face with the Queen herself, a knight on each side acting as bodyguards: a serious and somehow absent Sir Lancelot and a frowning Sir Gawain.

And they were always the same two men escorting the Queen for private reasons everybody suspected but nobody had the gall to speak up for.

"The White Apparition", many called her, for Guinevere's beauty with her long braided hair like pale gold thread, eyes pale and luminous, and skin as smooth and white as ivory, was like the moon, silvery and pristine, to Arthur, who was the sun. She was robed in white and silver, loose and flowing. Her small hands daintily hold in front of her.

And she wasn't smiling.

Not that seeing the young Queen smile was a common occurrence these days, but in her calm eyes and quiet lips one could read a slight touch of utter displeasure.

"My Queen!" – exclaimed Sir Meleagant, who had all of a sudden lost all the merriment and he was now all humble and well-mannered, inclining himself in front of her so low that the ends of his slightly long dark hair could touch the floor – "Oh, Milady, what are you doing in such an undeserving place for your feet to walk in?"

Ruber rolled his eyes. And yet another idiot besotted by this statue of a lady, great.

"I have come to witness with my very eyes what my ears refuse to acknowledge." – she answered coolly, her soft voice permeated with a remote, aloof dignity that wasn't at all usual on her person – "Tell me then you yourself, Meleagant, if what people say is true. Tell me if there is a child languishing between these stony, cold walls." – but looking at the hesitation she could notice not only on Meleagant's eyes, but also on the rest of men, her two bodyguards included, she frowned and demanded, if softly, more firmly that anybody had ever heard her speak – "Answer your Queen!"

This was getting so pathetic that Ruber broke the silence with a malevolent smile.

"Oh, but there's truth in what you may have heard, my Queen." – he said slowly, so his words would sink adequately on her brains – "These oh so very brave men, as well as your husband the King…" - he added, punctuating his words – "… have incarcerated a young girl and a child for being suspects of practicing The Craft."

He knew that every single of the present men were giving him dirty glances right now, but he couldn't care less. Hell, truth is that he cared a rat's ass about it. He was telling the truth, after all; he was informing his Queen about what others refused to stain her pretty, pretty delicate ears with. Now let's see how this doll of a woman reacted to such news.

He wanted her to do something, anything that proved that she had some fire in her veins instead of the insipid, demure acquiescence she wore like a second skin all the time.

He was challenging her, challenging her power like he had done with the King as well, challenging her intelligence and her ability to react as a human being.

He wanted her to prove him wrong for once.

He wanted consequences.

But the only apparent change the Queen's visage underwent was that her pale eyes obscured a bit.

"Pardon me, my Queen, but…" - Lancelot began to say until a soft but firm look from the woman silenced him.

"Listen to me, all of you." – she announced – "I do not care about the nature of the case or its implications: a child should never be thrown to jail. Never." – she added with determination – "I am investigating the nature of the accusations and you will not oppose my desire. Inform the King if that is in your hearts' content. I bid you a good evening, gentlemen."

And, with those simple words, she left with her two bodyguards the speechless men looking at each other with dumbfounded expressions except Ruber, who was internally gloating for have managed to evoke that the Queen, for once, had a part in any official affair. And what an affair.

Arthur will likely sport a huge headache when he discovered his wife's whereabouts.

"I will speak with Arthur about this." – Lionel offered – "He has to be informed where the Queen is at the very least."

Ruber snorted while looking at his back as the loyal knight disappeared in the darkness of the subterranean corridors.

Sure, go. And send Arthur our regards and some herbs from the Apothecary. He will need them later.

He was so satisfied with himself that he failed (and he actually didn't care much) to overhear how the men were dispersing and what Sir Bagdemagus was saying to his disheartened son:

"Come on, my boy." – he said gingerly – "No need to put on such theatrics in front of her. She is not noticing you anyway." – but looking at his frowning son, he pressed – "Forget her! That fish has been captured already, and there is plenty of fish in the sea, my son. And you are still very young, so enjoy yourself with as many women as you want! Then, marry old with a young virgin. No need to waste your precious time on a pretty face." – then, his cheerful demeanor dropped a bit – "They are not worth it anyway."

"I do not think that I could love another one as I love her, father." – the young man muttered.

"You are just blinded by her beauty, which is quite normal since she is really something." – Bagdemagus admitted – "But desire has nothing to do with that idea of love minstrels often mislead us to think that it actually exists. Meleagant, my son, give it time and you will find a maiden as beautiful as the Queen is. Or close enough. Give to me her name when you find her, and I will make sure that she will be yours. Trust your old man, my boy."

Medraut's green eyes squinted in the dark when they saw movement outside her and Loholt's cell.

"What?!" – she exclaimed, thinking she was yet again dealing with the stupid jailers – "Coming for more, rat? If you've come to speak more idiocy, you can kiss my redhead ass!"

"Stand up and show more respect towards Queen Guinevere, highlander!" – boomed a masculine voice that she recognized pertained to the man that had asked her who she was before throwing her and the kid in that filthy jail – "Present yourself in front of Her Majesty! Now!"

Arching a red eyebrow, first looking towards the distant barred door, then to Loholt, who was giving her a questioning glance.

"Stay behind me." – she murmured to his ear before standing up and presenting herself in front of the fair Queen, who she gave a quick look from head to toe – "I hail you, Guinevere, daughter of Ogrfan Gawr." – she said carefully, maintaining a mild tone on her voice to show she meant no harm towards the other woman – "I'd present you my sword, but I'm afraid it's no longer with me, as you can tell."

Guinevere took a deep gulp of breath before addressing the tall odd young woman with the raspy voice she had in front of her, for she found her frame impressive and her serpentine green eyes a bit intimidating. She had never been in front of a warrior woman before and the sight was new to her.

"Are you the one who calls herself Mordred?" – Guinevere spoke, trying to hide her nervousness.

"I am."

"Then answer this question: are you a magic practitioner, Mordred?"

Medraut gave a curt bark that was meant as a laugh.

"Me?" – she asked as if the notion were somehow the funniest thing she had ever heard – "I am afraid I am not a "Gifted Child" as many witches would call someone born with an affinity to the arcane energies."

Guinevere inhaled more air, trying to maintain her bearing serene and aloof, just like Arthur would do. She was the Queen, she mentalized herself, she could do this.

"The King's knights have declared that they have witnessed you using the Vile Arts to protect a child, who is also you accomplice." – she said – "I am willing to take your word for granted if you deny the charges that are held against you."

"I am not a witch." – Medraut stated valiantly – "But I did use an artifact imbued by arcane energies." – then she pointed to herself – "This armor I wear, the Black Armor, forged with the fire of the dragons of old, just like Excalibur… but also blessed with the Mark of the Wayward Sisters."

Both the knights' eyes almost rolled out of their respective sockets while the Queen's dainty hand covered her mouth in horror.

"The Three Ancient Witches!" – exclaimed Lancelot – "How did you acquire such a wicked artifact, woman?! Speak!"

"We should just put her at the stake and bury that horrid armor so nobody can claim it again!" – seconded Gawain, his face red and contorted with the fury he had been always infamous for.

But both knights' outbursts were silenced the moment an infantile voice rose among them.

"It's not her fault!" – Loholt exclaimed while putting himself in front of his friend with both arms extended – "They tricked her so she would wear it to kill me!" – then, remembering who he was talking with, his voice faltered a bit – "But… but she refused! She saved me!"

Centering her full attention on the boy, Guinevere's expression softened as she lowered herself to the child's eyesight.

"Your name, young one?" – she asked warmly.

Nervous, Loholt lowered his eyes and started fidgeting.

"L… Loholt, my Lady."

And Guinevere smiled. And Lancelot's heart ached with sweet pain as well as Gawain's countenance darkened.

"Tell me, young Loholt: are you a magic practitioner?" – the Queen asked, but there was gentleness in her voice.

Loholt's head lowered even more as he assented in silence.

"Would you use your magics to harm a Christian believer?"

The boy's head got violently up, and there were determination and truthiness in his eyes.

"If they have a good soul and good intentions, never, my Lady." – he answered straight, firmly believing in what he was saying – "I am a druid, not a warlock. My masters taught me to use my gift with care and responsibility."

Smiling again as if the answer had pleased her, Guinevere continued.

"I believe you and I trust your intentions, young Loholt, for until this very instant, I can tell that you and your guardian have been telling me nothing but the truth, no matter how terrible it might have sounded to a stranger's ears." – she stated – "However, I must pose you a last inquiry before reaching a decision: why the Unholy Dark Sisters wanted to kill you?"

Palling visibly, Loholt's lower lip trembled, unsure what to say to this gentle lady who had been so understanding with their situation. The truth would only break her heart.

But soon, Medraut's armored hands came to rest over his tiny shoulders and they gave him an affectionate squeeze.

"My Lady…" - she started, all grave and serious – "I cannot tell the reasons behind all of this yet, but… I hope it suffices to say that, as I've stated to the knights previously to our incarceration, I only protect the blood of the Dragons and their righteous Head." – and taking one of Loholt's hands between hers, she continued – "This kid… has the blood of the Pendragons running through his veins. And, if you don't believe me…" - she said when her eyes spotted Gawain opening his damn mouth to refute her affirmations – "… sink Excalibur into the Magic Stone again. I am willing to bet my life that this boy is able to unlock the sword from it."

Loholt trembled within her grasp and the Queen seemed momentarily taken off-guard until she recovered herself in record time and, with sudden seriousness, she asked.

"Would you be willing to offer your own life to the ax of the Executioner if what you say proves to be incorrect, Mordred?" – she defied – "Would you be willing to be declared guilty of all the charges pending upon you without a fair trial to defend your innocence if this child ends being not blood-related to the Pendragon Lineage?"

Medraut stood tall and firm, with her head high, as she addressed the other woman.

"Swear to me that, no matter the outcome, the boy will be safe from any harm, and I will meet your conditions, Guinevere, daughter of Ogrfan Gawr." – she said – "Grant this small mercy to me as a Queen and as a woman, and I'll willingly meet your terms."

Both women sized up one another for a moment.

"I swear, by the power God bestowed upon me as Queen of Britain, that, no matter what, this child will be safe from any harm as long as I live." – Guinevere declared – "From this moment on forward, young Loholt would remain in my custody as my protégée." – then, she turned around to address a speechless Lancelot – "Lancelot, please, bring here the keys of this cell and release the child."

As if awakening from some spell, the handsome knight hesitated.

"But, my Queen… the King has not…"

"I will deal myself with my husband about my decisions later, Lancelot." – she spoke, firm and authoritative despite hating herself for treating in such a manner the only man who took into consideration her thoughts and feelings – "Now, obey your Queen."

"Yes… Your Majesty."

As they were making preparations for the boy to be released, said boy hugged Medraut's armored waist as if she were a sort of an anchor.

"No!" – he exclaimed, face against the metallic carapace – "I will not leave you here! I will go nowhere without you!"

"Kid, listen to me…"

"No, YOU listen!" – he cut her in mid-sentence, raising his big blue eyes full of tears that were freely going downwards both his cheeks – "You said we are friends! Friends don't abandon one another! Friends are together in good and bad times, right?! That's what means to be friends!"

Disentangling his fragile arms from her, Medraut knelt at his height.

"It's true." – she said – "All you say it's true, but there are times when one of the two has to make a choice to save the other. A tough one. And I've already made mine. That means to be friends too, kid." – as both knights entered the cell, Gawain put a blade against her throat while Lancelot took the screaming boy away – "You are Loholt Pendragon, kid!" – she shouted as Gawain forced her at sword point deeper in the cell while grunting 'Keep your distance, highlander' – "Don't let them say otherwise! You are the Head of the Dragon!"

But, as soon as she found herself amidst the silence of the once again closed cell, her world collapsed and she found herself drifting away to the darkness the Armor was starting now to whisper about as many threads of sanity splintered when the familiar pulsating buzz filled her brain and the veins of her neck and eyes glowed with the green light of the arcane.

The child's presence had been keeping away the intrusive thoughts that now run wild over and over her mind.

The instant those fools come for your head, break their bones, squish their brains until the blood stains the walls. Just like the good old days, eh?

No. Those weren't "good old days", they'd never been…

Remember… remember how they tried to take the Armor from you, how they underestimated you…

No more. Please, no more…

And they will do it again. You are just a girl to them, a frail woman to take advantage of… but you are like your father. You are strong, you are resilient, you are powerful… nobody can cage the beast within you…

Please…

You are… Mordred, the Kingslayer.