[TW/ Blood. Major wounds. More blood. Major character death]
Pieces of her heart fell from her as Ari sprinted for higher ground, fuelled completely by the instincts in her veins when all that her body begged her to do was to fall to the ground.
She'd left Lancelot behind. Left him. And now there was no time to look back over her shoulder, not when her feet stumbled through the mess of blood, mud, and trampled grass, dodging lifeless bodies on the ground and individual fights between her fighters and theirs.
Her lungs heaved, her sight upon the singular strange rock that jutted out of the ground a few dozen yards away from the edge of the forest. She didn't know how she was going to get the attention of the field again, she just needed to. Or else she would have left Lancelot to die for nothing. He was alive. She had to believe it.
Releasing her power like that to make the earth shake when she saw him fall made her feel like there was none left within her. Completely drained. Legs barely carrying her, her body still thrummed from the shock of what she didn't know she had the power to do, and she prayed to the gods that she never did it again.
Raiders rammed their way through a cluster of Paladins ten feet in front of her. Ari couldn't see the Red Spear anywhere but she wasn't trying to look. She was covering more ground but with every diversion that she had to make, that jutting rock felt further and further away.
A shining sliver of silver shot over her shoulder and past her ear.
"Ah! Fucking—" Her one glance back, and two red cloaks chased behind her.
She should have picked up her sword from where she'd dropped it engulfed in flames. There was too much risk in dropping to snatch the one knife that was still in her boot, but the dip in the sodden ground that she didn't see in time took that risk for her.
Ari's knees crashed into the earth before she could recover the misstep. Fingers shooting to her boot and grabbing the knife as her heart pounded warnings in her chest. She whirled and released the blade right to where instinct and years of training for this knew innately that the closest red cloak would be, expecting to hear an agonised wail.
But he was frozen. The both of them with their red faces and teeth bared mid-sprint.
The blade struck the first Paladin right in the centre of his stomach, but— "What the fuck..." He didn't fall. He didn't even flinch as his sword reached semi-raised above where she'd been forced to stay low.
Panting with exertion, Ari's eyes blew wide. Nothing and nobody around the battlefield moved at all. The world had slowed down to a heartbeat.
"Arianne."
Her gasp split the silence. She scrambled to turn, scraping her palms over the small, hard clumps of dirt beneath her.
"Zurah?" The name fell desperately from her lips. "Zurah!"
A soft smile and open arms beckoned Ari to her feet. "My child."
This wasn't possible. She wasn't really seeing the weathered olive skin and bright grey eyes that she'd left months ago, standing only a few feet away. She had to have been too late with falling and died at that Paladin's blade without knowing it.
Ari hurried to her feet and staggered forwards towards the Druid. Tears that hadn't entirely stopped broke from the corners of her eyes again in this suspended moment of time.
"Is this real?" She whimpered.
"Yes, sweet child." Zurah's wrinkled hands reached up and cupped her face with a warmth that battled the cold, and Ari sobbed.
"What do I do?" She begged. "Lance, he's..." Dying.
Sympathy softened the corners of Zurah's eyes and made the smile fall from her face. She took a step back that Ari wanted to chase and held out her hands. A beam of while light formed above Zurah's palms, so bright that Ari had to shield her eyes. Still, around her, was a silent, unmoving tableau of the fight.
That light dimmed, leaving a sword in its place. The long blade was broad, covered in swirls at the hilt and faintly glowing down the steel with runes she couldn't read.
"What is this? Why are you here— How are you here?" Exhaustion bled into every word from Ari's lips.
"Let the Sword guide you." Zurah's eyes held all of the certainty that Ari had lost, though she wished for just one answer that wasn't cryptic.
"What is this?" She asked again, having no choice but to trust Zurah's foresight. She vaguely remembered something about Druid fire, and some kind of fate bring written that had kept her father away.
"This is the Sword of the First Kings."
Ari's jaw fell open. This? This is the Sword of Power? Kaze had said weeks ago now that some Mage called Merlin was guarding it, so why did Zurah have it now?
"Your time is running out, my child, to save your friends." Words so grim that were said so softly.
"No—" She didn't even want the power of the Dagger of the First Queens that had been forced upon her, let alone the power of the Sword that was humming so strongly off of it that she felt it against her skin. It was too much.
"To save Lancelot," Zurah said.
Lance... Ari's eyes stung. How could one sword save him? If Zurah said that this was necessary, then there must be a reason— she must know what would happen if Ari took the Sword.
She reached and hovered her fingertips over the leather wrapped grip, feeling an energy push back against her. The wind and the whispers rattled around in the unbearable silence.
In one rush and bated breath, she grabbed the Sword and raised it in an arc to her side.
The blade sang with a thousand voices and the battlefield snapped out of its trance.
Zurah was gone.
A screech from behind her made Ari spin, Sword raised straight into the soft side of the second Paladin whilst the first crashed to the ground. She didn't wait to see the one with the blade lodged beneath his ribs, fall.
Her mind that governed her actions wasn't her own at all.
Let the Sword guide you.
So she did.
Like she was being called by a siren song, Ari turned towards where the Sword's power pulsed the mightiest against her palm and her feet lifted from the ground, running towards she did not know where, head first and alone towards the edge of the battlefield.
The Sword, given its size, should have been heavy to wield. Her arms were definitely tired enough as she got caught in the cross of another Paladin's blade. Ari moved as if she had been fighting for thousands of years— swifter and more agile than she had the strength left to be.
It led her towards the jutted rock that protruded from the grass, pointed and flat at one edge like it was built to be stood upon.
Ari jumped up, groaning as she went, and steadied her feet. From here five feet in the air she could see across the entire chaos of the field. Littered with more that were wounded or dead than alive. Coloured more crimson and brown than green.
Let the Sword guide you.
Whatever was going to happen, she wasn't prepared for, not when her body was on the edge of collapse.
The runes lining down the centre of the blade glowed in pulses that grew stronger as she tightened her two handed grasp and lifted the Sword up high above her, point down. Power shot up her arms in blinding pain and she cried out, letting go of control.
Flames spread out from her palms and cloaked the blade in the yellow glow of Sunborn Fey fire while harsh whispers swirled and swirled like she was caught in the eye of a storm. An invisible pull gripped its vice around her aloft wrists and tugged her towards the ground.
Yelling into oblivion, Ari thrust the Sword down with a deafening war cry that boomed across the battlefield, the runes blazing like blacksmith's tongues.
The rock beneath her split like it was no more than unmoulded clay. It shouldn't have been possible. The swelling of whispers snapped as the earth splintered outwards from the rock, cracking deeply as the ground tore apart and a golden light filled the opening crevices.
Her hands felt like they were fisting hot coals but she couldn't let go of the Sword as her veins spread up her neck and shimmered gold.
Sunborn.
The sound of her cry rattled from deep within her every bone. The energy in the earth flooded through her as though she was draining it dry, and her body shook as she gripped the glowing Sword. It was too much to contain. She couldn't hold it all.
Let the Sword guide you.
Yield! Ari screamed in the void of her mind and released every coil of power that had wound up within her until she felt the stone scrape her knees.
A burst of air like a shock wave pushed over the field, and beyond, quaking trees in the further forest in a boom that was deafening.
Ari heaved for lungfuls of air, the sensitive grazes on her palms stinging as she held her body up from the stone. She couldn't feel the thrum of power from the Sword any more, as if it had once been a living thing but was now dead.
Iron was tangy on her tongue and in the back of her throat, meaning that she didn't have to guess what the trickle of wetness was coming from her nose. She didn't want to look at what she'd done. Didn't want to know if trusting the Sword had made her destroy every single thing that had been in front of her.
Her breaths trembled as she forced her head to lift, strands of her hair clinging with blood and sweat and gods know what else to her forehead and cheeks, and the whoosh of air that choked out of her made her ribs shout in pain.
Trails of gold like spiders' webs of veins moved between the bodies on the ground, claiming skins and searching for those who still had the chance of life to be restored. Who hadn't gone past the tipping point from this world to the next. They trailed up the limbs of those on their knees, those clutching wounds.
This wasn't the Sword's power at all.
It was hers.
Well she definitely had their attention now. Every sword and steel in the hands of a Paladin now laid in the dirt. She'd screamed yield but maybe it hadn't just been in her mind. That shock wave that came from her and the Sword could have done this, and Ari would never be sure.
And every single person stared at her. Some shrieked at the tendrils of her power spiralling up their legs. It wasn't just the Fey who the gold touched, either.
Her legs wobbled and threatened to give way more than once as Ari struggled up onto her feet. Fuck. This wasn't how she thought that this would end. The thin circlet of a crown woven into her hair had stayed, but dug now into her scalp as a reminder of what was at stake. Her throat was arid but she had to trust her voice, breathing deeply as she gathered it.
"Your leader is dead!" Her voice carried across the expanse against the protest of her throat. The air quivered so thinly with fear, that one wrong word was going to start the battle up again. "Paladins— look around you! Your people are dying in a war that will never end unless you stop fighting."
There were two, maybe three hundred reds on their feet which was only a fraction of what they had begun with, but they were surrounded by three armies against one. Hers. Uther's. And Red's. Whilst she raised her voice, Ari watched as those armies crept in like wolves picking off the weakest of the herd and surrounded the remaining reds in their individuals and groups, all with their weapons still in hand.
"You do not want this! You want lives, families, friends! Not some bloody death in a field surrounded by those that you do not care for."
She had tried reason. And she had tried force. And now she was just trying.
Her tendrils of gold worked their power and a few of the half dead closest to her opened their eyes, others lifted their hands from wounds to find that the earth had stopped their bleeding. She could feel that power move within her like a strange feeling of her veins being too full. Such a sensation would take her breath away if she had any spare to give.
Ari searched the distance for the circle of Fey fire that had surrounded Lancelot, but she couldn't see it. He had to still be there. Zurah had said that using the Sword would save him, and now the earth weaved its magic between the cracked crevices of the earth that had splintered through the field, and hopefully one would reach him. She didn't know what she was going to do if it didn't.
"So much has already been lost but it is not too late. This can end right now! We can live together in a land where no one has to fight. Where nobody has to look at their neighbour and see an enemy." Words hadn't worked before, but when they were dead on their feet, words to appeal to a better nature— or pure survival instinct— were all that she had left.
"The colour of your cloak does not define who you are." Lungs burning, her voice amplified as if the power of the Sword carried it for her. "If you wish for peace then surrender, that way we all can win something today.
"You will not win. And I am done fighting you." Tired faces that looked back of her, were full of the same sentiment. The defeat was there within all of them, even her own troops.
"Surrender! You are surrounded. Outnumbered. If you value your life then you will give up your weapons and you will be spared." She'd let them live as her kind have lived, even if they didn't deserve it. "If you don't, then you will besurrendered." At the blade of a sword, an arrow, an axe.
The reality looked as though it dawned on the few hundred remaining red cloaks. They were surrounded— they couldn't fight their way out if they tried.
"You can cry witchery but I am healing your brethren right in front of you. There will be no more death today," Ari bellowed. "Surrender!"
A first few thuds of weapons fell at the points of swords and spears. She couldn't let herself relax, not until the few bouts of protests had been silenced and indignant faces were being turned away from her. She'd been right all along that they would choose their own lives instead of fighting for their cause, but at least that worked in her favour now.
It was over.
The physical, at least. She'd thought that she'd feel a great flood of relief wash over her when the fighting finally ceased, but it only felt like a pale dousing out a campfire. So much of her energy had been taxed, and her powers were only a vague tingle at her fingertips.
The battle might have stopped and the Paladins might be being restrained, but there was still work to be done. The kingdom was still full of humans who didn't approve of her kind, and it was going to take more than defeating the red cloaks in battle to change that. Uther had formed a truce with the Fey, as proven today, but Ari didn't know what he planned to do with her, or the church that had seemingly taken control of his land, next.
That was a problem for later. For now, she had somewhere else to be.
Ari reached for the Sword beside her. Without its glowing runes, it looked just like any other sword, except, when she tried to pull it from the stone, it didn't move. Half of the blade was wedged solidly as if the rock itself had grown around the steel.
She stared for a moment but the reality of what was happening around her slammed into her.
Lance.
Leaving the Sword behind, since it clearly wasn't going to go anywhere at any mortal's hands at least, Ari jumped off the pinnacle of the rock, landed in the slippery grass, and ran. Dodging between groups grabbing red cloaks by the collars and restraining them, she searched for her father. He was the tallest Fey that she knew of and not so difficult to spot when he was stood— wait.
"No..."
Why was he standing? He'd been with Lancelot. He'd promised to not leave him. If he was standing then he couldn't be—
Gawain spotted her first and whatever he said made her father turn. His hands... still dripped with blood. Enough figures had moved out of her sight to see what made her stomach bottom out.
"No— no—"
Still on the ground, Lancelot was lifeless, his eyes shut and his head turned towards her. His chest didn't move even though she stared at it whilst she ran, as if focussing hard enough would make him breathe.
"Why are you all just staring at him?" She wailed, pushing Gawain out of her way. "Do something!" The ground rose up as she fell to her bruised knees at Lancelot's side and cupped his face in her hands. She gasped at the coldness of his skin that she'd never felt from him before, even when they'd been travelling out in the winter snow, before that gasp gave way to sobbing tears.
His face was white and his dark clothes were stained and cracked with dried blood around where the arrow was still within him. Even his Ash tears had lost their colour to a sickly shade of grey.
He looked... dead. Yet the gold in the earth was trying to reach him. The veins tried to rise up his neck and over his hands but faded as if they'd run out of energy to go any further. Others who didn't deserve their life were rising from the ground because of her power that slithered through the fissures, and the one person who deserved to live, lay helpless.
You will be the death of him; this was it. This was what her nightmare, the whispers, the Dagger and Yeva had all meant. Lancelot had taken the arrow because of her.
Ari coughed and heaved at the fire in her lungs.
"Ari he is almost gone," someone, her father, murmured.
"No! No he isn't." She clutched at Lancelot's shoulders and dug her fingers into his tunic like she was trying to wake him.
If the gold was here then there was something to wake. A piece of life still had to be within him. Her powers couldn't help those who were already lost, and the veins were clinging on to him like there was a chance.
"Lance!" A familiar voice screeched. Ari spun on her knees right as Hector fell in a tumble beside them, covered in blood with a gash splitting his coat sleeve, but it was the redness of his eyes that she couldn't look away from.
"No, no!" His hands grabbed Lancelot by a limp arm before she could yell at him to stop. "Lance— you smug bastard— wake up!"
Hector grappled at his brother's tunic until Adrian gently pushed at his chest to back him off. "Hector— Hector," he said softly.
Ari's heart couldn't take any more pain as Hector roared with sorrow. Half of the field watched them but she didn't care for their eyes. Her shoulders violently shook, her chest heaving as she cried and held on to the last piece of warmth in Lancelot's skin that she could find beneath her fingers.
"My— my brother," Hector whimpered as he fell sideways into the Old King's arms.
"I know," Adrian hushed over and over. His hand at the back of Hector's head, he shushed Hector in the way that Ari needed to feel Lancelot hold her again. Their last embrace— their last kiss— couldn't be the last.
Panting, Arthur stumbled towards them. "Who is it— oh."
That oh pierced Ari like a spear.
It wasn't supposed to end like this. They were supposed to end this war together—Dagger's dreams be damned. They would move on and build a better life. Lance was going to build them a home and Squirrel was going to be safe, and they were going to grow old in each other's arms.
So much of Ari's life had been taken from her before it had even begun. She just wanted one chance to live what was left of it fully.
She wanted him.
Ari bared her teeth to the sky in a silent scream.
She wanted him back.
"Arthur!" Red barged through towards them, axe still drawn by her side and stumbling over her feet.
"Guin—" Exhaling relief, Arthur wrapped her up in his arms.
Ari couldn't look at them. It wasn't fair. Relief flashed through her system they were both alive, but seeing them together... it wasn't fucking fair. Lancelot was the best fighter amongst them, so how could one measly arrow have done this to him?
Nyra prowled with murder in her eyes, eyeing Lancelot's mouth like she could see the breath that Ari couldn't feel. She didn't have time to worry about the hound, it could take her too for all that she cared.
Covered head to tail in red, Nyra pawed closer and closer again. Ari drew in a breath and her body seized. The hound was bigger than most any other creature, but so low on the ground Ari felt like prey.
The giant white head dipped and Nyra nudged gently at Lancelot's cheek with her nose. Ari didn't know if she understood or not why her master wasn't moving. Hector strained against his own tears, tensed, with his eyes locked on Nyra's maw that was the length of Ari's arm.
Her wracked breaths hitched when a spark of light flickered in the earth beneath Lancelot's neck. The soft glow wasn't gold, but—
Blue?
She couldn't say anything before Nyra moved her soft probing to below Lancelot's chest, baring her fangs at the arrow whilst she sniffed. Another nudge of her nose to where Ari had sworn she'd felt a lump earlier. With her now heavy tears dripping, from her jaw, sure that the lump was a bone, her hand snapped out reflexively to shoo the hound away, as if she could hurt Lancelot now.
Nyra kept her nose against Lancelot's chest but lifted her red eyes, staring Ari down like she was trying to communicate, so she moved her fingers from Lancelot's cheek towards where Nyra pointed with her nose, indicating at where that lump beneath his clothes had been.
The lump!
The hound had far more intelligence than Ari had ever given her credit for.
She grabbed at Lancelot's tunic and unbuckled the leathers like a mad-woman whilst Hector growled at her, imploring her to leave his brother alone. Her father's face held firm and emotionless but the caution in his eyes was like it willed her to keep on going.
Ari snapped the arrow shaft enough to lift Lancelot's tunic from him and—
"Oh gods—"
Between the seams of his torn coat, his skin underneath his blood stained shirt, glowed. It glowed in streams rising up from his body. Bright and sky blue like the flickers in the grass beneath him.
"What the fuck is that?" Hector yelled, sliding on his knees to Lancelot's side when Adrian finally let him go.
Nyra backed away, as if to say that her job was done.
By the way in which her erratic heart reacted, Ari didn't know what to say until she leant closer. The Ash Stone. Broken into pieces like it had stopped the impact of the arrow. That was what had rolled from Lancelot's clothes when they'd been undressing last night? He must have tucked it within one of the inner pockets of his tunic.
Ari whipped her head up to meet her father's eyes, but they were down on the shattered pieces of stone, and he exhaled in what looked like relief. Druid fires. He'd known this would happen— she didn't even need to ask.
The whispers came on a breeze; 'Avalon', they moaned, filling Ari's ears between Hector's raised, panicked voice. Avalon. Ari caught her father's reaction, clear that he'd heard them too.
A soft wheeze that she barely heard came from— "Lance!"
"What?" Three difference voices yelled at her.
"He breathed..." Ari lowered her cheek to hover over his lips. "He's breathing," she cried, hearing the wheeze and feeling the tiniest brush of air against her skin. Her chest constricted so tightly that she thought it was going to cave in.
Silent bodies erupted into a small chaos around her. A collective fret for what they were supposed to do to bring Lancelot back.
Ari pressed her fingers to his neck, hoping and praying to the gods as she tried to block out all of the noise that she would feel his pulse thread beneath her fingertips. It wasn't there yet, or too weak for her to feel, but he wheezed again and the iridescent blue glowing from the broken pieces of the Ash stone started to spread over him. The earth beneath him soaked it up until he was surrounded.
'Avalon...'
"Get him to a cart," she ordered quickly.
Hector's head snapped up to her. "A cart, why?" He looked so haggard that Ari wanted to reach out for him.
Looking past him to Adrian to see him nod, she shifted herself to gather Lancelot up. "We have to go."
"He will not make it," Arthur said lowly, apologetically.
Time was going to be against them for whatever the Hidden were commanding, and Ari didn't have time to waste on any debates. "I can keep him alive for long enough—" She didn't know for certain but so much of what had happened with her powers today, she hadn't known that she could do— "but we have to get him to Avalon."
"Avalon?" Gawain gawped. "Why?"
"Just do it!" She snapped at everyone who wasn't moving to help. "Get a cart!"
Not needing another order, Arthur scrambled off towards the forest behind them walling off the camp that they had been in for days.
"Ari, Avalon is too far away away in this condition," Gawain said lowly, as if he thought that Lancelot could hear him, trying to be the voice of reason.
Well Ari didn't care for reason.
"That's why we need to move. Now! I will keep him alive, I can do it." Death wasn't going to take him. Not today. Not if she had a say in it.
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wc: 4.5k
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