Chapter 18 Ghosts #2
They returned to camp, where they gave their basically-nothing report to the others before settling down to a dinner of mushroom and rabbit soup and bread toasted in herbs and fat from the rabbits.
Growing up a child of the waters, Lancelot had never eaten anything that didn't grow in the lake, mostly fish.
Experiencing the food enjoyed by land-dwellers had been a revelation.
Certainly he'd been eating better since he'd woken as Lancelot. His life as Lance Waters seemed distant, almost dreamlike, now. It was definitely a life to which he could never return, not after all this.
When they'd eaten, Lancelot and Merlin washed everything at the nearby creek, with Arthur to stand watch.
After all was done and cleaned, they all climbed into their beds.
Soon, the only sounds were Dred's soft snores, the crackling of the fire, and the distant noises of night creatures foraging, the odd squeal as a soundless hunter caught its dinner.
Despite the exhaustion that had plagued him all day, Lancelot couldn't sleep.
Something picked at him, gnawed at him like a bone, teased at the hairs at the back of his neck.
Sighing softly, he sat up and pulled his boots back on, grabbing his sword and buckling it into place as he stepped outside the safety of the torch-marked wards.
He looked in the direction of the castle, entirely invisible in the dead of night, but whatever was bugging him wasn't coming from there. Instead, he turned south, following the sensation by way of a frustrating game of hot and cold.
As the wind changed direction to blow in his face, it brought a sharp chill and the scent of bergamot.
The memory came, sharp and piercing. Another night when he'd been lost in the cold and dark, seeking shelter from the storm on the horizon, distant thunder already making the world shiver.
He'd resigned himself to huddling in the roots of an enormous tree when the scent of bergamot had drawn him, strange and out of place in the wilds of the British Isles.
He'd come upon a modest keep, not even enough to really be called a castle, the crumbling wall around it more suggestion than curtain.
Inside, an exhausted and terrified maiden tending her wounded, dying father.
Lancelot was no healer, but water could have purifications of its own, and he knew enough herbal lore from Guinevere and Iseult to draw the man away from the door to death.
In gratitude, the man who'd styled himself the Fisher King had insisted Lancelot take his daughter as wife.
Shamefaced, she'd told him later, after her father had fallen asleep, that she was in fact a widow with a son already grown, and of course he could leave in the night—she would cover for him in the morning.
Lancelot scoffed to treat a maiden so poorly, even if in the eyes of most she was maiden no more.
Her father might be old and increasingly feeble, but his land was valuable, and he had friends who would rise to his defense should Lancelot act dishonorably.
They would pose no significant threat, but it was an unnecessary fight.
More than any of that, though, he had seen a woman in distress whom he had the power to help.
So with the understanding that his true love was Galehaut, and that she had always been averse to lying with anyone, though she'd done her marital duties, he agreed to the marriage.
In the end, the marriage had proven a great boon to Camelot, and Elaine had found her true love in the Queen of Camelot herself.
He wondered how they would have managed to marry, he and Galehaut, when so many obstacles stood between that happy occasion. Not that it mattered anymore. The obstacles keeping them apart now were so much greater, he almost longed for those simpler problems of the past.
With the memories now bright at the forefront of his mind, he followed the winding path he'd been chasing before, through the mist that parted for him, until he at last came to what he'd sought: a crumbling excuse of a castle, shrouded in darkness and neglect.
He passed through the archway that had once been a gate, down a barely-there dirt path that had once been properly paved and lit by ornate stone lamps, and pushed open one creaking door.
Inside, just like all those years ago, Elaine was dressed little better than a chamber maid, grimy and exhausted as she bent over a figure in the bed, struggling not to cry.
She had withered here, stuck in soil too dry and old to nurture, but she'd held fast, determined not to give up.
And when offered her escape, she'd instead told Lancelot to leave her because he could do so much better than an old widow forgotten by the world.
"Mistress," Lancelot said softly.
She jerked up and back, the bowl in her hands crashing to the floor and splashing water everywhere.
"Sir knight! My apologies, I did not hear you arrive.
" She gathered her skirts and bustled across the room to him.
"We have little, but I will offer you what I can, of course.
I am Lady Elaine Amite, widow of Lord Amite, daughter of Lord Pelles Corbenic, who commands the lands of the same name.
You are?" She bustled over to the fire in the middle of the room and swung a beaten up old kettle over it.
"Sir Lancelot du Lac of Camelot," he replied, worry knotting his stomach.
Elaine acted as though they were back in that very day so long ago. She gasped as his words registered. "Camelot? The Sir Lancelot du Lac?"
"Unless there's more than one running around," he said, pleased when that earned a laugh. Small and weak, underscored with exhaustion and some fear, but a laugh all the same. "What do you here all alone, fair lady?"
"All others left long ago, leaving me here alone with naught but my son for company, and once he is well, I will encourage him too in departing from this place."
That wasn't right. She'd lamented everyone was gone except her beloved son, off hunting, and her father, who was slowly dying from being wounded by a wild boar who'd surprised them in the garden a few days past.
Lancelot approached the bed and sure enough, there in the bed was Galahad. What in the fuck was going on? "What misfortune has befallen him?"
"I don't know," she said tearfully. "I woke up yesterday, and he was not well. Would not wake, mutters strange words in his sleep as though possessed by a devil, and grows weaker by the day. If I cannot wake him soon, I fear he'll not see another sunrise."
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Lancelot pressed a hand to his forehead, where sure enough, he was burning up, the kind of fever that would cook someone from the inside out if it went on too long.
She'd probably been using the water to keep him cool as best she could, not strong enough to carry him to the pond he could sense near by.
Discarding his outer layers so he wasn't encumbered by them, Lancelot tore the blankets away, heaved Galahad up in a fireman's carry, and strode off as quickly as he could, bound for the pond he could feel east of the keep.
As he walked, Galahad muttered in his ear. "Disconnected. Some…fritz…jolt…can't…stuck…help…"
Lancelot's blood turned to ice.
As they reached the water, a pond exactly as he'd thought, he kept going, plunging straight into it, until only Galahad's head was above water. Bringing up the comm window, he selected Merlin from his friend list. Merlin, wake up! Wake up!
I'm up, I'm up.
I need you here yesterday. For the love of god, don't bring Dred with you.
On my way.
"How is he doing?" Elaine asked, wading into the water alongside him, heedless of the weight of her skirts as they absorbed water. She pressed the back of her hand to Galahad's forehead and cheeks, sighing softly. "His fever has already cooled significantly. Thank you."
"Thank me when he's awake and healthy," Lancelot replied. "I've a friend coming to hopefully help us further resolve this matter. Go wait for him at the gate and lead him here."
She heaved and clawed her way back out of the water, then huffed in irritation, drew the knife at her belt, and cut the skirt off just above her knees.
Another oddity, for that was a tale she'd told of something she'd done as a girl, after a cruel man whose suit she'd rejected had pushed her into the river while she'd been doing laundry one day.
With the yards upon yards of fabric soaked, she'd had no choice but to cut the cloth away or die of drowning.
As she ran off, he turned his full attention back to Galahad. His warm skin was ashen and sickly, more gray than brown, but he wasn't quite as pale as he'd been just minutes ago, so the water was at least keeping him stable. "Stay strong, Galahad," he murmured. "Don't give up just yet."
"Lan…" Galahad said, then fell quiet and still again.
"Lancelot!" Merlin cried, and Lancelot looked up to see him and Guinevere racing toward him. They plunged into the icy water, Gwen immediately setting to examining him. "What's wrong with him? Why does she act like she doesn't know this is a game?"
"I think their connection was killed, and they both were almost ghosted. Whatever happened fritzed her mind and made her forget this was all a game, and Galahad is lost somewhere, but not quite ghosted yet."
"Shit, shit, shit," Merlin said.
Gwen gestured sharply. "Get him back to shore, I'll see what I can do."
In the earliest days of the full immersion tech that was ubiquitous now, abrupt power outages or other full disconnects could cause the person using the rig to be essentially lost, their consciousness neither in the game nor in their body, but lost somewhere between, a digital ghost. Thousands had died before the problem had been fixed, and people had been too afraid to continue using the technology for another ten-twenty years after that.
It was one of the biggest technological disasters in history, and there was an absurd number of fail-safes installed in every rig to prevent it happening.
Practically the only way it could happen was a one in a million chance mistake or purposeful sabotage. Lancelot would bet everything he owned that Maleagant, angry at the losses already suffered, had gone for the expedient but cruel route of ghosting them.
Only it hadn't quite worked, for reasons they'd probably never know. Though what it had done was bad enough.
Once he had Galahad settled on the bank, still partway in the water to help keep him cool, Gwen snatched up the staff that she'd dropped in order to examine him.
Now she knelt beside him, staff gripped tight across her lap, head bowed low as she whispered chants to focus her power.
The crystal orb set in it began to glow, softly at first, and then with increasing brilliance, flickering all the colors that fire could be—orange, white, red, blue, green, and more, a rainbow of searing heat that spilled from the crystal and over Galahad, consuming him entirely.
Elaine dropped to her knees and pulled his head into her lap, crying openly, uncaring as the scorching light consumed her too.
Lancelot lifted an arm to block the blinding light, forced to turn his head away as it consumed the entire meadow—
And then was gone.
"Fuck me," Elaine said. "How long have I been stuck here?" She looked around at them in bewilderment. "What's going on?"
"Mother, I'm insulted you're asking all these questions instead of fawning over your miraculously recovered son."
Elaine huffed a tired laugh that turned into a sob. "I can't believe how close I came to losing you. This is the last time I play any game with you, I swear to the goddess."
If Lancelot was at all given to fainting, he might have then from sheer relief. Instead, he moved to help them up. "All right there, Galahad?"
"You know it," Galahad replied. "Could do with food and sleep, but otherwise I'm all right.
Though I don't know…" His eyes went distant, and then he sagged so hard in relief that Lancelot had to catch him.
"Our bodies are fine. Whatever happened, the emergency backups kicked on.
Too late to save us entirely, but that's probably what kept us from completely ghosting. Fuck me."
Lancelot clapped him on the back. "I'm certain Dred will be more than happy to do that. Shall we return to camp before more trouble finds us?"
Elaine, already wrapped securely in a happily-crying Gwen's arms, said fiercely, "With all the haste you can muster, dear husband. I said it back then, and I'll say it again now: I never want to see this stupid pile of rocks ever again."
"A wise lord heeds the wishes of his wife," Lancelot replied, motioning for Merlin to take the lead with proper light to guide them, while he as usual covered their rear. The very moment they reached camp, he was finally going to get some damned sleep.