Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Merlin ducked out of the way of the gaping jaws coming for him—practically flattening himself to the ground—and just barely managed to dodge them the second time.

Scooting back and away, the beast lunging for his throat missed its mark and crashed into a tree trunk a ways behind him with a solid THUD. Scrambling to his feet, kicking up mulch and leaves as he regained his footing, Merlin backed away, eyes darting from the stunned creature to the empty, expansive forest behind him; there was nowhere he could escape to quickly enough.

He was having a Bad Day.

After hearing word from an outlying village to the West of Camelot about strange sightings and reportedly missing children from ages five to seven, Arthur had insisted they move their Southwest-bound patrol more Northward so as to investigate the odd occurrence before they headed along the previously alotted course.

King Uther, of course, had agreed steadfastly, suspecting the source a magical threat, and had encouraged his son to join the search. By now, all of Camelot knew of the valiant Prince Arthur and how every magical beast or foe he faced was miraculously defeated. On the King’s part, it was a rather wise decision to make to ensure the safety of his people. To Merlin, who knew what really happened to all those adversaries, it was just another chore for him to clean-up, and an incomprehensibly stupid one, at that.

(Any day, he could meet his match or make a mistake, and then what? So much depended solely on him, sometimes he felt he could just break.)

But if they could find the children, Merlin had figured it’d be worth whatever pain came their way. Of course, where Arthur went, Merlin followed, and Arthur had been determined to go. There hadn’t really been much of a choice involved.

All in all, though, the investigation had just been meant as a brief pit-stop before the real trip.

That wasn’t how it turned out.

Instead, they had arrived in the morning a day after setting out from Camelot, discussed the missing little ones with the villagers and distraught parents, and gained information on where most of the unusual sightings of glowing eyes and shifting shadows had taken place: the greenwoods surrounding the quaint settlement. Of course, their patrol hadn’t missed a beat and began investigating the moment upon arrival. For almost half the day, every knight was scrounging through underbrush and hacking through briars.

They didn’t find anything.

Approaching late-afternoon, the sun getting heavy and lazy in the sky, they were suddenly met with movement. From the dark of the interior woods came the slinking figures of six shadowy-creatures. There had been no visible cause or reason for their provocation; they had shown up out of the blue and wasted very little time in ripping into the knights’ numbers.

Now, being faced with one of the said creatures truly out of nightmares, Merlin found he regretted quite a lot. Like wandering away from the other knights to keep track of Arthur (who had ordered Merlin to stay out of the way and forged straight ahead to face as many of the beasts as possible like the cabbage-head he was), only to get turned around in the scuffle between the prince and one of the shadows and separated from him with night-terrors still on the loose.

He regretted that a bunch. And he couldn’t just magic away his problems, either, unless it was strictly necessary, for fear of one of the others being nearby to see him. Which meant…he was on his own.

His monster’s head snapped up from the tree trunk it had hit to face his direction; it wasn’t looking so stunned anymore. Merlin—feeling nervous—tried to edge back, away from it, for all the good that would do him. Naturally, it was that exact moment in time the universe thought it’d be hilarious for his foot to catch on an upraised root.

He tripped and went down hard on the ground.

Unfortunately for him, the opposite could be said for the beast.

The thing (and that was a generous term) lithely flipped back onto its dark, incorporeal paws, towering high above the manservant even half a clearing away as it was. Its vaguely lupine-esque features—especially the jagged jaws—dripped viscous shadows that seemed to seep into the ground and disappear. Amidst the blunt splashes of black, its glowing eyes were the only source of color, them glaring a grisly, macabre red. Even as it stood there, its body seemed partially insubstantial, all whirling, agitated shade and pitch. It looked like a badly-sewn-together Patched-Quilt of Nightmares.

A said quilt-of-nightmares that was now bearing down on him, ready for round three.

Merlin, who was still sitting on his rear in the middle of his pile of twigs and leaves, gulped.

This couldn’t end well.

With a deep, guttural growl in its throat, everything in its predatory stance and gleaming eyes screaming “now I’m mad” and “you’re totally dead,” the thing stalked towards him, movements jerking and sudden as if it wasn’t held together right.

Which it wasn’t. But that was besides the point.

Scrambling back, Merlin attempted to place another tree between himself and the wild beast’s advance, but the dastardly thing moved with him, pacing and slinking and circling as if it were playing—playing with its food. And Merlin could say with absolute certainty he didn’t like what that implied one. Bit.

Deciding it was about time he stood up and ran for the hills already, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?, Merlin staggered to his feet in a flurry of movement, his adrenaline spiking and crowding him in his desperation to get away.

The move turned out to have been quite the detrimental one, as no sooner had he jolted to a rise that the shadow started barreling towards him, set off by his sudden movement.

With a snarl of curled lips and an extended, gaping maw, the wolf-like thing plowed for him, its whisping, intangible body contradicting the harsh glint of jagged teeth and razor claws.

And Merlin—staring with wide, horrified eyes, still stuck half-way between standing and falling—was entirely too shocked to do anything about it.

Before teeth could meet flesh, a hand shot out from nowhere—gripping Merlin by the back of the neckerchief—and yanked him safely out of the way as the beast met, not its intended quarry, but the cold steel of a blade. In a spray of dark sludge, the thing burst into angry, writhing shadows before it reconvened into one large mass and fled into the shadows of the trees, leaving behind a victorious, yet enraged, Arthur Pendragon, his manservant a few steps to the right still sitting staring dumbly at what little remained of his near-imminent demise.

Odd. The creatures could reconfigure themselves, as the other knights had demonstrated with their previously ineffectual hacking at them. Why hadn’t this one?

“MERLIN!”

Merlin’s head shot up, snapping him out of his distressed muddled state and back to the present.

“What do you think you were DOING?!”

Uh, oh. Arthur was mad. He’d better have a good explanation for this.

Just as Merlin opened his mouth to respond, he had to close it again almost immediately, completely lost.

I could ask myself the same question, came to him, but it wasn’t a very good answer (only likely to agitate Arthur more, which was never a good idea unless he liked heaps of unnecessary chores and a bunch of shouting), and his voice hadn’t seemed to come back with the re-connection of his brain to his body. Which was unfortunate.

Scratch that. Merlin’s entire day so far had been unfortunate.

He settled for remaining mute.

Arthur stomped towards him. “You were supposed to run, Merlin, not play dead with it, otherwise you could’ve actually BECOME dead!”

Merlin winced. He hated how close to the truth that fell. If he hadn’t been so petrified by the others possibly being nearby, he would’ve dealt with the beast no problem, a simple wind spell to blast it away, a fire conjuration to drive it off—the possibilities were endless. Heck, he could’ve even conjured lightning down on it like he had with Nimueh. He wasn’t helpless.

But with Arthur’s trusting eyes apparently fending off one of the other shadow-wolves just a couple of clearings behind him, he might as well’ve been.

Merlin just couldn’t win.

Ducking his head in shame, but not the same shame Arthur thought, Merlin murmured a feeble “yeah, sorry.”

Arthur’s right eye twitched minutely. “So. You nearly get yourself killed recklessly endangering your life wandering after a dangerous, vicious magical monster with no apparent weakness—disobeying direct orders from your prince, might I add—and all you have to say to me is sorry?”

Merlin blinked up at him. “Erm…yes?” Realizing belatedly how weak his defense sounded, even to his own ears, he immediately rushed to protest, “I thought I could help!”

“Merlin!” Arthur threw up his hands in exasperation, something Merlin really thought unfair. “Don’t be such an idiot! I don’t want to have to scour all of Camelot for a new manservant, just so you can have your little moment of glory!”

What glory?

Merlin sighed at the unbidden thought, suddenly more exhausted than he could put into words. It wasn’t that he was bitter over Arthur and the multitude of other people over the years who had shown up at just the right time—or, heck, even luck—receiving all the praise for his work; it was more like he was just so tired of it. It was the circle that never ended. And it wouldn't end unless he could work up the stupid courage to tell a prince a secret.

It honestly shouldn’t be so hard, but…would he lose everything?

He couldn’t find the will to speak three words, so instead he just listened.

“—rom now ON, you had better start listening to me when I speak!”

Rats. Maybe he shouldn’t have listened.

Trying to will a little of his usual self into the role, Merlin gave a half-hearted attempt at rolling his eyes. “Yes, Sire. Of course, Sire.” Never one to turn down the opportunity at a clever retort, even as strangely disconnected and disconsolate as he felt right now, Merlin gave a cheery grin just as Arthur turned his back to him. “Just to be clear, does that include when you're drunk off your backside?”

Arthur spun around, sword still in-hand. “What was that?”

Merlin put on his best innocent veneer, miming looking from side-to-side as if expecting someone else to be there. “Nothing, Sire, not a peep. You must be hearing things!”

Arthur reached over and cuffed the back of Merlin's head, the prince's gentle hand betraying him. “No, I heard exactly what you said, and I won't have such insolent talk coming from you. Learn your place, Merlin.” Straightening up, the prince glanced at their surroundings with a trained eye. “Now, come on: Let’s get moving.” Turning back to his path (to find a way back to the knights, Merlin assumed), Arthur forged ahead, a grinning, brightened-up Merlin not far behind him.

Most masters would've had their servants flogged for lesser cheek. Whether Arthur admitted it or not, he cared.

And in the end, as it always was with his friend and King, that was enough for Merlin.

Any further sentimental thoughts of their strange friendship were then abruptly cut-off by a tortured scream ringing out through the hollow woods, sounding just a few clearings away from them and making both Arthur and Merlin near-jump out of their skins (not that Arthur would ever admit it).

Merlin went as pale as a sheet. Cold chills speared up his spine.

Something’s not right about this.

The scream went on, slicing through the still like warped metal dragged painstakingly through flesh until it lengthened into what Merlin realized wasn’t a scream at all, but a howl. The howl of one of the six creatures. They were close. Much too close.

It was then he finally noticed the damp, suffocating sheen of darkness hovering just above the tree branches, coating the air with its slick, oily presence. It was a sneaky darkness trying to hide from notice, one Merlin could not see so much as feel; magic.

Merlin’s disconnected nerves. The strange way all of them had been separated from each other in the blip of a second, despite Merlin’s attempt at staying at Arthur’s side. The fact the wolf-like creatures were leaving Arthur alone, if his current presence beside Merlin was any indication.

This was a trap.

The oppressing weight in the air, now that he was aware it was there, pushed down heavily upon his shoulders, like a dampening blanket set to smother him alive.

This was a trap.

“Arthur!”

Arthur grabbed his shoulder with a growl. “I know, I know, I know. Be quiet.” He warily eyed the forest surrounding them, scrutinizing every piece of moss and twig as if they all might be lurking threats. The distant howl rose in pitch, then fell prey to a kind of stalking silence. Arthur’s grip on Merlin’s shoulder tightened. “We need to get moving,” he decided. “Now.”

“But, Arth—”

“Merlin,” Arthur barked, “Don’t be an idiot, start running.”

And, with a preliminary shove to get him going, so he was.

Thus, heart racing like the pitter-patter of rain in a ceaseless storm, Merlin found himself tearing through the woods, Arthur following after him and frequently checking over his shoulder for more of the shadow beasts. Thankfully, none of them were on their tail so far, but that would only last for so long.

The howl reawoke, rising again to a fever pitch and sounding on their heels like a cleave, severing the air in an undying, tormented wail of despair. Something in Merlin twisted wretchedly at the sound, begging him to turn around and help. But there was nothing to help.

Shaking his head to dispel his confusion, he ran on, his breath leaving him in wheezing gasps as he streaked past trunk after trunk.

Feeling so panic-stricken—and only slightly hysterical—was not something he was great at handling; therefore, it wasn’t very long before he found himself wasting precious air he couldn’t afford to be expending on the one thing that never failed to calm him down.

Arthur-belittlement.

“Why, again, did you think this detour was a good idea?!”

Arthur’s voice puffed out from behind him, apparently just as eager for a distraction. “They’re magic, Merlin, what would you have me DO?”

“Oh, I don’t know, how about leave the creepy creatures be!”

“I can’t just—”

“AHHH!”

Red, pupilless eyes suddenly shone from the foliage at Merlin’s front, startling him into skidding to a stop. Arthur ran into his back.

With a yelp, the two broke momentum and fell, crashing head-over-heels past the eyes and tumbling down a sudden incline that had lied hidden beneath the dense foliage.

Landing with twin oomphs into the leaves at the bottom of the hill, scratched up, but otherwise little worse for wear, they both took a moment to regain lost breath from having every scrap of oxygen in their lungs knocked out.

Slowly and painstakingly, leaning on his sheathed sword like a crutch, Arthur rose to his feet with a wheeze.

Merlin decided he quite liked the view from where he was and remained sprawled out on the ground. The dancing black spots darting in and out of his vision were particularly entertaining.

Arthur nudged him with his boot. “Come on, Merlin. Get up.”

Merlin ignored him and continued his best impression of a corpse.

Arthur added more incentive to the deal; this time, his boot dug sharply into his ribs.

Merlin shot upright, clutching his side with a gasp. Rubbing the sore spot, he gave the towering prince a good death-glare.

Arthur rolled his eyes and offered his hand.

Satisfied that if looks could kill, Arthur would be plenty dead right now (and simultaneously trying to ignore the terrifying prospect Merlin’s magic probably could make that possibility a reality—), Merlin reached up and grasped the proffered hand, Arthur helping him regain his footing.

Once both of them were standing fully upright, they caught their breaths sufficiently before even trying to speak.

“You think we lost ‘em?” Merlin rasped, throat parched and lips dry from all their running.

Wordlessly, Arthur handed him his waterskin from where it’d been hanging at his belt. Merlin shot him a grateful look before accepting it and taking a quick gulp.

“Hopefully,” the prince panted, still slightly breathless.

It was with an awe-inspiring sort of revelation that Merlin realized Arthur had been running just as fast as he’d been the entire time, including with all the heavy, clanky armor and chainmail Merlin was intimately acquainted with dragging him down. The sword sheathed at his side looked rather unwieldy, too.

Endurance training for knights must kill. Merlin certainly didn’t envy them in the slightest.

Handing the skin back so Arthur could have his own replenishing swig, Merlin took in the sight of the area where they had fallen.

There wasn’t much to say about it. It looked like any ordinary bit of forest, except with the drop-off of the incline rising high above their heads. Unless they could scale steep slopes virtually unscathed in as much time it took to fall down them, they wouldn’t be coming back the way they’d come.

Though considering that’s where all the man-killing shadow monsters were, Merlin didn’t consider that much of a loss. Not really.

“Enjoying yourselves?”

Merlin and Arthur jumped at the voice, spinning around to face it.

An old man stepped from the shadows. He was a sorry sight, bedraggled and worn, a thin, dark cloak draped across his shoulders to ward off the chill of the evening air. Hardly threatening, but something about him made Merlin’s hackles raise. The long shadows the barely-present sun cast across his aged features were harsh.

Arthur tensed up, his muscles coiling as he prepared himself to move. Merlin didn’t know when, but at some point during the scare, Arthur had drawn his blade. “Who are you?” he demanded.

The old man looked ready to tsk at the prince’s ill-manners when suddenly he seemed to freeze slightly, his expression stuck in place like a stilled-frame. He blinked, almost puzzled. “Who am I?” he seemed to ask himself in a quiet echo. Then he shook it off, like shrugging off a particularly unpleasant, scratchy woolen overcoat one didn’t want to wear, or even look at ever again. He didn’t appear bothered anymore. “Who I am matters little, for I know plenty what I am, and in the grand scheme of time, that is all that ever matters.”

Arthur’s stance relaxed somewhat, but only just. He was still wary, which Merlin rightly approved of. Something was off. “Whoever, whatever, I don’t care. What I do care about is that you’re obviously a senile old man out here alone, wandering the woods with these dangerous monsters lurking about. You shouldn’t be here, old man.”

The man cocked his head to the left. “On the contrary, an atmosphere like this is exactly where someone like me belongs, young knight.” Arthur opened his mouth to object his title being down-graded, but thought better of it when the geezer smiled at them; it was a cold thing, as if it had been chipped from frozen stone until it no longer resembled anything happy. “And the little ones of this forest hold no danger for me; why, they only exist because of me. What I want is what they want, and what I want is for me to know.”

Arthur froze. “Y-you…you’re responsible for all this madness?”

Merlin froze himself.

The old man looked smug all of a sudden. “Yes. Do you like them? I think they’re quite beautiful, some of my best handiwork yet, in fact. Nothing less’ll do for the Lady.”

Lady?

Arthur growled at him, his eyes narrowing in anger and the promise of death. “You’re a sorcerer.” It wasn’t a question. Not anymore.

Merlin couldn’t move, feeling as though a chasm had opened out underneath his feet, swallowing him in darkness. The energy above their heads—the shifting coat of murky black that curled and twisted maliciously in the tree branches—vibrated in expectation.

So. Looks like they had a magic-user on top of six magical creatures to deal with.

That was splendid. What a trap.

The man looked bemused. “Why, wasn’t that obvious? An old man with little business being in the woods being in the woods at the same time horrendous beasts appear to ravage your numbers and separate you all? An old man who entered the scene emerging from the shadows, wearing a dark cloak?” He lifted the fraying edges of the black garment he wore for emphasis, a grin stapled to his features. “My, how astute of you. Truly, I don’t know why I expected more from a Knight of Camelot, the thrice-accursed red-swathed bearers of blood, but I suppose I did. My mistake. Perhaps the majority of my people are simply imbecilic fools that make it easy for you to catch them, but it matters to me not. My mission this day is for a higher power, and I will not allow myself to be drawn from my written course.”

If Arthur’s head could have exploded and spewed molten-hot lava everywhere at that moment, Merlin had the feeling it would have. This sorcerer certainly knew how to push all of his buttons. Which was not a good thing.

“Listen here, and listen well,” Arthur snarled, leveling his blade with practiced ease at the man’s throat. The sorcerer’s eyes widened with every word he spoke. “I am no mere Knight of Camelot; I am Prince Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther Pendragon, and you are hereby under arrest. By this time tomorrow, justice will have been served your head for your treachery and the terror you have wrought upon this village, and I can promise you that one day, the land will—at long last—be free of your ilk.”

Merlin did his best to keep a straight face through the last sentence. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before. Still, it somehow tweaked a barely-restrained flinch from him.

Arthur didn’t notice.

The sorcerer’s wizened eyes were still wide, stunned. “Prince Arthur…Of course,” he murmured. “I should have realized. I should have realized. My darlings wouldn’t have steered you my way if you hadn’t been important. The small, defenseless one threw me off,” it took Merlin a moment to realize the old man was referring to him, “but I should have realized. The Lady did say you dragged a servant about behind you as if on a leash.”

The sorcerer’s frigid gaze on him felt as though it could see right through him, burning past every part of him until it bleached his bones. Merlin took a hasty step back.

Arthur bristled at the mention of Merlin in the conversation and moved to block the man’s view of him. “I don’t keep him on a leash; he comes of his own volition and a stupid sense of misguided loyalty. Leave him out of this, he isn’t relevant.” To make the point perfectly clear, Arthur drove the sword into the delicate skin of the man’s neck, adding pressure until the skin broke and small rivulets of blood trickled down.

It only seemed to amuse him. “Of course. I know how this game works,” he insisted, something dark slinking into his face. “You’re the real prize, and he’s just a delightful bonus if the Lady won’t have use of him. I know how to play my cards; the big game is to be hunted first. The little ones can be gathered later.”

With that chilling note, the man’s hand moved swifter than either Merlin or Arthur could follow, wrenching the blade away from his neck with enough force to unbalance Arthur into stumbling forward—the man seemingly not caring for the slices his flesh received as the metal bit palm—and then he was swiveling away from them, his eyes briefly flashing a pale, sickly yellow, crying out some unintelligible word to the trees.

An echoing howl answered him.

Merlin’s gut dropped to his toes.

Oh.

Right. The “what they want is what I want” fodder.

Perfect.

They were going to die.

Arthur lunged to run the sorcerer through. At the very last second, he feinted right, the old man still expecting to be skewered and dodging left to avoid a blade that never came. It left an opening, and Arthur gladly took it, snatching Merlin’s wrist in his hand and yanking him along after him as they started up the race through the woods once again.

The old man shrieked behind them, probably something to the wolves. “Go, retrieve him! Prince Arthur must be removed from the picture!”

If Merlin had had the breath, he would have groaned. As it was, he settled for loud-mouthing instead. “What…are you doing? The sorcerer is that way, remember?” he panted. Not that I’m complaining. The further away you are, the better.

Arthur side-glanced him dryly. “How…observant of you.”

“I’m just saying, what happened to…arresting him? I thought you were going to stand and moronically fight him to the death like,” Merlin ducked as a branch nearly whacked him in the face, “like you usually do.”

“For the record, I do…not do anything remotely moronic; that’s all you. And for…another, I can’t…fight him with you…standing there. You don’t have…a weapon, and you’d make a real easy…snack for those things.”

Merlin, taken aback by the response, let the conversation after that peter out. On the one hand, he found Arthur’s consideration admirable; a worthy act of the king Merlin hoped he’d one day become, protecting his subjects and placing them first. At the same time, he couldn’t tamp down the irritation that rose with equal fervor at having to be “protected” because he was “weaponless.” It couldn’t be further from the truth, and that frustrated him.

As it usually did when he dealt with the same complication week after week. This was just one occurrence in a long line of previous occurrences.

He sighed mentally.

The fever pitch howl started up again. Although, it didn’t so much sound like screaming this time around as it did full-out screeching, the same kind that would wear your throat raw and bloody after just a few seconds of holding it. It was almost painful to listen to; Merlin dearly wished he could cover his ears and run at the same time. The noise was nauseating.

His head spun.

He tried to keep his wits about him, but barely avoided a tree.

Arthur wasn’t so lucky; his shoulder clipped bark, and suddenly he was coming to an untimely, crashing halt. With a cry of alarm, Merlin skidded to a stop himself and rushed to check his friend over.

To his immense relief, other than a steadily bleeding gash along Arthur’s eyebrow from a rock, he was fine.

Merlin hauled Arthur carefully to his feet after making sure he didn't have a concussion, the prince still slightly dazed. “Arthur, are you okay?”

Arthur, once he wasn’t swaying to the point of falling flat on his face again, pushed Merlin away. “‘M fine,” he brushed off. He shook his head, probably to get rid of the ringing Merlin knew was there. “What happened?”

Merlin deadpanned. “You ran into a tree.”

“I did?”

“Yup. Pretty sturdy one, too. And you call me a clumsy, witless oaf.”

“Shuddup, Merlin.”

Merlin blinked, something occurring to him. “Hey, do you hear that howling anymore?”

Arthur swiped some of the blood from his brow. “No. Why?”

Merlin stared, blanching. “Uh, that’s why.”

Right there in the copse of trees with them, not five paces away, stood one-sixth of the four-legged monstrosities. They were caught.

Merlin would have cursed up a storm of obscure obscenities right there and then if he hadn’t had a mother who’d raised him right. Arthur, strangely enough, didn’t hold the same reservations.

The shadow-dripping canine growled lowly and dove for them.

With a flash of silver, the wolf burst apart into the goopy ooze of shadows.

"What the devil even are these things?!" Arthur grunted, gesturing wildly with his sword, the aforementioned "thing" having slowly reconfigured itself from the black gook his blow had splattered. His sword remained ready and in-hand as he backed up, one arm raised to keep Merlin behind him.

Suddenly something clicked in Merlin’s frenzied mind and most of the dots connected together, even if some of the components didn’t quite fit. The eyes certainly didn’t. But it hardly mattered; most of it was there, and the resulting revelation gave him a rush of exhilaration.

"I do believe they're barghests, Sire," Merlin piped up, perhaps a bit too cheerfully, from behind. He was just happy to at last have a name ascribed to them (and so what if he knew it always irritated Arthur slightly to respond so formally in a life-or-death situation?).

Arthur turned to him slightly, giving him the look over his shoulder.

"What?" Merlin blinked at him innocently, knowing exactly what the look was for. "Gaius insisted I read up on magical creatures, with how many we usually seem to encounter it seemed like a good idea, and this one is actually a standard entry, I have no idea why it slipped my mi—"

Arthur rolled his eyes, dismissing his servant's rambling and turning back to face his opponent. "Do shut up, Merlin. Unless you know how to beat this thing, knowing its name is not going to help us."

Merlin crossed his arms over his chest, an unimpressed air about him as he huffed, "You would think that, wouldn't you?"

"I'm not hearing a lot of SHUTTING UP happening back there!"

"Fine! You'll not hear another peep from me, my prince!"

"GOOD! NOW ACTUALLY SHUT UP, AND LET ME CONCENTRATE!"

It was that exact moment, with the twosome being distracted as they were, that the beast lunged directly for Arthur's throat…

…and somehow missed completely.

It rammed into Merlin instead.

“Merlin!”

The two went flying, Merlin hitting a tree some paces back, stunning him, and the barghest flying a bit further, smacking right dab in the middle of a tree branch before tumbling into a stream with a splash!

Scrambling to his feet after the impact, Merlin gave a small grunt, the only visible sign of his pain being a slight favoring of his right side and an arm clutching the battered area. It was sure to make a splendid bruise, but bruises weren't exactly the most important thing on his mind at the moment.

Ignoring his newly accumulated injuries, Merlin rushed over as best he could to the water to see what had become of the monster.

It was then, staring in disbelief, that he made a stunning discovery: the barghest was gone. Nowhere in sight. All that was left were scraps of darkness floating away.

Either the monstrosity had dematerialized to escape, or…water was the key to its undoing.

Merlin grinned.

Rapidly whirling on one heel to loudly proclaim his triumphant find to Arthur, Merlin was suddenly stopped by an odd something that caught the corner of his eye. He crouched down low to get a better look.

The sight that greeted him was just as perplexing upon closer inspection. Swiveling on the spot, he glanced left and right in the dim light only to be met with much of the same, in either direction: Black specks, shed from the demon dog itself when it'd hit the branches, scattered all across the mulch floor. The only problem was…up close, it clearly wasn't shadow making up these creatures.

Hesitant (afraid), Merlin reached down to touch one of the sludgy, viscous splotches.

Under his finger, it was almost gelatinous, like it had congealed on contact with the air. It was near-uncomfortably warm, as well, and it smelled cloyingly sweet, the lot of it sitting heavy in his lungs.

Slowly, terrified, Merlin lifted his hand to bring it to his face.

It came back coated red. A red so dark, it was black.

Blood.

The color instantly bled from Merlin's face. His heart gave a thump before it sunk so low in his chest, he didn't think he'd ever find it again. He scrambled away from the puddles, away from the red. Whipping his head up, he looked to the small stream only to see the water clouded by an advancing blanket of murky velvet.

Notrightnotrightnotrightnotright.

Not. Right.

Merlin knew this. He knew it. Knew what this was.

He had thought they were ordinary barghests under a thrall, but he had forgotten their true nature.

Normally, barghests were creepers of the night, bringers of the foretellings of death for some weary traveler to stumble upon, and their magic was too intricate to tame with a spell. In other words, they didn't actively kill people themselves. They were merely grim, blue-eyed omens portending disaster. But these wolves? They were red-eyed, and they actively sought…

Something dark squirmed up his spine.

Death.

These were no ordinary barghests. These were conjured barghests. And only…only one thing could be responsible for such a perversion.

Merlin felt his blood chill. Yes, he had heard of this. Never seen it, but he’d heard of it, mentioned only in reference as it was in his magic book. This…this was dark magic. One of the darkest sort. Just being near it felt like it was defiling him, and he couldn’t help but shudder when the name came to him.

Blóddrýcræft.

Blood magic.

This. It wasn’t good. So not good. He was perfectly aware of the cost this particular brand of magic demanded from its user.

He and Arthur had to get out of here. Now. This was the final straw. Whoever the old man responsible for conjuring such vile creatures into existence was, he definitely wasn’t here to pick a bouquet of primroses for his mother’s name-day, no matter how much Merlin would’ve preferred that to be the case. If that were so, Merlin might’ve even felt gracious enough to help out. But instead of picking flowers, this man was here to kill a prince (or worse), and that one was strictly against one of Merlin’s major policies. If the guy had a problem with it, he could take it up with the wrath of Emrys.

Merlin’s patience today had already been tried to its limits, and the discovery of this perversion of magic was the killing blow. Merlin was Done.

(To think…who could do such a thing?)

The man was playing with fire, and there was not a doubt in Merlin’s mind he’d be burned by the end of it.

“Merlin, are you all right?”

Merlin shook from his stupor and looked up, catching sight of Arthur just behind him, watching him with a hardly-disguised worried eye. He tried to hastily bury his barely-restrained bubbling fear and rage, rising unsteadily to his feet. “Yeah,” he mumbled unconvincingly, numbly. Glancing quickly to the stream and back, his voice grew stronger. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Arthur didn’t look fully convinced, but didn’t argue the point. Were either of them truly all right, all things considered? His gaze wandered over Merlin’s shoulder and caught sight of the stream. His blue eyes blew wide. “W-what…is that yours?!”

Startled at the horror in his voice, Merlin followed the prince’s gaze and realized what it looked like. He snapped his head back around, “No! No, it’s not mine, I promise! I’m fine, I swear, it’s just a couple of bruises.”

“Then what, exactly, is all that?!” Arthur yelled at him, gesturing rigidly to the by-now deeply red-stained water. The longer Merlin looked at it, the sicker with fury he became; there was just so much of it.

Merlin gulped internally. Arthur could be rather irrational when he got like this. Best to tread carefully.

Taking a calming breath, he tried to sound reasonable. “Arthur, that just showed up there. I don’t know where it came from, but that’s where the barghest disappeared, so I think we must’ve beaten it.”

Arthur gave him an unimpressed look. “Right. And the beast made of shadows bled everywhere.”

Not shadows.

Merlin threw up his hands. “Well, I certainly didn’t!” Grabbing a fist-full of his tunic and jacket, he turned in a circle, shaking out the worn cloth and leather. “See? I wasn’t stabbed or bitten, nor am I bleeding out. I’m fine.”

Arthur crossed his arms over his breastplate, stubborn as a mule. “Even if you aren’t the source of that mess, I’m getting tired of you saying you’re fine when you clearly aren’t.”

“You’re one to talk, Sir Bashed-By-A-Tree!” Merlin sputtered. “And I’m not lying, I am perfectly fine!”

“Right.” Arthur raised a skeptical eyebrow at him that reminded him uncomfortably of Gaius. “So you're not shaking like a leaf right now?”

“What?” Bewildered, Merlin looked down at his hands, registering they were trembling uncontrollably in shock, with the occasional twitch. The discovery made him hyper-aware of the rest of his body, which was trembling just as badly; the discovery of the blood magic must have affected him worse than he’d realized. He hadn’t noticed.

It certainly didn’t help his case any.

Exasperated with the whole situation and that Arthur wouldn’t just drop it, Merlin snapped, “Does it matter? I’m not the source of the blood; the barghest was. It hit the stream and just…dissolved.” Merlin held up both hands to halt Arthur’s ensuing demands and questions; they didn’t have time for either of them. Channeling his inner physician, he answered as intellectually as he could, “No, I’m not sure why it did, but my best guess would be it couldn’t retain its form after being diluted by a larger source of continuous fluid.”

Arthur stepped closer to him, still on-guard and watching their surroundings. His sword had remained upraised and ready for action the entire time they had been bickering.

Arthur’s eyes narrowed a fraction. Merlin braced himself. “Then…we need to find a source large enough to get rid of the rest of them. If I’m remembering the map correctly, there should be a small lake…” for a second he deliberated with himself, gathering his bearings, before he saw something that tipped him off and he settled for pointing to the right of the stream, “…this way.”

Merlin, who had expected his advice to be ignored or scoffed at or, at the least, ridiculed because he was silly, goofy Merlin who just didn’t have a clue, stared at his friend in startled surprise. That was…unexpected. But not at all unwelcome.

Reassured Arthur was, at last, taking him seriously, Merlin released his breath and tried to ease his jittery hands. It took a considerate amount of effort to finally still them, which was unsettling. Turning his head to face the direction Arthur indicated, Merlin instinctively reached for his magic, making sure Arthur couldn’t see the small golden flash, and looked Ahead.

Arthur was right. A lake was that way, and it luckily wasn’t one the locals depended on for a source of water. It would do perfectly.

Releasing his grasp on the Sight, Merlin turned back to Arthur. “It might be our only chance at getting rid of them.”

Arthur nodded. “Good.” His eyes darkened ominously. “Then I’ll take care of the sorcerer.”

Something about his tone made Merlin nervous. “Arthur, I really don’t think you should go after that man on your—”

The howl rang out.

Merlin just about tore at his hair; he’d had it with that sound. And it meant the other wolves were close behind, too. He glanced back at the stream. It was a less vibrant scarlet now, but the trickling water wasn’t washing the blood away fast enough; they wouldn’t be luring any more barghests in there, not with such glaring evidence of one of their own’s end remaining.

Merlin looked to Arthur, eyes wide. “Arthur, what do we do? I don’t think your water skin can hold enough water to take out one barghest, let alone five. And I’m pretty sure they’re smart enough to know they need to avoid bodies of water; this one was a fluke I don’t think we’ll be able to repeat easily.”

“Oh, we’ll repeat it.”

The howl was making Merlin’s pulse race. “How can you be so sure?!”

Arthur gave him a determined look, one that spoke volumes of his courage (or perhaps his bullheadedness). “Because it’s our only hope, and we’ll make it work.”

No truer words have ever been spoken by any dollop-head anywhere.

Merlin’s internal panicking switched on full blast, to the point he felt he might be drowning. That’s not a plan!

…But what more could they do?

Merlin had to somehow keep them both alive. If this was all they had, then it was what they would work with.

Taking a deep breath, he nodded reluctantly. “O-okay, then let’s go. We need to reach the lake before they catch up.”

Recognizing the need for urgency, neither wasted a second.

For what felt like hours then, but could have just as easily been minutes, they ran along the stream-bed, at times occasionally losing sight of the water through a particularly crowded thicket, but eventually finding their way back to the stream just the same.

They were almost to the lake, just a dozen or so meters away by Merlin’s eye, when the howling ended and a menacing growling started up in the bushes just shy of the clearing in front of their destination.

Not a single second had passed before out of the leaves stepped two pairs of haunting, mocking red eyes, flickering faintly in the quickly darkening light like twin heartbeats.

Merlin felt sick.

Their path to victory was blocked.

Thinking fast, Arthur pivoted—without slowing his pace or hesitating—and yanked Merlin by the sleeve into turning left, away from the eagerly awaiting-to-rip-off-their-faces barghests, yet, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, also away from their protection: the stream.

With a sneaking suspicion forming, all it took was one glance over his shoulder to confirm it; the barghests were leaving behind the bushes they had been guarding to tail after them.

Merlin and Arthur’s plan had apparently been completely predictable. They were being herded away from their sole advantage.

Which left them with nothing but an ineffective (if not practically useless) sword to defend themselves with against not one, but two barghests, with possibly three more on the way. Which was just dandy.

Merlin might end up having to reveal himself for this. His secret wasn’t worth Arthur’s life.

Suddenly, Arthur pulled Merlin to a stop by the sleeve he hadn’t released yet. Lost on why they had stopped at all with the wolves rapidly closing in, Merlin looked up to see they had stopped in front of a specifically tall and sturdy oak. Its trunk was wide enough around that Merlin’s lanky arms wouldn’t have been able to fully encircle its base if he tried. It had hardly any lower branches, but some of its higher ones were low-hanging enough to be reached with a boost.

Looking to Arthur now for some answer as to what they were doing stopping in the middle of a deadly chase to admire a tree, Merlin didn’t quite get the answer he’d been expecting.

Though, what answer he had been expecting, he couldn’t say. Not the one he got, that was for sure.

“Right,” Arthur breathed, baring his teeth in a grimace. He crouched down and knit his fingers together to form a step. “Up you get.”

Merlin gaped at him as if he’d lost his mind.

“Merlin, I’m not joking. Get in the stupid tree. Now.”

Merlin skittered back, instantly protesting. “No! There is no way I’m just going to up and leave you down here to get mauled or whatever that old sorcerer wants to do to you! I can’t do that, I refuse to do that, don’t you dare ask me to do that!”

“Merlin—”

“I am not getting in that tree!”

“Yes, you are!”

“No, I’m not!”

“MERLIN!”

“ARTHUR!”

Branches somewhere behind the tree snapped.

Arthur took the distraction as permission to jerk Merlin bodily forward by the shoulder and haul him up onto one of the lower branches with a hefty shove before he could even blink. Glancing behind himself in panic, Arthur motioned with one hand for Merlin to keep ascending. “Go, go, go!”

Fully and entirely upset at being forced into a tree against his will, Merlin begrudgingly complied and climbed a couple of branches higher, if not for his safety, then for Arthur’s peace of mind. It did nothing to hinder his grumbling, though.

Satisfied Merlin wouldn’t be climbing right back down like the obstinate idiot he was and was safely high enough the branches and leaves would hide him from view, Arthur backed away from the tall oak and made a stand at the far side of the clearing, unsheathing his sword.

Merlin didn’t like what he was seeing. He didn’t like what he wasn’t seeing.

His nausea was returning full force.

The two barghests entered the scene on either side of Merlin’s oak tree. Neither paused to even spare a glance at it; they were after Arthur, not some serving boy. They didn’t even seem to register Merlin was there.

Which could’ve been what Arthur was going for. Or just pure luck.

The wolves didn’t move.

From his straddled tree branch, Merlin looked between the two misconfigured beasts and the crown prince, unsure as to why they didn’t make their move.

It became inherently clear why when from the shadows of the woods, who should arrive, but the old blóddrýcræft-caster himself. As if any of this could get any better.

The wolves stood down for him, their growling quieting.

Arthur glowered at him. Not that the young prince made for much of an intimidating sight with his hair mussed wildly every which way, dirt smeared across his left cheek, and blood streaked across his forehead from his gash.

The sword itself would have been much more intimidating if Merlin didn’t know the old man was a magic-user.

“Ah, caught you.” Merlin couldn’t see the man’s face from this vantage point, but he could hear the slimy smile in his voice plenty.

Arthur was having none of his games. Cutting straight to the chase, he boldly declared, “What do you want?”

Merlin could practically feel the sorcerer’s continued grin as if it were hovering oppressively in the air. The old man paced calmly and smoothly into the grove until he was standing directly under the tall oak, beneath Merlin’s dangling feet. “Oh, that’s easy,” he breezily replied. “I want you, Crown Prince Arthur, out of the way. Indefinitely.”

Somehow, Arthur didn’t look afraid in the slightest. “Well, if that’s all, then I’m afraid you’ll be coming out of this rather empty-handed.” He twirled his blade expertly.

In comparison to the old man, it looked like a toddler twirling a twig at a two-headed, venomous viper. He didn’t stand a chance.

“We’ll just see about that,” the man retorted. He snapped his fingers, calling the two barghests to attention. They perked up and slunk to stand at his shoulder. The elderly sorcerer paused, staring at his two creations. He seemed confused about something. “Where’s—Ah.” The confusion cleared all at once. “Poor dear, she must have gotten a little wet.” Merlin was thrown for a second when the man’s face actually twisted into something vaguely mournful. It certainly didn’t last long. “No matter,” he dismissively waved off, “five will do just as well as six.”

Back into murder-mode, then. Delightful fellow.

He snapped his fingers again, and the barghests crept towards Arthur, anticipating the order to strike as they crouched on their haunches, ready to spring.

Arthur eyed them warily. He caught the old man’s black eyes. “Look, whoever-you-are, I’m sure you’re plenty put-out by your sentence, but unless you leave Camelot, never to return, it’s only a matter of time before you are over-powered. My knights are strong and trained from their youth to kill the likes of you; I should know, I trained them myself.”

“Ah,” there was amusement in his dead eyes now. “How naive of you, little princeling. You think me to be persuaded by an offer of banishment over death? You think me so easy to chase off, as if a chastised child, when I am the one in control? I am death.” There was a dark chuckle then, one that sent shivers crawling down Merlin’s spine, like little, writhing black, shiny-shelled beetles clambering up and over one another frantically to avoid being crushed at the bottom of the pile; it was always the most defenseless that were crushed first. “No, no, Prince Arthur.” The elderly man swept into a grand, elegant bow, every bit of it just as derisively mocking as if Merlin was the one doing it, minus the charm and the good-humored glint to his eye. Everything human in the man seemed absent, on hold, as if it had been shoved aside and deemed unimportant. It made Merlin’s stomach sink to the forest floor and his eyes widen owlishly, for reasons he couldn’t put into words even if he tried.

The man straightened up before Arthur could get a word in; yet another veiled insult to the prince. “Most noble Sire, I am here in this position of my own free will. In the name and work of the brighter future, I have sought you out specifically, Prince Arthur, you who would slaughter my kind with little remorse. No matter how you may try to outrun me, you will not succeed.”

Arthur was on guard now, at least. Not that it will do him much good, Merlin couldn’t help but remind himself grimly. Magic wasn't a force to be trifled with, and blood magic brought a whole new level to the playing field. (A new level Merlin didn’t even want to consider.)

Arthur was frowning. “Right then,” he hefted his blade higher (visibly gathering his resolve, though maybe it was only visible to Merlin’s sight), eyes tuned to the slightest flicker of movement, of trickery, “wasn’t very wise to seek me out, now was it?”

The sorcerer smiled, but it was a jaded, cracked thing, like a shard of a broken stained-glass window; Merlin could tell it had once upon a time been a thing of beauty, bright and airy and happy, but no longer. Now it was naught but an unhinged sort of madness fueled by the flickering fire of hatred; a crack split across the pale, sallow surface of his face, splitting him into two disconnected halves of himself that could never again be whole. Everything about him screamed dangerous and unnatural and wrong. Merlin wanted it to go away. “On the contrary, Prince Arthur, it wasn’t very wise of you to come here in the first place seeking out me.”

Right then and there was when the final three barghests arrived, effectively boxing Arthur in from behind, completing the circle of lethal foes. Apparently, the other knights they had undoubtedly been terrorizing weren’t worth the effort anymore.

Merlin cursed their terrible luck as he thought double-time, trying to work out what to do. He couldn’t just leave Arthur down there to face the threat alone, that’s what the stupid old man wanted. But, at the same time, the man hadn’t seemed to notice Merlin’s absence; Merlin might just have the element of surprise on his side. That wasn’t something to be wasted lightly.

While Merlin was still debating the pros and cons of revealing himself, the atmosphere abruptly changed, flipping on a coin as if something had been activated, and Merlin looked down to see the blóddrýcræft-caster’s eyes glowing that ugly, sickly yellow. The barghests at his command prowled closer, circling Arthur and distracting him as the sorcerer gathered his power together.

Terror spiked in him. The old sorcerer was done talking, and Merlin still had no idea what it was he planned to do to Arthur.

The magic building in the air was getting stronger. He could feel the pressure of it building behind his ears. His magic buzzed in response to it, sensing the foreign power and retreating into himself to avoid its tar-like presence. Whatever spell the sorcerer was drawing power to cast, it was a powerful one.

Aka: Bad. Very bad.

Arthur, the dollop-head he was, was still just standing there swiping at the wolves, daft as a turnip, still demanding the sorcerer stand down and ever oblivious to the magic-user’s real intent in standing there in the first place.

Merlin barely restrained the urge to smack his head into the tree branch.

Of course, the arrogant fool was just standing there. As if the mere presence of the crown prince would solve everything!

Arthur was going to get himself killed.

(That is, if killing was the sort of spell the sorcerer was casting, which Merlin figured it had a pretty high probability of being. Arthur just seemed to be on the wrong end of those spells more often than not, which was much too often for Merlin’s comfort. Apparently, Arthur just rubbed people the wrong way. Who knew?)

Merlin only had a few seconds to act out and stop it.

He could enchant something to knock into the sorcerer or just plain counteract the spell, but that risked Arthur glancing up at him and seeing, and Merlin didn’t want him to find out that way. Not to mention, that left an angry, experienced sorcerer below him finding out his one element of surprise.

Just, generally, not a good idea at all.

So, that scratched out the use of magic. But then, what else was there? The spell may be a powerful one, requiring time, intense concentration, and a long activation phrase, but that meant nothing if the sole advantage Merlin was good for couldn’t be used! Frustration broke through, and he felt moisture welling up in his eyes.

The spell was nearing its end. Merlin could feel it, the influx of magical energy tapering off to the fine-edged cusp, ready to spear through its victim and leave them suffering from whatever ill effects the sorcerer intended.

Arthur was that victim.

Arthur didn’t have much more time.

But what could Merlin do?

Merlin blinked back his frustrated tears, mind racing and frantic. He narrowed his eyes.

The old man was standing beneath the tree. Merlin’s tree. He was standing beneath it, oblivious to the fact that it was Merlin’s tree.

The old coot didn’t know there was a person above him.

A person above him.

Well. That was a solution, now wasn’t it?

Merlin sighed heavily to himself; if this didn't kill him, Arthur was assuredly going to finish the job. But he figured the prince would thank him for it later.

After all, it was the best option he had. If Merlin could stop the sorcerer from completing the spell, could interrupt it somehow, then the magic would disband without harming anyone. Erm, well, almost everyone. The old sorcerer would still be struck by the rebound, but it kind-of served him right for casting the cursed spell in the first place; Merlin couldn’t dredge up too much sympathy for a spiteful old man dead-set on murdering his best friend.

Once the spell was neutralized, the sorcerer would be dealt with, Arthur would still be alive, and Merlin’s magic would remain a secret. A win-win, all around! That is, if it didn’t involve him first jumping out of a tree for three meters to land on a dangerous blóddrýcræft-caster to do it. Then it’d be perfect.

But, alas, just as many things in this world were, perfect plans were so very hard to come by.

Tree-jumping it was.

Here goes nothing. Taking in a deep, calming breath to steel what little of his frazzled nerves he had left, he leaned over the edge of his branch until he was directly above his target and, all at once, released his fingers’ grip.

Someone below gave a loud shout.

“Oncyrran dógorrím!”

Well.

Blast.

The spell was cast…

And Merlin was falling right for it.

Chapter Text

“Oncyrran dógorrím!”

Merlin landed on top of the sorcerer with a heavy thud, landing hard enough to drive all the breath from his lungs. The spell he had overheard, completely cast before his timely arrival, released from the old man’s hand and struck him straight in the chest instead of its intended royal target. With a grunt of pain, Merlin was flung backwards, tumbling across earth and roots alike and adding further nicks and bruises to his battered body. Distantly, he thought he heard Arthur scream his name.

Probably to remind him of how much of an idiot he was.

Still tumbling, he hit a fallen, mossy log and abruptly jerked to a halt with a groan. Lying there—sprawled out on the ground with everything hurting, no breath to be found in his gasping lungs and an incessant stinging in his chest—Merlin felt the strangest urge to laugh; for once, since he’d met him, Merlin had accidentally taken a hit for Arthur! Wasn’t that an interesting change of pace? He almost couldn’t believe it.

And then he couldn’t help but wonder how messed up his life had really become if he actually found his current situation in any way humorous. He must be losing his mind. Taking comfort in the fact he wasn’t cackling like a madman right now, and only felt like it, he figured he should probably give himself the benefit of the doubt. For now.

Then his attention was directing itself back towards his surroundings as, dubious sanity aside, Merlin still had a job to do: Time to protect the prat.

…On purpose this time. And if he could get his suddenly dead-weight limbs to budge.

Straining upwards, Merlin tried to sit up, but every part of him felt like it was carved from the stony side of a mountain. He was tired. No, exhausted, more like. Sleep sounded nice, especially as the bone-tired weariness settled in his chest, dragging down at his eyelids, calling to him like a siren song in the void of silence the ringing of his ears provided.

Everything just felt so cozy, so perfect for napping, even the mulch dampening his trousers and the twig sticking into his back. He wanted to curl up against his log forever and forget, well, everything.

All of it instantly put him on the defensive; this fatigue was sudden. Too sudden. It couldn’t be natural, not when two seconds ago he was on an adrenaline high from jumping out of a tree. Doing the only thing he could think to do, he fought back, straining against the heavy blanket shrouding him.

Somewhere in the background of the battle of will in his mind, Arthur was shouting, but Merlin’s hazy brain couldn’t make out what he was saying. Was the prince shouting at him? Or…or who? That was funny. There was someone else here, too, but who was it again?

A ragged growling started up all around the clearing.

Blood magic.

Merlin flinched. That’s right, there was a threat, and it wasn’t neutralized yet. Was Arthur fighting on his own?

He needed to move. Why wasn’t he moving? He should’ve been moving by now.

Everything was heaped under unnecessary amounts of fog. Merlin’s vision warped.

Arthur is in trouble.

At last, after a full minute’s struggle, one of his fingers twitched. Then his whole hand. A foot. An arm.

Feeling a sudden surge of strength (not knowing his eyes had briefly flashed gold), Merlin bolted upright into a sitting position, trying not to wince in pain of all the bruises now littering his ribs.

Boy, bruises were not fun.

Looking around, blinking rapidly and trying to make sense of all he was seeing, Merlin found the blurry blob that looked a bit like Arthur—the red, tattered cape gave him away—and another inhuman blob that vaguely resembled the old guy? It was hard to see. He wasn’t sure why, but it was the least of his problems right now.

He could sort out his fuzzy vision later.

Lifting a hand, making sure Arthur was sufficiently distracted (his blurry blob-face looked like it was distracted…it wasn’t facing Merlin, at least), Merlin gave his magic the quiet command to snap a tree branch over the blurry-blob sorcerer.

Instead of a single branch, the entire tree instantly ripped itself from its roots with an almighty CRACK.

Oops.

Its impending form looming down, it fell inevitably toward the blurry form of the sorcerer…and Arthur.

OOPS.

All of it happening too fast for him to do anything, Arthur and the sorcerer were forced to break apart to avoid the felled tree, both jumping aside. There was a flash of silver and a flash of yellow. Were they battling? Merlin couldn’t tell; it was hard to follow what each party was doing when his world kept tilting off-kilter.

The tree crashed to the forest floor, wood splintering and crunching, the tip of its uppermost branches lying just shy of Merlin’s boots. Great. His magic was faulty and trying to kill everyone, including him. Wasn’t that just hunky-dory.

He jumped when a shout pierced the static cotton of his ears.

“Merlin! GET UP!”

Oh. So his hearing was back, then. That was good.

The grounding tether, at last, helped clear away some of the fog. Having things slightly coming into focus now, Merlin could make out the individual barghests scattered around the clearing, including one sitting not two paces from him. He hurriedly made to scramble back, only to pause.

The twisted creatures, the barghests…they weren’t moving. In his vision, they were still semi-fuzzy, but he could make out enough to see they were frozen in place. Their red eyes were dim and their jaws gaping open, murky shadows (blood) slowly dripping from their maws into the damp, earthen ground. Not a single one moved, not even to breathe. Merlin found it deeply unsettling.

Apprehensive, but needing to know if they were still a threat, he picked up a stone by his hip and chucked it at the creature nearest to him, praying to the gods it wouldn't snap back to reality and bite his face off.

The stone plinked at its incorporeal paws.

No face-biting occurred. It didn’t so much as flinch.

Feeling more unnerved than ever, Merlin turned from it and looked up anxiously to see where Arthur had gotten to—only to witness, in startled awe, the prince hacking away at what appeared to be the waning power of the old sorcerer’s sickly magic. The sorcerer was backed to the far side of the clearing, trapped by a trunk at his back. Arthur had the upper-hand.

The sword wasn’t useless.

Somehow.

Feeling wholly concerned (was it a trick? Was the old man playing him for a fool?), Merlin narrowed his eyes. Then opened them wide in realization.

The barghests weren’t moving…because they weren’t receiving any orders. They were only puppets, after all, and judging from the amount of flickering the sorcerer’s magic was doing with every deflection of Arthur’s felling blade, not to mention the perspiration beading along the old man’s temple, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. The man must’ve worn his magic reserves out, or something of the sort (Merlin didn’t want to think about that right now).

Maintaining the barghests and casting such a powerful spell must have pushed him to his limits. Most likely, he’d assumed he’d have Arthur out of the way by now and a measly peasant left to deal with. He’d miscalculated.

His mistake.

With a grunt, Arthur’s sword skidded across another deflection that shattered halfway through, yellow sparks flying. With a decisive thunk, the fight was over and the sorcerer crumpled to the ground like age-old parchment.

Arthur was victorious.

And Merlin stared, eyes wide and heart thudding as the forest fell shockingly quiet. Every part of him hesitated, tense for the catch. Was it…over?

That seemed too good to be true. And too easy. It couldn’t be real.

With a disgusting sounding gurgle, the five barghests around the circle slumped in on themselves and fell apart, seeping into oozing masses before they disappeared entirely with a slurp and a crackle, fading to shadow. While Merlin had been distracted by the wolves, the same decomposing happened to the dead source of their woes; he turned back just in time to see shadows fading away where the body had lain.

All too soon, there wasn’t a single trace left except for the physical remains of the scuffle, including some rather impressively sliced up trees courtesy of Arthur’s not-totally-useless-in-a-magic-fight-so-long-as-the-sorcerer-is-completely-exhausted weapon.

None of it made sense. Merlin didn’t get it. Where was the surprise twist? The part where everything crumbled and Merlin had to piece it all back together again? There was always something he had to fix. Stumbling to unsteady feet and slumping against a nearby tree for much-needed support, Merlin felt his distress climbing.

It’s NEVER this easy! What happened? What’sgonewrongwhat’sgonewrongwhat’sgonewron—

With a jolt, he remembered something. Something rather important. Something he might have, probably shouldn't have forgotten in the first place.

The spell.

It had hit him. Square in the chest. Right in front of their eyes. Even he couldn't squirrel away that kind of irrefutable proof, from Prince Prat or himself. And for another matter, what was the spell even meant to do? In the heat of the moment, he hadn't questioned it, his need to protect Arthur above all else consuming his thoughts. For a moment, he'd forgotten he'd even been struck.

But he had. With…no consequences? That couldn't be right. It had been a spell aimed at Arthur from a magic-user, for Pete’s sake. It had to do something. His distress deepened.

Any further contemplation was quickly cast aside, however, along with any of the air left in his lungs.

"Oof!"

"MERLIN, you great, big, self-sacrificing dullard!"

Arthur—popping up out of nowhere (in reality, he’d only jogged across the clearing)—near flung him to the ground with the force of his tackle, gripping Merlin firmly by the shoulders as he frantically looked him over, ignoring the glare his servant cast him for practically leaping at him and banging his head against the tree he'd been resting against.

Merlin shoved the prince off, rubbing the back of his aching skull with one hand as he scowled. "Get off, I'm fine."

"Like a dying carcass, you are." Arthur scowled right back, his worry taking on the form of irritation. "I watched that spell hit you, you lout. So don't give me that rubbish."

“What rubbish?”

“You know perfectly well—”

Merlin chuckled under his breath, secretly welcoming any distraction with open arms, his face a silent challenge of: Oh, do I?

Arthur’s speech halted as he stared. “Stop it.”

Just to be impertinent, Merlin laughed louder.

Arthur glared. “Merlin, this isn’t funny.”

Merlin knew it wasn’t. He grinned. “It’s a little funny.”

Arthur threw up his hands as if to say, Fine, see if I care! “You know, I don’t find you being an absolute imbecile and jumping out of a tree where you were safe, ignoring any natural sense of human instinct in the process, in any way humorous, cabbage-head.”

“Hey,” Merlin protested. That was his insult!

Arthur held up a hand, instantly silencing him. “Nope. No. I think I’ve had quite enough from you for today. You’ve been hit with a spell that could kill you at any moment, so I reserve the right to call you what you are. Now, we are going to find the knights, gather up our scattered supplies, and then you are going to ready my horse, your horse, Bedivere’s, and Garaint’s, and we are heading straight back to Camelot.” Hand resting on his sheathed sword (just in case), Arthur turned to forge back through the trees, his part said.

Merlin blinked in his wake. His brain still felt a little sluggish, so it took him a second or two longer to process what he’d been told. It was obvious when he finally did register his orders. “Wait,” he piped up, “but—”

“No BUTS, Merlin!” Arthur spun on his heel, wagging a finger in his servant’s startled face. “You could have died today—TWICE! Honestly! You’re impossible!”

“Oh, I’m impossible?!” Merlin glared, gesturing to himself before he jerked a hand to point at the prince. “You’re the one who wanted to take on that stupid sorcerer all on your own!”

“Yes, I did,” Arthur said patronizingly. “And you didn’t see me nearly dying as a result of it, did you?”

Merlin felt rage bubble up inside him, his face flushing slightly, but no come-back came to him; his skull started aching.

Taking the silence for a second victory, Arthur gave a stiff nod. “Enough arguing. We need to find the knights.”

Resigning himself to Arthur being an impudent pig for the rest of the day, Merlin sulked behind him as they backtracked through the dark woods on their way to finding where the rest of the knights had ended up through the whole kerfuffle.

It took a while, but eventually, half an hour of searching brought them not far from the original radius of their children search-party, before the entire chase went down. It wasn’t much longer after that they found the knights.

Lying as though half-dead on the ground, some of them appeared to be just waking up. They looked a sorry sight, battered and defeated. Merlin didn’t doubt it was the barghests’ handiwork. They’d have to keep an eye out for infected bite-wounds; Merlin didn't envy them in that.

“Sir Leon!” Arthur rushed forward, his hand at last leaving the blasted hilt of his sword. Clumsily tailing the running prince, Merlin stood off to the side and watched as Arthur took the older knight’s hand and hefted him to his feet. Merlin would’ve liked nothing more than to step in and help the knight regain his footing, or any of the other knights, as it were, but his head was spinning again and he needed to take deep, heaving gulps of air to keep himself from hurling at the intensity of it.

“What happened? Is everyone all right?” Arthur continued, his hand releasing Leon’s once the man was upright. His head lifted to survey his beaten men.

Leon bent over his knees, taking a breath himself. “We’re all fine, Sire,” he huffed out. “Just a little shaken and scratched up. Those things, whatever they were, they were relentless.”

“Don’t we know it,” Merlin mumbled to himself.

Arthur’s gaze returned to Leon. “Regardless, we need to regroup and find our scattered supplies. The barghests—the beasts, that is—and the sorcerer responsible for them have been vanquished. What I’m concerned about now are our provisions and any harm done to our men.”

Leon respectfully bowed his head. “Understood, Sire. Those least wounded will be dispatched to search for the horses. We’ll tend to whatever wounds we can with what we’ve got in the meantime until the saddlebags have been retrieved.”

Arthur nodded. “Good. I’ll join the search. While we’re at it, we might as well keep an eye out for the children as well.”

Not having anything better to do himself, Merlin made to follow the knight and his prince when a hand at his shoulder stopped him.

Blinking in confusion, Merlin glanced up to meet blue eyes. Arthur. When had he stopped walking…?

Arthur’s voice was gruff and firm. “Not you, Merlin.” Before he could protest any, Arthur insisted, “I want you to stay. You’re still out of it, don’t pretend like you aren’t, and you’re the closest thing to a physician we’ve got right now. Stay. We’ll be back soon.”

Not wasting a second more, Arthur strode off without looking back. He didn’t have to. Merlin had his orders and he could curse them to infinity all he wanted, but it wouldn’t change the true fact of it all: they made sense.

Merlin was needed here. For now.

The dumb door-knob better make it back.

Sighing to himself and rubbing at a sore rib that felt like it was smarting deep inside him, Merlin got to work building up a fire so they could see in the dark from branches provided to him by some of the more mobile knights left behind. For an hour or so, then, he worked, bandaging up claw marks, scratches, gashes, and bite-wounds alike until his vision was fizzing at the edges again. At least it wasn’t as bad as it had been during the fight.

At that point in time, the sun had well and truly set, and night crept in with all its shadows, setting Merlin involuntarily on edge.

Night had never been a good time to be out in the woods. Especially not with the harrowing experience they had barely lived through still fresh on the mind. Merlin noticed some of the knights still awake shifting uneasily.

He wasn’t the only one.

Time blurred and it wasn’t much later after that Arthur and his group made it back successfully; all the horses had been found and recovered. The same couldn’t be said for all of the saddlebags, but the medical supplies were still present, so they could overlook the lost supplies. Whatever had been dropped could be easily replaced in the nearby village the next morning.

Except, Merlin learned, it wasn’t Arthur’s intention to stay all the way to the next morning.

Approaching his sitting manservant and shoving a couple of the few saddlebags still with provisions in them into his startled arms, Arthur told him, “Prepare the horses. We’re leaving. Oh, and don't forget: Geraint and Bedivere are coming with us, so prepare theirs, too. We ride for Camelot. Hopefully, if we ride through the night, we’ll make it in a day.” Then, without so much as another word of acknowledgment or a moment for Merlin to verbally respond, Arthur was gone, heading most likely in Leon’s direction.

Merlin huffed out a frustrated breath, but then winced when it pulled something. Seeing no other option but to comply, he set down the bags and dragged himself to his feet. A quick glance around provided him with the knowledge Sirs Bedevire and Geraint were already heading in his direction, both of them having been on the horse-hunt with Arthur and most likely pre-informed of the development. Sending a nod in their direction, Merlin leaned down and reached for the first saddlebag. It took a precarious moment of fumbling and repositioning before he had all the bags in his arms, but once he did, he carefully walked them over to where the horses had been lined up and dumped them to the ground so they could be loaded atop their backs.

Starting with his own mare (who nickered a gentle greeting to him and mussed his hair, forcing a laugh from him), he fell into the by-now natural rhythm of prepping their horses for a long journey. The work provided for his hands was soothing and returned to him some clarity, and his mind decided to start working.

Before he could stop it, he started thinking.

And now that Merlin could think clearly (well, more clearly), he almost wished he couldn’t. Because it made one glaring fact he had been trying so desperately to ignore undeniably all too real: knowing now that the old man had been skulking about these woods since the reports had begun rolling in, it was obvious they wouldn’t be finding the children.

Because they had already met them.

Heat gathered in Merlin’s eyes. He tried to brush it away.

Their patrol had been much, much too late to save anyone.

Blood magic. Bloody blood magic.

Merlin had been so underprepared for this whole disaster. Blood magic was universally shunned and feared in the magic community. Druids never dared to speak of it, so they didn’t. It was especially rare to even meet a practitioner because most of the very few that existed preferred living on the down-low and keeping out of sight. Once a part of the shadows, always the shadows. It had never once even crossed Merlin’s mind he might one day meet one, nonetheless fend one off.

So what could these monsters lurking in the dark do that an ordinary sorcerer couldn’t? According to the brief description in his book, blood magic-users had the unique ability to shape life into altered forms, or tamper with pre-existing life, if you will. The downside that made the practice so despicable was the horrendous fact a life equal to the spell you were casting had to be taken.

Magic always did insist on maintaining balance; it was only natural the rule applied to even the darkest of practices, too. And magic comes from life. While most sorcerers pulled their magic from themselves or “borrowed” it from their surroundings, Blood-magic users took their magic. They took life and exchanged that life for power.

It made them extremely unreliable. Which was why it was so perplexing one had been sent after Arthur. What person had thought it worth the risk?

The Lady, apparently.

With a sneaking suspicion, his mind naturally defaulted to thoughts of the sisters; Morgana and Morgause. It could have been them, but then why the singular title? Was it a plot to rid the kingdom of Arthur to place Morgana on the throne (which had epically failed—last Merlin checked, he was still himself), or was it a new threat Merlin had to keep a trained, magical eye out for?

Neither were particularly great options.

He just wanted to ignore the mess, curl up somewhere, and sleep, not stress himself out further over unknown possibilities. If only his head would shut up and let him rest, let it rest. But nooo, it just had to wind itself up tight as a cord, jumping at assumptions it couldn’t even logically make.

Morgana? Allied with blood magic? Where had he even gotten that idea from? He knew she had recently begun her foray into dark magic, but even she must have her limits, that being harm to herself.

On the easiest, most fundamental level to understand, blood magic couldn’t be trusted, not even by its caster.

(Somewhere, Merlin couldn’t remember where, he’d heard blóddrýcræft demanded a price for its use. Something of innumerable value to the host: identity. Blood magic-users don’t remember their names. And what sort of queen would Morgana be if she had no name?)

It couldn’t be her.

I hope.

With a returning fuzzy, murky head, Merlin reached for the next saddlebag.

(He had failed her enough already.)

Next to him, having apparently reached his side, Geraint standing stiffly by the trees rather than joining them, Sir Bedivere kneeled down and lent Merlin a willing hand. Before he knew it, with the extra help, the horses were prepped and ready for the journey.

Merlin only felt empty.

Arthur found Leon amidst the gathering of knights by the fire. Not wishing to disturb the semi-peaceful scene, Arthur stepped close and murmured, just loud enough for the man to hear, “Leon? I need to have a word with you.”

Eyes appearing guarded in the flickering, fickle light, the knight nodded and silently rose to his feet.

Once they were a good ways from the other knights and the fire, Arthur got to the point. “Leon, I need you to make sure word is given to the villagers whenever it is supplies are gathered; let them know they should be safe now. And inform the rest of the knights to keep looking for the missing children.” Arthur’s face turned grim. “I don’t believe any of them would have survived alone in the woods with those things on the loose, hunting them, but we can hope.”

“And you, Sire?” The man looked confused. “Where will you be?”

Arthur rolled his eyes. Taking care of an oaf. “Something happened during the final fight. Nothing is for sure, but I’d rather play it safe. I’m taking Merlin back to Camelot to get looked over by Gaius, so I’ll be taking a couple of knights with me as an entourage. You’re in charge of the rest of the knights until further notice. Once the children are…found, adjourn the patrol and head back home. After this whole nightmare, every man deserves to recuperate before the rest of the patrol must be undertaken.”

Leon gave a respectful dip of his head. “Of course, Sire. I wish you well on the return journey.”

Arthur mustered up a smile. “Thank you, Sir Leon. The same to you.”

It was when turning back to see the horses fully prepared and ready to leave, Merlin awaiting him on his own mare with Sirs Bedevere and Geraint by his side, that Arthur felt a spurt of deadly hope alight in his chest. Surely Merlin couldn’t be too out of sorts from the spell if he could still complete his chores? Surely.

Merlin will be fine.

Arthur let himself breathe a jittery, false breath, and, in a few minutes, he was hitching himself up into the saddle.

It was time they headed home.

The night portion of the journey was the hardest. The entire time, as they rode along the well-traveled paths, all Merlin wanted to do was close his eyes and rest his aching skull, his aching bones. Whenever he suggested it, however, Arthur would promptly shoot him down. He got answers like, “we don’t have time to sleep just yet,” and “we have to reach Camelot first.”

It was all very irritating, and so very Arthur.

Like it would actually harm them all that much to stop and rest a few measly hours.

But Arthur had it his way. No stopping, no resting, no dilly-dallying, no joy. They only paused briefly for meals and rest-stops, and that was only once daylight at last flooded the sky.

Merlin did his very best to repay Arthur, though; he complained his ear off the entire night. The two accompanying knights seemed amused by this.

Once mid-morning was upon them, however, Merlin grew bored of prattle and banter and fell quiet. Having little else to occupy his mind with as they rode through the day, Merlin’s thoughts wandered to the current mystery confounding his brain.

The spell. The spell all this rushing about nonsense was for.

Magic was, by nature, chaotic—the very life of the earth personified, Nature at its core, turbulent and untamed, yet calm and calculating. And as Nature goes, magic does what it wants. What it wills. In order for man to command it (and it’s not even a command, really, more of an insistent request), words from the Old Religion are required to guide it. The more powerful the spell, the longer and more specific the words required to guide it.

That much magical build-up, the build-up he had felt pressurize the air and force his own magic to retreat…it should have required a much longer activation phrase.

The only way the spell functionally would have worked was if the few words on their own had held power. But powerful enough only two were required to guide all that magic…?

Merlin had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. No. Wait. His…chest? Sternum. Gah!

Whatever the spell had done or was going to do, it was going to be a disaster. Merlin could only hope his magic managed to fend the dark energy off and untangle it from himself. If it couldn’t, then to put it lightly, he was done for.

Going back to the spell, Merlin hadn’t recognized the unfamiliar words the sorcerer had chanted, either, so he had no idea what the intended effect was supposed to be. For all he knew, he might just turn into winged-pony! Probably with a pink-colored hide, just to further his humiliation. Arthur would surely get a kick out of calling him a girl then. Though, thinking of such things now made his head feel oddly heavy and dull, full of whispy, obscuring cotton fluff, like—like he could just slip peacefully away with no worries into a nice, long nap under the warmth of the sun…

Merlin jolted upright in his saddle.

No. No naptime in the middle of the road. He’d never hear the end of it from Arthur if he fell asleep astride his mare again. He could practically see the stupid clotpole’s smug smirk towering above him from here.

Yeah, absolutely not. Arthur wasn’t getting the satisfaction of dumping water over his head yet again.

(The stupid, dollop of a prince had only done it about a hundred times.)

Besides, Merlin still had the spell to contend with. He couldn’t sleep now! He had to…had to…

…do what?

Wait a minute. What had he been thinking about?

Merlin shook his head, rattling it for answers, but the thoughts wouldn’t return themselves to him. It was like fishing through Arthur’s mess of a wardrobe for his belt, only to find the belt had been resting halfway across the room on the desk the entire time. It was…frustrating. Unnerving.

The thought had felt important. Very important.

Something about magic, perhaps?

Merlin shook his head, a bit more violently this time, trying to clear away the fog forcibly. Something in his chest stung. Then the sting transferred to his head. Stupid stinging.

Spells.

He had been thinking about spells, hadn’t he? Was Arthur hurt? Merlin glanced at him. Or, well, at what he could see of his back, seeing as the prince was riding up at the front, facing away from him.

No, no, Arthur was fine.

But then, who was hit with a spell?

This was confusing. Were they heading back to Camelot now? Why had they left in the first place? Had they accomplished what they set out to do? Why did every part of his body hurt?

Oh, his head.

With a groan, Merlin tipped forward until his head rested against the dark, silky mane of his mare, forehead leaning against her soft neck. He tried to still his breathing, control it, but everything seemed to be spiraling, and the rocking gait they were traveling at wasn’t helping. Nausea rose, and he barely held back the impulse to lean over and purge his stomach. The throbbing behind his temple intensified.

Did he have a head wound? That would explain the nausea. But who in their right mind would have allowed him to get on the back of his horse and ride if he was mentally impaired? Arthur could be a real insensitive scallop-brain, but even he knew procedures as basic as that.

So, not a head wound then.

But what?

Oh, this was infuriating. It felt like his brain was playing middle-man with his memories, tossing them above his head just out of his reach.

Details kept coming and going.

There had been a man in the woods. No, no, a woman. The Lady. She had, she had…no, wait. She was the one to send trouble, not instigate it. It was a man.

Who was the man? Had he said his name?

Sometime along the road, after what felt like decades of running in circles within his own mind, they stopped for a quick, hurried dinner.

Or had it been lunch?

Either way, it didn’t matter because Arthur, like the clotpole he was, refused to let them rest a wink after they all finished eating. "Not until we reach the castle," he said. Something once more about spells, but at that point, Merlin was no longer paying attention.

He only cared for the fact he wouldn’t get to sleep. Why was Arthur so mean? Who had upset him into punishing them all?

In the ensuing argument, Merlin must have said something wrong because Arthur stared at him like he had spontaneously grown three heads.

“‘Y-you don’t even know why we are here?’ Seriously? That really isn’t funny, Merlin. Cut it out.”

Merlin frowned at him, nonplussed. “But I really don’t. And can I sleep now?”

In all fairness, he probably should have seen the resounding “NO” coming.

Thanks to his outburst, he found his recounting of events prodded at and inspected within an inch of its life, not that there was much there to prod.

Arthur described things to him that had apparently happened. Merlin couldn’t remember a speck of it and said so. Arthur’s scowl would deepen and he’d get even meaner, insisting they all ride faster. Merlin felt sorry for the two knights with them. He didn’t recognize them, so this must be their first time, and what a terrible first time it was!

Merlin wanted to sleep.

Then, suddenly, they had arrived.

As their horses galloped through the lower town, citizens of Camelot came out of their homes and waved, cheering to see their prince returned safe and well. For the most part, Arthur seemed to be ignoring them, although he did offer a small, cordial wave to the crowd upon entry to the courtyard.

It was very sweet. Merlin felt proud.

Then they were dismounting and Arthur gave Merlin a firm shove in the direction of Gaius’s chambers. Confuddled, Merlin looked to him inquisitively; the horses needed tending still. Arthur knew this.

Arthur gave him an exasperated huff and gestured insistently for him to get a move on, the sign of dismissal. Oh. Understanding lit the fog inside his head. Arthur was going to let the stablehands take care of it. That was nice and all if it didn’t mean Merlin was all the closer to a lecture and the dreaded Eyebrow-of-Doom.

Groaning into his hands, Merlin miserably watched as the prince made his way up the steps to the King’s study to report all that had happened (and likely come up with some excuse for why they had returned so early without the rest of the patrol (at least, that was what Arthur said happened); somehow, Merlin didn’t think Uther would be the happiest man alive to hear his son had abandoned the rest of a perimeter patrol for the sake and well-being of a single commonwealth servant.). Resigned to his fate, and still mightily frustrated he couldn’t recall the events Arthur had berated and pestered him over, Merlin headed across the courtyard to head inside himself.

All he wanted to do was sleep and fall away into oblivion. There, he didn’t have to worry or care about anything—not Arthur, not Morgana or Morgause, or weird old men in the forest with sickly yellow eyes—he could just drift away…

Merlin made sure to keep his steps as light as he possibly could in his foggy condition and the scuffing of his boots on the stone to a minimum (not that the effort probably muffled much, more token than anything) as he ascended the stairwell to his and Gaius’s living quarters. Pushing the creaky wooden door open just enough to cautiously slip through, Merlin cringed at the particularly high-pitched squeal the hinges gave off as he closed it. So much for stealth.

Standing frozen, waiting to be caught red-handed trying to sneak in without notice, Merlin was surprised to hear no movement in the room. Turning around slowly, his dark blue eyes took in the cluttered benches and messy bookshelves of home, no Gaius in sight.

The remains of an evening meal were still warm in the pot over the fire; most likely a hearty gruel or vegetable stew. Merlin only glanced at it to register the steam still coming off of it; strangely enough, food didn’t sound appealing to him right now. Which was…abnormal. Usually, after a long day’s ride, he was positively ravenous.

Currently, though, thought of food only served to curdle his stomach. And his jaw felt too tired and achy to willingly chew anything, anyway. In fact, all of him felt tired and achy, which, thankfully, was something normal after an entire day’s ride.

Glancing at the hearth once more and finding a hastily emptied bowl shoved amongst the vials on the bench, Merlin concluded Gaius must have finished off his rounds and returned home, only to have been called back out on the breath of an emergency.

Probably just a woman in the lower town having a delivery. Nothing to worry about. Babies listened to no one, and that included what day they were born on.

Standing in the middle of the messy floor, doing his best to avoid a pile of scattered papers that may or may not be vitally important, Merlin moved to the doorway of his bedroom.

And hesitated.

The evening’s moral dilemma had, at last, presented itself.

Gaius would want to know what had happened (or, at least, hear the events told from Arthur’s perspective) and hear his odd list of symptoms. It could be imperitive that he know.

Even if the elderly man was bone-tired and weary after a long, grueling day fulfilling other’s needs over his own without Merlin around to help lighten the load like he usually did, Gaius would still want to know.

But.

Merlin took the first step up the precursory stairs to his room.

Gaius deserved to be able to come home and rest; not to have to deal with yet another problem on top of worrying over him, again. Merlin was the one to make the foolish decision; why did Gaius have to be one to suffer for it? Gaius did everything for him, so surely he deserved the night to relax?

Merlin bit his lip, deliberating.

Wait for Gaius to come home and tell him? Or go to bed and wait for the morning to explain it all to him?

In the end, it was Merlin’s eyelids that made the decision for him as they started drooping closed; unless he found his bed soon, Merlin knew he’d wake up with his face quite intimately acquainted with the floorboards.

Waiting till morning it was.

Decision made, and happy it was the right and most reasonable one inside his cloudy, foggy brain, Merlin wasted no time stumbling up the steps and flopping into bed; he didn’t even bother taking the time to remove his boots or jacket. He just snuggled down into the rope-drawn straw mattress and, like a wink, he was out.

After that, he knew no more.

Chapter Text

Morgana sat at her vanity, glaring hatefully at her reflection in the mirror.

Disappointing! Her mind raged at her. Disappointing, disappointing, disappointing.

Yes, I know, she grumbled irritatedly at it. Now be a dear, and put a cork in it.

Losing interest in her reflection, she fiddled with her fingers, her body an anxious, coiled knot of frailed nerves and unbent rage. Why, oh, WHY had the plan not succeeded for once? Morgause had assured her that this one was practically fool-proof!

Yet here she was, still ever throne-less and foiled again.

Gah, what were they doing wrong?!

Growling lowly to herself, she knocked a brush off the edge of the vanity with a petty swipe of her hand, forcing all her anger behind it.

Disproportionate to the amount of force she’d put behind the shove, the brush promptly flew across the room and exploded into bits of splinters with a CRACK against the stone wall. Shreds of it showered all across her chamber floor and bed, but she could care less. Gwen was at home; she wouldn’t be in until later today, and it was a simple enough spell to clean the mess up to avoid suspicion.

Morgana rolled her eyes. Stupid brush.

Currently, though, she was too worked up to feel any disappointment in herself for losing control. (Again.)

It didn’t matter. She was getting a hang on things, and there was always trial and error to learning. Magic was a tricky thing to master.

She took in a deep, calming breath and held it in until her pulse slowed. Feeling better, she released it and glanced back at the remains of her brush…then quickly got worked back up all over again when the brush-remains reminded her of her lousy evening before. Just as she had been getting ready for bed—Gwen helping her with her dress and that dreadful hope still alight in her chest as it had been since the patrol had left those three days before—there had been a stir outside, people shouting and crying out. Perplexed as to what might be happening so late that might cause so many people to gather outside (and Morgana’s heart leaping in the hopes it was the death of a prince), Morgana and Gwen had swiftly moved to the window. And stared.

For who else could it be, but a part of Arthur’s little procession and his pet galloping on into the courtyard—with Arthur himself, alive and well, at their helm.

Arthur...who should have been dealt with. Dead. Gone.

As if to add insult to injury, he had even gone and waved at some of the peasants cheering for him, as if to extenuate his very much alive-ness. Gwen had giggled. Morgana had felt something inside her snap.

The very next morning—this morning, in fact—she had been informed the magical source had been dealt with. The sorcerer behind it—some old man, though deadly nonetheless—had been killed, slain by Arthur’s own sword. The same man her sister had assured her knew exactly what he was doing, dead. Just like that.

What, in all of Camelot, did it TAKE to at last get Arthur out of her hair?!

Before she could get into another mental rant or break anything else, the hand-mirror resting docilely before her fogged up. Straightening in her seat, now alert, she leaned forward anxiously, eager for any word from her sister.

Surely, she knew the plan had failed?

Slowly, words began to scrawl themselves in the fog of the mirror—fog that was really condensation from the breath of the person who held the mirror’s other half.

“What news?”

Morgana scowled. Ohhh, she had news all right. Wiping the mirror clean, she fogged the surface with her own breath and traced out: “It didn’t work. Your ‘ingenious’ plan failed. Arthur has returned, safe and well.”

Morgause seemed to contemplate that, as it took her a moment to respond. Eventually, the mirror was wiped and a new word showed itself.

“Oh?”

Morgana’s grip on the mirror handle near snapped it in two.

“YES! Your hired help, the so-called 'master of his craft,' failed to—”

Her response was too long. She had to wipe it away and continue.

“—kill him! Unless he’s a reanimated corpse, which I highly doubt.”

If Morgause were physically present in the room, Morgana had the feeling she’d be rolling her eyes if her response was anything to go by.

“How do you know killing him was the plan?”

Honestly. What sort of question was that?

“What else could the plan have been?”

“Many, many things, sister.”

It was Morgana’s turn to roll her eyes. Great. Cryptic siblings were the best. But…they were a far cry better than throne-stealing ones.

She gritted her teeth and decided to move on with her report. “I’m fairly certain the sorcerer dying wasn’t part of the plan, either.”

Okay, so maybe she was still feeling a little put-out at not being included, but her sister was the one leaving out details, so she was allowed her sarcasm.

“Did he really?”

Morgana stared at the words. There were so many ways to interpret the question without her sister’s voice to aid her. She was beginning to regret choosing this form of communication for their discussion but quickly shot the feeling down. She hadn’t had much of a choice; Morgause needed to be informed and Morgana hadn’t had a good opportunity to slip away, not in broad daylight.

This was for the best. Limitations and all.

“Yes. His death is one of Arthur’s new favorite boasts.”

So far, he had not shut up about it. Apparently, it had been a rather close call, which made the ordeal all the more swell for bragging in the realm of the knights’ minds. Morgana thought they were all stupid.

“Well, it is of little consequence.”

Morgana almost dropped the mirror.

She nearly needed to double-take, her incredulity high. What? Hadn’t that man been a sorcerer? One of their people? “Of little consequence”...? That wasn’t okay!

“Morgause!”

“Be at ease, sister. He wasn’t one of us, not really.”

Morgana tapped her nails on the wood of the armrest, waiting for her to expand further. She did.

“He was a user of blood magic.”

Morgana blanched, her face turning sheet-white. Her body twitched.

She had only heard of blood magic, but what she had heard had been quite enough to get the main idea across. The practice was only used by those desperate for power, and by practicing it, they practically sold themselves to it, driven by an insatiable hunger to take whatever it was they needed.

There was no practice, no art form to perfect; just taking.

It was hardly considered magic at all.

“W Hy Wou LD YOU CoNsoRT WITH SuC H A PERsoN?”

Her writing was wobbly.

But she was worried. The man could have easily decided to take Morgause’s life; a high priestess was nothing to sneer at, surely. Of course, her elder sister could handle herself, but it was still worrying.

Morgause was all she had.

“He seemed useful, and he offered me an interesting proposal I could not refuse.”

“What was it?”

A pause.

“For the return of magic under your reign, he promised me Arthur subdued. Permanently.”

That only confused Morgana more. “Subdued?”

“Out of the way, but still very much alive. I was intrigued, so I agreed.”

But now Morgana had more questions than she had answers—and a very limited surface to gain them from. Curse this infernal mirror!

“Why would we want him alive? Isn’t the point for him to be dead?”

“Oh, my dear, sweet sister. Surely having him alive but removed is a boon?”

“For what?”

This time, the answer was prompt.

“Revenge.”

Ah. It made sense now.

Something deep inside Morgana squirmed. She shoved it back, containing it. There was no room for the weak-of-heart in this game of chess she was playing, and her insides should know that by now.

Even if she did want Arthur quickly killed. Even if she did want him to suffer as little as possible in the process. Even if she did only want him gone, and nothing more—nothing to further weigh upon her conscience.

A good queen made sacrifices for her people. She would be a good queen.

Revenge was not a sacrifice.

But she couldn’t directly disagree with her sister; Morgause knew what was best, after all. Morgana could play along for the sake of the oppressed magic-users. In the end, all that mattered was Uther and Arthur gone where their dark influence could wound no more, and herself on the throne to free all of Camelot from the laws that held her bound.

It was just a means to an end.

She didn’t care. She didn’t care.

“I still think it would be easier to just kill him.” She wiped the surface. “But whatever the old fool intended to do, he still failed his task.”

“We’ll see.”

Morgana sat patiently in her seat and waited for more, but those words were all that came. To Morgause, the conversation was finished and the meeting was adjourned. Until further news was gathered or another plan concocted (once Morgause finally realized the futility of her current one and moved on from it), Morgana would simply have to wait a fortnight to speak with her sister again.

Seeing no further use dallying at her vanity, she stood and placed the mirror down on her dresser, a foreboding feeling permeating her gut.

The words seemed to ring through her head without end.

We’ll see.

We’ll see.

For a moment, when blustering into Merlin’s small room after attending to the prince that morning (apparently, he'd gotten a cut to his left eyebrow Uther had been concerned about), Gaius feared walking in on an empty, unused bed. The fear quickly abated, however, when his eyes met the more than welcome sight of his ridiculous, oversleeping ward.

He took a moment to sigh to himself in relief. Then he was unceremoniously dumping the poor boy to the floor for making him worry so much.

Merlin made a strange, strangled snort-like sound when he met the floor before he quickly settled back down again with a groan. “Nnng,” he mumbled incoherently, “j’sss five more minutesss, Gia’s…”

Gaius raised a brow at him, hands at his hips. “Five more? Merlin, you were hit with a spell yesterday, I really need you to get up so I can examine you.”

One of Merlin’s sleepy eyes blinked sluggishly up at him before it closed again. “Noooo, don’ wanna…” he whined. “‘Nd who told you that, ‘nyway?” He shoved his face more firmly into the pillow he had taken hostage. “‘Ss rubbish.”

Heaven help Gaius, this boy would be the end of him.

“Who do you think, Merlin? Arthur did. He’d never admit it aloud, but he’s worried about you and he expressed he wasn't sure you would tell me yourself—we’re going to have words about that later, by the way—so he gave you the day off and informed me himself.” The physician gave his best-disapproving scowl.

Too bad Merlin’s eyes were too busy being squeezed shut to notice.

Gaius sighed. Again. “Merlin, really, I need you to get up.”

“But…so tired.”

“That’s not normal, Merlin. I let you have a full night’s rest.”

That made Merlin’s eyes open a crack. “‘S morning? Already?”

Gaius, trying to remain patient and reasonable despite his growing concern, gave a firm nod. “Yes, it’s morning. Haven’t you noticed the sunlight?”

Merlin blinked dazedly. “Oh,” he mumbled. “Thought that wassa candle…”

“That’s it. Up, Merlin, right now.” Gaius reached down, helping his ward stand with an insistent hand at his elbow.

The instant Merlin was on his feet, he near-flopped over and hit his head on that confoundedly empty cabinet of his. Forced to steady and bear most of the young man’s weight on his own, Gaius moved to gingerly take the two of them down the steps and out of Merlin’s room, in which case Merlin practically fell down them. (It seemed he thought his legs weren’t working properly.)

Once past the steps, Gaius situated Merlin on one of the benches and set about bustling around, glancing at tinctures and riffling through separate manuscripts for anything that could prove useful for their present situation.

Merlin, with a soft sigh, simply slumped forward on the table right into the bowl of porridge Gaius had set in front of him. He giggled into it.

Definitely not normal behavior.

Eyeing his ward to make sure he didn’t somehow become the first man in history to drown in boiled oats (with Merlin, something as basic as a spoon could probably end up posing a threat to him; the boy got injuries in some of the most creative ways Gaius had ever seen. Which wasn’t a comfort.), Gaius gathered what he’d found and settled in his seat across from Merlin’s mussed head of hair. Because that was all Gaius could see of his head; his face was entirely buried in the porridge.

So what Merlin had said about being tired was confirmed, then. Perhaps a magically-induced slumber? Or was it just magical-exhaustion from fending off ill-effects from the still-unknown spell?

Looking through the deluge of entirely unhelpful medical scrolls he’d picked up here and there during his scramble about the room, he instantly felt completely overwhelmed. The rare—that is, rare when the situation wasn’t Merlin-related—feeling of uncertainty replaced his usual professional confidence in his craft.

There were too many possibilities here, too many possible variables and outcomes, too many things he could overlook. Gaius wouldn’t be able to narrow it down with so little to go off of. He needed more information. He needed to observe.

But Merlin most likely didn’t have that kind of time.

Going to look up the one thing he could readily identify, Gaius abandoned the scrolls and went back up to Merlin’s bedroom to pull out his magic book from under the loose floorboard he thought he was so clever for discovering (in reality, Gaius had loosened it up hoping he’d find it, but that was a matter for another time). Moving back to take his seat, he skimmed through the pages, trying to find the solution for magical-exhaustion and praying to every deity he knew that there was a remedy; not one of those “this is your fault, so looks like you’re dying” answers complicated matters were always so fond of providing the desperate mind.

His eyes caught the correct page from the index and his fingers trailed the words with his magnifying glass until he found what he was looking for.

Sleep.

That was it? That was the only answer this supposedly ancient text of the magical arts he had saved all those years ago from the Purge could impart to him?

Sleep?

Collywobbles.

That wasn’t helpful at all.

Looking at the state Merlin was in now, it seemed almost detrimental to just let him take however much sleep he wanted. He was almost acting like he had a severe concussion, in which case he definitely shouldn’t sleep as much as he wanted.

Was it possible for a person to use up so much of their magic, that in an attempt to recuperate, their body fell into a coma and wouldn’t wake? The book didn’t have many details on the subject, but it still seemed to be a very real threat. Gaius didn’t want to risk it. And this was just one portion of Merlin’s symptoms! There was still the mystery spell to contend with!

What if the spell was a parasite? What if it was sucking Merlin dry and killing him slowly from the inside as Gaius stood by like an old fool, dithering over what to do? What if it was meant to—

No.

This would get him nowhere, and wouldn’t help Merlin. He had to keep his head about him.

Gaius glanced from the open book to Merlin, who was breathing softly, his face still mashed in his breakfast. Best to start with treating what he knew how to treat, even if he had his doubts.

Carefully lifting the young man from the table, Gaius cleaned off his face and managed to rouse him enough to get him shuffling in step (“Wh’m I?” “Home, Merlin.”), the physician supporting him all the way across the room to his patient cot. Once there, he carefully lowered the warlock to the bedsheets and covered him to his chin with them. Smoothing out his unkempt fringe of dark hair, Gaius ran a tired hand down his own aged face.

This boy.

Shaking his head and praying for the best, he stood back. There was nothing more he could do. Without any further knowledge of what the spell was (Arthur’s apologetic face popped into his head, the hollow words I’m sorry, I didn’t really pay attention to what it was that monster shouted, I don’t know what the spell could be, ringing through his skull), and the sorcerer responsible dead, all Gaius could do was let his boy rest and hope he could fend off the spell on his own. Hopefully, the rest would revive his magic enough to cope with the spell’s infection.

For now, though, he would keep a close eye on him.

Abruptly, pelting feet sounded from down the stairwell, pattering up the stone steps to the physician’s quarters. Sighing to himself, Gaius turned to face the door, knowing at any moment, a poor soul would burst through, begging for aid.

And he, of course, would end up giving it to the best of his ability.

The door flew open with a BANG!

“Gaius!”

Needing a second to recognize the heaving young man at his doorstep, Gaius shook his head, at last placing him as the miller’s brother. “Alton? What is it?”

“Beggin’ yer pardon, sir, but Blaine’s…see, her, uh,” the man fumbled over his words, disorganized and clumsy as he usually was—not that many people minded. He was a good, well-meaning fellow. Gaius had known his mother quite well back when they were kids, if you could imagine a time when Gaius was a child. The poor, frazzled woman had passed on not quite yet five years ago.

Gaius retained his calm composure, though internally, his heart leapt. Please, please let Blaine be all right.

The glowing girl, the wife to Alton’s brother Dereck, was a blessing in so many lives. He’d hate to see that light snuffed out.

Not if I can help it.

“What’s this about Blaine?”

“That’s just it, sir!” It would seem the poor boy had finally found his tongue, his face flushed red and splotchy from no-doubt sprinting the entire way here, and possibly frustration with himself for not getting the words out sooner. He was still gasping for air like a fish out of water. “Her baby! It’s a-comin’! Dereck sent me, he’s a right mess o’er it!”

Gaius froze, stunned. The baby wasn’t due to arrive until another four weeks! It was early—very early! And that could prove fatal.

Jolting to action, Gaius made to rise but his downturned gaze was instantly met with his ward’s peaceably resting face. Merlin.

Merlin was still in a bad way. Merlin needed to be supervised for any unexpected changes. Gaius couldn’t leave him. Not now.

But one look at Alton’s terrified expression tore him in two.

It would only be a few hours. Merlin is resting; he will survive until then.

He would have to hurry home as soon as possible afterward, but maybe… For the sake of Merlin and Blaine both, Gaius prayed this was the right decision.

Mind made up and mournfully patting Merlin’s covered leg, Gaius rose unsteadily to his feet to head off. He had some work ahead of him.

He would check up on Merlin again this afternoon.

Gathering his supplies for the day in his medicine-bag, and with one final, sorrowful glance at his pseudo-son, Gaius departed to the lower town with Alton nearly tripping down the steps at his heels.

--o--

Gaius felt worn and weary.

He had spent the entire afternoon out on runs helping the lower townsfolk after his morning of successfully delivering Blaine’s beautiful, squealing baby girl into the world (both mother and child would be fine, praise the heavens). After the miller’s house, he had just been about to return to the castle when he’d had a run-in with Beldon, one of the best carpenters in Camelot and a single father. The man was a worry-wart at the best of times, most of all over his seven-year-old son, Trenwin, who was a notorious trouble-maker. Just the other day, Gaius had been called down to set and bind the child’s arm because the rowdy, rambunctious boy had broken it somersaulting from the thatch of their humble home into a nearby cart of hay to impress his friends. The boy had missed, and his father had instantly called for Gaius when he wouldn’t stop crying. Now, Trenwin was perfectly on the mend, though still sulking over his wounded pride.

Still, Beldon had evidently found something to worry over and had quite insisted the physician come by briefly to check on his son’s healing. Not being able to refuse the caring man, Gaius had agreed to a brief visit.

He’d ended up staying three hours despite his protests, with a spot of lunch in-between the rapid-fire inquiries because Beldon had started worrying over Gaius’s health, of all people’s. The man was on a role today.

After that, it had been a sick wife, an unhealthy baby, another injured child, a man’s sprained shoulder, and the list went on. Gaius, being the man he was, couldn’t in good conscience refuse any of them. Thus, in the blink of an eye, time flew him by and, before Gaius could even register it was happening, the sky was darkening in the budding stages of twilight. With no further need of him, he headed for home as quickly as he could.

It had been a busy day, but one full of accomplishments he could be proud of. Proud of, that is, if he knew Merlin would be up and waiting for him when he got back, grumbling over every little incorrigible task Arthur had put him through during the day as he usually did around supper time. Mournfully, he wouldn't be. Gaius wasn't sure when exactly Merlin would do such a thing again.

He needed to get home.

It was strange to think he actually missed the grumbling and complaining, though. It wasn't as strange when he considered it came with Merlin, the young man Gaius would do almost anything for.

The physician wondered how it was, exactly, the boy had managed to wrap him so thoroughly about his finger.

Not that there were any regrets.

Breaking from his thoughts upon his hurried arrival in the courtyard of the castle, Gaius strode through the gates and made his way to his quarters, joints creaking up each step of the blasted tower. It felt as though with every excursion, those stone steps grew only longer.

Carefully opening the door to minimize the sound, Gaius slipped in with barely a whine from the hinges.

Best to let his boy rest as undisturbed as possible.

Gaius would fix up a meal, first, then Merlin could be roused and the physician could check up on his overall condition for any new symptoms. By all that is holy, let his condition have improved. Please.

Blustering into the dimly lit room, Gaius instantly noticed how low the fire was in the form of a chilly draft seeping through his robes. That wouldn't do at all. He'd have to remedy that.

Considering the fact the boy's cot was on the way to the hearth, Gaius couldn't resist the concerned, doctorly side of him that begged he check up on him. Merlin had been left alone for an entire afternoon, after all, no matter how accidental it may have been (guilt wormed up at the thought). Supper's preparation could wait for a moment.

Gaius just needed to know Merlin was okay.

Breaking the order of his silent to-do list and turning to check on the boy and see if it would be possible to rouse him for a bite to eat, Gaius froze in his tracks. He squinted in the dim lighting, then he stared. His breath stuttered in his lungs and his heart skipped a beat.

The patient cot.

He thought it'd been a trick of the light, but…it was empty.

As if time had frozen and shattered, Gaius came back to himself and rushed toward the bed, frantic eyes combing the room even as the sinking feeling in his gut told him Merlin wouldn’t be anywhere else. If he was here, he would have been in bed, right where Gaius had left him. Nowhere else.

Trying to reign in the instinctual urge to panic, he took a calming breath to quell his light-headedness and tried to survey his situation logically.

Merlin wasn’t here. Nothing in the room had been disturbed. The cot was empty, the sheets bunched up in a hazardous, lumpy mess, though still warm, and—

Gaius frowned down at his hand resting on the cot. That couldn't be right. How were the sheets still warm if they had been vacated hours ago? In Merlin’s state, he wouldn’t have fully recovered for at least a few days. It would have taken time for him to have gotten up and actually left, if he could even regain consciousness at all.

There was an abnormally large lump curled to the right side of the cot. The more Gaius looked at it, the more he noticed how strangely shaped and pointed in places it was, as though someone had thrown a blanket over a spiked mace. Then, as Gaius watched, the lump rose and fell. Breathing.

Heart racing much too fast for a man of his age, Gaius reached down, feeling more than a little detached as he carefully, mechanically lifted the edge of the sheet. What he revealed, was not at all what he’d been expecting.

It would seem Gaius had been wrong; Merlin was here, after all—and he’d lost his fight with the spell.

For there, cozily curled into the warmth of the bed in Merlin's place, laid a tiny, black-scaled dragon that couldn’t have been more than a month old, snoozing the evening away with small puffs of smoke rising from its little snout.

Chapter Text

Gaius didn’t know how much longer he could keep this up.

So far, it had been a week since his unfortunate discovery. An entire week.

In those first few days, it had been hard to keep up the charade, to veil his chambers in shadow and keep others from looking where they shouldn’t. It was, by far, the hardest secret Gaius had ever kept.

Almost humorously, it vastly outranked keeping Merlin’s magic secret in a kingdom of sorcerer-killers.

Because, before, at least Merlin'd had an inkling what he was would get him killed.

The current state of his ward didn’t share any of that same self-awareness.

And it caused…issues.

Chief amongst them, Gaius had never fully realized how much energy babies have. Which was something rather silly for a physician to be saying because, as a physician, he knew perfectly well how demanding and tiring young children could be and how they could easily run circles around their parents. He’d just never considered how much trouble youngsters could be every second of the day, as he’d never had children of his own, nor had he ever believed a mere baby could be more work than taking care of a danger-prone warlock.

And it was true. Most likely, a baby wasn’t more difficult than taking care of Merlin, who brought along his fair share of trouble and infernal prophesies to puzzle Gaius to his grave.

However, as Gaius had unfortunately discovered, all such reasoning defenestrated itself out of the window with the addition of one teensy, tiny detail: the creature he was taking care of wasn’t just a baby.

His ward, however inexplicably, was now a baby dragon. A rather clueless one, at that.

Gaius, at one point, had tried talking the wee thing down when he was being particularly stubborn about hiding, but the baby didn’t seem to understand. He didn’t know how this world worked. Didn’t know what he was, was a creature that had been hunted to extinction by the very beings he was now surrounded by.

Gaius’s Merlin wasn’t in there. Not right now. His Merlin would have understood the dire urgency with which he needed to hide himself. Would have gladly tucked himself away in his bedroom for a few days until Gaius could just figure out what had happened and turn him back.

The Merlin Gaius had now was an actual baby, memories and all. The only recognition in his bright blue eyes when he gazed up at the elderly man was that of a child looking up trustingly at their caretaker.

Gaius honestly didn’t know what to do.

He spent just as much time trying to keep Merlin from jumping out of his hiding places as he did tending to people who walked through his door. He didn’t have any time to make rounds or deliver medications, nonetheless, start on the long trip through knowledge and old manuscripts he’d no doubt have to take to find a cure.

Because Merlin couldn’t stay like this. He couldn’t. Not without—

It had been a week. A week. And Gaius already felt like he was going to crack at the seams.

Any second, Gaius could slip-up. Any second, Merlin could squirm his way out of the shadows or from under a basket. Merlin could be discovered. And then what? Was he to be killed on sight? Or something worse?

Gaius wouldn’t let it come to that. He couldn’t.

A muffled thump and clatter of objects hitting the ground echoed from behind Merlin’s door.

Running a tired, achy hand over his wizened face, Gaius breathed a gusting sigh before he set down his magnifying glass and heaved himself to his feet from the bench he’d been resting on.

He had hoped for at least a few more hours before the tiny terror woke up. It had been one of his first respites in days, and Gaius had done his best to take advantage of it. Not that it amounted to much. He still had no clue what might have caused such an absurd transformation.

(It was a known fact in the magic community that the form of a dragon was a form unachievable. Half of those recorded who dared to try it were destroyed—and that was the kinder fate. How it was a random spell from a random sorcerer managed to achieve the impossible confounded Gaius, the motives behind it even more so.)

(He feared there was no cure.)

(He feared this might really be it for Merlin.)

So much for prophecies.

Turning to the steps, he entered his ward’s room with a scolding glare ready on his face. He didn’t think he could handle Merlin trashing the place for the twelfth time (he’d had to baby proof it after the third time. Gaius’d never realized just how many knick-knacks Merlin kept around the room—chokable knick-knacks of which Merlin had tried to eat five.).

As per the norm for this week, Gaius was greeted upon entry with the sight of an over-eager black-scaled dragon perched precariously upon the nightstand, a mess on the floor from where he’d knocked everything off like the darn overgrown cat Gaius was convinced he was. About the size of one of Arthur’s hunting-dog pups, with dazzling blue eyes (though the pupils were oddly round and human, unlike the commonly slitted pupils dragons sported) and silver spines all down his back leading to two ungainly wings he didn’t seem to know what to do with yet and a lithe, curving tail, the dragon made for a startling, yet nonetheless cute sight. Unfortunately for Gaius, the moment the small thing noticed the opened door, he lit up with delight and gave a crow of triumph.

Gaius, by now, knew that look in his eye. “Oh, no you don’t!” Rushing to close the door, anticipating the little imp’s train of thought, Gaius was too slow.

…and Merlin had already slipped past Gaius’s feet before the man could catch him.

Drat.

Gaius groaned into his hands. So much for attempting to keep him contained until noon. The scrolls would have to wait.

Hurrying back down the short steps, slightly breathless from more than just the exertion, Gaius finally caught sight of where the tiny terror had gotten off to.

Ah. He should have known.

Merlin was attacking the table again.

Gaius really wished they hadn’t made a habit of starting the day this way. As if having a near heart-attack upon finding Merlin distinctly not-Merlin wasn’t hard enough on his ageing soul, dragons were notoriously difficult and stubborn creatures, their pride and so-called “nobility” leaving them with a penchant for demands with little listening given in return, and he couldn't really claim to have one for a pseudo-son was a joy he had been expecting so late in life.

No matter how Gaius fought Merlin on it, it always ended the same.

Gaius didn’t like it. Didn’t like this. He preferred Merlin to stay tucked safely up in his room. Where no one could accidentally stumble in on them and see him. Where Gaius at least had a modicum of control over the situation to protect him.

Merlin, unfortunately, disagreed completely. Vehemently. He had spent too long cooped up in that tiny chamber, exploring every nook and cranny until the stained plaster walls made him claw at the door with tiny talons that clinked on stone and whine for freedom he couldn’t have. Not if…not if—

Freedom or death, Merlin? Gaius thought grimly, sadly. You can’t have one without the other. Not here.

But Merlin couldn’t understand that. To him, there was a bigger, brighter chamber just past the door he had more to explore in, had more to play in. Why couldn’t he go down there? Why couldn’t he remain close to his caretaker, the old creature, the one with the funny wrinkly face that was so, so very kind? Why could he not hold close, bury himself in his shadow and trip along after his heels?

Why did he have to be all alone in that room?

Gaius could just see it—see all of it right there in the baby’s small face. It broke a piece of him every time he saw a glimpse of it because he had no way to explain his reasons to the child, to inform him of the complexities of death. Why he should fear it. Why he should be willing to hide in that claustrophobic, constraining room until Gaius could fix everything. Because he would fix everything.

He had to.

Until then, Merlin was stubborn. Firm in his resolve to try and remain in the lower chambers for as long as he possibly could, when he could, before Gaius would be inevitably forced to pick the wee thing up and put him back in his room. Oddly, Merlin never fought him then. Never fought to wriggle from his hold. Perhaps, some part of him registered Gaius as his elder, his superior, and therefore obeyed him.

(But he didn’t obey him at any other time.)

It was, Gaius thought, more likely in those moments Merlin could feel how close to despair Gaius truly was.

Because Gaius hated putting Merlin back in his room. Closing the door, making sure his ward wouldn’t be able to squirm through. Ignoring every time the keening whines would start up, begging for release, asking with heartbreaking confusion what am I doing wrong?

Nothing. Gaius always silently answered. You’re doing nothing wrong, Merlin.

But how could he get a baby to understand that none of this was his fault? How, exactly, does one go about convincing a tiny, stubborn, headstrong being too young to know the darkness of the world, that he is not to blame?

Gaius didn’t know. A part of him was glad Merlin truly didn’t understand because at least…at least for once in Merlin’s entire unfortunate life he was not afraid. He had nothing to fear.

It had been so long since Gaius had seen those bright, glittering blue eyes, deep as the ocean’s currents and open as the sky, free from that underlying shield, that second skin in place to mask the fear any young boy would harbor living in the center of a kingdom dead-set on murdering his kind without trial.

Only sometimes at night, when the whole castle had fallen asleep and Merlin was in the company of only Gaius—his mentor, his father-figure, his trusted friend—had Gaius ever had the relief of seeing that blasted shield fall. To comfort his poor boy and help him fight through the fear to see the good with what reassurances he could give.

Somehow, Merlin could always see the good. Gaius could never quite stifle his awe at it. What a wonderous thing it must be, to see the good in everything, no matter how hurt or torn down you were on the inside, to keep going forward, steadfast in such a hopeful belief. It had never failed to raise a paternal instinct in him, an instinct to hide Merlin’s magic with all he had and keep him safe no matter the consequences to himself.

Merlin could see the good in everything, but Gaius…sometimes, Gaius could only ever see the bad. And he used that to the best of his ability, to protect what little bit of family he’d found he still had. Sure, sometimes it backfired in their faces, but he always had good intentions in it.

Not that, in the end, it would do them any favors.

If he could not find a cure, and fast, there would have been little point in how hard the both of them have fought these past few years. There would have been little point to any of it—and that was something Gaius could truly not accept.

Merlin deserved better. Has always deserved better.

Gaius could not—would not fail.

Merlin was everything to him.

Sighing once more to the empty air, eyeing the small dragon still scritching his tiny, delicate claws against the wood grain of the center table he was poised upon, Gaius correctly deduced the meaning. “Hungry for breakfast, are you?”

Merlin cast him a quick flash of his fleeting attention, chirping affirmatively in that small, bright way of his Gaius had spent the past week getting used to (missing a certain laugh).

Gaius managed a strained smile just for him. “All right.”

He prepared a quick meal: porridge for himself, and some sausages he’d been saving for a special occasion (Merlin’s favorite—as a boy, not a dragon) for the baby carnivore still sitting snug on the table, trying to gnaw on a found pestle too wide for his small snout.

With a gentle hand peeling the grinding implement from between the dragon’s two forelegs, Gaius switched it instead for the steaming meat he knew would catch the child’s attention and hold it.

Sure enough, Merlin’s head snapped forward, pushing himself up from the sitting position to his clumsy, clacking talons, his muscles bunched and quivering with eagerness. He must be ravenous.

Gaius only hoped he would settle down some after he ate. He didn’t dare hope he’d have a spare moment, but he couldn’t help the hope anyway. The scrolls sat off to the side, on another bench, almost mocking him with their abandonment.

To turn his attention to the documents? Or to keep it on Merlin, keep him from trouble? It didn’t matter, not in the way Gaius’s heart told.

Both felt like a betrayal.

There was no winning, not in a situation like this.

Just as Gaius sat down with his own food, silently concocting the next scheme to somehow lure Merlin back up into his bedroom before anyone in the castle came in in need of help, a pounding sounded at the door.

Gaius froze, heart in his throat. Merlin cocked his head in the direction of the sound, but deemed it uninteresting in the face of food and continued eating, undisturbed in the slightest.

Rats.

Luck wasn’t on Gaius’s side today.

(He’d jinxed himself.)

“Gaius!” an impatient voice called through the wood. “Gaius, are you up? I’d like to speak with you.”

Just like that, the voice identifiable, Gaius’s frozen countenance shattered and he wearily rested his face in his hands.

Ten. Ten. This was the tenth time this week! The hidden concern was admirable, but Arthur was slowly driving Gaius insane with his unexpected house calls. What Gaius wouldn’t do to get Arthur as far away from little Merlin as possible, just until he was better. Just until he was himself again.

But Gaius didn’t have the heart to shoo the prince away permanently.

Thus, Arthur had become a regular visitor in the physician’s chambers. Gaius’s excuse to keep Merlin’s true ailment from the rest of the kingdom, from Uther, from anyone, certainly didn’t help in that regard. In fact, dare he say it, Gaius was sure it was the cause of Arthur’s frequent check-ins.

In order to excuse Merlin’s inexplicable absence, Gaius had been forced to tell the king and his son, especially his son, that Merlin had fallen ill with a mysterious sickness. He’d assured them it was not fatal, just highly contagious, which he implied might have been the sorcerer’s intent upon infecting him with it in the first place, as it was meant to hit Arthur. What better way to demoralize a kingdom than by having one of its highly-regarded leaders it depended upon spreading a plague? (Arthur had looked uncomfortable at that, and Gaius couldn’t help but remember the Unicorn Incident. He internally winced at the unintentional reminder.) In request of the circumstances, Gaius had asked for Merlin’s relievement of all pertinent duties as Arthur’s manservant and (for now) a month of quarantine in the physician’s chambers for recovery. As such, he’d insisted upon a new rule being pressed on any who wished to pay him a visit (he was not foolish enough to believe he could relieve himself of his own duties as easily): From now on, his door was to remain closed at all times and those wishing to be permitted to enter would have to knock and wait for Gaius to answer them.

The rule had come to save Merlin and him a multitude of times over the week. Gaius wasn’t sure what he would have done without the quick thinking that had led to asking for it. The heads-up someone was coming usually gave him just the right amount of time to hide Merlin if he was downstairs. Particularly, when Arthur showed up, in much the way he had now.

It didn’t matter what Gaius told him about how Merlin was recovering well, would be better soon, would eventually return to his duties. None of it mattered to the prince. Every day, without fail, sometimes more than once, Arthur would show up anyway.

It certainly made things more complicated.

That thought was punctuated by Arthur pounding more insistently at the door, at last garnering a startled squeak from Merlin.

Gaius remembered where he was.

Not knowing what else to do, Gaius shot to his feet—ignoring his protesting joints—and hurriedly scooped Merlin up, shoving the small thing as quickly and gently as he could into one of the nearby baskets on the table he had been using for exactly that purpose (hence why the basket was in rather shabby shape, slightly-shredded and misshapen and all). Before he could replace the wicker lid of the container, however, he caught sight of the pair of wide, indignant, inquisitive eyes staring up at him in all their startling blue. Gaius, by now, knew that look like the layout of his workbenches.

Merlin had no intention of staying put.

Another knock and shout at the door told Gaius he was taking too long. Giving the best stern glare he could, he whispered harshly, “Merlin, please. Stay.” Then the lid was in place and Gaius was rushing to answer the door.

Wanting nothing more than to get the whole random visit done and over with so he could hopefully transfer Merlin to a better hiding spot, Gaius cracked the door open to see a very impatient prince standing in his doorway, tapping one foot. Pushing open the door a little wider, the physician asked with all his composure, “Yes, Sire? Is there something you require?”

Arthur evidently took that for an open invitation. Of which it was not.

But a prince was a prince.

Barging into the room and breaking through past a very displeased Gaius despite his protests, Arthur surveyed the chambers. When it was apparent what he was looking for was not there to be seen, Arthur’s whole countenance seemed to tense.

Then they went through almost the exact same conversation they had gone through nine times before this one:

“Where’s Merlin?”

“Up in his room, resting, Sire.”

“May I see him? It’s been seven days, Gaius, and I still don’t know where that lout put my belt.”

“He is not to be disturbed.”

“It will only be a moment.”

“Arthur, do you want him to get better?”

No answer.

“Arthur.”

Nothing.

A sigh.

“You know he needs to rest, Arthur.”

Unintelligible grumbling.

“As Court Physician, I’m telling you—he is not to be disturbed. The last thing we need is the disease spreading. He’ll be right as rain soon enough, Arthur.”

“…Fine. If you’re sure.”

“I am.”

And with Gaius’s word as a physician, Arthur would always back down, as, of course, Gaius would know best in such a situation as this. Of course, the old man would know how to handle it.

Merlin was fine. Would be fine. Why was Arthur even here? There was no cause for concern.

He should leave.

But still, as was also becoming customary for these strange visits, Arthur would dally. He’d stand there in the chambers for a bit, so obviously unwilling to leave, yet also uncomfortable with the fact he was staying when there were so many other duties for the monarch-in-training to attend to.

Normally, Gaius would sit silently by, anxious for him to leave without showing it in his face and praying for Merlin to keep quiet up in his room for just a single minute more, until, at last, the prince would wake from his stupor and withdraw.

Normally, the entire encounter would end fine, despite Gaius’s concerns.

Normally, Arthur would come by before or after his training, or early in the evening, not in the morning. Not mid-way through breakfast.

Normally.

And, normally, Merlin wasn’t downstairs for Arthur’s visit, stuffed in a shabby wicker basket, with a plate of still-steaming, half-finished sausages set out on the table near him.

Again, normally.

What a wicked word, that. What other cruel and indifferent three syllables could better describe what should have happened instead, but didn’t?

While Arthur was pretending not to feel completely out of place and yet reluctant to go, staring off into the dying ashes of the fire as if he had some great mystery of the universe to contemplate, Gaius was just beginning to settle down in his usual spot to ride out the awkward silence that was surely coming when panic lit up inside him, jarring him to his old bones.

His eyes were stuck, transfixed, unable to look away as a basket in the middle of the room—just behind Arthur’s turned back, right on the table where Gaius had left it as a potential hiding place in case of emergencies—slowly tipped itself over, a teensy, tiny black snout poking its way out, soon followed by two blue eyes.

Gaius reacted.

Interrupting Arthur’s musings of the ashes, the physician grabbed the young man by the arm (while still showing as much of the proper respect and decorum owed to a prince as he could muster) and rushed him out the door without so much as letting Arthur open his mouth, making sure to shield all view of the table with his shoulder as they moved. Arthur was so startled by the abrupt tone-shift, he didn’t even get upset as Gaius rambled, “I assure you, Arthur, Merlin is in safe hands. The safest hands he could possibly be in, you know that, and you shouldn’t worry, you’ve got plenty enough to worry about as it is. So go on, go worry over the work that you need done, and allow me the decency of worrying over that which is mine.”

Once deposited right outside the doorstep, Arthur seemed to regain his tongue. With a glare containing only half the visible heat and a sniff, Arthur snapped defensively, “I wasn’t worried. Course he’ll be fine. He’s Merlin. I just want to know when he can return to his duties. Father has been talking of finding a replacement for him, no matter how much I’ve told him I won’t be needing one.”

Gaius wasn’t listening. “Yes, yes, that’s very good,” he muttered with a flap of his hand before he slammed the door shut in the prince’s face.

As soon as the slab of flimsy wood stood as a barrier between the threat and the child, Gaius slumped into himself, suddenly exhausted.

How much longer can this go on before it all slips?

A quiet clatter of wood utensils at the table and the clicking of claws had Gaius looking up.

Merlin had fully scrabbled out of the basket in the time Gaius had been escorting one bewildered royal out and was eating some of the left-over sausages he had been forced to separate from previously, those crystalline, strangely-human eyes of his fixed curiously on the door.

Well. It was Merlin’s first time meeting the other half of his destiny since the transformation. Not that Merlin would remember or recognize Arthur as he was now, but it was still something to take note of, Gaius supposed.

Making haste to the dragon, a ready admonishment on his lips for coming out of hiding before the danger was past, Gaius was stopped dead in his tracks as Merlin decided, then and there, was the perfect time to swipe his slender, serpentine tail back-and-forth, too soon flinging bowls, all of the cutlery, and a couple glass jars to the floor with a CRASH.

Gaius stood in horror at the mess, more-so of the noise resulting from it than the mess itself because Arthur. Could. Still. Be in. Hearing. Range.

Unable to help it, an instinctive, terrified “Merlin!” slipped out before he could stop it, before he could wrestle it down and smother it. His hands lifted to his mouth.

Somewhere outside the flimsy, flimsy door, Gaius heard movement.

Oh no.

Dropping to a kneel, ignoring any of the pain he received for banging his knees, Gaius snatched a nearby rag and fumbled with the bits of food and bigger pieces of glass, trying to clean it up and hide the evidence of anything having gone wrong. His mind frantic, the elderly man looked up and caught Merlin’s gaze. The baby’s face appeared apologetic with its downturned eye ridges, except entirely not, not with the wizened look in his eye, the one that said it had to be done.

But just like that, the look was gone, and Merlin hopped off the table to “help” Gaius with the overturned bowls (despite Gaius telling him to go to his room now, Merlin. Now…while there was still a chance.)

The door flung open with no restraint, Arthur bursting in, a knife in-hand (he didn’t have his sword on him today, but he always carried a weapon of some kind on his person). “GAIUS! What’s wrong?! I heard you call out Merlin’s name, is he all right?”

And the whole room fell apart. No, the whole world did.

All three of them froze—an old man, a young man, and a baby (no, a physician, a prince, and a dragon)—staring at each other, fear and shock so bright, it could have burned out the sun. To Gaius, the castle was spinning. To Arthur, his brain doubted the honesty of his eyes.

For Merlin—who was on the floor by Gaius’s side—sat in full view with his tail wrapped around his talons and no fear whatsoever in his eyes.

(Who was he to fear such a familial bond?)

(he welcomed it)

In a split-second decision, Gaius took the metal bucket he had just been about to deposit the glass shards in (but hadn’t) and plopped it over Merlin’s head.

It seemed to break whatever spell had been placed on the room.

Arthur blinked for the first time in what might have been minutes. All the breath left him in a wheezy gush as if he had been holding it in. He blinked again, his eyes only slightly less glazed, and his knife still gripped tight in one hand, knuckles bone-white despite his tanned skin.

For a moment, he looked lost.

That moment ended fairly quick.

"Gaius." Arthur's tone took on a warning edge, darkening dangerously. "What is that?"

Gaius regarded him, a somber note to his countenance that seemed to increase the prince’s jittery nerves tenfold. “Not what you think, Sire.”

Arthur’s gaze sharpened incredulously as if to rend the truth free. His grip on the knife tightened further. “Really? Because I think I have a very good guess at what it is, thank you very much. I’m not daft.”

Gaius sighed wearily. So much for pretenses now—looked like he'd have to be honest and hope Arthur took it relatively well (oh, who was he kidding? This was Arthur. Anything remotely magic-related and he practically blew a gasket!). He was scared what this all might lead to, but there was little he could do but tell the truth now. He was getting too old for this. Leaning forward to remove the bucket from Merlin's head, the little thing gave him a small chirrup in gratitude. Apparently, he hadn’t liked the make-shift cleaning-supply disguise. That was fair.

There was no more time for stalling. "I'm afraid, Sire, that it’s a…drakling," Gaius admitted reluctantly.

Arthur stared at Merlin. For a moment, he seemed struck dumb, mouth dropped open and eyes impossibly wide. “I-It is? I-I, I thought my eyes—I didn’t actually think you had a, a…” Then his expression hardened. “How in the—where did you even FIND a baby dragon?! And why, WHY do you have it?! Gaius! WHY IN ALL THE EVERLOVING HEAVENS WOULD YOU THINK THIS WAS OKAY?!”

“Sire, I didn’t find him—”

“Him?”

Gaius stiffened.

Arthur's eyes grew so dark then, they no longer even looked remotely blue. His expression contorted with the anger equivalent of a maelstrom. If Gaius had to take a guess, the prince was only a few seconds away from throttling the closest thing to him. Or, eyeing the clenched blade, stabbing something.

Trying to be as surreptitious as possible, Gaius slowly rose to his feet and took a seat on the bench behind him, gently nudging the baby Merlin under his chair with one foot so he was hidden behind Gaius’s legs. No need to tempt the fates today, he firmly resolved, and he'd much prefer to keep any and all transformed, infant Merlins from death's gate as long as humanly possible, including from the infamous death-by-Arthur gag, thank you very much. Merlin had not come this far in Camelot just to get killed for something so far beyond his control now. Gaius wouldn’t stand for it.

Turning back to the prince, he tuned in just in time to catch the rest of Arthur’s lengthy rant. "—some kind of sick joke?! You mean to tell me that you've been hiding a dragon in here this entire past week, and you kept it a secret despite the danger it posed to everyone and everything, even after I EXPLICITLY ASKED IF ANYTHING WAS WRONG?!"

Gaius, having to deal with many, many, many years of stressful situations, found it ironically easy to remain calm despite his growing fear for Merlin as he was bombarded with the royal's anger. "Sire," he tried, testing the waters. Arthur only growled a little, so he took it for permission to continue, "Technically, you only ever asked if Merlin was okay.”

Arthur sputtered. “What do you think I’ve been doing this whole time?! I’ve been trying to make sure you were all right, and that Merlin would be fine, that EVERYONE would be fine! It’s my fault he’s sick right now, and—”

“Arthur,” Gaius’s eyes softened. “It isn’t your fault. Merlin made the decision to protect you over himself on his own. You can’t be blamed for his acti—”

Arthur shook his head harshly, cutting Gaius off, fury still a cold fire in his eyes. “No, no, I can’t listen to this right now. Where’s Merlin? Where is he? I swear, Gaius, if that thing is part of the reason Merlin is still sick, I’m going to—”

Gaius glared. “You’ll do nothing.”

“Gaius!” Arthur cried, scandalized, “It’s a dragon!”

“He’s not, actually, not really,” Gaius calmly rebuked, “And I’ve been taking care of him for quite a few days now. He’s not the beast you’ve got pictured in your head, Arthur, so put that ridiculous blade away. How could I have told you something was wrong if nothing was wrong?”

It seemed the further Gaius got into his explanation, the further Arthur's goodwill deteriorated, which—when considering it wasn't much to begin with at the start of their conversation—meant nothing good for all those involved.

Especially concerning the ill-conceived timing with which the baby dragon in question became bored and chose to stick his small head out from behind Gaius's leg to give a cheerful trill to the room, helpfully reminding the universe of his continued existence.

To say the least, it tipped Arthur over the metaphorical cliff.

"'NOTHING IS WRONG?' 'NOTHING IS WRONG?!'" the soon-to-be-king exploded. "THAT. RIGHT. THERE," he enunciated with individual jabs of the knife in Merlin's general direction, "LOOKS LIKE HECK OF A LOT OF WRONG! And you're CARING FOR IT?! Why would you even—it's not a PET to be CODDLED, Gaius! It's a VICIOUS, MAN-KILLING MONSTER!"

The baby Merlin cocked his tiny silver-spined head to the side as if confused by this new, strange loud creature that wouldn't stop proclaiming its dominance over everything. It was rather funny in that way, but, really, the loud creature could chill. If he wanted food, too, then he could just be polite and ask!

Gaius glanced down at his transformed ward, catching the indignance in the tilt of the teensy, angular head, and—though the older man could never claim to know the thoughts of a dragon—felt he was rather inclined to agree with Merlin in this sense. Arthur could chill out a bit.

"Sire?"

Arthur whirled on him, still thoroughly upset. "WHAT?!"

That was the physician's last straw. Steel entering his gaze, Gaius snapped, "Do shut up."

Arthur openly gaped at him, grasping for a response to such blatant insolence. He expected such impertinence from Merlin, but Gaius? Never. The man was mostly, if not always, very polite and respectful, unless, of course, you were his patient refusing bed-rest.

Taking full advantage of a stunned-into-silence Arthur, Gaius carefully lifted the silver and black drakling from the floor, cradling him in his hands half-tilted to face Arthur, and finally dropped the truth on the poor, unsuspecting, already-plenty-bewildered prince.

"Arthur, you will apologize to Merlin. He's been having quite the rubbish week, and I insist you treat him fairly."

To say Arthur's uncharacteristically-horrified, bugged eyes and dropped jaw were comical would have been the understatement of the year. Even Merlin seemed amused, although that could have just been him staring hungrily over the prince's shoulder at the leftover bits of sausage on the table. Arthur’s knife, no longer clutched tight in one fist, clattered to the floor where it spun in a loose circle.

Silence swept through the room.

Arthur broke it.

“W-what, what—” the prince stammered in disbelief, gaping at Merlin like a fish would the open jaws of a shark (which was frankly ridiculous; like Merlin could even hurt a butterfly).

Gaius cursed the universe for letting the situation get so out of hand. How does one go about explaining that they have no idea how something happened? Because Gaius had no clue what to say, no information to offer about how this could have all come to be. Merlin was just a dragon now, with absolutely no explanation, and the prince was probably going to demand for one in that haughty, do-as-I-say way of his, or, judging by the speechless way things were currently heading, just continue gawping at Merlin as if he were some malicious fairy come to swindle away his teeth.

Merlin, having no idea what had stunned Loud-creature into clamming up so efficiently and wondering how to trigger the blissful silence himself, curiously leaned forward and wuffed slightly in the future king’s face. Arthur, of course, not used to itsy bitsy dragons getting all up in his face and lobbing heated breath he was sure was some form of exuberated sausage-scented fire directly into his eyes, startled back with a yelp and fell over a stool, simultaneously smacking his head on the table. He then unceremoniously hit the floor with a very heavy WHUMP.

Gaius groaned and massaged the bridge of his nose one-handed, Merlin still perched precariously on the other, tail wrapped around his wrist for balance. Maybe he really was getting too old for this.

Looking down at his poor (now thoroughly perplexed about the mental stability of Loud-creatures) ward, he decided he was most definitely getting too old for this. While Gaius was plenty confident in his ability to handle a sweet, spunky boy with an eye for trouble, Gaius wasn't so sure how well he was doing with a sweet, spunky drakling with an eye for trouble.

Between those two words, was one world of a monumental difference. And would most likely, if Arthur’s still-horrified gape from the floorboards was anything to go by, be the end of him. Gaius outwardly breathed another sigh, but, internally, felt a small chuckle rise in his throat. He wasn’t sure what part of him suddenly found the situation so humorous.

Merlin can hide no longer.

Chapter Text

"It's...it's really him?"

Gaius watched carefully as Arthur leaned forward and scrutinized the small dragon clinging to the lip of the table, tiny fore-talons scrabbling at wood. The prince's voice was semi-composed, but there was the hint of a waver in it that finally had Gaius relaxing fully.

Arthur believed him; there would be no need to fend him off. Merlin was safe. For now.

It had taken quite a bit to get to this point, most of which included Gaius repeating himself a lot as he tried to explain that, yes, he’d lied, Merlin wasn’t sick. And that no, Arthur, he’s not really himself right now, he doesn’t remember anything. Yes, he’d been like this for a week, and no, Gaius had yet to find a cure to change him back, but he was still trying. Yes, Merlin was harmless in this form, and no, you know why your father can’t know! After what felt like ages of repeating the same information over and over again, it all finally seemed to stick in the prince’s brain and he was out of denial.

After that, Arthur had paced furiously for an extra twenty minutes in one corner of the room, brooding with a dark glower for the ground, while Gaius had removed the knife from the floor before any hapless young dragons decided it looked like great fun to mess with. As soon as Arthur had finished working through his consternation, or whatever it was he’d been doing in that corner, he’d insisted on checking Merlin’s room from top-to-bottom. Not seeing what use Arthur expected it would do, but understanding he still needed to do it anyway (and knowing all magic-related items were safely tucked away), Gaius had let him, and, in ten minutes more, the prince had returned to the lower chambers.

Then this scene had unfolded.

As Arthur stood in front of the table, leaning forward slightly to study Merlin further, the small dragon puffed up his scaly chest and studied him right back, sizing him up. Deep blue eyes narrowing and wings fanning out to appear bigger, Merlin yapped at him, fierce and shrill. A challenge.

A challenge for a creature five times his size.

Arthur leaned back with a stifled groan. “It’s him, alright," he muttered, tone defeated.

Gaius nodded sagely from his seat. “He’s every bit as headstrong as he was as a human. You can imagine, I’m sure, how much of a nightmare it’s been trying to keep him hidden.”

Arthur ran a hand roughly through his blond hair, lost in every sense of the word. “Oh, I don’t even want to imagine it. I can barely comprehend it now—I mean, Merlin? A dragon?” His voice growing more agitated, he turned in a disjointed circle before whipping his head to look the physician in the eye as he demanded, “How did this HAPPEN?”

Gaius furrowed his brow. What sort of question was that? “You know he was hit by a spell. How else did this happen? Magic.”

“Yes, yes, I know.” Arthur flung out his arms, pacing away before turning on his heel and pacing back. “What I don’t understand is…” he paused for a beat before he gestured quickly and hurriedly to all of Merlin, the baby’s head following his hand’s quick motion, eyes bright as if thinking it a game, “this.”

Gaius watched him, bemused. “I’m afraid I don’t follow, Sire.”

“URGH!” The prince planted his face in his hands. “I don’t know how to put it into words! None of this makes sense!”

“Magic doesn’t necessarily have to make sense, Sire.”

Arthur spun in place, his finger jabbing at the air. “But this makes even less sense than normal! A dragon? A dragon?! Why a dragon? Shouldn’t that be—I don’t know—impossible?”

“I…” Gaius fell silent. He took a shaky breath and tried to calm his nerves. “To be completely honest with you, Arthur, I don’t fully understand it myself.”

And he didn’t. A whole week of puzzling over it, sneaking glimpses at magic-related texts where he could, and he was still no closer to solving the mystery. All he’d been able to surmise so far was that either the unknown spell was the cause of the results on its own (as impossible as that had to be, just had to), or something else was afoot.

Not much was known of the Dragonlords, after all. Besides that they could command dragons and shared bonds of kinship in their souls with the winged-lizards, anything else they might have been capable of and the knowledge of it went with them to their graves, leaving Merlin—the last of his kind—to figure out the complexities of his powers alone, with maybe the occasional help of that confounded dragon Kilgharrah.

Even still with that assumption—that it had something to do with Merlin’s Dragonlord status—none of it led Gaius any closer to understanding how an unknown rogue spell equaled a regressed baby dragon. A regular dragon, maybe. But a baby one? How in all of Albion had that come to be? Ageing spells and droughts were common enough charms, but very few spells could accomplish the opposite. That was reclaiming youth, fighting against the sands of time, and it took great power to come even close. Just how twisted was Fate to bring about something so unfortunate?

Gaius didn’t know. He had his guesses, but he knew nothing for sure, except that Arthur couldn’t partake in any of his thoughts. Arthur finding out Merlin was a Dragonlord could lead to him finding out about his magic, too, and both were the last thing anyone needed right now. It was a risk Gaius wasn’t willing to bet on.

Lifting his gaze from the floor, Gaius continued, “But that hardly matters right now. We have no way of knowing what the spell was. Chances are, it could have been incanted wrong, or perhaps the sorcerer intended for his quarry to be turned into a dragon." He shrugged. "There's just no way to know for certain, and we should honestly be concerning ourselves more with it's after-effects.”

“‘Hardly matters’?” Arthur instantly balked, the disbelief in his voice palpable, “”Hardly matters’? Gaius, I was his quarry! And I don't know about you, but I'd like to know why in all the heavens a sorcerer would have wanted to turn the Crown Prince of Camelot into a dragon!” Before Gaius could properly respond, Arthur forcefully cut him off, picking up steam as his pacing somehow grew even more agitated, “And if it’s possible for a spell to turn someone into something as powerful as a dragon, how is it we haven’t seen hide or hair of the like before? I may have defeated one dragon, but it’s rather obvious I can’t defeat a whole army of them! If…if sorcerers can transform themselves into such beasts on a whim, how is it we haven’t seen it? The thought that they could do it never even crossed my mind! Camelot would be completely unprepared for it! Everything…” Arthur’s pacing came to an abrupt halt. “Camelot would fall.”

“Arthur,” Gaius admonished.

Arthur’s eyes narrowed. “Camelot would fall.”

“Arthur?”

“Gaius, the fact they haven’t used this power is completely out of character for their ilk! Why shouldn’t they have used it? They could be free right now, free from Camelot and the threat of execution, free to wreak their havoc."

Gaius felt faint. This was getting out of hand.

Arthur kept going, his thought process becoming more convoluted by the second. "No, no, there has to be something more to it, some reason, if they could do it, for why they haven’t. But, even then, it's still bafflingly illogical! Every sorcerer I've ever come across has been willing to do whatever it takes, cross whatever lines they need to to get what they want. Manipulation, trickery, murder, they have no qualms with any of it! If they could become dragons, what could possibly be stopping them? The only way it makes sense is if they can't and it really is impossible. But then why would Merlin—”

And that was much, much too close.

Gaius panicked, and before he knew it, words were tumbling from his mouth. “The magic is too draining!”

It stopped Arthur in his tracks. “What?”

Internally, Gaius winced, but...well, it was as good an approach as any to throwing Arthur off the scent. Quickly collecting his thoughts and formulating a believable response, he calmly stated, “No sorcerer has ever managed to transform into a dragon because it requires more power than most could ever hope to possess. The sorcerer the two of you ran into must have been powerful, very powerful indeed to have accomplished it, whether it is he intended to do so or not.”

It was mostly true, and it kept Arthur from questioning the things he shouldn’t. It would have to do.

(There were a few documented cases, way back in the old days when the castle library had been full to bursting with magical knowledge, of a sorcerer or two successfully transforming into a dragon. The records were very old, nearly as old as Albion itself, and just as vague. But Gaius had understood enough to know not a single one had ended well. The successful spells were then purposefully lost to time by those few left who knew them—the real reason for its impossibility.)

The spells were dangerous and lost, and Gaius had a hard time believing they could be recovered after so long. Which meant all that was left was…

It had to be something to do with Merlin’s power as a Dragonlord. He’d searched and searched for any other explanation, and found nothing. Merlin’s power must have reacted with the spell in some way, and Gaius couldn’t let Arthur suspect it for a second.

That didn’t necessarily mean Arthur would cooperate, though. The prince scoffed. “Gaius, how does that make any sense? Why would one sorcerer—an old man, at that—have enough power to transform something into a dragon over the thousands of sorcerers before him? And why would he waste all that power—power you just said is ridiculously difficult to get—on me? Why didn’t he use it on himself? He would have won that fight so easily if he had.”

Mind made up on keeping secrets and only answering to humor the prince now, Gaius offered, “Well, perhaps he did mean to. Maybe Merlin disrupted the spell’s course and the sorcerer wasn’t aiming for you at all. Or maybe his magic just had a different quality to it than most. Who knows? The ways of magic are unpredictable.”

That at last made Arthur pause, a contemplative look crossing his features. “Well,” he mused aloud, a crease forming between his eyebrows, “Merlin did seem to think the bargh-whatsits we fought were made of blood…”

Gaius stopped.

He hoped he hadn’t just heard that.

“What.”

Arthur waved a dismissive hand. “In the woods. The sorcerer had these weird dog-wolf creatures—Merlin had some dumb name for them—and he claimed they were made of blood, which I thought was frankly ridiculous; they were clearly made from shadows, but Merlin insisted—”

Gaius growled at Arthur. Actually growled. “You didn’t mention the sorcerer was using blood magic!”

“I—what?” Arthur blinked, startled. “Blood magic? That’s a thing?”

Gaius forewent answering that. “The patrol—it was sent to that village in the first place because children were reported missing, correct? How many were missing?”

Arthur still looked stunned. He'd long-since stopped pacing. “Seven.”

“How many blood wolves were there, did you say?”

“Erm, six.”

“That leaves one unaccounted for.”

Arthur was catching on, and he didn’t seem to like the implications. “Maybe the child escaped?” he asked hopefully.

“No,” Gaius denied with a heavy heart. “The power was used for something else…” His gaze fell on Merlin, who, during the entirety of their heated debate, had been chewing on a wooden spoon (and still was). “…like a certain spell.”

A small piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

Corrupt blóddrýcræft…a child’s life… At least now Gaius knew where the baby part had come from, mostly; blood magic certainly held enough power to reverse age, depending on the life taken.

The dragon part was still a mystery, but it was almost certain now: it couldn’t have been a result of the spell.

Arthur followed the physician’s gaze before looking back to Gaius expectantly, easily falling into his usual “solve one problem at a time” attitude. “Well?” he questioned. “How do we counter it?”

Gaius’s spirits, having risen with the discovery, fell as he fully contemplated the ramifications. He slowly shook his head, despair building and eyes burning. “We don’t.”

“What?! Why not?”

The physician gave him a hard look. “Because blood magic is tainting. It’s killing one creature to meddle with the life-force of another, and it cannot be reversed easily. I fear the only way would be with…more blood magic.”

Arthur sputtered. “That’s out of the question! We are not using magic!”

“I know.” Gaius’s solemn disposition must've been contagious because Arthur’s vehemence quickly deflated, the prince’s mouth snapping shut. “Even if it was only used to revert Merlin back, it wouldn’t end there. Those that use blood magic are drawn back to it again and again; it’s addicting. It would get to the point the user would lose any sense of self, mere husks of themselves left to slowly be eaten alive by their own magic. To use blood magic is, quite literally, Sire, to sell your soul to the devil.”

Arthur looked confused.

Gaius looked away. “I couldn’t ask that of any druid. Not even for Merlin.”

“Then…what do we do?”

Gaius set his face in his hands. “I don’t know.”

The room fell into a heavy silence, neither party knowing what to say to the other. The chamber felt dismal, dark, the semi-early morning light shining through the windows with all the warmth of ice. It was all Gaius could focus on, the light. The cold, cold light that seemed to be mocking him with its promise of a bright day.

That is, until the stillness was interrupted by an acrid smell of burning wood and sulfur that quickly filled the musty air of the chamber between the two humans.

On impulse and muscle memory more than awareness, Gaius leapt to his feet, snatched the bucket of water he kept by the workbenches, and, barely sparing a glance to what he was drenching, doused the table completely.

Once his vision cleared from the hisses of steam in his face, he finally caught sight of the source of the smell and smoke: a scorch-mark blackened spoon and a rather put-out pair of too-human eyes in the face of a sopping tiny dragon.

Ah.

“Merlin,” Gaius breathed. Even if this was probably about the eightieth time it had happened, the elderly man had yet to really get used to those brief few seconds of fright where he thought one of his experimental medicines had gone horribly wrong. Fire in a building was never a good thing, but fire in a physician’s chambers was about ten times worse.

Reaching out a trembling hand to rub between the dragon’s protruding silver horns, Gaius murmured, “I’m sorry for dumping water on you again, Merlin, but you’ve got to learn to stop setting everything on fire.”

The baby dragon harrumphed. Or, well, harrumphed as well as any baby dragon could. That is to say, not very well at all. (He looked adorable for the attempt.)

Despite his “irritation,” Merlin leaned into Gaius’s hand all the same. Gaius smiled. Tired and small, but a genuine smile still. Hope isn't gone just yet. Not looking up, he reached for a clean rag folded neatly in a pile on top of a nearby bookshelf and used it to towel the little creature off. “As I was saying, I don’t know how to fix this, yet, but I’ll figure out something. I just need some time. There’s always a way to reverse these kinds of things with magic, and I'm sure that applies to blood magic as well; I've just never delved deep enough to find it.”

Arthur didn’t respond. Once Merlin was dry enough that he wasn’t giving Gaius a stink-eye and the puddle on the table was sopped up as much as it could be, Gaius looked to Arthur and found him in a state of shock, jaw dropped and eyes blown wide.

“Arthur?” he tried. “Is everything okay?”

Arthur glanced from Gaius to the little dragon repeatedly, jaw still dropped.

Gaius leveled him with his infamous Eyebrow of Doom. Merlin, meanwhile, nipped playfully at Gaius’s fingers until Gaius clammed a hand around the baby’s snout, not feeling in the mood to deal with teeny teeth.

That snapped Arthur out of it. “I thought you said you had him perfectly handled!”

Gaius’s eyebrow practically rose to his hairline. “Did I?”

“Yes!” Arthur burst out, “And he just nearly burned the entire castle down!”

“You get used to it, for the most part,” Gaius muttered under his breath.

“What was that?!”

Louder, so the prince could hear, he calmly stated, “Nothing, Sire, merely that you’re being a tad overdramatic.”

“But you did say he was harmless and that you had everything under control!”

“Erm, yes, about that…I may have misled. A bit.” At Arthur’s pointed glare, Gaius conceded. “Okay, a lot. But to be fair, you did barge in here looking about a parsnip away from murdering Merlin on-sight.”

Arthur sputtered, a flush rising to his cheeks in his embarrassment. “I walked in and saw a dragon, what else should I have done?”

Gaius gave him a wry glance before turning his attention back to the squirming Merlin. “Oh, I can’t say I have the faintest idea, Sire. But if you really want my advice, I would probably start with explanations first, and fairly sharp weapons second.”

Arthur’s flush spread to his ears. Trying to save-face, he crossed his arms and dropped down onto a stool, hunching his shoulders as he retorted, “You and Merlin spend too much time together. I do believe you’re picking up his snark.”

Gaius smirked, amused despite himself, and leveled a knowing eye at the young prince. “Unfortunately for the both of us, the boy has yet to pick up any sensibility in return.”

Arthur snorted at that and gazed down sullenly when Merlin tugged his snout free from Gaius and scampered off the table to the ground just to clamp his jaw down on the toe of the royal’s right boot. With a playful growl, the drakling tugged at the footwear, trying to catch Arthur’s attention, the leather caught between sharp, tiny teeth. Arthur looked back up. “I think I noticed the lack of that one, Gaius.”

The physician leaned forward and reclaimed his ward from the floor, scooping Merlin up with a squawk as the dragon was detached from his prize. “I’m afraid at the moment he’s teething. Or, well, something of the like; he’s been chewing at the banisters practically all week.”

Eager to helpfully enunciate the statement, one of the wooden pegs making up the rail to the storage above their heads suddenly gave way with a loud SNAP and fell, slamming into a pot which knocked over a jar which fell into the cooling ashes of the fireplace with a great kuh-PLFFF, sending the dust spurting out around the room. The scattered flaky white-grey specks fluttered down gently like a kind of twisted snow-fall, though Gaius was just grateful they were cool enough to avoid his entire workshop all at once being set ablaze. Again.

Really, once was quite enough.

With Merlin gawkily leaping from the physician’s arms to explore the falling “snow”—a few excited fwaps of his bitsy wings not aiding him in the slightest—Gaius turned with a critical eye from the broken banister to the still-slightly-stunned-but-probably-would-never-admit-to-such Arthur, who had most definitely seen that coming. Obviously.

Gaius could understand his shock. It had taken Merlin all week (when Gaius hadn't been looking) to chew entirely through the heavy wooden logs Gaius had insisted were to be used to replace the flimsy old railings. It was one of the more recent developments to the physician’s chambers, only from a few years ago. The catalyst for the change had been the first time he met Merlin, when he'd started and fallen through the blasted old one. After that, it had been replaced, but now it already looked due for another. Gaius still didn't understand how Merlin had managed the litany of bite and claw marks up there; it's not as though the baby had been left unsupervised that often. And when he was, he was left in his room. (Which, oddly enough, he had yet to permanently damage.)

But that was irrelevant.

Gaius snapped the prince back from his astonishment and said honestly, “I can’t keep him cooped up in here much longer, Arthur. I can barely handle him as he is; he’s got more pent-up energy in his little talon than I could afford my entire body.”

Arthur cocked a brow, both in challenge and curiosity. “Like?”

Gaius huffed. "Already, he’s explored every minuscule speck of his chambers and possibly mine, accidentally swallowed more harmful substances than I would care to recount, nearly fallen out of the window in his room under the false pretenses he was ready to fly, chewed holes through most of the viable hiding places I have available—all my baskets, Arthur, every single one, brutally shredded!—set fire to a plethora of supplies, and nearly revealed himself to other people thirty-seven and a half times, the half time being one moment when he chased a dust mote head-first into the leg of the patient cot and knocked himself out cold the instant a request was given that a patient be brought in. I had to pick him up and chuck him into a pile of research notes to hide his unconscious body! And that’s only right now. Without a doubt, if he remains stuck in here for much longer, I fear he may snap.”

Or I might, Gaius thought with little humor.

Arthur frowned, trying to drown out a certain little dragon’s squeaks and squeals in the background so he could concentrate. “What exactly are you implying?”

Gaius heaved a weary breath. This was the tricky part.

Now that Arthur knew, the older man understood it would be foolish not to ask for the help he so desperately needed. If Arthur could watch Merlin for a day or two, it could give Gaius the precious time he needed to really search, now that he had more of an idea what cure to look for, and it would be good for Merlin in the long run; the baby needed a change in setting. Getting the stubborn, dragon-intolerant prince of Camelot to willingly help, however, was another task entirely.

At least the dragon was Merlin; Gaius knew their friendship—though the two would never actually admit they were friends to each other’s faces—would help win Arthur over…eventually.

Just thinking of the grueling process ahead made him feel ages older.

Might as well get started.

But where to start? Arthur already knew of the danger Merlin was in and how much trouble the dragon could get into, so what else could possibly—oh. There...was one other thing...but Gaius could barely consider it without feeling distinctly distraught.

But it needed to be addressed. He took a deep breath.

“Dragons are free creatures, Arthur," he began. "They need to feel open and unrestricted, uncontained. Especially for such an impressionable youngling—if he remains trapped up here much longer, he might lose a part of himself. He might...well, he might not be the same.”

Gaius’s face turned grave, trying to bury the fear and concern he felt under his grim composure. He could only hope Arthur would understand the direness of the situation. The prince needed to, or Merlin wouldn’t stand much of a chance in the long-run. He'd seen that spark in Merlin's eyes when he'd knocked over the bowls, the spark of something older dancing there just before Arthur barged in. It only confirmed his suspicions: Merlin needed something familiar.

And Gaius wasn't familiar enough for that, and he had no way of contacting Kilgharrah for assistance—not when baby Merlin didn’t know how. Arthur was their only hope.

“Sire, I may be able to restore him to his original self, but I don’t know if anything can repair a broken mind.”

Having it spoken out loud in the room made it much too real.

Now, Gaius knew Merlin was at no major risk of losing his mind if he stayed a few more days in the healer’s rooms. That wasn't the concern. Sure, he may go a little stir-crazy, more so than usual as a dragon, but not enough to completely lose it. Dragons were much more resilient than that. (Even if the thought sobered him, it was true that Kilgharrah himself was a prime example of this. Well, besides the brief revenge-rampage.)

What was really worrying Gaius—besides discovery and resulting death—was the possibility of future manifesting afflictions besides insanity. It was entirely true the young baby was malleable and still exploring his world. If cooped up when it was so painstakingly obvious there was more beyond the stone walls that he could not reach, there was a very high probability the feeling would permanently remain behind once Merlin was reverted back, in which case he would be stuck grappling with intense claustrophobia for the rest of his life.

The same could be said for insecurities, most prominently, anxiety and abandonment.

Already, Gaius could see the malcontent in his ward, the restlessness. The baby didn’t understand why he was stuck, alone without creatures much like himself, behind stone as if hidden far away. It hurt Gaius a little, knowing he couldn’t do anything to help—constantly pulled left and right as he was—and only something familiar to a dragon would truly put the little one at ease. To the baby, Gaius was just a man. A kind, caring man, but not a fixed bond. What he needed was another dragon, a parent or a guardian, someone he could communicate with and understand (at least until he was old enough to speak human tongues, which Gaius was determined to keep from ever happening. They would have Merlin back long before it ever came to that.).

The baby was alone. And though he was a dragon, Gaius could tell—buried behind the playful guise, in those human eyes that could hide nothing—that it still scared him.

More simply put, Merlin was in a precarious state of limbo, and it was one he couldn't afford to be in without his memories and awareness to help push him through it.

But without Kilgharrah, the only other person who stood a slim chance at forging a deep connection with the transformed drakling was the same person the boy shared a destiny with:

Arthur Pendragon.

The same Arthur Pendragon whose face had morphed into very poorly-concealed horror at the mere thought of a permanently damaged manservant.

(The same manservant he secretly considered an acceptable friend, sorry, companion, though he would never admit it aloud—ever. If Merlin found out, the whole castle knew there would be no heard end of it nor of the absurd smug grin he'd sport as if he knew it all along. Gaius was well aware it wasn't an option to the prince.)

But that did nothing to deny that Merlin needed help. And Arthur—clearly thinking of nearly-killed kings, bound-to-fail quests, and poisoned chalices—would be darned if he let his friend down now.

Determination flared through aquamarine eyes. “What do you need me to do?”

Gaius smiled in relief. Maybe, just maybe, Merlin would make it out of this one okay. As the prince of Camelot himself promised with eyes and words to protect a creature of the same flesh and blood as the one who’d sundered his kingdom to the ground not yet two years before, hope for the future suddenly seemed all that much brighter.

Gaius didn’t think he had ever felt so much gratitude.

“I’m glad, Sire; if I’m to return our Merlin to us, I’ll have need of a babysitter.”

“Of cour—wait, what?”

“To use blood magic is, quite literally, Sire, to sell your soul to the devil.”

The words rang endlessly in Arthur’s head, making no more sense to him than when they had first been spoken. He’d tried distracting himself by watching Merlin trip over his own wings and chirp at the trails they left behind him on the soot-covered boards, but it wasn’t working because wasn’t that all magic? Magic was evil; it was an atrocity all on its own. Why was one version any worse than the rest? Why did Gaius seem to think one version was all that worse than the rest?

Well, if “blood magic” was what caused this whole disaster, then Arthur supposed he understood. He didn’t want to think about the children. More victims to the cruelty of magic, he thought bitterly. He knew it was going to haunt him for a while.

Gaius cleared his throat, catching the prince’s attention. Once he had it, the physician handed him a piece of parchment he had been scribbling furiously on for the past three minutes at his writing desk. Taking a quick glance at the neat, clinical scrawl, Arthur scanned over what was written: just instructions on how to care for a baby. Or, more specifically, the baby. Which was a dragon.

Arthur doubted he could actually do this.

They had argued (or, rather, Arthur had yelled a lot and Gaius had stood by with his brow raised, unimpressed) back-and-forth about it for a while—Arthur didn’t know for sure how long it had actually been as he hadn’t been keeping track of the time. The sun did appear higher in the sky…but what did it matter? Semantics.

The very last thing Arthur ever expected to be asked of, was to look after a dragon. A cold-blooded, fire-breathing monster, with magic coursing through its veins. The very thought made his skin crawl because—

It’s Merlin. Is it really?

He looked up from the parchment, trying to squash down the turbulent feelings rising in his throat. “Are you…absolutely sure you need me to do this, Gaius?”

Gaius’s wrinkled face seemed to sag more than usual, as if weighed down by the world, his hands busying themselves with the quill pen. “I’m afraid so,” he said loud enough for Arthur to hear, his head giving the barest shake. “I don’t believe Merlin is safe in my chambers anymore. If you discovered him, how long before someone else does? It's too busy here, and Merlin is far too restless. Your chambers are more private. He’ll be safer there, I hope.” Gaius paused, as if he had something occur to him. “You haven’t gotten a replacement manservant for Merlin, yet, have you?”

Arthur shook his head, still a little numb. “No; I haven’t. I thought…” Arthur’s gaze strayed downward, toward the drakling still playing with soot on the floor. “I thought he’d be better by now.”

Gaius heaved a world-weary sigh. “You’re not the only one. In any case, it'd be best you don't take up another for the time being. Having someone other than yourself constantly in and out might compromise Merlin.”

Arthur nodded stiffly in acknowledgment, his eyes remaining downturned. For once, he had nothing to retort.

Gaius gave him a sad smile. “Everything you need to know should be on that paper, so don’t lose it.” As soon as he made sure Arthur had tucked the precious paper safely away in his jerkin, the physician began to ramble. “Just so you’re aware, Merlin can’t really fly, despite what he believes, so make sure to keep your windows firmly shut and locked. He could possibly glide for a minute or two, but I wouldn’t risk it; his wings are delicate at this young stage. He should stay grounded. Keep him warm; he’ll need blankets—he likes to make a nest out of them—and if he’s still not warm enough, it’d be a good idea to keep the hearth fire stoked. And he likes sausages; if ever he gives you a difficult time, just bribe him with some of them, he can’t resist.” Then, uncharacteristically grave, he emphasized, “Remember: no one can see him. I know servants are already required to ask for admittance before entering your private rooms, but I cannot stress it enough. Merlin, under no circumstances, can be seen or noticed by anyone. Do. You. Understand?”

Arthur resolutely nodded his head. That seemed simple enough. He could do this. He could do this.

It’s Merlin.

“Oh, and you’re going to need this.”

Arthur stared at the new object being handed to him, eyeing it disdainfully, his face perplexed. To him, it looked like nothing more than a worn-thin scrap of cloth. How useful could that possibly be? “What is it, exactly?” he asked for the sake of asking.

“One of Merlin’s neckerchiefs,” Gaius easily supplied. “He won’t sleep without it, so please don’t lose it unless you want a miserable next few days.”

Arthur’s interest piqued. “His neckerchief?” he asked with arising hope. “Does that m—”

“No,” Gaius cut him off regretfully. “He doesn’t remember it. I think it just smells comforting to him. Who knows? Maybe a hint of Hunith’s scent remains in it. I couldn’t say for sure.”

“Oh.” Arthur wilted a bit, staring at the sorry scrap of red whose owner didn’t recall receiving it, with the very same mother that had given it just as forgotten. Something in his chest ached.

No one deserves to forget their mother.

A realization came to him, then, perking him up a bit from his dark train of thought. Thinking it might be helpful, he spoke, “Gaius, if Merlin likes this one so much, why don’t you give him the blue one? You know, the one Hunith just recently sent for his name day? Surely that one smells more strongly of her.”

Gaius sighed heavily, running a hand through his white hair. He’d been doing an awful lot of that lately. “I would, Arthur, but I can’t.”

Indignance flared. “Well, why not?”

Gaius gave a helpless little shrug. “It disappeared; he was wearing it when he changed.”

Oh.

It had to deny Merlin even those small comforts? Couldn’t stop at erasing a mother’s memory?

“Magic,” Arthur hissed with a sudden passion, with loathing, his arms crossed tight over his chest. Condemn that wicked practice to the ends of the Earth!

Gaius looked suddenly uncomfortable, and Arthur felt a little bad (not that he would apologize; a prince is never wrong). He knew at some point Gaius had been a practitioner. Of course he’d feel uncomfortable. All that mattered, though, was that he’d stopped and banished the evil practice from his life.

If only all sorcerers would do that, could have the willpower. There would be no need for so many pointless executions, then.

“Anyway, Sire,” Gaius pushed the cloth into his hands, “you’ll want this all the same.”

Arthur looked at it. Felt the once-coarse, now-worn raggedly soft (but no less scratchy) cloth between his fingers, the faded red dye in it a cheerful pop of color in the drab, mottled brown room.

He vaguely wondered where Hunith could have gotten it. Red was one of the most expensive dyes there was. Only knights and kings wore it, never peasants.

His hands clenched around it, involuntarily shaking.

(it was strange to see the square of red without—)

No. No, there was nothing wrong. Nothing wrong whatsoever.

Turning on one heel, Arthur called out, “Merlin!”

Merlin didn’t answer.

“Merlin?”

A streak of silver and black shot out from under one of the benches, pouncing on one of Arthur’s booted feet and startling him so bad, he landed on his rear, arms flung out behind him to brace his fall. With one look, he knew the culprit.

Arthur scowled. Merlin, who had scrambled up to rest on Arthur’s right knee, stared innocently back. The two stared each other down for a solid few seconds, individual obstinance an inferno, until Merlin leaned in close and deliberately wuffed directly in the prince’s face.

Arthur cringed away; hot dragon breath was not one of the most pleasant things in the world to smell, especially not a second time. At his flinch, Merlin gave a little wriggle and a victorious crow, having won the “stare-off,” leaping from Arthur’s knee to dart around him in excited circles. Arthur couldn’t handle it for longer than three seconds.

“Merlin!” he snapped. “Stop that!”

Merlin ignored him and scampered over to Gaius—who was chuckling—and tugged at the edge of the man’s robes as if to garner his attention and show off his great triumph. Gaius smiled. “Yes, yes, I saw. You were very brave, Merlin. I daresay Arthur won’t mess with you again anytime soon.”

“Hang on!”

“Don’t deny it, Arthur, it makes you look a terrible sport.”

Arthur pouted (except didn’t, because princes do not pout).

“Also, Sire, if I may, I would suggest investing in those sausages sooner rather than later. Something tells me you’ll be needing them before long.”

Arthur’s pout transformed into a glare. “All right, that’s enough. Merlin, I’ve got something for you, but if you don’t want it, that’s fine by me.”

Merlin didn’t so much as glance Arthur’s way. As soon as he lifted up the neckerchief, however… That caught the baby’s attention.

Before Arthur quite knew what was happening, his back was planted to the floor and he had a spiny creature on top of his complaining ribs, the small thing attempting to reach for the scrap of cloth he held in one hand just above its head. Arthur groaned and shoved the dragon off. “Merlin! I’m not a doormat!”

Gaius laughed. “Could’ve fooled him.”

Arthur shot off another quick glare before he turned back to the wriggling, squirming ball of scales he had on his hands. It was odd…he’d always assumed dragon scales would be sharp, sharp enough to slice a man’s hand off if rubbed the wrong way, and frigid to the touch, as cold and heartless as the creatures themselves were. Maybe even a little slimy, or something of the sort, as there was no way such an evil creature could feel pleasant.

This dragon’s scales didn’t feel sharp. They felt sturdy, for sure, under his hand, like little plates of black armour wrapped tight around the baby to protect it from harm. Its scales weren’t frigid or slimy, but cool and smooth, like expertly cut obsidian, with an underlying warmth to them that spoke of the small spark of fire burning inside. Feeling that warmth under his thumb—alive and vibrant, almost comforting and familiar in its presence like apricity washing frigid cold away—it made him think of laughter and loss, and, suddenly, he felt like a drowning man who'd forgotten he needed air to live. Like the past week he had been missing something vitally important, something he needed, something he couldn’t do without, and how could he have misplaced it? It was desperation fueled by irrational thought, coming from nowhere and coming from everywhere with no end in sight. Something inside his chest lit up with it, a returning warmth he didn’t know he carried.

It was through that direct contact, however—flesh against scale, a tiny head butting fiercely against his hand—that the true weight of reality dawned on him. This wasn’t a dream. This was real. Merlin was a dragon. It sent his mind spiralling because, since he’d stumbled upon this, the dragon hadn’t once acted maliciously or cruelly, so wouldn't it be crazy if—

Arthur shut his thought process down. He couldn’t afford this, couldn’t afford to be distracted.

Oh sure.

Shut up.

What was he thinking? Dragons were evil. Evil. How could he have almost dismissed that? Why had it taken now to remember clearly? It might be a baby Merlin, sure, but it was also a baby dragon, and dragons were evil to their core, completely and absolutely. Arthur just…Arthur just had to watch this one until Gaius could find a way to reverse the spell and Arthur could have his manservant back. That was it. That was all. End of story.

This wasn’t Merlin. The Merlin he knew.

This was an unpredictable magical creature. He had to treat it like one.

He barely noticed nor cared when the sunshine warmth in his chest faded to a dim glow, murky clouds covering the dejected sun.

Without him having to do a thing, the dragon moved out from under his hands and scooted back without a sound, something Arthur couldn’t recognize glimmering in the unnervingly familiar blue eyes, its tail curling about its clawed feet. It cooed imploringly at him.

Arthur sat up stiffly. “Okay, look, dragon.” Two velvety black ears perked up. “No more jumping on me. I’ll give you this,” he gestured to the neckerchief, “if you promise to behave.”

The dragon slowly cocked its head (was it his imagination, or was it acting more subdued?) and gave a throaty chittering sound.

Not sure what that meant, Arthur glanced to Gaius, and Gaius nodded. With a gusting sigh to rival one of the physician’s, Arthur reached out tentatively. The dragon made no move to bite him, so he gathered his nerves about him and hurriedly tied the neckerchief (folded over a few times so it would fit) around the baby’s scaly neck before quickly withdrawing his hands. Every place he had brushed against cool black felt like it was burning.

Okay. It’s okay, he could do this. He could do this.

(It’s a dragon!) It’s Merlin. It’s MERLIN.

Arthur took a deep breath, steadying his pulse and thundering thoughts. Looking to Gaius, he stumbled to his feet and tried to subtly move as far away as he could from the tiny dragon on the floor, the small thing quietly preening over its new look. It seemed so satisfied with the cloth, chest puffed up and strutting a bit, it was almost…cute. But Arthur knew, he knew appearances were deceiving when it came to magic. He almost wanted to rip the neckerchief off, claim it back. Letting a dragon wear it felt almost like desecrating Merlin’s memor—honor. His honor. Arthur forced his eyes away from the sight.

It was probably a good thing Arthur would be keeping an eye on it for the next few days. If anything went awry, Arthur would be able to defend himself. Gaius? Not so much. He obviously only saw his ward when he looked at the beast. He wouldn’t have the heart to fight back, even if his own life was on the line. Especially if his own life was on the line. Sometimes, he cared for Merlin far too much.

Arthur wouldn’t let his guard down in such a way. Arthur would be vigilante.

(So certain?)

Gruff and to the point, he asked, “All right, how do I get it to my chambers?”

Gaius frowned at him. “Him, Arthur. And I was thinking you could carry him there wrapped in this.” He lifted a thick, woolen blanket.

Arthur had to restrain the urge to plant his face into his palm. “Gaius, that’s a blanket!”

“I’m aware.”

“How’s a blanket going to keep it—him—from leaping out and revealing itsel—himself—to the entire castle?”

Gaius’s eyes brightened. “Simple. In three, two, one…” The older man snapped his fingers. Then he swept out his arm.

Following the motion, Arthur gazed out over the room…and found a slumbering dragon-Merlin with its snout buried in a pile of manuscripts.

Arthur blinked, surprised. “How’d you time that?”

Gaius smirked. “Eh, it was easy enough to predict. He always has a nap around noon, and you tied an object of comfort around his neck. It was only a matter of minutes before he nodded.”

Taking the blanket in his hands and rising to his feet with a grunt, Gaius carefully leaned down and scooped the small dragon into the blanket’s snug confines, making sure to keep a small opening for the baby to breathe. "He'll be out for an hour or two, he's a rather deep sleeper, but I'd get him to the safety of an enclosed room as soon as possible. The less risk, the better." Straightening up with the bundle, making sure not to jostle it, Gaius brought it over to the prince.

He held it out.

Arthur swallowed before slowly lifting his arms to take it.

Gaius looked him in the eye. “I’m putting a lot of trust in you, Arthur.”

“I know. I’ll...I'll keep everyone safe.”

“And Merlin?”

Arthur looked down at the bundle now in his arms. Even though the weight made him feel distinctly uncomfortable, knowing what the weight was, he still didn’t feel his conviction waver. Merlin would come out of this just as safe as anyone else, dragon or not. He’d make sure of it.

He met Gaius’s stern eyes. “Him, too.”

Gaius nodded, satisfied. “I know you will.”

Without another word, Arthur turned and strode out the door, Merlin bundled up and clutched protectively to his chest where, hidden deep, sunshine pulsed like a distant heartbeat.

Chapter Text

Arthur rushed through hall after hall, barely taking a moment to stop, to think, to consider for a single second just what exactly it was he thought he was doing?

The unmoving lump in his arms was hardly heavy, but the weight of it was a heady reminder all its own. A reminder that sent him reeling.

He resolutely shoved it back and kept his thoughts from straying. He couldn’t stop, not until he was safely in his chambers. Stopping meant standing still, and standing still meant his brain turning back on, and he didn’t want to know what it’d have to say to him.

Every lesson that had been drilled into him since he was three, everything on how to be a good prince, a proper prince, the perfect prince, it was all screaming at him.

His heart was quick to scream back, scream back and win.

And he didn’t want to contemplate the implications. Didn’t want to acknowledge the proof lying before him of what he feared most. What he’d always feared most.

So he didn’t. He ducked his head, and he moved faster, the only attention he offered the outside world being a watchful eye looking out for busy servants or wandering courtiers. He found neither. It didn’t give him the slightest bit of relief; the busier halls were still ahead.

As every step he took echoed back at him, unnerving him with the thought of possibly being followed no matter how ludicrous it was to jump at shadows, he left the relatively quiet halls precursing the physician's wing for the more occupied corridors beyond. There, laid out in front of him, castle servants stepped everywhere, chatting idle gossip with one another or hurrying along as they went about their daily chores.

The hubbub was enough to make Arthur involuntarily pause at the threshold.

Something in his chest tightened, and his heart rate spiked. It took him a moment to recognize it for what it was. When he did, he didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or lash out.

It was the oddest feeling in the world to be afraid of people he once considered insignificant. (Not that he considered them insignificant anymore. But the fact remained: he had. Once. How long ago that felt. And now he was carrying a dragon.)

He brushed his concerns aside like they were irritating gnats (they weren’t) and put up a confident front he hoped wasn’t transparent. Staring ahead and calculating his next move, his head cocked in the signature arrogant way that was entirely his.

Around the same time Arthur managed to pull himself together, the unmoving lump cradled against his chest suddenly decided to not be so unmoving anymore.

It shifted.

Then, it squirmed.

Like the flick of a flint with no kindling, Arthur felt his small spark of retrieved confidence go out in a rush and he was left struggling to tether his facade to his face with his heart in his toes. Fishing himself out of his head and finally becoming aware of the feeling in his arms again, he belatedly realized he wasn’t just holding the swathe of cloth anymore; his arms were clenched around it—not enough to harm, but definitely enough to be the source of discomfort. With a soft gasp of panic, he swiftly released the severity of the hold, nearly fumbling the bundle altogether in the process.

After shakily rocking the package for a few seconds, the lump settled down. Arthur almost collapsed to the floor then and there, barely able to scrape himself together, his panic dissipating so fast the head rush nearly sent him spinning.

That was close. So close. Too close. If the dragon got loose out here, then this entire bizarre—endeavor? mission? whatever it was!—would be over before it even started. And Arthur would never forgive himself get his manservant back. And he couldn’t have that, now could he? No.

No, he couldn’t.

Merlin had to stay asleep. These were some of the busiest parts of the castle.

From here, it was just a fairly simple route down a few halls, maybe going the long way down some of the less used (at this time of day, anyway, when it was most convenient to go the straight route) servant passageways, and then he’d be at his room and he could work more on figuring this whole thing out.

He still didn’t know how he felt about all this.

Liar.

Violently ducking out of his thoughts and mentally shutting everything down, he found himself pleading, Not here, please not here. Not now. More firmly. Freak out more in your room.

Gathering his head back about himself, he straightened his shoulders and joined the traffic of the hall, walking as a prince should with authority and purpose. It didn’t take long for the servants around to notice their prince in their midst, and soon he had a comfortable bubble of space to walk in, the crowds parting to the sides for him of their own volition. He couldn’t deny the smattering of gratitude for these people that welled within his chest, but he was quick to deny the urge to offer a warm smile. It wouldn’t become him to acknowledge a gesture peasants were expected to uphold.

Any warmth he still felt inside puttered out and died, and he was left hyperfocusing on the blanket, praying to any force in the universe that might be listening, none of it looked too suspicious.

Not that servants (well, bar one, but he was a little predisposed at the moment) would ever question the heir to the throne, but that did nothing to remove the niggling of doubt. It hadn’t even been ten minutes, and already he hated everything about this.

Curse you, Gaius.

Making a quick turn-off to the side—dodging a vase of flowers being carried by a young girl he almost walked right into—he left the bustle behind and made his way down a separate branching hall he knew led to the royal wing, careful to avoid drawing attention to his package.

He turned two corners, took the right passage, turned another corner out back into the main corridors and—ran into someone.

Not just anyone, though. Oh no. Life couldn’t be that easy.

He ran right into—

“Father!” Arthur gasped, staggering back from the slight impact of the collision.

Uther Pendragon, King of Camelot, gazed down with no small sense of surprise at the sight of his son, the surprise quickly softening to his familiar stony composure, though there was the smallest spark of warmth in his eyes reserved solely for his offspring. “Arthur! I wasn’t expecting to see you here—what are you doing out and about at this time of day? There are reports you should be overseeing, Sir Leon’s among them.”

If a heart could sporadically stop beating, Arthur’s would have already done so.

“I-I, yes!” he stammered out, trying hopelessly to even out his tone, “I am!” He cleared his throat. “I am. Overseeing them, that is. I’m actually, er, headed that way now; something came up that briefly delayed me, but I assure you the reports will get done. I’ll have a courier delivering them to you shortly.”

Before he had the chance to slip past to the freedom of the rest of the hall, Uther’s hand descended on his shoulder and stopped him.

“Now, Arthur,” came his chiding tone, “would this delay have anything to do with your refusal to accept a stand-in manservant? If so, it is as I told you, George is excellent at his work and there really is no reason for—”

It was Arthur’s turn to be annoyed. “Father,” he found himself saying, in a tone he usually would have balked at using in front of his king, “I’ve already said it once. I don’t need another servant. I already have a perfectly good one, he’s just—” his eyes darted down to the bundle in his arms before shooting back up. Uther noticed. “—sick at the moment. He’ll be up and about soon, Gaius will ensure it.”

“Yes, well.” Uther fixed his day jerkin stiffly, something not unlike displeasure curdling his features. “He’d better. What does he expect you to do in his absence? Dress yourself?”

Arthur bit back his comment that yes, that’s exactly the kind of thing Merlin would expect him to do. In fact, it was something Merlin expected him to do even when he was around and not magically transformed into a baby dragon.

Some way, somehow, a large part of him felt it wouldn’t be entirely tactful to say so. It was a wonder why.

Yet again hyper-aware of the slight weight in his arms, Arthur rolled his eyes and made sure to make a show of it. “Surely not! What kind of uncouth barbarian would dare utter such a thing?”

“My thoughts exactly,” Uther agreed steadfastly, before his words turned more sharp. “Now, if you are heading back to your chambers, I’d suggest you send for someone to bring up your midday meal. If you stubbornly insist upon refusing a stand-in, you’ll have to reap the consequences of it and seek assistance yourself. I’ll not have you starving for something so childish.”

Arthur bowed his head, trying to hide the color flooding his cheeks. “Yes, my King.”

It was a difficult thing for him to do, not when the conversation was going semi-well and it was his father talking to him, but Arthur forced himself to ease away—hopefully in such a way it looked natural—in order to break away so he could slip back to his room. He couldn’t—shouldn’t be talking to his father, not with a dragon right under his nose. It felt...it felt wrong.

It took every bone in his body to convince himself he wasn’t maliciously betraying his father, that he was doing the right thing, the thing his father would ideally be proud of (even if he knew he wouldn’t, it was nice to imagine, if only for a moment).

I’m protecting an innocent citizen from being executed unfairly, protecting a victim of the vileness of magic. Surely—surely—

That’s the right thing to do?

His sinking gut told him otherwise.

“Oh, and Arthur?”

He didn’t think his head had ever whipped up so fast, muscles freezing in place. “Yes?”

“I think the new allotment of patrols should be discussed further after your recent attack. If one sorcerer had the audacity to challenge our borders, there will be others. A plague such as them must be stamped out the moment it shows face, before they grow further brazen; I expect twice the amount of usual patrols scouring that area, we leave no stone unturned, no hole for them to squirm their way out.”

Arthur nodded along, trying to keep from jerking his head, his posture rigid. “Of course.”

While his father talked, he’d managed to ease himself a couple more steps away. It was like dancing the border between Camelot and an enemy kingdom; any moment, Arthur feared he’d be caught and that would be it.

He couldn’t—couldn’t let that be it.

The thought felt so empty.

“I’ll get started on those new patrol plans right away,” he forced a smile, tried to turn away, “now if you’ll excuse me—”

“Not so fast.”

Arthur froze dead in his tracks. By all of Albion—

Uther stepped closer, thereby rendering all of Arthur’s attempts to leave up to this point a joint moot effort. The prince would have groaned if his heart wasn’t in his throat, stealing his voice and leaving him only to gulp.

His father’s face hadn’t faltered, a change in expression unwarranted (unnecessary) for such an exchange, but his eyes had grown keen, filed down to a single needle prick. “You can’t sneak anything by me, Arthur, I was sure you knew that by now. What, exactly, has you so eager to escape my presence?”

That was exactly the sort of question Arthur had been trying so desperately to avoid. He couldn’t fumble here, couldn’t give anything away, but how could he—

Uther’s gaze focused downward, an inquiry on his lips before he caught sight of something. Whatever it was, it broke the stillness of his face, broke the composure Arthur could rarely get through and had his eyes widening.

Before Arthur could stop it, stop anything, Uther had already ripped the slipping blanket-bundle open to reveal the rest of the creature belonging to the snout poking out in plain sight. From afar, it was hardly noticeable. In close quarters, all one had to do was look down.

So it was over before it even began.

What remained of the stony composure fractured. “Arthur,” the king breathed, voice barely contained to a hissed whisper in the sudden heat of his fury. “What treachery is this?”

Arthur didn’t know. He didn’t know. He didn’t know.

In the loss of any self-assurance, any hope that this could be fixed, he acted on impulse. And dropped the blanket to the floor in favor of slinging the snoozing, motionless blob of a dragon across the span of his shoulders.

Voice fortuitously returned to him, he found himself blurting, “Do you like it? It’s a scarf!” and promptly waited for the world to end.

To his increasing disbelief, the opposite happened.

“A scarf?” Uther gaped at him as if Arthur had lost his mind. Or he had lost his own. “That thing is a scarf?” The king was thrown, having seen one thing and now seeing another. Where before stood a treacherous son with a dragon, there now stood his son with a questionable article of clothing.

He didn’t appear to know what to do with that.

Which was fine because Arthur didn’t, either.

A scarf?! Really? his mind screamed.

Arthur cursed himself and his addled brain thrice under his breath but managed to keep a sort of false cheer in place. “Yee-es, Sire.”

His only hope now was that Merlin managed to stay asleep until the scrutiny had passed and his father let him leave. That is, if his father truly bought the absurd excuse and didn’t look any closer. Every small wuff of breath Merlin was exhaling sent Arthur’s heart skittering all over again, the minute movement of the tiny chest all too apparent against the back of his neck.

Malevolent sorcerers? Vindictive enemies? Kingdoms baying for his blood? Magic itself? Oh, none of it held a candle to this. This was officially the Worst Thing that had ever happened to him.

As soon as they had Merlin back, Arthur was going to strangle him.

His father was appraising him again, taking a step back, looking him up and down before the rigid line of his shoulders at last relaxed, or, well, relaxed as much as Uther ever relaxed in public. “Ah,” he murmured, “I see it now.”

Arthur felt as though he could explode from the gale of relief sweeping through him—He bought it. How had he bought it?—and couldn’t help the slight stutter as he said, “Y-you do?”

“Yes.” Uther nodded, something lighting up behind his eyes. “And I must say, it’s magnificent! For a moment, I had even thought it was real!”

Arthur struggled to keep his smile neutral. Oh, you have no idea.

“Where did you get it?”

Arthur lost the fight with his smile as he froze. “Oh, u-uhm, I got it from…” His frazzled mind raced as he searched for another answer to a question he didn’t have. Where had he gotten it? Where could he have plausibly gotten a baby dragon replica to wear around his neck like a bizarre kind of trophy? “W-well, you see…” His eyes landed on a nearby tapestry. Inspiration struck. “…the artisan wished to remain anonymous.”

“The man didn’t give you his name?” Uther cocked an eyebrow at him, but Arthur got the strangest sense he was more disappointed than skeptical.

It bewildered him for a second. “No,” he replied slowly, a cautious edge to his voice. “He claimed it a tribute celebrating my victories, and wished only that I would wear it. He sought no recognition for his talents, only to offer me his gratitude in protecting the kingdom.”

“How unfortunate,” Uther fretted, almost to himself. “I would have loved one for myself. What did he look like? Perhaps we can still find him by description alone.”

“Uh,” Arthur choked, not knowing how to break off from the charade before it progressed any further. “The scarf is really no good at all—rather scratchy and pokey.” He shifted Merlin carefully with both hands, trying to be gentle so the baby wouldn’t wake up while still outwardly appearing callous, miming scratching at his neck. It wasn’t completely untrue. While the scales were smooth, the claws and spines were another matter entirely. At least the wings were folded firmly along the baby’s back; one thing he didn’t have to deal with. “No, no,” he affirmed, silently pleading for his father to just drop it and let him leave, “you really don’t want one, trust me. I accepted it out of goodwill to the artisan, nothing more.”

“Then, if it bothers you all that much, I’m sure you won’t mind if I take it off your hands,” Uther continued to haggle. “The craftsmanship is so exquisite!”

If Arthur didn’t know any better, he would say his father was gushing, but that was the problem. He did know better. Where was this interest stemming from? He needed to end this, now, nip it in the bud before it became a problem.

“Why, it almost looks as if it’s breathing!”

Annnd now it was a problem.

Arthur forced a chuckle, but on the inside, he was dying a little. Merlin was going to muck out the stables for the entire next month. “Quite. But I’m afraid its creator asked specifically for me to keep a hold of it—it, erm, was the poor man’s last dying wish.”

“The creator is dead?!” Uther exclaimed, aghast, his face the perfect picture of a child who was just told their favorite puppy had died.

“Yes,” Arthur said stiffly. “So sad.”

Subject done and over with, he then spun on one heel and sped down the hall, only a wave over his shoulder and a hurried “Wellgoodbye,Father!” to end off the conversation before he could be pulled into another.

A confused, heartbroken Uther was left in the dust.

Making it to his bedroom in record time and slamming the sturdy oak doors shut behind him, Arthur slumped against the wooden barrier and slid down to the floor in an exhausted, anxious heap.

That went well. You only left Merlin out in plain sight of any passerby and lied straight to your father’s face. Spectacular job. Best prince ever.

He buried his blanched face in his palms and groaned. It was only the first day. It was only the first day.

And it hadn’t even been an hour of the first day! How in heaven’s illustrious name was he going to last a week, or more? This whole plan of Gaius’s was already quickly unraveling, and Arthur was drowning in the middle of it.

Taking a moment to catch his breath after the scare (his father knew the dragon existed, oh good glory, his father knew the dragon existed), he tried to reassure himself in the fact that he had saved the situation. Partly.

Sure, his father thought he had a weird scarf now, but it was better than him knowing he had a dragon, so Arthur considered that a win. Had to consider it a win. It was all he could take comfort in right now.

It had been a close call, but he’d managed to weasel his way out of it. Not in an entirely dignified or intelligent manner (in fact, the excuse had sounded rather like something Merlin would say, much to Arthur’s inner horror), but still salvaged it somehow.

He could do this. He was up to the task.

Merlin was going to be okay.

Staggering to his feet and moving past the main room over in the direction of the bed, Arthur carefully lifted the small creature from his shoulders and held it in his arms, debating where to place it. He would just set it on his bed, but he didn’t particularly like the idea of a dragon sleeping on his clean sheets, so he compromised and snagged an extra pillow he didn’t particularly need. Taking it over to the chair at his desk, the dragon cradled in one arm, he pulled it out and set the pillow on the seat before moving to carefully situate Merlin on top of it to continue his nap.

A pity the very instant Merlin left his arms, the small dragon snapped awake and startled Arthur into falling back on his rear.

“What—”

One moment fast asleep, the next wide awake. It was enough to chill his blood; that could have happened at any moment in the hall.

And, even worse, it could have happened in front of his father.

Maintaining deep breaths—it didn’t happen, it didn't happen, stop worrying, it didn’t happen—to quell the pounding in his ears, his eyes made contact with the dragon’s now that he was level with the creature on the floor, and the baby blinked at him.

Arthur had no right being intimidated by something so unassuming in nature, but the unpredictability of what it could do next ensnared him like prey in a hunter’s trap and all he could do was stare back.

With soft, gentle tilts of the baby’s head, it looked around the room, sleepy eyes gaining more awareness as soon as they noticed the change in surroundings. Taking tentative puffs of air through the nostrils to test the scent of everything, it rose to its haunches. Then stopped.

Unsure of what exactly the baby intended, Arthur shifted to reach out for it but stilled when it narrowed its eyes at him and bore its teeth. The unfamiliarity of the action almost made Arthur scramble back, panic clawing at the inside of his skull as he didn’t recognize this, didn’t see his friend servant in the cold, burning holes of blue drilling into his soul. It was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong without the words necessary to describe it.

Then the eyes were crinkling, the burning a gentle thaw, and honest to goodness Arthur swore the thing was grinning at him. It flicked its tail. From side to side. Side to side. Side to—

Stop.

And Arthur knew precisely what it was planning a second too late to stop it.

“Wait, no—Merlin!”

Merlin ducked from under his hands and leapt from the cushioned chair, skidding on the stone floor until he slipped under the bed before Arthur had the chance to catch him. Growling in frustration, the prince slapped his palm to the wood floor from where he’d dove after the thing. “Dang it, Merlin! Get out from under there this instant!”

All he got in response was a couple of bumps and rustling and a strange churring noise he swore sounded like it was mocking him. When diving his arm into the crack and fishing around gained him nothing more than dust bunnies and a not-so-very-threatening warning squeak, Arthur gave up and collapsed on his back, staring murderously up at the ceiling with one arm still stuck under the bed frame.

With the muffled sound of a sneeze and a faint whiff of smoke, however, his efforts were quickly renewed; shooting back to his knees, he shoved both of his arms frantically under the bed. “MERLIN, you set my bed on fire, and I swear, you’re going to the stocks for a week!”

Another churr.

“I don’t care if there aren’t stocks built for your size, I’ll have one MADE if you keep this up!”

As Arthur backed up on his hands and knees to try grabbling at a different angle, Merlin’s small spiny head poked out from the darkness under the bed frame and chirped at him.

Arthur glared at it. Leaning back on his heels and pointing a stern finger to the space next to him, he said sternly, “Here. Now.”

The small head cocked to the side.

His scowl deepened. “Don’t give me that, I know you can understand me—to a certain extent—so come here, or so help me, you won’t get a single sausage while you’re stuck in these chambers.”

The baby flicked one ear up and cocked its head the other way, but made no move to obey.

At his wits’ end, Arthur didn’t even think twice about what he was doing when, in his frustration to grasp at straws, at a solution, at anything that might get the dragon to listen to him, he reached out and found the warmth he remembered vaguely from before, the great big ball of sun in his chest. Not sparing a moment to ponder on it, he yanked on the warmth, demanding it come here.

The dragon didn’t ponder on it, either.

Zipping out from under the bed to the spot of floor Arthur was pointing at, the dragon sat, poised and obedient, the only indication of his restless nature in the constant shifting of his tail. Add the humility shining in those big blue eyes, and he looked the perfect picture of innocuous innocence, as if he’d been sitting there all along and Arthur was the one at fault.

The prince wasn’t so easily fooled.

Nabbing the dragon under the forelegs before he had the chance to scoot off, Arthur lifted him so they were eye-to-eye. Giving his best commanding “do as I say” stare, Arthur sternly ordered, “No more going under the bed.”

Merlin didn’t seem to be listening; instead, he booped the tip of his snout to Arthur’s nose.

Arthur jostled him. “I’m serious, Merlin! I can’t reach you under there, and I need to be able to keep an eye on you at all times. No. Bed. Got it?”

The small dragon yawned wide, showing off his pearly little canines. He snorted.

“I’ll take that as a ye—”

Then he leaned in and wuffed, for the third dang time, right in Arthur’s much too close face. Arthur dropped him.

“AGH! Merlin!” he cried, rubbing at his eyes, “Stop doing that!”

The cheeky thing only trilled at him, tail wagging and wings fanning out at the sides in delight. It was fun playing with Loud Creature!

Shrugging off the third assault to his nose in only the past five hours, Arthur stepped away, trying to figure out his next plan of attack, and—his brain seemed to catch up with him, reality slamming into him with the force of a mace.

That...wait.

The dragon listened to him.

It came out from under the bed, sat where Arthur told it to sit, and it listened to him.

Arthur’s breath caught in his throat. He couldn’t breathe. All of a sudden, the warmth lingering where it shouldn’t even exist was at the forefront, and it was smothering. It shouldn’t be there. It shouldn’t be there. Why was it there?

A sneaking suspicion taking hold, Arthur jerked to his feet and stepped away from the baby, eyeing it warily, his breath still coming in labored heaves. Not wanting to test it, not wanting to know but needing to anyway, he reached out and he ordered the light, go over there.

Merlin gave a pleased little chirp and moved where Arthur told the light to go.

Arthur didn’t have any breath left to gasp. His lungs couldn’t find any. Sinking to the ground shakily, he stared, unseeing, at the floorboards.

No. Spirits, no. No. No.

What in all that was holy—

He was infected with dragon magic. It was the only explanation. How he’d been infected, he didn’t have the foggiest recollection, but that hardly mattered. It happened, and now he was here.

And by all the ancients, Merlin was listening to him.

The world had to be ending. Albion was done for. Camelot was done for. Arthur couldn’t process this. He couldn’t—he couldn’t—

The warmth in his chest fizzled with an energy he didn’t understand and then Merlin was there. Right in his face, foretalons leaning against his shoulder so the small dragon’s head could reach up high enough to be level with him. His eyes were wide, and they were human, and they seemed to ask him are you alright?

It was confusing. And it was baffling. And somewhere, deep, deep inside, a part of his heart hurt. He didn’t know why. Or, he did, but he wouldn’t tell. Wouldn’t admit.

No weakness.

The dragon’s head bobbed, as if answering, and then he gave Arthur’s cheek a quick lick. The slimy sensation startled Arthur out of whatever episode he was having and he blinked, pulling away in disgust. “Eww, gross! Merlin!”

Giving a strange, rumbly trumpet-like sound that took Arthur way too long to realize was laughter, Merlin scampered off to play, leaving Arthur behind to rub dragon saliva off his face with a flustered, bewildered scowl.

Faintly, his hand unconsciously reached up to his chest, hovering over his heart. He eyed the small baby yapping at table legs and furnishings and wondered…

Is this…magic?

Because it didn’t feel wrong. It felt like light and warmth and coming home after the longest, trying day when nothing went right. It felt like understanding and companionship and loyalty. It felt…it felt…

Like a friend.

And that scared him.

Magic wasn’t anyone’s friend. Magic looked out for magic, and it left the poor people without it to suffer and die because they didn’t matter if magic didn’t grace them. Magic was evil. Magic was a monster. Magic would sooner kill everything than save anyone.

Magic corrupted every good thing it touched.

And now, now Merlin had been hit with a spell, turned into a dragon, and apparently had…dragon magic. This sunshine he was using to communicate to Arthur, letting Arthur use to communicate to him.

Magic was corruption, and it was trying to take Merlin.

Arthur didn’t know what to do. He hated feeling this helpless, this useless, but what could he do? Until Gaius scrounged up a solution to this whole mess, they were stuck without options. He was stuck without options. All he could do was wait and watch.

He tried not to think about it, to let it rise higher than a whisper, but the thought came and claimed all it could of his mind either way: The longer Merlin was like this, the less of his friend there might be left to save.

Magic was already taking him, and there was nothing Arthur could do.

Gaius needed at least a week. He only needed to do his job right and keep Merlin’s existence quiet in the meantime until there hopefully was a solution to Merlin’s predicament, and then the magic could be beaten back.

He couldn’t combat all-consuming, two-faced magic, but he could protect Merlin in this way, in his way, with a good old fashioned sword and, begrudgingly, a few fleeting lies.

It was the best he could do with the circumstances, the best anyone could do, and it had to be enough. It would be enough. He tried to convince himself it was better than nothing, better than sitting back and not trying anything at all, but fell just short of it. There was still the matter of the Hall Incident.

Sighing, he picked himself up off the floor and dropped into the abandoned pillow-topped chair with a grunt, vaguely watching Merlin exploring out of the corner of his eye just to keep track of where he was in the room (and steadfastly ignoring the pulsing sun saying fine, fine, fine on loop), while his real focus remained on the issue revealed to him.

Lying wasn’t his strong suit. Never had been, never would. He liked to poke fun at Merlin for his own terrible lying skills, even though his were much the same; he just refused to admit it. Normally, he always managed to think up a believable enough response, but the more on-the-spot a confrontation was, the less believable his responses.

The “scarf” was the last straw. It was all he needed to convince himself that he couldn’t do this alone; couldn’t hide a whole freaking dragon right under Camelot’s nose by himself. He had been this close to losing it all today: losing his servant, losing his father’s trust, losing Gaius’s faith in him.

There couldn’t be a repeat.

Thankfully, as soon as he thought of it, the solution was jarringly obvious. So much so, he could’ve laughed.

He couldn’t do this by himself; he needed help. Help that knew how to navigate nobility, help that could string words together like pearls with a silver tongue, help he could trust with Merlin’s life, help who would look past Merlin’s current form, past the magic, just like she had risking it all to rescue a young druid boy from the dungeons all those years ago.

Arthur needed Morgana.

And he knew she would give her all to help. There was no one he trusted more.

(Nevermind the fact he loathed having to ask her for help; it was irrelevant. He was beyond caring about that at this point.)

Mind made up, Arthur stood from his seat with determination brimming his frame, ready to make the quick trip to his pseudo-sister’s chambers—up until he caught sight of Merlin crouched on the main chamber’s table, poised to leap and barrel through the unlocked window.

He would gladly carry the shriek that escaped his throat to his grave.

“Merlin, NO! You can’t fly!”