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They come from nowhere, flooding the camp. Hundreds of armed men and women — it’s an ambush.
Arthur and the knights waste no time before leaping into action, and the clang of swords and cries of battle fill the air. Merlin stands alert, ready to offer his own form of protection.
Yet when a familiar tingling sensation brushes over him, he feels a chill. This is no regular bandit attack. There’s magic nearby, and it’s powerful.
Merlin’s suspicions are confirmed by a flash of green light to his left. His own magic leaps to readiness as he spins to survey his surroundings. From the shadows spring cloaked figures with eyes of gold. Merlin can sense six… ten… no, at least twelve separate magic users, and they all begin to draw power.
And then it begins. Merlin sees and feels incantations all around, and he starts targeting each with a block or counter spell. He positions himself close to Arthur, marking the King as his sword twirls in combat. It’s a routine they’ve practised many times in preparation for attacks involving magic, but with this many sorcerers, it’s not something that can be rehearsed. On top of this, today Merlin protects not just the King, but all his men as well.
Magic flies around them all; spells designed to kill, burn, slice, and any number of other means of inflicting damage. Relying partly on training but mostly on intuition, Merlin moves with rapid speed to deflect and protect against everything the sorcerers throw at Camelot’s force. Every one of his senses – both mortal and magic – are working in overdrive, his reflexes responding like lightning.
Two sorcerers leap into his path and he dispatches them with ease, dropping them into a deep, cold sleep. He does not wish to kill magic users if he can avoid it — or anyone for that matter. He can wake them later for questioning.
Yet still the onslaught comes, magic shooting in every direction. Sweat beads on his brow as Merlin works hard to shield each of Camelot’s knights and the King from deadly blows, one after the other. The outlook doesn’t look good. Camelot’s elite knights are more skilled than the attacking force, but vastly outnumbered. Likewise, Merlin has the advantage in sheer strength over all the enemy sorcerers combined, but there’s still ten of them and one of him. He doesn’t know how long he can keep up with defending against the relentless tirade, and he can feel himself tiring — but he can’t stop now.
When three more sorcerers work their way close enough to him, he takes them down as he had the others, into an unconscious slumber. He lets out a deep breath. Five down; seven to go.
From the midst of the attack, surrounded on all sides, that’s when he sees her. One of the cloaked figures lowers a dark hood to reveal eyes of fire as she walks toward him with fierce determination. Instinctively, Merlin moves away from Arthur, to be safe — this sorceress knows it’s Merlin who’s blocking the spells, and means to stop him. Arm outstretched and lips moving, she makes eye contact with him and he can feel the energy she’s drawing, building up tension, ready to spring. She’s very powerful, but Merlin knows she’s no match for him.
Still fending off spells from behind and all around him, he readies himself to counter several possible attacks she could be planning to throw at him…
Yet, the moment the sorceress releases her blast, a blurry red shape leaps into the path of the spell.
The knight is hit in the chest with full force. Merlin looks on in horror, as Gwaine’s body crumples to the ground.
“No!” Merlin cries.
Without thinking, he throws magic at his friend with a single intent: let him live. It is magic so complex and innate that Merlin could not have repeated it with conscious thought if he’d tried. The magic protects Gwaine’s brain and sustains his core life force — somehow — but Merlin knows it cannot last long.
This is the final straw. The fighting needs to stop. Now.
Time slows. Power surges through Merlin. Drawing on rage, fear and desperation, he lets out a deafening scream which shakes the ground and the heavens. In a single shockwave felt for miles, the entire attacking force of bandits, mercenaries and sorcerers collapse as one. Dozens of limp bodies lie in heaps across the forest floor. Scattered figures in the red of Camelot stand amongst their fallen foes, bewildered but unscathed. At the epicentre of the blast, Merlin stands with arms outstretched, chest heaving, and eyes blazing.
Merlin briefly meets Arthur’s stunned gaze. He’ll have to deal with that later… he’s just done exactly what he’d told the King was impossible. He is not even certain how lethal the blast was — Gods, have I killed them all? — he only knows that it was extremely powerful magic, even for him. It should have exhausted him, but there’s no time for that now. Within seconds, Merlin is falling to his knees at Gwaine’s side, plunging magic into his body to assess his condition.
He is alive, but he has a slow erratic heartbeat, and he’s not breathing. Merlin breathes into Gwaine’s mouth, then begins chest compressions, his physician's training kicking in.
But Gwaine does not respond; in fact he becomes paler — the compressions are too forceful, it’s too much pressure, the impact too violent for his fragile body, which is hanging in balance. And Merlin’s earlier protective magic is wearing off.
“Come on!” Merlin cries, desperately. Fear crashes over him; fear of losing his closest friend, and beneath it, fear that his reckless act against the attackers had been in vain. He feels like thumping down on Gwaine’s chest, but his instincts take over to prevent it. Gwaine needs delicate care now.
Merlin breathes deeply, forcing himself to clear his mind and focus. Gwaine needs to breathe. He guides his magic to gently push air in and out of Gwaine’s lungs at a steady constant rate, willing him to start breathing on his own — but for now, he cannot.
Merlin delves with his magic again, sensing every inch of Gwaine’s fragile body — he can feel every cut and every bruise; a broken rib and a sprained ankle — but those are not urgent. His brain seems intact… for now. He focuses on Gwaine’s heart – that’s where the problem lies. He can feel the muscles trying to compress, trying to return to a steady beat, but erratic spurting signals evade his body’s attempt to resume its beating pace.
Carefully, Merlin directs his magic inside Gwaine’s chest and begins to compress the heart muscles in the subtlest and gentlest way, trying to coax it back into its own beating pulse. One, Two, Three, Four. Merlin focuses on the rhythm as he squeezes the muscle, keeping time like the beat of a drum — but something’s still not right. Concentrating, he attunes his magic further, and adjusts his compressions with minuscule precision, so that the movement of Gwaine’s heart mimics the exact motion of his own…. And it works. The blood begins to flow more strongly.
Eyes stinging, Merlin holds Gwaine’s head and torso, and stares into his vacant eyes as he tries to temper the anger and frustration flowing through him at the knight’s brave and stupid move. He works to keep the beat, willing with all his might for Gwaine’s heart to pick up the rhythm itself. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four. Come. On. You. Fucking. Stupid. Fool. Don’t. You. Dare. Fucking. Die. Not. For. Me.
Merlin is vaguely aware of movement around him. Someone is trying to move him. Absently, he pushes them away with a thought, creating a barrier. To their eyes, he is almost motionless. They cannot see the work he’s doing - and he can’t let them stop him or distract him.
Something is still wrong. Merlin knows Gwaine needs more help. He delves further with his magic, searching. He finds the signals coming toward Gwaine’s heart, the pulses which set its pace. It is those which are erratic, and Merlin realises it is those which must be steadied.
He follows the signals to their source, trying to fall into pace with them. He finds their resonance, senses how they work —like tiny microscopic lightning bolts— and he attunes his magic to match, boosting the signal, and trying to steady it. Merlin tries and tries to bring the signal into a steady rhythm, but to no avail; it’s all over the place… irregular pulses stutter and spurt with no pattern at all. Angrily, Merlin ramps up the strength of his little lightning-like jolts. He overrides Gwaine’s own signals. One. Two. Three. Four. This seems to work, Gwaine’s heart responds to Merlin’s signals. Slowly, he transitions from squeezing the heart muscle to keep blood pumping, to merely providing a steady rhythmic signal which controls Gwaine’s heart. With Merlin’s pulsing signal, Gwaine’s heart pumps on its own. Merlin lets out a hopeful sob at this, and another when he realises that sometime along the way, Gwaine’s lungs have also begun breathing of their own accord. He keeps his attention on keeping to the beat. One. Two. Three. Four. He gets lost in the rhythm. One. Two. Three. Four…
Brow furrowed, he carefully senses the response in Gwaine’s body. Beneath Merlin’s pulsing signal, Gwaine’s own signal remains in its erratic state. He sighs in frustration. He’s still keeping Gwaine alive, and he’s running out of ideas on how to fix him.
“Whether you like it or not, I am not giving up on you,” he mutters angrily, as he looks up and around him. Vaguely, he registers that he’s surrounded by the other knights. The entire patrol, it seems. Some of them have lips moving as if they’re speaking or shouting, but Merlin can’t hear them. Percival bangs his fist against air, as if on the other side of a window. Arthur looks solemn, and Elyan seems heartbroken. Merlin watches them all, wondering fleetingly why they’re making no sound, why they’re punching air. Nothing they’re doing makes sense. It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s Gwaine that matters right now and that’s where his attention must stay.
The signal in Gwaine’s body is wrong. It needs to be fixed. What else can he do? With his magic, he feels an urge, a pulling. With determination and no other options left, he trusts in his magic and follows his instinct to boost his own signal higher still. He pauses to build up a larger charge, and directs the lightning pulse into one big sudden jolt, right at the point the signal reaches the heart. Zap.
The magic shoots into Gwaine, and his body jerks upward in a spasm. To Merlin’s horror, he finds that now the signal has stopped entirely.
Waves of cold panic shoot through Merlin as he scrambles his magic, ready to begin the manual heart compressions again… but then he notices it.
Gwaine’s signal is back, and it has steadied itself. One. Two. Three. Four. Merlin checks, and checks again, ready to seize control again if he needs to. But the signal is strong, and Gwaine’s heart is beating on its own, to its own pulse, lungs breathing. Gwaine is alive without Merlin’s help, and he looks like he’s sleeping.
Merlin’s chest feels lighter and he begins to chuckle. The tears which had threatened to fall in anger and fear melt away into laughter. Merlin sits back, and as the world comes back into focus, he remembers why he can’t hear anyone. Oh shit, the barrier!
Merlin shakes his head and wills away the invisible shield he’d thrown up which had kept everyone away from him, and suddenly their shouts hit him too.
“ –seems like he’s alive!”
“ –he lives, go tell the others!”
Merlin scans the bustle of knights excitedly spreading the news of Gwaine, until he meets Arthur’s stare. The King’s eyes bore into him, his head slowly shaking with a thousand unvoiced questions. Merlin closes his eyes, taking a slow breath.
“Arthur… the attackers, are they…?”
“They're alive.” Arthur says slowly.
Merlin feels a weight lift from him at the news, and a flutter deep inside at the release of a tight knot of fear. A fear not only of the destruction he’d proven himself capable of, but of what he feared had happened when his magic had acted outside of conscious thought. He knows his magic feeds from his true intent. The possibility that deep down his subconscious intent had been to kill — utterly at odds with his conscious decision to preserve life — had been truly frightening.
Arthur watches him with searching eyes. “You took down the entire force in one go… how did you…?”
“I have no idea,” Merlin replies, truthfully. He looks around at the sea of unconscious bodies, which the knights have begun moving into rows. Taking out so many at once, at such distances – he shouldn’t have been able to do it, and Arthur knew as much. Merlin’s own words from training echo in his mind about how sword and sorcery must work together, since magic has limits. Well, today it seems Merlin has stretched his own limits.
He sighs, and tries not to think about the task he’ll have ahead of him of waking each attacker up one by one, nor what Arthur might decide to do with so many prisoners.
Merlin feels a hand placed on his shoulder, and looks up. “Well done,” Arthur says, giving a respectful nod, and gestures toward Gwaine. “You’ve saved his life, if I’m not mistaken.”
Merlin looks down at Gwaine, still sleeping peacefully, and thinks back with a certain awe at what he’d managed to achieve in order to save his friend. “Yes,” he replies softly. “Yes, I think I did.”
He blinks as a yawn takes hold, and awareness creeps over him of his immense bone-deep exhaustion.
“Get some rest, Merlin. We’ll talk later,” Arthur says, and heads off to help the others.
Merlin closes his eyes for a moment, his head beginning to swim with the lull of sleep. After a moment or two — he isn’t quite sure how long — he is awoken by a rough cough from below him.
“Oh Gods, I have one hell of a hangover.”
Merlin peers down with a grin as Gwaine’s eyes open blearily. The Knight smiles when he sees Merlin, despite a painful wince when he tries to shift his body.
“Careful! Don’t move yet, or you’ll undo my hard work to keep you alive. You’re not all fully fixed yet.” Merlin places a gentle hand on Gwaine’s chest, trying to keep an admonishing tone to his voice, but it’s hard when he feels such relief and happiness to see him awake and being himself. “And you deserve that hangover, you idiot. What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking anything, it just happened,” Gwaine replies, looking a little sheepish, but proud too. “She was going for you and looked like she could do some damage… so I stopped her.”
Merlin huffs. “You almost died. You stick to swinging swords, I’ll handle the sorcerers, okay?”
Gwaine coughs, and nods. “Noted.” He raises his head and tries to look down at his body. He wiggles his toes, but winces in pain again, laying his head back once more. Then he turns to Merlin with a weak but sincere smile. “Thank you… you know, for keeping me alive.”
Merlin chuckles. “Any time.”