Chapter Text
This is a story about the past, and the future. We will come to the future, but first, the past.
Out of the forest and into the summer sun rode a young king in raiment of bright-shining steel and rich robin’s-breast red, astride his proud destrier, on his way home to his castle. The weary, pensive grace of one who has confronted a great wrong committed by his kin and has begun to make it right weighed heavy on his broad shoulders. At his side rode his faithful manservant, Merlin, who walked into battle and into royal meetings in the same well-darned blue tunic and plain brown jacket. He stood out among the knights surrounding him for it, for his lack of crimson banner streaming from his shoulders in the wind of his passing. He wanted to speak to his master, that much was clear from the concern writ large on his countenance, but he held his tongue, for once. The questions Merlin wanted to ask Arthur, as Merlin was not actually allowed to call him, were not ones his liege would answer yet, and he had enough on his mind. Today was a proud day in the as-yet short annals of the young king’s reign, filled with bittersweet triumph. Today, he had sealed a pact with the peaceful Druid people, signing into law their right to live free of the fear of the threat of raids looming over their shoulders. From today, they were under the crown’s protection, as they should have been from the beginning.
Still, as Merlin watched Arthur’s thoughts circle themselves in the cotton-stuffed cabbage between his ears, he wondered if he would get another chance to ask. Rare was the journey in which they did not have to stop--
A piercing scream rent the air.
--and rescue someone, Merlin finished his thought wearily. Arthur had already wheeled his horse towards the source of the sound, and Merlin urged his own after it. His heart jumped into his throat. In the village ahead of them, a pillar of black smoke was rising, though none of the clustered huts seemed to be burning. No, the fire Arthur was charging towards at full speed was burning in the square.
“By order of the king, stop this at once!” That was the shout that carried across battlefields, rung clear over the din of battle, and it cut through the villagers gathered in the square like the ripple of a stone hurled into a pond.
They scattered, and Arthur, the brave fool, leapt off his galloping horse, over the fast-growing tongues of flame licking hungrily up the base, and onto the pyre. The victim was shackled in irons to it, and the firelight only made the anger glitter brighter in Arthur’s eyes. Merlin could not follow him up, so he did the next best thing.
“Don’t just stand there, that’s King Arthur! Put out the fire!” He swung off his horse, prepared to use Arthur’s helmet if he couldn’t find a bucket to douse the flames, but by the time he’d landed on his feet, the villagers were already scrambling to kick dirt onto the fire, dumping buckets of well-water and the contents of a horse trough onto the dry wood at the base of the pyre. He got to it just in time to help the old woman down, singed but little worse for the wear. That did not staunch his anger, nor Arthur’s.
“What were her crimes?” the king demanded, furious and soot-smudged atop the stacked wood. His fine cloak was still smouldering, Merlin noted dimly. He’d have to mend it later.
For now, he helped the old woman sit on the upturned horse trough, pulling his travelling medicine kit from his horse’s saddlebags to tend to her. No one dared question him, focused on the angry king among them.
“Witchcraft, sire!” The man who spoke was of middling age, his leathery face dusted in a week’s beard, and he didn’t look especially repentant.
“Who has she harmed?”
Not one villager would meet Arthur’s fearsome glower.
Merlin finished bandaging the woman’s blistered feet with salve, but not before he’d willed a speedy recovery into the innocent salve with a golden flash of his eyes. Then and only then did he look up at Arthur, searching his king’s face with something he would less and less begrudgingly call respect. The ways in which Arthur was wholly different from his father surprised even him, some days.
“No one,” Arthur answered for them when no answer was forthcoming. His neck was stiff with barely-restrained rage when he shook his head. “Who here saw her use magic?”
“She hexed her neighbour’s ass to make it lame!” someone shouted, and the old woman seemed to snap out of her daze a little, drawing her shawl tighter around her with still-manacled hands. With a start, Merlin realised that Arthur had cut through the stake to free her.
“That ass is almost as old as he is, William, and you know it!”
William opened his mouth to argue, but Arthur cut him off.
“Enough!” he barked. “The woman goes free.”
Something like hope dawned in Merlin’s heart as Arthur stepped down off that pyre to speak to the woman. His head was buzzing with it, even once Arthur concluded his impromptu visit and rode back towards the road. It was the only reason he could think of that he missed the bandits that began to follow them later. He’d been so distracted staring at the back of Arthur’s blond head, wondering what had gone on inside it today, that he couldn’t even say when it was they’d started to follow them.
There were six of them, when they pounced. Merlin almost felt sorry for the lot of them--he didn’t even have to help. Some days, he almost believed what people said about Arthur: he was invincible.
Except he was not invincible against witchcraft.
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In the dead of night rode a nobleman on a fine gelding palfrey, his glossy coat the colour of the night all around them. The low-hanging branches tug at his deep blue cloak as he forges ever deeper into the underbrush, and one could see from his petulantly arched brow that he was not up to a good deed. Arriving outside a dingy, low-slung hut dimly lit through badly-covered windows, he drew up his horse and dismounted. It was clear, as he pushed the door open and stepped over the threshold, that he was wary of the occupant, who was not immediately visible through the shelves.
“My lady,” he said, knowing the witch would hear him regardless. “I come with news.”
“Make it quick, Agravaine.” Morgana’s voice cracked sharp as a whip in the dusty darkness of her abode. She sat at the table, poring over a book written in a language he could not read.
“Very well, milady. Arthur returned to court today with news that he successfully treated with the Druids. They will now live free of persecution within Camelot’s borders.”
Morgana’s mug of tea smashed to the ground in a tinkle of shattering pottery.
“...are you well, Lady Morgana?”
“Get out of my way. Summon Helios. We attack tonight.”
“My lady, I must protest. If you--”
“Silence!” The glare Morgana leveled over her shoulder at him would have made a lesser man wet himself. “I will not repeat myself.”
“Yes, my lady.”
------
The feast celebrating Arthur’s return was rich with fine foods, rich meats and pastries both sweet and savoury, soups and roasted vegetables and fine wine well aged in Camelot’s cellars. To Arthur, it all tasted like ash, like the thick black smoke he’d climbed through to pull the woman off the pyre. Nia, he’d learnt her name was. He saw her face every time he blinked. She was the latest symptom of the hatred that plagued Camelot, innocents young and old, male and female, magical and mundane, all burnt and drowned and murdered. On days like this, the only vision of his mother he’d ever been granted haunted him. She would never have wanted this. Would she even have believed her husband capable of such cruelty?
“Don’t think so hard, sire. You’ll strain something.”
Arthur snorted, snapped back to the reality of the present the feast before him, the caterwauling of the by-now-inebriated minstrels that was not Nia’s scream, the roast pheasant that was not her rapidly-heat-browning skin. Arthur’s stomach turned at the thought, and he turned to fruit for solace, hoping not to find eyeballs where grapes should be, fingers in place of fresh carrots, hearts glistening wetly in place of Camelot’s red apples--
“...rthur. Arthur, did you hit your head?”
Merlin was looking at him with real concern in his eyes, now, and Arthur scowled. “I’m fine,” he lied through his teeth.
Merlin was unimpressed.
“Stop looking at me like that, I haven’t hit my head. You saw the entire skirmish for yourself, unless the tree you were hiding behind blocked your view?" That made Merlin scowl back at him, which was better than the genuine worry on his face.
“Arthur Pendragon!”
Both of their heads whipped towards the entryway, where Morgana stood bristling with rage, parting the exodus of straggling revellers like a boulder in a river. She ignored them entirely, focused instead on her brother. She shouted something Arthur didn’t recognise and hurled a ball of sickly green light at him. Realising Merlin still stood behind him, Arthur dove sideways out of his chair, tackling Merlin to the rushes. The ball collided with the Pendragon banner hung on the wall behind Arthur’s chair with a roar like the crunch of a thousand bones, andd it left a blackened crater in the stone behind the banner, which smouldered green in its wake.
“Come out from there and face me like a man, coward!”
“Stay down,” Arthur hissed at him, and rolled out from behind the table, drawing another ball of green fire. Arthur barely managed to get out of the way in time. It seemed to have veered last second, but Arthur didn’t have time to worry about that, because Morgana was advancing on him with a blade that seemed to destroy any light that touched it.
The only blade Arthur had on him was a ceremonial sword, more decorative than functional, and he knew with a sinking feeling in his gut that Morgana’s blade would slice right through it.
“You traitor!” Morgana’s shriek was unlike any fury Arthur had ever heard from her. Her blade whistled as it hurtled towards his head, and Arthur only just caught it in time with the ceremonial blade. It crumpled like a sapling charged by a bull, and Morgana smiled sharply at him, eyes burning with rage.
Arthur skipped backwards, towards a candelabra or a torch, anything he could use as a weapon, trying desperately to stay out of her range. “What have I done to you?” he demanded, because this wasn’t about the throne. He could see that. This was deeper. This was personal. She hadn’t brought her entourage with her, either, only her fell blade and the sick crackling wound in the air that was her magic gathered about her like a storm, unnerving but strangely familiar, too, in a way he didn’t have time to try to place.
“You backstabbing, gutless coward! You grant strangers more grace than your own sister!” She swung at him again, but she swung wide, and Arthur was able to duck. She had succeeded in cutting him off from the torches he’d been going for, though, The first thing he could grab was a carving knife, still dripping fat.
“What strangers, Morgana?” He backed towards the center of the room again. She raised her hand, and his heart clenched in his chest, sure he’d finally met his end, until the heavy tapestry fell off the wall and tangled her in it.
“Arthur!” Merlin, with his impossible timing, had Arthur’s sword in his hand. He tossed it to him, and Arthur caught it neatly, flinging the scabbard off just in time to see Morgana burn the tapestry off her.
To Arthur’s dismay, it was a tapestry she herself had embroidered, bent painstakingly over it for three long winters. As ever, she gave him no time to mourn and moved in for the kill, her sword whistling a horrible note through the air as it arced towards him again and again.
Excalibur, unlike Arthur’s decorative sword, held up to the blow. Sparks flew between them, silver and gold and red as blood, reflecting in Morgana’s coldly furious eyes..
“The druids,” she hissed across their locked blades. “You gave me no such grace. You saw nothing but your hatred then!” She shoved him back, advancing even as he staggered. “You saw only an enemy, not a frightened sister desperate for someone, anyone to see her as anything but a monster!”
Merlin saw Morgana’s verbal blow hit home. Hurt shattered Arthur’s blue eyes, his lips parting in stunned stupor, but Morgana wasn’t stopping. She whipped her sword down for the mortal blow, and Merlin did the only thing he could. He reached out--the hall was empty, now, save the three of them--and yanked Morgana forward towards Arthur. She overbalanced just as Arthur moved to catch her, staggering straight into his blade.
The both of them looked equally shocked, Arthur’s gaze tinged with hollow horror and Morgana’s with bitter sorrow.
“Arthur,” she rasped. Her blade clattered to the stone from her nerveless fingers, the edge of it eating away the rushes.
“Merlin!” Arthur was frozen, knowing well that to remove the blade was to seal her fate. “Guards! Fetch Gaius!”
Merlin was already at Arthur’s side when he was summoned, shuddering under the weight of the guilt leveled at him in Morgana’s baleful eye. “Sire?”
“You’re a physician, aren’t you? Treat her!”
It was the desperation in Arthur’s voice that galvanised Merlin to act. “Sire...there’s nothing I can do,” he said hoarsely. “Your blade--”
“Don’t lie to me!” Arthur’s voice was harsh with pain, desperation in his eyes that Merlin did not know how to answer. He couldn’t answer it, even if he’d wanted to.
“That blade was tempered in a dragon’s breath,” Merlin finished miserably, unable to look away. Arthur crumpled in on himself with guilt of his own, slowly sinking to the floor with his sister in his arms.
“He isn’t---lying, Arthur.” Morgana’s hands were cold on Arthur’s already. The light in her eyes was fading, and Arthur, for all his power, was powerless to stop it. “Nothing...nothing survives that.” She bared bloodied teeth in a facsimile of a smile. “I saw...I saw what you did today. In my dreams, last night. Perhaps...perhaps we could have built a fairer Camelot, if only you hadn’t…turned against me.”
Both men who’d killed her hovered over her, choking on their horror. Good, she thought as the call of the Goddess grew stronger and stronger, the feast hall at Camelot fading from her view. Let them suffer as I suffered. Let it mean something.
Merlin knelt beside her, but it was too late. She was gone before Gaius burst back into the hall in his nightshirt.
----------
Arthur was tense and curt with Merlin as he undressed him for bed that night. His jaw was tight, his eyes steely, and his mind was a thousand miles away, beyond Merlin’s reach. He couldn’t crack his stony expression, and he didn’t have much heart for jokes that night. Morgana’s blood was still crusted in the beds of his fingernails. He’d scrubbed Arthur clean of it before bundling him into his sleeping breeches and then into his bed, but Merlin could see it staining his own hands even as he extinguished Arthur’s last candle.
He paused in the doorway. “Arthur…”
“Don’t.”
His king’s voice was sharp and jagged with the edges of a pain he would show no one, not even Merlin.
“Leave me.”
Merlin left. He left Arthur’s chambers, left the royal wing of the castle, left the castle itself, left the citadel. As soon as he’d passed out of view from the gate guards, he ran. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him to the clearing in the grove he’d never understood the size of until his father died.
“O Drakon!” he bellowed to the stars, and his voice hitched, broke, and died when he tried to continue the incantation.
It didn’t matter. Kilgharrah heard him anyway.
“The witch is dead, young warlock,” the dragon said, tilting his great head curiously. His amber eyes glowed like twin moons in the dark. “This should be cause for celebration. Without her, Mordred cannot succeed in slaying Arthur, lest she had already made his sword.”
Merlin glared at him through the tears stinging hotly at his eyes. “Don’t you dare,” he hissed. “That was Morgana. That was his sister. Now she’s dead.” He drew himself up to his full height, which admittedly did not compare in the slightest to that of his companion. “I need to go back. We need to go back. Tell me how to turn back the clock.”
Kilgharrah laughed, long and loud and raucous. “Oh, young warlock, how you amuse me. You are Emrys, the Undying. Just as Time cannot touch you, you cannot touch her.”
Merlin’s face was ashen, even taking the silver moonlight into account. “I...I can’t…?”
“No immortal can,” Kilgharrah said, an if a touch of kindness pervaded his words, well, this was an exceptionally young Dragonlord.
“But it can be done? It’s only me that can’t?”
Kilgharrah snorted, a puff of smoke curling lazily from his great nostrils. “Yes, Emrys. You are one of the few with the strength but not the power to manipulate time.” A no doubt terrible idea lit up Emrys’ face with grim determination, and Kilgharrah didn’t bother to suppress a sigh. The warlock hadn’t even seemed to hear the part where the dragon had told him he was immortal, focused entirely on the problem at hand. “There’s no use telling you not to, is there?”
“I release you for the night.” The Dragonlord turned and did not look back.
---------------------
Gaius stared tiredly at the book Merlin had slammed in front of him. “Merlin, this is time magic,” he said. Sliding the half-moon spectacles from his nose, he pinched the bridge of it. “Morgana’s death is a grave wound to you both, but--”
“Gaius, please.” Merlin looked so serious, lit in silvery moonlight and warm firelight, old beyond his years and impossibly sad. “I failed her years ago. Now she’s dead, and Arthur’s devastated, and I.” He stopped. Swallowed hard. “Please. Let me fix it.”
Gaius sighed. “You’ll need to lend me quite a lot of strength. I cannot cast such magic on my own--it would tax even you. You may not be able to use your magic for some time after you travel, and you cannot come back to this time once you leave. Do you understand? This life will be closed to you, should anything go awry.”
“I have to try. I have to.”
Perhaps old age had made Gaius sentimental, but he knew he would do it. “You’re going to explain to Arthur.”
Merlin beamed, until Gaius pointed to his shelves of crystals.
“Charge those. All of them. Arthur must not see you perform magic.”
-----------------
Arthur woke up the morning after murdering his sister to the acrid reek of burning feathers. He sat bolt upright in bed to see a veritable alchemical monstrosity set up on his dining table, complete with crystals and bubbling beakers and strange metal instruments and chalk sigils scrawled onto the table top. Gaius sat bent over the horrible miniature cauldron into which he was currently dissolving what appeared to be crow’s feathers, Merlin bent over his shoulder to watch. Both hands were braced on Gaius’ shoulders, and both of them were intensely focused on the foul brew.
“Merlin,” he said tightly, and the expression on his manservant’s face when his head lifted was unlike any Arthur had ever seen on him. It put him in mind of a wounded animal backed into a corner, and he didn’t ask. Merlin patted Gaius’ shoulder and came to Arthur’s side, suspiciously competently getting his groggy sovereign out of his bed and behind his changing screen. It was almost strange, with Gaius there (albeit with his back to them), to have Merlin shave his face and comb his hair as he did every morning. Arthur much preferred it when it was just the two of them, because Merlin would speak more softly and joke with softer barbs on his tongue when he had his hands on Arthur’s head, face, or neck, which was a rarity he sorely missed, today in particular. He couldn’t relax into it with anyone else in the room, which really rather ruined the whole experience, as it made him tense up at the touch instead of relaxing into it.
He could see both Merlin’s face and Gaius’ figure in the hand mirror, though. Gaius said nothing, still, and even Merlin’s mouth was pressed in a firm, flat line of worry echoed by the set of his brow. His eyes were downcast, focused on his task, and Arthur’s eyes wandered, as they often did, to the fan of Merlin’s eyelashes against his sunlit cheek, thicker and longer than any man’s had any right to be, their shadows cast in rich violet against the red-gold kiss of dawn. Today, though, all he saw was Morgana’s eyes, closed for the last time, anger replaced by unnaturally smooth stillness, her mouth slack and listless, and he shuddered, looking away. As he did, Merlin caught his eye, and the sunlight gleaming there, for one brief moment, flickered harvest moon amber over the usual halcyon blue. Arthur was inexplicably reminded of the dragon the color of stony mountain soil that had terrorised Camelot, but the moment passed, and it was only Merlin again.
Arthur really, really needed to get ahold of himself, but this morning’s strange, terse silence taut like a spider’s web of bowstring between them was a silence he could bear, for the moment, so long as he had Merlin’s familiar touch to ground him. Merlin maintained his uncharacteristic silence until he’d finished with Arthur’s face and hair.
“Among the condolences from the Druids we received this morning were those of the one they call Emrys,” he said as he was dabbing his usual sharply-herbal scented oil onto Arthur’s freshly-smooth cheeks and jaw. “They say he is the greatest sorcerer ever to walk the earth. In his letter, he said her death was a great tragedy and an...aberration from prophecy.”
Arthur’s jaw tightened under Merlin’s delicate fingertips. “An aberration from prophecy?” he demanded, and Merlin continued quickly, hoping to nip that particular wounded tirade in the bud.
“He said there’s--there’s a way to fix it.”
Arthur’s eyes snapped to Merlin’s in the mirror. There was no hint of japery or some attempt at misguided humour. He saw only sorrow and quiet determination. “Using magic,” he concluded flatly. There was a hard, shuttered look in his eyes that Merlin didn’t quite know how to parse, but he saw the glimmer of hope there all the same.
“Using...using magic,” Merlin agreed. “He sent--crystals charged with his power, and a spell that will take us back to the time before her death, that we might prevent her from dying in the first place.” If Merlin had read the spell correctly, it would take them back much further than that. Far enough for him to correct his failure to reach out to her, to show her she wasn’t alone in the first place.
Arthur frowned. “Why isn’t he here himself? If he’s such a powerful sorcerer, surely it should be no problem to cast it himself?” He nodded to Gaius, who sat stiffly at the table, staunchly pretending he couldn’t hear their conversation. “I assume Gaius owes him some favour, which is why he’s doing this bloody sorcerer’s bidding?”
“He’s immortal, sire,” Gaius finally said. He still hadn’t looked up. “No immortal can tamper with the flow of time. It would upset the natural balance of things.”
Merlin’s hands stilled on his neck. It was very distracting, the way they lingered over his pulse point almost absently. Not for the first time, Arthur wondered if Merlin was actually wholly ignorant of the laws surrounding touching royalty or if he simply didn’t care.
“Right.” It was rapidly pushing past the limits of what Arthur was able to swallow. “Why would some immortal, all-powerful sorcerer care enough to send me back in time to save my sister? Is he hoping she’ll be successful in killing me, this time?”
“He’s hoping to prevent a great tragedy to your family,” Merlin cut in sharply, pulling his hands back as if stung. He turned away too quickly for Arthur to catch his expression in the mirror. “He said...he said there was a chance we could go back far enough to stop her from ever turning against Camelot in the first place, if...if we extend her the sympathy and compassion she needed in the first place.”
Arthur set the mirror down and turned to face him. Merlin was fussing overmuch with the arrangement of his nightclothes in the linens basket. “Years. This spell would send us back years.”
Merlin whirled to face him, and to Arthur’s surprise, he caught the glitter of angry tears in his eyes. It was easy to forget, with how stubbornly Merlin cleaved to his side, that Morgana had been his friend, too. “This spell would send us back far enough to save your sister.”
Hands clenched into fists at his side, Arthur forced himself to set his grief and his rage aside and think about what Merlin was telling him. One spell, and they’d go back. If they were able to help Morgana, they would be able to prevent not only her suffering but the deaths and suffering of thousands her war on Camelot had caused.
“Fine.” His voice was taut and unhappy, but he wasn’t unreasonable and he certainly wasn’t his father. “How does this spell work?”
A large part of the tension in Merlin’s shoulders dissipated all at once. “Gaius brews the potion according to the instructions of the spell Emrys sent. We drink the potion, Gaius reads the incantation, and we wake up in the past. From the notes in the books we were able to cross-reference, we should...we should remember everything of our lives until this point, but we can’t come back to the time we left.”
“And we’re certain this Emrys hasn’t set up a very clever trap to kill us?” He hadn’t missed Merlin’s tacit admission that he and possibly Gaius had extremely illegal contraband books hidden somewhere in the castle, but it was rather a moot point, now. Gaius would never hurt anyone.
“I can assure you, sire, Emrys would sooner throw himself on your sword than see you come to harm.” Unexpectedly--or perhaps not so unexpectedly, given that they apparently had a history--it was Gaius that spoke. Arthur turned to look at him, and saw only the same quiet, steady surety he had grown to expect from the old physician. “I trust him with my life and the lives of all Albion. If he has recommended this spell, it will do only as he says it will, and with his great strength to aid me, I will be able to send you both back before your knights have returned from training.”
Arthur looked between the physician and his servant, who was currently dressing him in the peculiar, stony silence he only ever slipped into when the subject of magic arose. (The king wondered about that, sometimes. His childhood best friend had had magic, if he recalled their visit to Ealdor correctly, but of late Merlin had seemed oddly mistrustful of it. Had magic been wielded to hurt him? Was it a consequence of Morgana’s betrayal?) As Merlin finished half-lacing his tunic, Arthur threw his hands up in the air.
“Fine. Yes. Brew your potion, cast your spell, and let us be rid of this.”
Merlin turned to fetch his cloak from his wardrobe. “If you’re worried about the potion, Arthur, I’ll drink it first. If I die, you can avenge my death.”
Arthur fixed him with a sharp look that Merlin met with a stubborn set to his jaw. The slight lift to his brow--clearly an imitation of Gaius’ and not nearly so compelling--eased the tension from Arthur’s shoulders. Merlin clearly didn’t believe he’d come to harm from the potion. As he approached Arthur with the rich red wool draped over his arms, the king swiped half-heartedly at his head.
Merlin, long accustomed to Arthur’s frustrations manifesting themselves in the form of petty, low-grade violence, ducked easily, thoroughly nonplussed as he straightened.
“Not funny.” He had neither the energy nor the mood to initiate the bout of sniping at each other as he otherwise might have. He’d just lost one person dear to him, despite all the pain she’d caused (pain she’d felt, whispered the traitorous voice in the back of Arthur’s head that sounded a whole hell of a lot like Merlin, these days). He wasn’t especially inclined to find amusement in the prospect of the death of another.
Merlin, for once in his blessed life, let it drop, and focused instead on fastening Arthur’s cloak over his---armour? He hadn’t even noticed Merlin putting it on him. He’d die before telling him so, but he was growing to be almost as efficient as George, in some things.
“If you’re ready, then, sire, the potion is almost brewed.”
Arthur looked up to where Gaius stood, facing them at last with a golden chalice in his hands decorated with emeralds and malachite. Arthur did not know how to parse the look on his face. It was somewhere between resigned and deeply saddened, all the weight of his long years bearing down on him. The heavy dark circles under his eyes made him look older and more somber, but his eyes were as kind as Arthur always remembered them.
“Gaius...thank you. For all you’ve done for Camelot, and for me.”
The physician shook his hoary head. “I’ve known you since you came into this world, Arthur. When I received word from Emrys that you would require my aid, I could do no less than lend it.”
Merlin, their bags slung over his shoulder, stepped forward to accept the chalice from Gaius. He had the same dark circles under his eyes, Arthur noticed. Had either of them slept at all? As he drank from it, his eyes screwed shut. “Tastes like shit,” he rasped, passing it to Arthur.
“Merlin!” Gaius scolded him, aghast.
“No, really, it--”
Arthur tuned him out and lifted the chalice to his lips, willing himself not to breathe in. It was a perfectly innocent shade of...grey like used wash-water, steaming deceptively gently. Steeling himself, Arthur drank the remaining portion.
Unfortunately, Merlin had been spot-on. The chalice hit the stone floor of his chambers with a loud clang! as Arthur stumbled to the side, bracing himself against the table. He’d barely forced himself to swallow, and now the wretched brew was threatening to make a reappearance. Merlin looked no better.
He heard the sound of paper crinkling above him over the waves of dizzying nausea, and then Gaius started to read the incantation aloud. Arthur didn’t recognise the language and was hard-pressed to try, because the potion abruptly turned ice-cold in his belly. He retched, and Merlin collided against his side, coughing and wheezing. Perhaps it was the rapidly-expanding freeze that permeated Arthur from the inside out, but Merlin felt burning hot against him, growing hotter every second. He caught on fire just as Arthur turned to ice, and they obliterated each other in a great cloud of steam that dissipated in glittering eddies.
Gaius heaved a sigh of relief into the empty chambers, and sat heavily down at Arthur’s table with a sigh.
He froze.
Two of the six crystals Merlin had charged still glowed with golden light. Between them sat the grouse eggs, whole and not at all emptied into the potion as they’d meant to be.
“I’ve lost them,” he whispered in horror. “I’ve lost them in the mountains of time.”