camelot_drabble

merlin_writers

A Picnic in the Sun

Overhead the sun was beating down. They said it could make you blind, staring at the sun. But Mordred couldn’t close his eyes.

Merlin stood over him, anger radiating off him in waves.

“Don’t you feel it?”

Mordred took a deep, shuddering breath. He could feel many things. But then, that was the intention.

“Survivors guilt. It’s supposed to be a terrible thing.”

There were plenty of terrible things out there. One of them was standing over him in the hot sun, a knife in his hands. So many cuts.

“How did you survive the blade forged in dragonfire, Mordred? How are you alive when Arthur is dead? What did you do?”

He could not answer. Even if he had known, there was no longer any way to speak. But then Merlin knew that. Merlin had done that to him. Perhaps inadvertently it was Merlin who had preserved him, kept him alive and now paralysed so that he could exact a final revenge?

“I suppose it’s going to work against you. If nobody knows you’re alive then nobody will come looking. Morgana’s dead, after all. Perhaps there’s nobody to come looking. And soon enough there’ll be nothing to find.” Merlin glanced up at the sky, then back at Mordred.

He remembered Merlin from when he was a boy. There had always been something there, an unfair hatred directed at Mordred. Mordred had done nothing back then, and still Merlin had hated him. At least now, having rid the world of the magic-loathing king that Merlin loved, Mordred could see where the current hatred came from.

There was a darkness in Merlin. Morgana had told him of it, told him of the day the sorcerer had thrown off his simple servant disguise and tried to poison her. Later he had meekly returned to Arthur’s side, the prince suspecting nothing. Mordred could see that darkness now for himself.

Overhead, the crows were starting to circle. Perhaps they could smell the blood.

“People say, when they find a body it’s the eyes they go for first,” Merlin told him. “And perhaps you’ll be lucky. There are wild boar in the woods. They’d be faster.” There was no emotion in his voice, or in his face. Belatedly Mordred realised that by killing Arthur he’d wiped that humanity away. This wasn’t Merlin any more. This was Emrys, the feared sorcerer, and he was leaning close, one last time.

“You took Arthur from me,” he whispered.  And then he was gone.

The sun was still beating down. Mordred heard the harsh caw of the crows getting closer, drawn by the smell of blood and lack of movement on the ground.

And then, heavy on his chest, the first of them landed.