CHAPTER FOUR
-ARTHUR-
I approached the Lake of Aeloria as the first hint of dusk kissed the eastern sky.
Mist clung to the water, thick and silver, transforming the familiar landscape into something almost arcane.
This weekly pilgrimage was my closely guarded secret. And that was for the best. If word ever got out...
It couldn’t.
Camelot weighed on my shoulders like a physical burden. Sleep had eluded me again last night—haunted, as always, by the same dream: a sword rising from the water... only to turn away from my grasp. Always the same nightmare, recurring with increasing frequency as the Shadow Trials approached.
I reached the water’s edge and removed my boots. The cold mud squelched between my toes—a grounding reminder of my connection to this land, however tenuous it had become. I waded in, ankle-deep, my robe growing heavy as it drank the lake’s chill.
"Nimue," I called. My voice shattered the stillness. "Lady of the Lake. Daughter of Aeloria's depths. Keeper of fates. I summon you."
The ancient invocation Merlin taught me tasted bitter now—a relic from a man who had once been like a father to me... before betrayal severed that bond.
The lake began to ripple from its center. Soft blue light glowed beneath the surface, growing brighter until it rivaled the coming dawn. The mist parted, peeled back by unseen hands, revealing the heart of the lake.
She rose slowly.
And she was as breathtaking now as the first time I’d seen her at fifteen years old. Her skin shimmered, a living canvas that shifted with the light. Every gesture seemed orchestrated by some divine hand—not of flesh and bone, but sculpted by the currents that danced beneath her surface.
Her hair appeared like a river of sapphire roots, tapering to sky blue and ending in luminescent foam-like wisps of pale aqua.
It floated as though suspended in water, even as the air gathered still around her—a ghostly waterfall.
And those eyes... They captured me across the distance, their color a roiling tempest between sea-glass green and storm-dark blue.
Her voice, when it came, resonated through the lake's depths, as if multiple echoes converged around me.
Her presence altered time, made reality seem mutable. She exuded an ancient calm that threatened to unravel my resolve, an unimaginable power that clung to her and made her both my oracle and nemesis—a reminder of the magic I fought against yet feared to lose.
The Lady of the Lake was no ally, not truly. It was more that her magic was bound by the same rules as mine—unable to cross, press, or fracture the invisible boundary that separated creation from chaos. And, in this case, her magic was creation and mine, chaos.
When I had taken the dragonmark and the dragon, I’d become inexorably tied to a draconic power beyond comprehension—older even than Nimue.
Its essence carved itself into me, an insidious force of chaos, fire, destruction, and unmaking, while Nimue’s magic was one of creation, balance, and destiny.
Because our magics nullified one another, we would never be true opponents.
She couldn’t use her magic against me, and I couldn’t use mine against her.
Not that I actively practiced my own magic any longer.
Ever since I’d become tainted by the fire of the dragon—corrupted by that ancient, insidious force that lived within me—my own zephyr magic had grown too unpredictable, too dangerous to wield with any certainty.
The magic that had once flowed through me, connecting me to the land I ruled, now came wrapped in dragonflame and unpredictability.
Where once I used to command breezes to carry messages across Camelot or summon gusts that could dry the dewy morning fields within minutes, birds traveled the kingdom on my gentle winds, their songs floating into every corner of the realm.
But that harmony was gone now. The dragon’s presence turned my wind magic molten, twisting it with a fire that consumed all softness.
A whisper of air now became a destructive gale, tearing apart walls and rending the earth.
Moments meant for serenity shattered—cyclones thrashed and devastated, igniting terror in those who witnessed my attempts to regain control.
The dragon’s essence had twisted everything pure about my gifts, transforming them into instruments of destruction that mirrored the beast’s own nature.
Each time I reached for my power, I felt its claws scraping against the inside of my ribs, felt its hunger for dominance surging through my veins.
The risk of losing control, of letting that ancient hunger consume not just my enemies but everything I sought to protect, made the practice of magic a luxury I could no longer afford.
And I hadn’t for seven years—ever since the death of my father, when I’d taken the dragon into myself in order to cage it, to keep it from wreaking havoc if released.
Seven years ago, I’d been a different man—a free man.
I peered beyond the lake, focusing on the memory of my father’s decline. His final years had not been kind. Uther’s mind had unraveled long before he’d breathed his last. In fact, Uther hadn’t ruled Camelot for over twenty years by the time he died.
My father had been consumed by madness, his sanity slowly devoured by the dragon's relentless influence until nothing remained of the wise king I'd once known.
The great Uther Pendragon, who had united the warring kingdoms and forged the foundation of our realm, had become little more than a shell in his final years—raving about ancient prophecies, speaking to shadows, and issuing contradictory edicts that would have torn the kingdom apart if I hadn't quietly countermanded them.
The courtiers whispered that it was grief over my mother's death that broke his mind, but I knew better.
I'd seen the dragonmark spreading across his chest like a cancer and watched the way his eyes went distant and cold when the beast spoke to him.
Thus, I'd been forced to step forward and take the reins of power at only fifteen, long before I understood what wielding a crown truly meant—before I grasped the terrible weight of decisions that could save or damn thousands with a single word.
The transition had been brutal, a baptism by fire that left me hardened beyond my years as I struggled to hold together a kingdom while my father deteriorated in the shadows.
The only mercy—if it could be called that—in this entire cursed arrangement was that the dragon, being an immortal spirit, had affected my own aging process in ways I was still discovering.
From the moment I'd willingly taken the dragon's essence into myself seven years ago, accepting the dragonmark, my body had ceased aging.
Even though I was thirty-five, I remained locked at the physical peak of twenty-eight, my strength undiminished, my reflexes sharp as the day I'd first felt the beast's claws sink into my soul.
It was a small mercy for the immense weight I carried, this preservation of youth and vigor when lesser men would have been ground down by the pressures of ruling.
Yet I harbored no illusions about my mortality—I was still very capable of dying, just as my father ultimately had when the dragon's influence finally burned through what remained of his human will.
"Arthur Pendragon," Nimue said as she ascended. A stone platform emerged beneath her feet, rising from the lake. At its center stood the sword in the stone—Excalibur—embedded as firmly as the day it had returned to her keeping seven years ago.
The day I'd failed to draw it.
Her eyes met mine, reflecting pity. If there was one emotion I detested, it was pity.
My feet, firmly rooted in the mud, felt the cold seep past my skin—an unwanted whisper reminding me of my inadequacies.
Each visit to the shores these last years had been a confession I could hardly admit to myself: I could no longer summon Excalibur.
The sword had grown silent, immovable, mocking the prophecy of my youth.
"You come frequently, Arthur."
"Does it amuse you?" My response was tinged with irritation, frustration at my own impotence, at the dragon stirring within me, at the weight of the crown that felt heavier with each passing day.
"Not amusement. It is simply a reminder of human fragility. Even now, your soul fights its cage."
I turned away, unwilling to meet those eyes shimmering with understanding—or perhaps indifference. Her words stung because they were true. And truth, unlike my crown, offered no comfort.
"I must know," I said, my voice quiet but steady, "if the sword recognizes me now."
This question haunted me—it had for years. It was the question that drove me here, time and time again, like a penitent seeking absolution.
"I must know if my worth has been restored."
Nimue nodded—neither encouragement nor dismissal. Just the same patient gaze. A witness, not a judge.
I squared my shoulders and stepped forward. Ripples spread with each footfall as I crossed the water. The stone platform felt cool beneath my bare feet.
Excalibur stood before me, the sword that had once come willingly to my hand.
I gripped the hilt.
It pulsed—neither warm nor cold. Not welcoming. Not rejecting.
I closed my eyes.
Let this time be different, I prayed—not to gods, but to whatever forces ruled this cursed sword.
The sword is dead to us.
The dragon's ancient voice reverberated through my skull, its words like molten metal poured directly into my thoughts. Each syllable carried the hunger of something that had never known satisfaction, the possessive fury of a creature that viewed the entire world as its hoard to claim and control.
I could hear its voice in my thoughts more often now—whispers that had once been occasional intrusions becoming a constant, insidious presence—a relentless commentary on my desires, my fears, my choices.