The morning sun shone through the forest’s treetops and landed on the search party’s camp. Whew. Today was going to be a hot one.
Leon was the first one to wake up. He opened his eyes and sat up, rubbing sleep from them. He searched the campground to make sure nobody had been carried off by a wolf during the night. His face grayed when he didn’t see Merlin. “Merlin!”
His yell woke up everybody else: Gwen, Gwaine, Percival, Elyan, and Agravaine.
Elyan glared at Leon and yelled, “What have you done to him?” The Death Lion part of the potion was starting to take effect.
Leon glanced at Elyan and said, “Nothing! He’s missing!”
“Tell the truth!” Elyan leaped to his feet. He pulled his sword out of the ground and charged at Leon.
“Elyan, stop!” Gwen shrieked. She grabbed her brother, but he fought her. He gave Leon the evil death glare.
Oh, gosh, Agravaine thought to himself. This was a disaster. Merlin was the one supposed to be possessed by the Death Lion! Not Elyan!
Elyan kept on fighting Gwen.
She was given no other choice. She reached down next to the fire and picked up a shield, whacking it across her brother’s head.
Elyan collapsed onto his front, knocked out cold.
Gwen peered down at him, shivering. “Sorry, Elyan. You’re welcome, Leon. I just saved your life.”
Gwaine and Percival snorted. That must have been embarrassing for Leon, getting saved by a girl.
Before the search party could discuss what happened to Elyan overnight and where Merlin was, they heard a crack in the woods. The remaining knights wasted no time picking up their swords. They pointed them in the direction from which the crack came.
A few minutes passed, and then a figure stumbled out of the forest. It was an old man who had a long, white beard. He wore a red cloak.
At the sight of the search party, he chuckled and said, “Ah, if it isn’t the stepping stones of Camelot.”
“You!” Leon lowered his sword.
The old man was Dragoon the Great, or Merlin in disguise. This was his plan to drag the search party to the Lake of Peace. “Have you come to kill me?” Dragoon asked.
“We most certainly would like to!” Gwaine said.
Dragoon snickered. “Well, you can’t.”
“And why is that?” Gwaine wanted to know.
“Because how else will you find that stubby lad Merlin?”
Dragoon’s words caused the whole search party to freeze, including Agravaine. What was going on here?
Gwaine kept his sword up, but he asked Dragoon, “You know where Merlin is?”
Again, Dragoon snickered. “Ack! I never realized what a fool you are, Gwaine! I took your lad to the Lake of Peace overnight!”
“You kidnapped him?” Gwen asked.
Laughing, Dragoon said, “It was easy, lass.” He leaned down and picked up a stick to help illustrate his story. “I waited until the moon was hidden behind the trees. Then I struck! I grabbed that lad, put my hand over his mouth, and took him away! I’ve never felt such success in my life!” Dragoon lifted his stick over his head, but he cringed when his back cracked. “Ack! My back!”
“And why are you telling us this?” said Percival. “A proper kidnapper would go into hiding. He wouldn’t come right up and say he was the one who did it.”
“I thought that maybe you wanted to take your friend to the Lake of Peace, where he can be healed.” Here, Dragoon pointed his stick at Elyan, who was starting to come to. Guinevere quickly smacked him across the head again with the shield.
Agravaine tried to intervene. “This scrawny, old man has no idea what he’s talking about! I’m sure Merlin went on ahead.”
Leon pointed his thumb at Dynard, who was still tied up to a tree with the rest of the horses. “But Dynard’s here. It’s not like Merlin to go on ahead without us. He’s always on Arthur’s tail. Maybe we should listen to this brute.”
“And why should we?” asked Agravaine. “He’s a sorcerer! You know he can’t be trusted!”
Percival held up his hands to stop all the arguing. “Quiet, you nincompoops!” He focused his attention on Gwen, who was still standing over Elyan’s motionless body. “I think we should let Gwen decide. After all, we won’t be able to find Arthur without Merlin and Elyan.”
Oh, gosh. Gwen hated being put on the spot. Then again, what if Dragoon really did know where Merlin was and how to heal Elyan? She knew Elyan was under the Death Lion’s spell. Merlin told her yesterday. Taking a deep breath, she said to Dragoon, “You didn’t really kidnap Merlin last night, did you? He came to you looking for help on how to free Elyan from the curse, right?”
Snap! This was a slight change of plans. Dragoon momentarily broke character, but then he yelled, “Exactly!”
“Curse? What are you talking about, Gwen?” Leon asked Gwen.
“The Death Lion has possessed my brother,” Gwen explained. “Somebody snuck the potion that changed Arthur into one of our water pouches yesterday.”
“Exactly!” Dragoon yelled again.
“So, are you saying that there’s a traitor in our vicinity?” Leon said to Gwen.
“Possibly.” Gwen momentarily looked at Agravaine out of the corners of her eyes. “Merlin must have known this, so he sought out Dragoon to help us.” She took a step closer to Dragoon, staring into his eyes. Hm, was it just her, or did those eyes look a little familiar? She nodded at him. “Take us to the Lake of Peace.”
***
“Up! Up! Up!” Dragoon yelled at Percival and Gwaine. He needed their help to hoist him up onto Dynard. It was much harder to get on a horse as an old man rather than a young one.
Percival and Gwaine puffed out their cheeks. They were struggling quite a bit to lift Dragoon.
“You call this a knight boost?” Old Merlin asked. “Up! Up!” Finally, the knights managed to get him on the horse.
Together, they fell onto their backsides and rubbed sweat from their foreheads.
“Ah ha ha! Thank you, gentleman!” Dragoon joked. “But you could use a few more training sessions.”
Agravaine tried to turn the search party around. “I must protest!” he yelped.
“You will do no such thing!” Dragoon snapped. “After all, I’m the only one who can get us to the lake! Hyah!” He kicked Dynard’s sides, but the horse didn’t move. He merely snuffed and looked to the left. Dragoon tried again. “Hyah!” Dynard still refused to move.
While Dragoon tried to think, Gwaine and Percival got off each other. They exchanged suspicious looks. Was there really a traitor in the midst? If so, who was it?
“You good, Percival?” Gwaine sarcastically asked Percival.
“Oh, terrific,” he snarled.
“Oh, boy!” Dragoon shouted. Right when he yelled that, Dynard took off.
“Hey! Wait for us!” shouted the knights.
Leon helped the unconscious Elyan onto his horse. He quickly climbed aboard his own and ordered for both his and Elyan’s horses to follow Dragoon.
***
Agravaine was so frustrated right now. At first, he didn’t join the search party. He brought the news to Morgana and asked her what the best course of action was.
“It’s simple,” she told him. “You kill the mermaids.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” asked Agravaine. “That no-good sorcerer is with them! He won’t let them die!”
Morgana remained calm. “Are you forgetting something, Agravaine?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Morgana glared. “I knew it,” she said in a sarcastic voice. “You’re nothing but a big, fat bumpkin. When will you get it into your thick skull that we have a Death Lion on our side?”
Oh. Agravaine felt stupid. He slapped his forehead, letting Morgana’s words sink in.
“And Death Lions feed on magic, right?” she added.
Ooh! Agravaine saw where this was going. He and Morgana exchanged an evil look. Agravaine may have screwed up the potion, but it was true. He and Morgana still had the Death Lion.
***
Agravaine caught up with the others a short while later. When they asked where he had been, he merely replied, “I was peeing.”
Laughing, Gwaine said, “Oh, I knew it! Instead of stopping five times a day, we’re going to stop ten times! Ha! Ha! Get it, Percival? Because Merlin had to use the bathroom merely ten minutes after we left Camelot yesterday?”
Percival rolled his eyes. Was it too early to have had enough Gwaine for one day?
The search party was actually closer to the lake than they thought. They reached it in merely three hours, but by then, Merlin was really struggling to keep up the Dragoon act. His magic. He felt his magic fading from him.
Gwen, who was riding next to him, asked, “Are you okay, Dragoon?”
“Ah, never better!” Dragoon forced a smile. “Except this dawg gone horse is as slow as me! Giddy up!”
Dynard didn’t listen to him. He only listened to Merlin. Merlin never dug his heels into his sides.
Agravaine, who was riding behind the sorcerer, smirked. Something moved in the forest’s bushes behind him. The search party was nearing the hill Arthur stopped at before he rode down to the lake.
However, Gwaine sensed that they were being followed, and he stopped everybody. “Is it just me, or does it feel like something is following us?”
“It’s just Agravaine,” Gwen said. Nevertheless, she, too, was starting to get an uneasy feeling.
Old Merlin fell forward on Dynard. He glanced at his hands and gasped. They were starting to revert to their youthful self again. “No,” he begged under his breath.
“Let’s move,” Gwaine ordered. His horse jumped into a trot.
Gwen, Percival, Leon, Agravaine, and Elyan’s horse followed. Gwen, though, noticed that Dragoon the Great had stopped Dynard. He hopped off him, tying him up to a tree.
“What are you doing?” Gwen asked.
“Oh, uh.” Old Merlin thought fast. “Peeing.”
“Now? Are you serious?”
“Hey! When you’re old and rusty, you’ll know how I feel!”
Gwen sighed. After a moment of silence, she said, “Fine, but make it quick. Be careful. We’ll meet you at the Lake of Peace.”
“Sounds like a plan!” Dragoon gave Gwen a quick nod. He held his hands behind his back so she wouldn’t see them turning back into Merlin’s.
After Gwen rejoined the search party, he dove behind a cluster of bushes. Once both legs were behind it, he turned back into young Merlin. Exhausted, he collapsed onto his front. Merlin wanted to sleep, but he couldn’t. The growling was drawing closer and closer, and he had a feeling he knew what it was. Why else did he feel so drained of magic?
Merlin was at the top of a hill that stretched down to the Lake of Peace. He could see the sparkling water through the trees.
He struggled to his knees. Peering up to the treetops, Merlin repeated the aging enchantment to himself. Nothing happened. His eyes did not glow. Merlin gave it another go, but he still wasn’t able to transform. He held his breath when he noticed that the growling was right next to him.
Merlin did not move a muscle. He stayed quiet. After a bit, the growling stopped. Did the creature leave? Merlin wasn’t sure, so he double-checked. He looked out from the bush’s left side. Nothing. The forest looked empty. Was the coast clear? Merlin started to think so, but then he looked past the bush’s right. The first thing he saw was an enormous creature with a lion's face, red eyes, and a pair of antlers that grew out from behind its ears. It just stared at the young sorcerer. He stared back.
Merlin’s entire body broke down in sweat. He didn’t even blink. He opened his mouth to speak, but his voice was trembling just as much as him. “Hey. It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”
The Death Lion roared in his face. Spit spewed out all over Merlin. Even though he was screaming on the inside, he lifted his finger and held it up to the monster’s face. He picked up a huge stick resting next to him and stuck it vertically in its mouth. Then, he took off at a full sprint.
The Death Lion was furious. It broke the stick and stomped the ground with its powerful front two legs. Merlin flew forward with the impact and crashed down on his front. Quickly getting up, he yelled spells, but none of them worked. He was utterly powerless. Therefore, he had no choice. He kept on running. Except, his foot ended up crashing into an unexpected hole, and he fell again. Merlin cringed with pain. He grabbed his leg with both hands, starting to pull on it, but he was not able to free it.
The Death Lion crouched down and crawled toward him. It threatened Merlin with its razor-sharp fangs. Before he knew it, the monster was standing directly over him. Death Lion drool splashed onto Merlin’s head.
He covered his face with his hands. For once in his life, Merlin was afraid of death. The Death Lion was a monster like no other monster. If someone saw one, death was guaranteed. Even if that someone involved Emrys, the greatest sorcerer ever to walk the planet. At least, that was the thought running through Merlin’s mind.
He waited to die. That was all he could do.
However, just when he thought all was lost, a voice suddenly yelled, “Merlin!” off to the side. Somebody threw a sword out from behind some trees, and it stabbed the Death Lion in the side, but it did not kill it. The “different magic” Kilgharrah spoke of was not yet ready for battle.
The surprise attack succeeded in scaring the creature off. It pulled the sword free from its wound. Gushing blood, it left Merlin. He may have won this time, but next time would have a different outlook.
Merlin quickly turned his head toward the cluster of trees from which the sword came. His eyes widened, and a grin stretched across his face. Standing in front of the trees was none other than… Arthur Pendragon.
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