Meetings
They met downtown by one of Lancelot's favorite food trucks, where he was more than happy to let Merlin foot the bill for enough falafel to feed a small army.
"So where do you live?" Lancelot asked as he sat down with his ridiculously overflowing tray.
"Slums, where else?" Dred replied, wolfing down food like they hadn't eaten in at least a week, which was entirely likely. God knew Lancelot had been there a time or twenty. "I live in the squalors north of the city, by the slop houses. You?"
"South, in the hives. Before that, the garden squalors. Dad died, got a settlement."
Dred grunted.
Merlin frowned unhappily. "Neither of you should be living in such abominable conditions. If anyone should, it's me."
"It's true no one wanders a forest in a mad haze just this side of naked subsisting on roots and berries like you, Merlin," Dred said with a grin. "Still, having you amidst all the guzzlers will give us an enormous advantage."
"As long as all of you come stay with me until we can get proper living situations sorted for you," Merlin replied firmly. "It's not safe to have us so scattered anyway. Quit your jobs. This is our only job until that thrice-cursed bastard is dead once and for all."
"Yes, lord and master," Dred said dryly.
Merlin lazily flipped them off while working a mouthful of falafel.
As in the game and the past, Dred's hair was obscenely long, down to their ass, even braided as it currently was, dark like a raven's wing. They rarely wore it loose, but it had always been a sight worth remembering when they did.
No one on Earth had been able to tame the notoriously fierce, fiery Mordred, until a quiet, humble, and deceptively delicate looking knight had come along and, in Mordred's own words, bewitched them utterly without even trying.
Not even Arthur himself could bring Mordred to heel with the full weight of his power and authority the way Galahad could with just a single soft look.
Standing, Merlin wandered away with a call that he'd be right back, and given there was a food cart selling cakes and other sweets at the end of the block, it wasn't hard to guess where he was going.
"Have you encountered anyone else?" Lancelot asked.
Dred shook their head. "No, but you know me, I keep to myself. What about you?"
Quietly, Lancelot told him what they knew of Morgan and his fight with the enslaved Galehaut. When Merlin returned, he added his own small bit of the tale.
"Ol' Mal always was a fan of kidnapping," Mordred said dryly when they'd finished. "You weren't a fan of stepsisters before though, well done on that."
Merlin rolled his eyes.
Lancelot snorted in quiet amusement. That was how they'd met, back when Arthur had first rescued a young Guinevere. She had been in a convent even then, banished to that life by an uncaring father, while he trained up her eldest 'brother' Mordred and her older brother Gawain.
He had returned Guinevere to her family, rather than the convent, and met them there. It would not be until years later that they would again cross paths with the family, Guinevere first when she'd traveled to Camelot, and later Mordred in the midst of a particularly violent battle.
Dred had, with deep reluctance, been heeding the orders of their father, but when they'd seen that their opponent was Arthur, they'd abandoned that once and for all.
Gawain had followed a few years later, seeking out his vanished siblings.
Gawain preferred the scholar's life, but he had been no slouch with a sword.
Would they manage to get everyone back? Who was everyone, for that matter? He doubted Merlin's magic had been able to control the reincarnation of everyone, but…
"You look way too pensive for falafel and strawberry cheesecake waffles," Merlin replied.
"Fucking hell," Dred muttered. "This food could pay my rent for the rest of the year and a few months next year."
Merlin flushed with shame. "I don't like it any more than you, but it would be foolish not to use the tools at my disposal. Also, you need to eat properly. This fight is going to drain all of us."
"It's fine, you stupid succubus. Just never thought I'd be here. What in the hell is cheesecake?"
"Find out." Merlin said, and shoved one of the overladen plates across the table to him. "What had you frowning, Lance?"
"How many of us will we find? How many are likely to be lost to us like— like—" He broke off, closing his eyes against the sting of tears, and finally forced out, "Like Galehaut."
"We'll get him back, never doubt it," Merlin said, "but to answer your question, there should be fifteen of us in total. The three of us, Arthur, Morgan, Guinevere, Gawain, Elaine, Percival, Bran, Bertilak, Tristan, Iseult, Galahad, and Galehaut."
"The Gales," Dred said with a snicker. "Can't wait to mock them relentlessly over having practically the same stupid name."
"Why did we have to wake you up so soon," Lancelot retorted, rolling his eyes.
Dred grinned toothily. "'Cause I have one of the magic sticks, of course, fish boy."
Lancelot sighed. "I hate you so much."
"Power of threes," Merlin replied. "Three swords, three powers of water, earth, and fire. Next we'll need three magics, of the earth, the shadows, and the light."
"Morgan and Guinevere are next then," Dred replied.
Lancelot laughed. "Wonder what Morgan will think of the whole stepsiblings thing. Think that's a hidden kink for her?"
Dred snickered. "Since when did Morgan ever bother to hide a single kink?"
Merlin gave them both a look. "Oh, shut up Ser My Lover was Half My Age."
Dred made a face, but didn't argue, because they had been in their mid-thirties when they'd met a barely twenty Galahad. They'd resisted another two years, but that didn't exactly make the disparity in age go away.
In Dred's defense, it was Galahad who had been lying naked in their bed waiting for Dred to show up one night. Lancelot wasn't certain God himself could have resisted an offer like that, though according to Galahad, Dred had tried.
"Probably is still half their age," Lancelot said thoughtfully. Not really, the gap was smaller than that, but not as small as Mordred would have liked. "Better hope Arthur doesn't prove to be your cousin or something."
"I hate you both," Merlin muttered. "Finish eating, we've got work to do."
"Why did you drag us downtown in the middle of the week when we should both be working?"
"You're quitting, so it doesn't matter," Merlin said, cleaning up the remains of their meal as the other two wolfed down the last few bites. "We're going to go scope something out."
"Ominous," Dred said, but fell into step as they left the courtyard where they'd been eating, tugging down the toboggan Merlin had given them earlier in the day, black threaded with faintly shimmery rainbow threads—and magic that made them all but invisible to passersby, and obscured their features from the thousands of cameras scattered across the city.
A hooded jacket finished the job, rendering Dred wholly unremarkable to all and sundry.
For Lance, it was a flat cap rather than a toboggan, and for Merlin there was a beautiful handmade silk wrap pulled over his head and across part of his face. "Do tell."
"Monmouth Games." Merlin motioned for them to follow him down a narrow alleyway.
"The only way Maleagant could have such a strong lead on us, and so much control over the game, is if he is the game, for all intents and purposes.
There isn't much listed about the board of directors for Monmouth, only that the company is ultimately owned by Apple-Soft. "
"Makes sense. They've been the lords and masters of all things tech and fifty percent of entertainment since the fifties." Mordred sighed.
The other fifty percent was owned by Hollywood-Charter, the result of a rather nasty coup in the eighties that had resulted in a whole lot of 'missing persons' and absolutely nobody being allowed on the scorched earth that was the former heart of Hollywood in what had once been California.
Now the Archduke of Hollywood-Charter controlled the first territory, comprised of what had once been Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Nevada.
The Apple-Soft family resided in territory three, which was ruled by the Archduke of BlackRock.
Their territory, six, was ruled by the Archduke of Mondelez, and the next two most powerful families in the area, Kellogg and Kraft-Heinz, took over much of what had once been the American South.
That being said, the families—corporations—had offices and apartments in each other's territories, not unlike embassies. Monmouth had a huge headquarters right in the middle of the city. Maleagant himself would not be here, but this would be their first step to reaching him.
The building was austere but pretty, as were most of the buildings around the cities these days.
Skyscrapers had long been torn down, or repurposed into hanging gardens and the like.
Most buildings, outside of special historical sites, were legally capped at five stories.
With so much done digitally or via robots and automated systems, there simply wasn't a need for the towering buildings of the past.
"So what's the plan?" Dred asked.
"There's a stupid museum on the first floor that's open to the public, has its own entrance and everything. We can start there—you two talk to people and all of that. I'm going to see if I can get a bit deeper inside."
"Use those wiles, pretty boy, that's the way," Dred said with a grin.
Merlin rolled his eyes and didn't bother to further reply as he led the way through the crowded pavilion in front of the building, around to the side where the museum was located.
Inside, they had to sign in at a wide, ostentatious counter and scan their IDs, but Merlin had made up fake IDs for them, Lancelot had no idea how, so there'd be no record of them here, just some more nobodies from outside the city.