It had been hundreds of years that the warlock had waited for his King to return. He passed the Isle of Avalon every day, waiting and hoping that that day would be the day.
The warlocks hair had long since turned white, and it fell in scraggly locks around his face and to his shoulders. He looked so different from his younger self, the years had hardened him. Each day that went by without his best friend returning seemed harder than the last, but still he walked the road that would lead him to the overlook where he could see the small island where Arthur lay.
Something felt off about that particular day, however, and he had no idea of what was happening on that Isle even as he walked down the road towards it.
Hours earlier a young girl, barely age twenty-five, had taken a boat across the lake. She was intent on photographing the place that nobody else dared to visit. The locals said it was haunted, and you could hear the screams of anguish during the night. Those rumors didn't deter her one bit, and Guinevere De'Vonne walked up the steep hill to the large piece of stone that sat atop it and began to take her photographs.
As she begin to tire of her relentless photographing, she stopped. Taking a deep breath, she looked across the lake as what vaguely looked like an old man walked down the road. The man stopped to look at the Isle and Gwen couldn't help but to zoom in on his face and take a picture.
The man looked haunted, and his eyes looked so familiar yet she couldn't place where she'd seen him before. He looked like a beggar, and she thought, perhaps she'd seen the man out on the streets before, but that thought didn't sit right in her mind.
Shaking the old man out of her head, she turned back to the giant stone and laid her hand gently atop it. For no reason she could think of, she felt suddenly heart broken. She hadn't believed the rumors at first but now she could literally feel the anguish that came with the low moans of sorrow.
Without warning, lightning struck not ten feet from where she stood.
Guinevere screamed, her voice echoing across the waters and straight into Merlin's ears. Gwen jerked away, looking up at the suddenly blackened sky. Another bolt of lightening shot out, in the same place as it had it just before; and then another, and another. Six times lightening hit the ground, and it looked to Gwen as if it was in the exact same spot as the very first.
Gwen shielded her eyes as the seventh lightning strike struck, and she cried into her palms. Her breathing was erratic and she could taste the fear running through her veins. She hadn't wanted this, she simply wanted to take pictures of this place. This little island that had been in her dreams since she was a young girl, the island that called out to her entire being. But she didn't want to die, she didn't want lightning to strike her, it was much too close and she felt the static clinging to her. She was terrified.
Several minutes passed, and as silence reigned upon her once more, Gwen slowly peeled open her eyes. The clouds that were black and had covered the sky over the island just minutes before was now bright, blue and completely cloudless.
The water's waves, which she was sure she'd heard crashing against the islands shoreline now lay quiet, barely rippling with the breeze.
Then... there... where the lightning had struck lay... a man.
Sunshine glinted off of metal and blinded her for only a moment before she saw him. She'd never noticed him before, when she'd been taking pictures, yet there he lay.
'No wonder lightning struck here so many times... he's covered in metal,' Guinevere thought to herself as she slowly walked over to the man. 'Poor guy, he's definitely dead... no man could have lived through that."
