Chapter Text
Merlin scrambles backward, away from the broken altar, uncaring how the sharp rocks scrape against his skin, leaving thin, red lines in their wake.
He could hear someone screaming, and he was horrified to realize it was him. He screams some more, as if his horror bore repeating.
Arthur.
Arthur.
Arthur.
He whips his head around looking for Arthur.
“Arthur!” He yells, his voice echoing over the steady drum of the rain against weathered stone. He swallows, then calls out again, bellowing Arthur's name with a push of his magic, carrying it farther and with it, Merlin's heart.
“No, no, no, he was safe! He was - he was -”
Where was he?
Merlin looks down and nearly jumps at the sight of sodden grass and puddles of rain. He glances at his hands, bloodied but only by his wounds.
He laughs as a sob builds in his chest. No mud and blood mixing between his fingers, no moans and gurgles of men dying in the distance. The air smelt fresh - tinged with rain and lightning and ash.
There was no one in his arms growing colder by the second.
He laughs, hoarse and broken, as he feels the tears fall and mix with the rain.
He stands up but slips on the slick, wet grass.
His body slams painfully onto the ground and he welcomes the sensation. He clutches at his chest, and relishes how his fingers prod the burnt skin beneath.
He starts shaking with laughter, his eyes and mouth filling with rain. He chokes on it but he doesn't find it in himself to care. The grass tickles his ears. He laughs some more, chokes some more.
Merlin doesn't know how long he lay there laughing. Soon, the rain slows to a drizzle and the laughter dies out in a sudden bout of sobriety.
He sits up and his eyes fall on a tattered piece of red cloth where it lay amongst the ash and bone of what was once Nimueh. Merlin closes his eyes, nauseated as images of Nimueh lighting up from the inside fills his mind. Lightning flashed once more, and as the world turned blindingly white for a moment, he saw again the tattered banners, the fires burning in the distance, and an all too-familiar face, ashen and lifeless, the life gone from his eyes.
Arthur's bane draws near.
Merlin's heart leaps to his throat, the familiar heat of magic surging to his finger tips.
“When?”
Arthur's bane draws near. No power you have can change it.
“What can I do?”
The only answer Merlin received was the near palpable tinge of unfettered magic lingering where Nimueh died, like a cloud of acrid smoke that burnt Merlin’s senses.
It pulled at him.
He reaches out with his own magic, a golden tendril swirling and mingling with Nimueh’s magic. A shock ran up Merlin's arm making him gasp as he drew his magic into him, like a rabbit huddling in its burrow at the first taste of danger.
Curiously, Merlin stood. He reaches out again with his magic, hesitantly reaching out for Nimueh's magic again. Merlin gasps as another shock runs through his body. He doubles over as the wind is knocked out of him, and a wild surge of untamed magic courses through his veins.
He screams as it burns its way into him, scorching his senses until it consumes him. He feels Nimueh's pain - her loss and her regret, and her unending hatred of Camelot's king. He feels her love for a woman who was queen even before she had a crown, and the devastation she left behind when she died giving life to a son she will never know.
Merlin echoes her screams when she lays her eyes upon the Isle, alight with dragon flame and the bodies of her sisters strewn about like discarded rubbish, as her kin were slaughtered for their gifts and she could do nothing but watch.
He feels his heart break as Nimueh lays eyes on Arthur, beautiful and terrible - the spitting image of his mother - as he vows to destroy magic, the very thing he owed his life to.
The burning stops, and a cold feeling settles in Merlin’s heart.
He tells himself it was just the cold rain - that it had seeped into his clothes and found its way under his skin - or maybe it was just in his head and he will be warm enough as soon as he and Gaius are home.
Merlin gets up and wakes Gaius, who wakes easily, groggy and wobbly on his feet, but incredibly jovial for someone who had quite literally died minutes before.
Gaius doesn't even complain about the cold, or about the long journey home. Instead, he lets Merlin brace him, and Merlin holds onto Gaius for dear life.
Merlin doesn't acknowledge that he feels a foreign magic in him.
He helps Gaius to his feet instead and walks him away from the altar.
Merlin feels the magic within him roiling like a storm, his magic and something else fighting, and both are losing to each other, and with every step he takes, he feels more unbalanced, and yet he grew steadier somehow.
The ground swayed beneath his feet but never once had he stumbled. The earth sang, and the wind blew, but all remained silent and still.
Gaius spoke no words, but Merlin could hear him just as if he were talking aloud.
The trees whispered to him things they've seen, and the sky came alive and danced with all the colors of the world.
It was…confusing.
It was exhilarating.
And just as suddenly as it had all happened, it all fizzled out, as if Merlin had been a candle about to burst into flame and someone blew out the wick.
The roiling in him had stopped. It had been replaced by a tentative quiet - a boulder carefully balanced on a pebble, or an arrow pulled taut on a bow with no intent of firing.
Merlin glances back at the altar, and a sense of both admiration and disgust floods him.
A perversion, it whispered.
Something new, something great, it begrudgingly adds, impressed and annoyed.
“Gaius,” Merlin whispers, his voice refusing to go any louder.
Learn with me.
“Gaius, I-”
I will teach you.
“What is it, Merlin?” Gaius takes a few steps back closer to the shore, walking backwards and keeping full view of the altar, eyeing it suspiciously.
Arthur's bane draws near. No power you have can change it.
“Merlin?”
But we can change it now. I will teach you how.
“Merlin!”
I shall lead you to a path most glorious.
“Gaius, I need to stay,”
Together, we shall save the Once and Future King!
“MERLIN!”
Merlin realizes he had been walking back towards the broken altar. He glances back at Gaius, still standing where Merlin had left him shivering in the cold. Mist swirled behind him, a near impenetrable wall that seeped in through what was once the Isle's door.
Gaius shivered again, the cold slowly getting to him.
Or was it fear? Worry? Perhaps all of it.
Merlin blinked and Gaius was gone, his brown robes swallowed up by the mist. Somehow, Merlin knew he was safe.
Merlin turned his attention back to the broken altar, and this time, he could sense raw magic just waiting for him to do something.
He reaches for it, just as he had reached for Nimueh, and he doesn't scream or burn this time.
He feels nothing and everything at the same time. The world sped up and slowed down - he could see everything, from the smallest ant to the largest beast he knew no longer resides on this world.
He feels every sorcerer and magical creature, in this life and the next, as they weave their way into existence.
He sees the world grow and crumble again and again, and kingdoms and civilizations rise and fall and in the middle of it all, was Arthur.
Beautiful, terrible, cruel and noble Arthur.
He was dressed simply, in what he calls his peasant garb - a plain red tunic and a pair of soft trousers.
Arthur turns to him, his smile dazzling and radiant, enough to rival the sun and all the stars in the heavens, his eyes bluer than the sky itself.
“Thank you,” he whispers to Merlin, his voice thick with emotion, “stay with me?”
Merlin reaches out to him, his thin fingers clasping over Arthur's calloused hands.
“Good luck getting rid of me,”