Disclaimer: Not BBC, Johnny Capps, Julian Murphy.
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Chapter 4
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"Merlin!"
Merlin sprinted across the corridor and turned to Arthur's room, closing the double doors behind him. Thrusting he right hand forward, he panted, for good measure, "Ne un clyse!" [1]
The lock slid into place magically, leaving Merlin alone in the room.
In no time he began scouring every inch of the room, throwing out the contents of Arthur's drawers and cupboards. Gaius said the enchantment that was now taking hold of Arthur was magically linked to a precious stone or jewelry or any piece of fine accessories that Arthur might have worn these past few days. If he could destroy it, then the enchantment would break.
Which would prove to be a very laborious task, considering how many silvers and golds and other precious metals Arthur actually have.
Merlin pulled out every single drawer in the room and poured its content on the floor, sending papers, rings, fancy daggers, and adorned ceremonial pieces of armory skittering down the floor. Merlin ran his fingers over all of it, trying to feel any trace of magic. He couldn't exactly destroy every single one of them– Arthur would surely chop his head off the moment the enchantment break, and he didn't have time to destroy it all anyway.
None of the objects radiated magic.
There was a loud bang on the double doors, so loud that dust scattered up in the air from the hinges that were slowly cracking off the stone wall. Merlin continued to pull out more drawers and turn the contents of each cupboard inside out before a loud deafening sound of the double doors being ripped off its hinges rang on his ears. He managed to duck behind a table just in time, but even from where he was hiding he could still see the form of Arthur, standing on the opening, his shining blood red eyes magically found Merlin.
Merlin shakily got to his feet and staggered backward as Arthur marched ruthlessly towards his direction.
"Arthur, wake up," Merlin croaked, losing his voice to fear.
"Now, Merlin, no more running," the blonde before him hissed, his eyes burning with the reddest blood Merlin had ever seen. He smiled maliciously at Merlin, giving the latter an impression of a snake.
Merlin continued to stagger backward slowly. There was a slow ebbing in the air, tickling at his joints, emanating from the blonde, and Merlin knew the cursed stone was one of the accessories Arthur was wearing.
Arthur was advancing on him slowly, his eyes not leaving Merlin's, intimidating him, and Merlin used the moment to quietly sneak a vase.
Merlin mustered all of his strength to smack the vase hard against Arthur's temple, hoping the latter would topple down unconscious, but Arthur merely straightened his neck back with inhuman resilience and continued to march towards Merlin.
"Enough of this child's play," he hissed, pinning the brunet against the wall on the neck with the sheer strength of his grip. Merlin choked.
"Arthur, please," he wheezed, tears welling on his eyes as he began to panic. Arthur's grip was inhumanly strong and now he was pushing Merlin upwards that the brunet's feet left the ground, wheezing for air.
"Where is the Cup of Life?" Arthur barked, and there was an almost animalistic growl that laced his voice. He tightened his grip on Merlin's windpipe, causing the latter to claw helplessly at Arthur's arm.
His fingers caught at Arthur's steel vambrace. It was directly under his nose, fitted on Arthur's forearm, and Merlin couldn't see it properly without crossing his eyes at a painful angle, but he had cleaned it too many times in the past to know that its embossed dragon figure had a considerably large ruby for an eye.
He clawed it open, but when the steel left Arthur's arm and fell down to the stone floor, it rang hollowly without any magic.
"Arthur, you're not yourself," Merlin rasped, his attempts to remove Arthur's hand from his neck getting weaker and weaker as his strength began to wane out. Arthur's blood red eyes were boring into his eyes, and Merlin let out a quiet hopeless cry. He was growing desperate. He needed to save his best friend, he must save him, but it would seem impossible with Arthur being very determined to kill him like that.
"I can kill you, right here, right now–" Arthur began hissing, but in the midst of his panic, Merlin landed his eyes on the boar head decorating the wall directly above him.
No. No, impossible–
He couldn't use magic in front of the Crown Prince of Camelot, it would be suicide! It didn't matter if Arthur was being enchanted or he was merely trying to save himself from suffocating, if Arthur was still conscious in there somewhere, he would discover Merlin's magic–
Arthur's grip tightened and black spots started to invade his sight. Any second now he would lose his consciousness, if not die altogether; if he didn't do it now, he would just die in Arthur's hands.
"Feall!" [2]
Merlin just had enough strength to cause the boar head to fall on Arthur's form, landing squarely on his chest and trapping him on the floor with its tusks. He just hoped to the gods above that Arthur thought it was merely a stroke of luck that a wall decoration should land square on his person, or simply wouldn't remember it.
Arthur fell, the back of his head hitting the ground hard enough to send someone into comatose, but he merely groaned and shook the butterflies out of his head. Merlin himself almost toppled down to his sides as soon as Arthur's hand left his throat, coughing and gasping for air, burning his throat as he did so. He barely had the time to cushion his fall with his arm. Falling on his sides, Merlin continued coughing.
Arthur groaned and moved weakly under the weight of the boar head, pulling Merlin back to the present. He leapt to Arthur's arms and began stripping off all of the jewels on his person. His other vambrace, his dagger with an emerald adorning the hilt, the four rings that snaked around his four right fingers–
At first he thought it was merely ink– Arthur probably knocked a bottle of ink over his hand and forgot to wash under his rings– but then it read like something along the lines of 'of the same coin', written in a handwriting so familiar to Merlin it could've been his own.
Merlin averted his eyes –focus, they had to deal with a serious business here, he couldn't exactly busied himself over some trivia such as the inappropriateness of glimpsing the Soulpoetry of the Crown Prince of Camelot, focus– but still threw the rings across the room where they joined the other jewelries.
Merlin brought out his hands and hoarsely yelled, "Brecan!" [3] There was an explosion, sending pieces of steel and precious stone across the room.
Another bang followed. The boar head that was pinning Arthur to the ground was now crashing against a cabinet, knocking over vases and splintering the wooden furniture itself. The enchantment still held; Arthur had single-handedly thrown it himself.
Merlin rolled to his feet and ran to the other side of the room, trying to put the table between them.
"Tell me where you hide the Cup of Life!" Arthur shouted. He drew a dagger from the pile of jewelries that Merlin had poured out of his drawers earlier, testing the sharpness of the blade as he fingered it.
"Arthur, you can fight it!" Merlin pleaded, his voice hoarse from Arthur's strangulation.
"Come on, I haven't got all day! Where did you hide it?" the blonde demanded.
Merlin landed his eyes on the shield hanging on the wall directly behind Arthur. "Forp fleoge!" [4]
The shield sailed through the air towards Arthur's head, but the blonde pivoted on his heels quick enough to face it and hissed, "Healte!" [5]
Merlin didn't miss how his eyes flashed bright red when he incanted it, nor how he smiled viciously at Merlin when the shield stopped midair. Merlin let out a hopeless breath as Arthur brought up his hand and motioned the shield to attack Merlin instead. "Forgripe!" [6]
Merlin just had enough time to duck out of the way, the shield collapsing into the poles of Arthur's four-poster bed. But on the next second, Arthur was already upon him, the cool blade of his dagger pressing on the brunet's throat.
Merlin pressed backward, but there was only wall.
"Arthur– Arthur, please," he pleaded, his vision blurred with unshed tears. Why can't Arthur wake up? He needed to save his best friend, but he failed him. He failed his destiny. He was supposed to protect Arthur from things like this happening in the first place. What use did his powers have if he couldn't save his loved ones–
And then he felt it.
A constant pulsing in the air. Like a heartbeat, ebbing against his bones, sending uncomfortable ticklish sensation that felt like a badly-tuned musical instrument, coming from Arthur's chest. A necklace peeked from between the buttons of Arthur's shirt, a nondescript piece of gold that seemed to radiate its own pulse in rhythm with the blonde's own heartbeat. Merlin quietly sneaked his fingers towards it, hoping Arthur was standing too close to notice, and touched it.
Arthur's eyes flashed gold.
"Now, you can quit playing and tell me where you hid the Cup," Arthur hissed, pressing the blade, his eyes back like a swirling pool of blood, hovering just inches away from Merlin's face, "or you can die."
Merlin grabbed the eye of the necklace and tugged it off Arthur's neck until the chain broke.
Arthur fell limp, losing consciousness in less than a second, and the dagger fell off skittering to the floor. Merlin caught him in time as the blonde swayed forward, collapsing under his weight as he slid down the wall.
He then eyed the gold necklace on his palm before throwing it against the wall on the other side of the room. "Swilte, gold beorþ, onlucan min freond!" [7]
The stone exploded, sending pieces of gold all across the room, followed by a gust of strong wind. Merlin brought up his free hand to shield his face. There was light from where the necklace hit the wall before it winked out, dying with the gust of wind.
Merlin panted, his legs bending in an uncomfortable angle as he held Arthur on the floor, but it didn't matter. Arthur was safe, it was all that mattered. That Arthur was lying with the front lower half of his body on the floor, and the upper half of it sprawled messily over Merlin's lanky figure that was now awkwardly leaning against the wall, was all that mattered. His face was buried in Merlin's chest and the latter could feel his breath changing from shallow to even, as though he was sleeping.
Merlin shakily breathed out in relief and sniveled, not realizing he was starting to cry. There were tears escaping his eyelids when the brunet closed his eyes, bowing his head down until his nose was grazing the top of Arthur's blonde hair. He gently put his arms around Arthur's back, enveloping him, and promised he would never let any harm come to his best friend again.
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[1]: Close! (Used by Merlin when he locked Grunhilda in the vaults beneath the castle in The Changeling.)
[2]: Fall! (Used by Merlin when he commanded the ice cliff to fall in Arthur's Bane Part Two, but it literally translates to 'fall', so I deemed it fit for the situation.)
[3]: Break! (This one is from an online translator hahaha.)
[4]: Fly forth! (I think some of you guys are familiar with this one, it's featured numerous times in Merlin hahaha.)
[5]: Halt! (Merlin used this when he stopped the dagger sailing towards him commanded by the goblin inside Gaius in The Goblin's Gold, but I don't know if this is also the form of the verb if it stands alone in a sentence.)
[6]: Attack! (Merlin used this when he commanded a snake to attack Morgana's horse in The Castle of Fyrien, but again, I don't know if the standalone verb also takes this form.)
[7]: Die violently, gold-borne, release my friend! (The 'swilte, gold beorþ' bit is from The Gates of Avalon, when Merlin killed Aulfric. 'Onlucan' is used when Merlin tried to break the chains with which Morgause restrained him in The Tears of Uther Pendragon Part One. 'Min' means 'my' if my research is right, and 'freond' translates to singular 'friend'.)
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A/N: Alright, that's the fourth chapter! What do you guys think? So, yes, not only Arthur has glimpsed Merlin's Soulpoetry without Merlin knowing, now Merlin has glimpsed Arthur's without the latter knowing. Hahahaha, sorry, I do love to make plot twists involving two very oblivious characters who are made for each other but needs to smacked on their heads for not realizing it XD But well, they were under stressful situations, they could've failed to remember tiny details like that, we couldn't exactly blame them. I can vouch for them, I've experienced it, lol XD
Thank you for those who have voted and commented!