3MA

3MA | Chapter 41

41
ONE CAMELOT 

For as long as I can remember, there have always been two Camelots: the fabled city from all the bedtime stories, and the concrete wasteland in which I was born.

Now, standing in the knee-high grass of the fields that surround the Amphitheater, Merlin's Staff clutched in one hand, and Amaris's hand held firmly in the other, I can feel another Camelot ready to open its eyes.

Not Mom's fairytale.

Not Carven's cruel metropolis.

But another place entirely. A third Camelot. A land of my own devising. I can feel the shifting outline of it moving through the Staff from tip to tip; a restless blueprint eager for construction.

Even if by some ridiculous miracle you won the Staff, I hear LeMorte's voice echo in my ear, what would a ruffian like you do with all the power in the heavens?

I look around at the faces of millions of citizens who gather around the Heirs in a wide circle, an endless, moonlit sea of raised chins and fluttering hair. The answer to LeMorte's question is suspended in all of their trembling eyes; each one housing a hopeful vision of the future.

Of our future.

Myrna steps out of the ring of onlookers and peers over my shoulder at the orange stain spreading across the horizon. On any other night, sunrise in Guinevere Park would be a welcome sight. But with our lives still tied to the Claiming, the tendrils of dawn light that slip through the pines look more like the fingers of death.

"Whatever it is you plan on doing," Myrna says, "now would be the time."

I turn around and glare at the King's Spire looming over the park's silhouetted tree line. Tonight it glows an intense blue-green--the same color as my static--as if on this night its fate belongs to me and no other.

An image flashes across my mind: the frayed banner hanging from Camelot's facade.

"I need you to lead us all in a prayer," I say to Myrna.

Confusion floods Myrna's eyes.

And then, her wrinkled face spreads into a smile of understanding. She grips the glowing head of her cane, her voice emitting in an amplified wave. "A hundred years hence I've not forgot, the path that leads to Camelot."

Just as in the dining hall, but on a much grander scale, Myrna's voice is joined by every person in Camelot; the sad, the hungry, the rich and powerful, millions of voices coalescing into a single thunderous prayer.

"THAT FROM THE DOOR A BANNER FLEW, A CRIMSON SWORD AND STAFF OF BLUE, INTERTWINED LIKE LOVERS TRAGIC,"

Amaris turns to me, Eleanora gleaming in her clenched right fist, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"One part blade," Amaris says with renewed courage, lifting the sword into the dawn sky.

"The other magic," I say.

I swing the Staff like a baseball bat. Amaris's blade cuts through the air like a silver rainbow. At the same moment the legendary weapons collide, my mother's reforged command leaps from my lips.

Return.

Two ribbons of fire, one crimson and the other blue, burst from the spot where the Staff and sword unite. They coil in midair, forming a single beam of blinding power. I pivot and direct it toward the center of the King's Spire. The beam collides with its thrumming heart in a shower of molten sparks.

The towering landmark buckles. The static trickling up its glass face flickers and then goes dark, turning the King's Spire into a shadowed obelisk. A mournful moan shutters from the darkened building and echoes through the trees.

I reach a hand out and lace my fingers through Amaris's as the King's Spire is driven down into the earth, as though slowly kneeling before the citizens of Camelot, and collapses into a cloud of electrified dust.

When the debris finally clears, a blank space is revealed where the monument had stood. In that newly exposed patch of night I see a familiar spray of stars.

The Armoured Dove.

"I'll give you this," Amaris says. "You really know how to end a fight."

I kneel to the ground and place my palm against the dew-drenched grass. My fingertips rattle to a familiar heartbeat. Only this time, the Hearthstone's power feels a lot closer to the Surface than ever before.

And it's growing closer by the second.

I look up at Amaris. "It isn't over yet." I nod to the distant rustling tree line where a burst of pigeons take flight. "Hold onto something."

"What--

The earth trembles as a single alabaster turret pierces the ground where the King's Spire had once dominated the skyline, a spiral of arched windows twisting up its massive girth.

The spiked head of a chapel bursts from the ground next, rising from the earth like a legion of the dead. Towers and ornate bridges and parapets and snaking cobblestone walls rise up through the concrete streets of downtown, volcanic eruptions of castle parts. LeMorte's metal skyscrapers and crystalline office buildings topple as Camelot pulls herself, brick by brick to the Surface, where she always belonged.

At long last, the castle that had once served as the proud heart of this city settles, and takes her rightful place once again in a shaft of Camelot's morning sun.

Streaks of light course through the castle's reawakened body, setting the entire structure ablaze. A rippling wave of static spreads from Camelot's base and rolls across the city in every direction.

I set my gaze on the distant horizon where the shadowed skyline of the Outer Boroughs hulk, shackled in darkness. I locate a familiar line of leaning tenement apartments and disused factories.

Trudge.

I shield my eyes as my hometown becomes a line of proud fire; the frozen apartments thawing as Camelot's enchanted blood is pumped through every inch of the neighborhood. Beyond Trudge, all the other Outer Boroughs ignite with static, too.

Jerseytown.

The Grail Yards.

Haggard's Landing.

All of them set ablaze in rainbow light, until the black, rigid borders that had separated us for generations are obliterated in a blink of an eye, forming one borough.

Unified by a single beating heart.

A lump rises to my throat when I think about Mom. How more than anyone, she would have liked to have seen this day. A part of me wonders if maybe she can see it. Two worlds linked by a single pair of shared, light gray eyes.

For a while, we all just sit on the grass in silence and watch the sun trace an arc over the newly risen fortress; a painted backdrop of a long-forgotten dream.

I'm the first to push myself to my feet.

"Where do we go now?" Mag asks.

It seems all of Camelot waits for my response.

I point the Staff at the horizon, where a trail of roses leads into the castle's waiting embrace. "Home."

THE END