The afternoon sun did little to help dry Ari and Lancelot off as they rode in the cart at a much gentler speed back to the White Hart fields. Wrapped together beneath the lone blanket, Lancelot's arms circled her, and Ari knew that she was home.
She explained on the journey about the Dagger's vision that she'd seen at dawn and, with a lump in her throat, what had happened between Lancelot falling and rising out of the lake. The whole time he looked sadly reminiscent before he said that he already knew, but had just wanted to hear her voice.
"How?" She'd asked, twisting to look at him.
He'd taken her hand and pressed it beneath Hector's coat to where he said he could feel a piece of he Ash Stone beneath his heart. Lancelot's skin glowed, and Ari was taken far back in her vision to the first time where she had held his hand within the hollowed out old tree.
Ari didn't quite understand it. Perhaps he was connected now permanently to the Between, though he said that he didn't feel any different. There was a slight buzz in his veins that may have just been the feeling of this new life that the waters of Avalon had given him.
"You can bring back what is lost, Ari," Lancelot hushed, tipping his nose against her temple, "and I think that I can, too."
It wasn't how she expected the day to have ended at all. Yet with how it had turned out, she was glad that it did.
"If you two are going to get any closer in your snuggling, tell me now so I can turn around." Came a voice from the other end of the rattling cart.
Hector didn't give the impression that he was going to stray too far from Lancelot's side in the foreseeable future. Ari didn't mind, and knowing Lancelot, he wouldn't mind his brother's protectiveness either. The two had gone from being strangers to a brotherhood that was quite beautiful, now that she thought about it, to have seen unfold.
"How do you think I feel?" Squirrel clipped back, his little face scrunched up. But there was something there in his eyes that glinted with happiness. The less that Ari knew about how exactly he had gotten here to the battle, the better.
More people than Ari had realised had followed on behind their rush to Avalon, and when they returned to the field as the sun began its descent, cheers erupted when Arthur rolled the cart to a stop.
Squirrel hopped up onto the ledge of the cart and gave an exuberant bow, flinging his arms one at a time out wide as if the applause was all for him. With a roll of his eyes, Hector slung Squirrel over his shoulder and carried him to the ground.
Smiling, Lancelot jumped down from the cart and offered out his arms to Ari. In the hour of gentler riding than their outward journey, her muscles had cooled and seized. The water of the lake being so cold as she'd waded out to reach Lancelot hadn't helped, either. Now she ached all over and the catalogue of her injuries made itself known, compared to her love who was filled with new life and vigour.
But she was still alive when she'd prepared herself to not survive the day. Her eyes kept on finding the tear in Lancelot's shirt as if reminding herself of what she'd almost lost.
He helped her to the ground and Ari had only a couple of seconds to scan the field and towards the forest where their camps lay beyond.
The red cloaks who remained had been herded together but kept apart in smaller groups guarded by Fey, raiders, and Uther's men. Ari hadn't decided yet what to do with them. To execute would mean that she was no better than their fallen leaders, and to let them free was no punishment at all. She didn't have to decide just yet, not this evening at least, and there were more important matters to handle first.
A flash of red hair was Pym busily moving between bodies with water flasks and bandage rolls tucked under her arms. Hector noticed her too and sprang into action dodging between the folk that were drawing in close, still applauding and sadly smiling at her.
"How are there so many standing?" Ari said beneath her breath.
"I think it was you," Lancelot answered, offering her his arm to lean on. "Your power."
Ari didn't want to seem unwell in front of all of her people but gave Lancelot's side some of her weight nonetheless. "But I can't... this was so much."
With all of the explanation in the world that Zurah could give, Ari still didn't think that she would ever completely comprehend what had happened here today. She had never seen that Sword in her life before it had been in her hands, and it had overpowered and fuelled her control of the earth so easily.
"You've always said that you wanted a war without casualty," Lancelot offered up as an explanation.
She'd known all along that in reality what she'd wanted was impossible. Even with the healing powers of the earth that she'd unleashed, there were still so many bodies littered all across the meadow, those that had fallen too early for her to save. Ari's heart ached for the Fey, her people. Even the humans who'd fought on by their side.
Henry. Her mind travelled to him. Could he have recovered? The chances, Ari realised with a weight in her stomach, were slim. She'd held him as he'd died long before Zurah had given her the Sword.
"Are you okay?" Lancelot peered at her with such tender concern, and he moved as if to shield her away from being seen like this. Ari squeezed his arm where she held onto him and lowered her voice.
"I promised Sir Henry that I would take him home."
Lancelot stilled rigidly. His eyes burned with a question that Ari couldn't bring herself to answer with words, so she only nodded once. She didn't know just how friendly he and Henry had become, but given that Lancelot was wearing one of Henry's shirts and his features softened and fell at the news, she guessed that they could have been on their way there.
He squeezed her hand. "We will carry him."
The ball of worry within Ari's chest retreated to a simmer at his reassurance, her eyes, slightly teary, not just from exhaustion. A couple of echoes of what Lancelot said came from each of their friends as they dismounted their horses near the cart. Ari hadn't intended to be heard, but to know that her friends would help her see taking Henry home done was a relief off of her shoulders.
"You are alive." The rough feminine voice almost sounded impressed.
Arthur slid down from the seat of the cart, circled to Red's side and put his arm around her shoulders. Her leathers looked as if they were bound by dirt and blood, but her body visibly relaxes when Arthur held her to his side. That feeling of being able to breathe again Ari fully understood.
Red's observation, as it seems, had been directed at Lancelot who grunted.
Alive, Ari thought, but apparently still the same.
"How many?" Ari asked, edging nearer so they could keep their voices low.
The remorseful look on Red's tired face gave enough of an answer. "What is done is done." Her words were stiff yet soft, soothing. "Your magic with the Sword saved many from wounds that they should not have survived."
What's done was done but it wasn't enough.
Ari put her feet back beneath and took back her own weight despite her aching limbs' and Lancelot's hands' protests. "The field needs to be cleared," she said to this council that was gathered around her. "We must set the pyres for the Fey, collect the amulets, and I will give the blessing. The remaining Reds will want to do something with their dead but the best that we can do is fire."
"There is time for that this evening, Arianne," her father said from behind them, appearing and placing his gentle hand on her shoulder. Ari calmed her choppy breaths as she looked up at him. "Congratulate the living, eat, and rest. As we all should..."
Now that Ari knew what the Druid fires had foretold— that she and Lance had been apart of a prophecy since before she was born— and why her father couldn't have told her of it, she could forgive him completely for how he had left when she was so young and come back again into her life. His secrets weren't secrets any more but Ari still had questions, new ones like if the Dagger was connected to this prophecy, or what image exactly the fires had shown? Had it been their victory, her with the Sword raised up high, or Lancelot on the ground with her pleading for his life?
"Yes," she said, feeling a need suddenly to go back to the lake and bathe the day off of her skin.
She looked between her friends; Hanna, Kaze, Arthur, Gawain, Red, the inner circle of her council. "Thank you all... so much." Weary eyes and tired faces nodded. "Please gather everyone back to the camps. The infirmary will need all of the help that they can get and the cooks will stretched out thin."
"What will you do?" Kaze asked.
Aware that there were more than just these few listening, Ari said, "If Uther is still here then I must speak to him before he retreats his men to his own camp. I will join you all after."
"Where we all will raise our cups to our queen." Hanna puffed up his chest, a torn piece of cloth wrapped and knotted around his upper arm.
Despite her exhaustion, a smile tugged on Ari's lips like that which grew on everyone's. "I will raise mine to you all."
They began to disperse, and for a second Ari did nothing. She thought nothing, spoke nothing, made no move to go anywhere. A few seconds to herself before the world carried on turning.
Lancelot stepped aside so that she could be wrapped within Hanna's quick embrace, and then her father's longer one. His gentle strength and steadiness made her eyes water with hope that they could become again to each other what they had been when she was still a child, before he had left without saying a word.
Arthur and Red still held each other. Kaze took a breath to regather herself. Squirrel's eyes blinked slowly as if in need of a nap. Hector trailed behind Pym with medical supplies bundled in his arms. Zurah had disappeared but Ari didn't doubt that she would be nearby with the healers, perhaps.
"Wait," Gawain said and they all stilled in their steps. "Where is the Sword of Power?"
~
The answer was: exactly where Ari had left it.
Their group crossed the edge of the meadow boundary with the forest and approached to where the Sword was still embedded in the large stone jutting from the ground, the earth around it that had cracked wide open hours ago, miraculously healed.
Ari's head ached with more questions that her father's eyes seemed to hold too.
Just like before, Zurah cornered the stone and appeared, fresher faced than any of them here.
"It is not the Sword of Power any longer," she said before Ari could begin to broach her questions. "All of its magic belongs to the earth now."
Perhaps that is why the Sword now looked so plain. Dull. The land that had been broken was now healed. Those who had fallen from a weapon were stood on their feet. Paladins, Fey, humans, all helping each other to rise healed and well. If all of the Sword's magic had moved through Ari, then that explained so many things.
"So... it is just a sword," Kaze presumed.
Lancelot looked at the steel as one would when a pest finally moved on. The most recent months of his previous life had revolved around gaining this one sword, and now it meant nothing. One more thing to set free from his mind.
"The sword will choose its owner in time," Zurah answered, hands folded in front of her skirts, "as was always intended."
Arthur shifted. "How? It has no power."
Zurah just let the ghost of a smile at him show. "It will choose."
Ari watched Arthur too and Red by his side, how they stood together, and a spark of an idea for another day, sometime soon, sparked off in her mind.
Behind them, a voice cleared.
Guarded by a few of his soldiers, Uther looked just as haggard as the rest who had fought. Ari didn't believe that he would have, but he'd shown her his true colours today. His scheme against the Red Paladins had worked. And he had drawn his own sword on the battlefield.
She approached, aware of her own people forming their line behind her. Uther lowered his chin as if in remorse.
Only one of them held the real power here.
"The debt that you owe to my kind for allowing these killings for so long," Ari warned, "is greater than anything you could imagine." Fiddling with the sheath and buckle of his sword at his belt, Uther pursed his lips like an apology was right on the edge of them. "But you stayed true to your word. Therefore I believe that we can make an arrangement."
Uther shifted on his feet, listening. "What are you suggesting?"
Ari held his gaze firm. "The South." If Uther was stunned by her demand, the flash in his eyes showed it. "You will turn it over to me. And I want one year to find every Fey in the North and bring them home."
He scratched at his jaw. "You win a war... only to ask for a half of a kingdom?"
"That, and peace." Ari had her reasons— she had gone over every outcome that she could fathom, and this, as it turned out, was the best of them. Fey did not need more than what they needed to live on. "I am not so naive to believe that every human in your land who has hated us thus far will change their minds.
"So you will get your church's wish— you shall have no Fey. There will be a border between us and there will be peace across it. Permanently."
"And what of humans who wish to live in your lands?"
"They will be welcome. And as there used to be, there will be two thrones governing one land. A Fey court and a human's."
Uther considered her but Ari already knew that there would be no argument. This solution was the best for all of them.
"Very well," he said. "The South is yours, your majesty."
"You swear it?"
"Once we have settled upon a border, I will publicly renounce the Southlands. No ink or parchment shall be spared." For once, Ari believed that what Uther promised was genuine.
Ari drew her Dagger and Uther tensed, but she tossed it down to the ground. Gathering her meaning, he shed himself of his weapons as well.
She reached out her hand and for the first time in twenty five years, the human king took the hand of a Fey.
"For all that you started twenty five years ago," Ari began, feeling the power in her words, "I forgive you."
Uther curtly dipped his head and turned.
Ari breathed a sigh of relief as he and his men walked off to where the rest of them were gathered. Second later, hands came around her waist and she settled back into the warmth of the man whom she loves.
"I'm proud of you," Lancelot said within her hair, his lips adoring where he kissed her.
Ari turned in his embrace. She wrapped her arms around his neck, unashamed and uncaring for who saw.
"If you try to sacrifice yourself for anyone again," she arced her brow and warned, "I will kill you myself, is that clear?"
He smiled at her. A bright, beaming smile. "I love you."
Ari nodded, the tears forming again in her eyes. "I love you too."
Their lips met, and everything was right.
Blood and gold.
Fire and Water.
Arianne and Lancelot.
Their lives had been tied together since the day that they were born, each destined to be the last of their kinds and to save each other. He was foretold to save her life, to keep the one prophesied to unite the land living. She was destined to save his mind, to save his soul, to bring those whose hearts were lost back through her mercy and kindness and make them found again. They had not known it, they had never known it, but their souls had been joined by the Hidden since the dawn of time.
The love that they found in each other was not a part of the plan— it hadn't been written or foretold in the stars, and yet it was inevitable. Fate, destiny? Name it what you will. It was one coin with two sides that brought them here, uniting fire and water seamlessly with the earth.
Everything in life has a purpose. Some are born to serve, some are born to lead. No one person is truly born evil and every wrong has a chance to be made right.
So this is that story; where two people who shouldn't fall in love, did.
And when one life ends, another begins.
The End
(for real this time)
__________
wc:3k
Total word count: 769,769 (which wasn't planned but is funny haha)
So, here it is, the end of what feels like an era 🥹 It's taken three years and I can't quite believe that it's done (except for the epilogues, they'll be coming at some point) FINALLY.
I don't have much to say without getting all emotional 😅 I've known since the beginning that this would end with the Sword in the Stone legend, and setting up for Arthur to take Excalibur (there will be more in the epilogue about that ☺️) which is where I think the Netflix series was headed to end if it had had more seasons.
To @aWh0resNewW0rld , thank you so much for your consistent support and comments 🥹
If you've stayed with this fic from the beginning then I love you and thank you so much 💛