Chapter Text

As he opened another new door and stepped into another dimly-lit storeroom, Arthur Pendragon knew three things for certain.

One, he was absolutely rubbish at interpreting strange, possibly-prophetic dreams, and he was fairly certain his father’s road to becoming king was infinitely less complicated than whatever was going on right now.

Two, he wasn’t asleep, and he knew this because his armor was starting to squeak loud enough to wake the dead.

And three, he had definitely, absolutely, without-a-shadow-of-a-doubt, walked into this room at least three times before.

He reckoned he couldn’t do much about the first one. If he’d wanted help in understanding his quest, he should have asked for it before he’d set out alone.

He also couldn’t do too much about the second; whoever had polished his armor was also miles away, and he couldn’t very well strip to his underthings right now. Here and now, there was only the squeaking of his badly-polished armor and this ugly storeroom with tiny windows and a smelly pile of rotting grain.

The third thing, though? The third thing was everything. Because he had definitely seen this room thrice, and he’d definitely smelled this spoiled grain thrice, but he’d definitely never walked through this door. 

This door was new. This door was different. This door was across from the pile of grain, where it used to be to the right, or—or maybe to the left? Or—at least once—it had opened directly into it. And Arthur knew that because he’d accidentally kicked it everywhere and it was still everywhere, even if the door wasn’t there anymore.

Sighing, Arthur gave the pile of grain another kick, on purpose this time, and watched the wet kernels scatter unsatisfyingly across the stone floor. He let the door behind him close, too, because that didn’t seem to matter, and then he sat down on the floor and leaned his back against it.

It was tempting to turn around and give up, but Arthur was no quitter. Instead, he stared at the wall across from him and reminded himself why he’d put himself in this situation in the first place.

A week ago

The tavern wasn’t anything special. It sat on the edge of the village like a fat toad, squat and sturdy and a bit too gray against the overcast sky. Its roof—a mix of bare chipped slate and trimmed sod—dripped with the cold rain of mid-autumn, but from the windows spilled warm yellow light and the sounds of patrons dining. 

Arthur flicked his wet hair out of his eyes and willed his horse to a stop. Behind him, his patrol did the same. They were all equally cold and wet, but that wasn’t unusual. It seemed to be gray more often than not as of late, a fact that wasn’t missed by any of them. 

Nobody had complained about the weather. In fact, they’d barely spoken at all in the last few hours of riding, aside from the occasional attempts by Sir Gwaine to lighten the gloomy mood with half-jokes, Sir Percival speaking softly to his irritated horse, and Sir Elyan bemoaning how many mistakes the cartographer had made on the map. 

(“We were supposed to arrive at a village an hour ago,” he’d said, “but there wasn’t any significant turn off the main path.”) 

Arthur had to admit the sour feeling hanging over the group was partially his fault, although none of them would say it to his face. Only Sir Leon had the right combination of authority and courage to say anything, and he was just shooting Arthur long, concerned looks from time to time.

He was giving Arthur one of those looks right now, in fact: something between worry and pity, and Arthur sighed.

The tavern did look inviting.

“We will stop here for the evening,” Arthur announced.

His men visibly relaxed in their saddles. They had been on this patrol for five days, and most of those nights had been spent in the forest. The promise of a warm meal and dry surroundings was too tempting to pass up.

“Rest up. Eat a decent meal. Tomorrow, we push on towards the border.”

All of the men grumbled out varying levels of affirmative responses, but they were already hitching their horses and heading towards the front door of the tavern.

Arthur sighed, his breath billowing out in front of him in a pale white cloud. It was colder than usual this time of year, although not terribly so. He lingered as they entered, taking his time with unclasping his saddlebag. He watched the stablehand come out and start leading his men’s horses out of the rain before he finally shouldered his own pack and followed into the tavern.

The burst of sound and warmth as he walked through the door was an assault on his senses after so many uneventful days in the cool light of the forest. Most of the seats at the bar were already full, as were most of the tables, but Sir Gwaine had already secured one in the corner of the room. His men were peeling off their wet layers, already settling into the space with pints of ale and bowls of what Arthur could only guess was the daily stew.

Sir Leon spotted Arthur across the room and waved him over. 

“The rooms are upstairs,” the knight explained, already on top of everything. “They said to take any four that are already empty.”

Arthur nodded rather numbly, aware of just how wet his clothes were against his skin. His men seemed content to eat first and change later, but all Arthur truly wanted to do was take a warm bath and change into something dry. 

He said as much to Leon, who gave him a concerned frown before pulling his face into neutrality again.

“If you so wish, sire,” Leon said. “But we would love for you to join us after.”

Arthur gave Leon a nod and headed towards the stairs. He flagged down one of the apprentices at the bar to light a fire and bring him a bath on the way, then set out to find a room.

On the way up, he quite literally walked into another man going the other way in the stairwell. He was probably as old as Arthur’s father, but hunched in that way that writers and drinkers always were. Arthur steadied his shoulders as they collided, but the man only grunted, shook Arthur off, and continued walking downstairs. Arthur didn’t care much, he just wanted to sit down.

The rooms upstairs were small and sparsely furnished, but each one boasted its own hearth and extra wool bedding, and they were warm and dry and relatively private. The muffled sounds of the tavern came up through the floorboards, but all in all, it was not the worst room Arthur had stayed in.

And he’d certainly stayed in a lot of them these last few months.

A bathing basin was dragged into the room by two of the tavern’s servants. One of them lit the fire while the other started bringing up buckets of hot water. Arthur watched them work as he laid his wet things to dry by the hearth. He’d been spending more and more of his time on increasingly long patrols, and he didn’t foresee that stopping any time soon. The clothes he wore on his patrols were starting to become ratty, and he’d have to request new ones soon. 

This is for the greater good of the kingdom, he told himself. He’d told his knights and the council and his father the same thing: If they were ever going to track down Morgana and her sympathizers, they needed to start somewhere, and patrols seemed like the best way to start.

But if Arthur was being honest with himself, the truth was far simpler than even that. 

The truth was that Arthur couldn’t stand to spend more than a few days inside the castle’s walls. 

On the eve of her birthday, Morgana had declared herself a Priestess of the Old Religion, sworn vengeance on all of Camelot’s inhabitants, and disappeared into the night…and the father Arthur had once known had disappeared, too.

Not in the flesh, of course. He was still sitting at his throne, still walking through the halls. But Uther Pendragon, once a proud man with a strong will and unrelenting spirit, had changed these last few months, and the castle had changed with him. Morgana’s betrayal had twisted Uther into something wraith-like and unrecognizable–a shadow of the man Arthur had once known. With each passing day, he only slipped further into a grief-driven madness. 

Ever since that fateful night in early spring, the castle had taken on an unfamiliarity, as if the color had been leached from its walls. Servants scurried where they once walked, townspeople stayed inside. Where there had once only been a few sorcerers executed a year, there were now a few every week, and even Arthur was starting to doubt the accusations. Uther’s mind had been all but consumed by his rage, his hurt, and he had spiraled into something that creeped far closer to a tyrant than a ruler. His all-consuming desire to eradicate all traces of magic from the earth came above all other duties, and the kingdom was slipping.

And what was worse was Arthur had no power to stop him.

He’d tried in the beginning, of course. He’d spoken up at meetings, protested some of the accusations, and had hushed conversations over dinner. He’d been thrown into the dungeons twice for his insolence. Uther was not swayed from his war path. He barely seemed capable of hearing Arthur at all. He swung wildly from ranting about the evils of magic to staring out his window, withdrawn and pale.

So Arthur went on a patrol.

And then another.

And another.

And now it was nearing winter, and Arthur was easing himself into a tub in the attic of a nameless tavern, and he knew his odds of finding Morgana and dragging her back to Camelot were slim to none, but he didn’t know what else to do.

The village was called Gorra, and it was only a day’s ride from the border of Ascetir. It was an unremarkable little village, full of perfectly decent people.

It was Sir Gwaine who heard the rumor first.

“If you’re lookin’ for a sorceress, I would start at the tower,” an old man at the bar was saying. Clearly, Sir Gwaine had already told many of the patrons about their quest to track down his half-sister after the corruption of magic had stolen her mind away.

Arthur didn’t mean to listen, but the man was ruddy-cheeked and clearly deep into his cups; he was speaking so loudly it was hard to ignore. 

“A tower, huh? And what ‘bout it?” Gwaine slurred. He was also deep into his cups.

“If anybody’s goin’ to be tempted into sorcery, it’d be there. The root of all evil, that tower is.”

Arthur couldn’t help it. He leaned in.

“The root of all evil, huh?” Gwaine said, taking another swig of his ale. “And why’s that?”

The man shrugged. “That’s not for me to say. I’ve just heard talk ‘bout it, of course. Can’t say nothin’ for sure. But there’re lotsa stories. There’s a lotta magic there, you see. And what’s just as bad is where the magic comes from. There’s a well in there, a well for evil spirits and dark magic. At least, that’s what my buddy told me.”

Arthur scoffed, prompting both the man and Gwaine to startle.

“Sounds like an old wives’ tale to me,” Arthur said. “I’ve never heard of such a tower.”

The man recovered quickly from the interruption, unperturbed. 

“It don’t matter to me if you believe it,” the man said. 

“Well, I think it’s a good story,” Gwaine said, and that was the end of the conversation.

One hour and two drinks later, though, someone else brought up the same story.

At that point in the night, there were a great deal of strangers at the table–young men who worked or apprenticed in the town and were winding down for the night. They’d all introduced themselves and taken turns buying rounds.

Sir Gwaine was flirting with the barmaid.

Sir Percival was trying to convince one of the blacksmith’s apprentices to arm wrestle him.

Sir Leon was telling a story about the time he’d been caught stealing sweets from the castle’s cook.

It was a comfortable atmosphere, warm and inviting despite the storm picking up outside. 

Laughter erupted around the table as Sir Leon described the cook chasing him through the halls with a wooden spoon.

“She was so angry when she caught me,” he said, laughing. “I thought she was going to bring me before the king and have me flogged.”

Sir Elyan chuckled. “That was always the threat!” he exclaimed. “My father would always say that if I misbehaved, I’d be flogged by the king!” he shot a cheeky glance at Arthur, who smiled good-naturedly.

“To be fair, my father always threatened me with the same thing,” Arthur said, prompting even more laughter. “Not that he’d ever go through with it.”

Hugh, one of the locals who had joined their table, grinned.

“We never had flogging,” he said, “but if I misbehaved, my mother would always say the King of Devils would get me.”

One of the other young men—a cooper named Thomas, if Arthur remembered correctly—nodded emphatically. “I stole my neighbor’s cap when I was twelve and my mother told me she'd march me straight to the Devil’s Tower if I didn’t return it!”

“At twelve?” Hugh asked, his face red from laughing and drinking both. “Did you still believe in the Demon’s Tower when you were twelve?”

Thomas’s smile dropped a little, but not his good humor. “I still believe in the Devil’s Tower to this very day,” he said, “because I’ve seen it.”

Hugh shook his head, grinning. “There’s no way you’ve seen it. Even if it was real, nobody who’s seen it has ever come back.”

Thomas grew more serious then. “I swear on my mother’s life, I’ve seen the tower.”

“Impossible!”

“You just can’t go in. There’s no rule against getting close to it. If there were, how would we have the stories at all? I tell you what’s impossible—dead men spreading stories.”

At the turn of phrase, the air in the room seemed to get a bit heavier. Thomas lowered his voice.

“It’s real, and it’s just as horrible as the legends say it is.”

Hugh scoffed. “How would you know, if you’ve never been inside?”

“What’s inside?” Arthur asked.

“Probably dust bunnies,” Hugh said, just as Thomas piped in:

“They say there’s a labyrinth inside. If you go in, you’re lost. Doomed to wander until you die.”

“It’s silly,” Hugh said. “Even if the tower is real—and I’m not saying it is—there’s no way it’s big enough to confuse anyone, much less a…” he stopped, giving Arthur a sideways look.

“A what?” Arthur asked. “A sorcerer?”

“A devil,” Thomas said, waggling his eyebrows. “Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard.”

“Or a demon,” Hugh said. “Or a monster, or a sidhe, or the son of a devil…it’s entirely horseshit.”

“What, you think there aren’t demons walking the earth?” Thomas asked, taking another sip of his ale.

“I think there are plenty of evil things walking the earth. I just don’t think they’ve been locked away in a magical tower a few miles away.”

At this point, Gwaine had given up on seducing the barmaid and made his way back to the table.

“Whoa, who’s locked away in a tower?” he slurred, stealing the tankard out of Arthur’s hand and taking a swig of it. “Are we talking damsels in distress?”

“Nobody,” Hugh said.

“A devil,” said Thomas.

“I think it’s best you all drop the subject,” said a lower, deeper voice on the other end of the table. “Because you don’t know a damn thing about it.”

It was the man that Arthur had bumped into in the stairwell earlier. His eyes were deep set and tired-looking, but there was a lucidity in them that surprised Arthur, considering how much the man had drank.

“Ah, Merek,” Hugh said, smiling. “You know it’s all in good fun.”

“It is not in fun, master Hugh, because the creature is neither a legend nor a devil.”

The ruddy-cheeked old man that Gwaine had been talking to earlier in the night rolled his eyes. 

“Here we go again,” he muttered into his cup. 

Merek stood up from his seat, swaying slightly. He licked his lips, speaking excitedly and reverently.

“It is as real as the nose on my face, and I know it,” he said. “I know it because I saw it. A demon-child, born from the infernal. Its own parents had it locked away when they set eyes on it, horrified by its wickedness.”

Hugh dropped his voice and leaned in closer to Arthur. “Merek’s always been a bit…eccentric.”

The bar had gone much quieter. The man Hugh had called Merek shook his head.

“How and why it was born, that’s between heaven and hell. All’s I know is its parents must’ve tried to rid themselves of such a creature. Wouldn’t you? Drown it, cast it away, bury it in the earth—but would you go through with it? Or would you have the weakness of a parent?”

Nobody spoke, but the knights were listening now. The man shot a furtive look around the tavern.

“It couldn’t die, a monster like that. How could it? Something made from magic itself? From evil itself? That never dies. Even if the parents had an iron will, a bull’s brutish heart, what could be done to kill it? But it could be contained.”

Outside, the wind had picked up. Arthur could almost imagine it was the creature wailing outside the windows.

“So its parents—they built a tower. They built it, and they never stopped buildin’ it, and they added rooms upon rooms, staircases into walls and twisting, shifting hallways—the passages were never the same, so the creature should never get out, trapped in a vertical labyrinth of earth and stone.”

Arthur shivered. He could practically imagine such a creature: a grisly, misshapen thing with yellowing teeth and dark, rolling eyes. 

“May the gods save their souls, those parents did their best. But a child like that? It was only a matter of time.” 

Arthur knew what came next.

“It killed them, one after the other. Folks here have said they heard their screams, still do sometimes. Echoes of what was. You could see the fire and smoke and magic through the trees. Years ago, sure, but you can still hear it lumbering through those halls, lost, the very shape of evil.”

Fat droplets of cold rain spattered against the shuttered windows. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Thomas was the first to speak, voice soft.

“...they say the rooms move on their own now. Nobody goes in, because nobody ever comes out.”

Merek gave Thomas a half-approving, half-crazed look, then split into a wide grin.

“Of course, it could all be a story,” he said, letting out a dry laugh. “Mayhaps what I heard was the shriek of a hunted deer, the smoke of a tree burned by lightning. Maybe I spooked myself, thinkin’ about the heart of evil. It’s been decades, after all. Surely even a trapped rat could have worked its way out of a labyrinth in that time.”

Thomas looked a little less convinced. “Not if the rooms move,” he muttered, mostly to himself, and then took another sip of his drink. Merek gave him a cutting look. Thomas looked pointedly into his cup.

For the rest of the evening, the story hung over Arthur like a dark cloud.

They set out the following morning for the border, but Arthur couldn’t stop thinking about the tower. He didn’t believe in the devil, of course. The entire story was a myth, a tall tale to keep children from misbehaving. It was absurd to believe that the origin of all magic was hidden in the forests of Camelot, of all places, and it was even more absurd to believe that a single man could be the origin of all evil, even if he was the most powerful sorcerer to walk the earth.

And none of that mattered in the first place, because the tower wasn’t real and the man living in it was even less so.

Still, he couldn’t stop turning the idea around in his mind over and over for the rest of their trip.

Six days later, Arthur arrived home with no fanfare and nothing to show for his time away. He had not found Morgana and he had not vanquished sorcery. To make matters worse, they’d had an inordinate amount of rain that year, and the royal grain coffers were at a record low before the winter had even begun.

And the council reported no change in Uther’s mood and a notable decline in his health—he was refusing to eat for long periods at a time.

Maybe it’s time to consider regency, they said.

Perhaps you’ll receive the throne sooner than you thought, they said.

Have you chosen a quest?

Do you have your father’s blessing?

Are you ready to be king?

Arthur was overwhelmed by it all, but that didn’t matter. There were certain things that needed to happen to make Arthur a king, and they needed to happen soon. There was paperwork to write and a coronation to plan and before any of that could happen, Arthur needed to prove his divine right by completing his own quest, alone and unaided, the details of which should come to him in a vision when he was ready.

And there was no time to wait, so Arthur had to be ready now.

His father had always said the vision quest was one of the most important moments in a prince’s life, and Arthur believed him. He took the entire ritual very seriously, and knelt on the floor of the throne room until his knees went numb. He took slow, measured breaths and counted his heartbeats. He resisted the urge to fall asleep.

But when Arthur finally emerged from his night of kneeling before the throne and waiting for divine intervention, all he could think about were old wives’ tales.

All he could think about was visiting that damned tower.

And that wasn’t divine intervention, was it? That was just his own restless mind hoping the answers would come to him easily.

The vision came to him the night after.