Start of Arc 4!
They had been traveling for a while now through different places as they went further and further away from Camelot and the reason was simple: they were being hunted. Not by common bounty hunters or warlords, but by the long arm of a dying empire that refused to accept prophecy.
Vortigern's banners still flew across Albion's shattered sectors, and with them came inquisitors, knight-hunters, psionic augurs, and things that wore human shapes only as a convenience. The Sword had been drawn. The galaxy knew. And powers far older and powerful had begun to stir.
Merlin never stayed anywhere long. They slipped through worlds like rumors. They passed through Caerleon Prime, once the heart of imperial command, now a hollow administrative world orbiting a dead star. This had been Camelot's sister world.
Its senate chambers were sealed. Its academies have been abandoned. But its data vaults still whispered secrets in the dark. Merlin scavenged records here battle logs, bloodline confirmations, names of knights who might still live. It was also where Vortigern's agents nearly caught them. And where Arthur drew the Sword for the first time in anger.
They crossed the Waste Land, countless systems strip-mined by ancient war engines until its planets were little more than slag and ghosts. This had once been a fertile realm now it was dead. Arthur felt sick there.
He even saw a Grail spire which rose broken on an ocean world, a colossal tower of white alloy piercing the clouds. Once, it had been a stellar life-engine, its interior powered by a singularity suspended in a lattice of faith-driven computation. Pilgrims still came, though none were allowed inside.
They came upon a place which Merlin called Broceliande. It was a rich asteroid field that covered many systems in which somehow plant life grew on the meteoroids. Its surface covered in fractal woodlands grown from self-replicating psionic flora. The trees shifted when no one was looking. Paths rearranged themselves. Sounds arrived before their sources. The locals called it the Mad Green. Arthur liked it and this was where the old wizard fixed his staff.
The man who called himself Merlin looked like a madman. Nothing like the regal archmage of legend, not the cosmic manipulator whispered about in half-burned libraries and outlawed star-codices, but a ragged thing wrapped in layers of mismatched cloth and scavenged tech, hunched over a staff that looked more like a broken antenna than a relic of power.
His beard was wild, streaked with dust and bits of circuitry, braided in places and burned away in others. His boots did not match. One glowed faintly with arcane sigils. The other was duct-taped together from synth-leather and stubbornness. His hair stood out in every direction, as if gravity itself had given up trying to tame it.
To most eyes, he looked like a mad old hobo who had wandered too far from the slums. To those who knew better, he was the most dangerous being for a thousand worlds in any direction.
Arthur trudged along beside him, small boots scuffed and uneven, a threadbare cloak hanging from narrow shoulders. He was no more than ten by appearances, light-haired, sharp-eyed, wary in the way of children who had learned too early that the universe did not care. He carried the Sword of Kings wrapped in oilcloth and cable wire, slung across his back like it was nothing more than scrap metal.
Behind them stumbled Ser Ector. Once, he had been a Knight Commander of Camelot. Once, he had commanded battalions, ridden great walkers into starfire. Now he was a one-armed, one-eyed drunk with a metal crutch, a flask permanently welded to his remaining hand, and a voice like gravel dragged across a rusted hull.
They ran into this old man on a mining moon whose surface was more rust than rock. Arthur watched as he drank constantly. From flasks, from bottles, from things Arthur was fairly certain were not meant to be consumed by humans.
And yet when danger stirred Ser Ector walked straighter. His hand drifted to the hilt of a sword that was not there. His voice sharpened. His steps aligned with old instincts that had not yet died.
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The old man had been teaching how to use the sword which was a great help since he didn't need to just log it around uselessly. "Tellin' you," Ector muttered, slurring slightly as he limped along the pathway, "she won't like this one bit."
Merlin snorted. "She never likes anything I do."
Arthur glanced back. "Who… who are we going to see again?"
Merlin stopped. That alone was enough to make the void around them ripple. He turned slowly, peering down at Arthur through a mess of hair and grime. His eyes, though were sharp, ancient, and painfully sad. "The Lady of the Lake," Merlin said. "Nimue."
Arthur frowned. "Is she… royalty?"
Ector barked a laugh and nearly fell over. "Oh, boy. That's one word for it."
Merlin sighed. "She is older than royalty. Older than kings, older than kingdoms."
The nebula appeared not all at once, but gradually first as a bruise of color against the black, then as a vast, roiling ocean of gas and newborn stars. It sprawled across the void like a living thing, clouds of violet, gold, and deep blue folding into one another, threaded with lightning that flashed silently across impossible distances. Stars grew sparse, swallowed by vast clouds of ionized gas where gravity and chaos danced slow, terrible waltzes.
Arthur stopped without meaning to. "It's…" he whispered.
"A stellar nursery," Merlin said softly. "Where stars are born."
"And she lives inside that?" Arthur asked.
"Yes," the old man answered and just then the gases parted like curtains. The lightning softened, reshaping itself into slow, graceful arcs. The newborn stars dimmed, as if bowing. A path formed not of stone or light, but of stillness, a corridor of calm carved through cosmic chaos.
Arthur felt it immediately. The Sword on his back hummed. Not loudly. Not urgently. Just… recognition.
The corridor of stillness carried them inward, deeper into the nebula's heart, until the chaos beyond felt distant, muted, like a storm heard from beneath deep water. They stepped through. Then the Lake revealed itself. The surface stretched endlessly in every direction, a vast, luminous plane suspended within the nebula's hollow heart.
Stars drifted beneath the surface like schools of distant fish. Constellations slid and rearranged themselves with each ripple, as though the lake were a living map of the cosmos, remembering stars long dead and dreaming of those yet to be born.
The Court of the Lake did not obey physics.
There was no ground, yet Arthur felt solid footing beneath his boots. There was no sky, yet above them stretched a vast, luminous canopy of drifting lights - spirits, he realized, watching them. Thousands of them. Shapes half-remembered, half-forgotten. Some human. Some not. Some so strange his mind slid away from them like oil from water.
Water flowed everywhere and nowhere. Great slow-moving rivers of liquid light drifted through the court, forming pools suspended in midair. Islands of crystal and living metal floated gently, connected by strands of glowing energy like spider silk spun from starlight.
Around the lake floated islands. Some were small, no larger than market stalls, crowned with pale grasses that chimed like glass when the unseen wind brushed them. Others were vast, bearing ancient trees whose roots dipped directly into the glowing water, drinking starlight.
And at the center of it all Arthur's breath caught when he saw her.
She stood barefoot on the surface of a floating lake, her reflection stretching infinitely downward. Her skin shimmered like moonlight on deep water. Her hair flowed freely behind her, silver and black and blue all at once, moving as though underwater. Her eyes were too deep, too vast when Arthur looked into them, he felt as though he were standing at the edge of something endless.
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She smiled. "Merlin," Nimue greeted them. Her voice was warmth and gravity combined. It wrapped around Arthur's heart before he realized it.
Merlin bowed so deeply his staff clattered against the invisible ground. "My Lady," he said, suddenly far less mad and far more tired.
Her gaze shifted and landed on him, Arthur felt it like sunlight breaking through cloud. Slowly, impossibly gently, Nimue stepped forward. Her expression softened. Melted.
"Oh, my sweet boy," she breathed as she knelt before him..
Arthur swallowed. "Uh. Hello?"
Then confusion crossed her face. "You don't remember me," she said quietly.
Arthur shook his head. "I'm sorry."
The air changed. Nimue stood, very slowly. She turned to Merlin. "What," she asked, her voice suddenly cold enough to freeze stars, "have you done?"
Merlin did not meet her eyes. "I saved him," he said.
"You broke him," Nimue accused.
"I preserved him," the old man bit back with heat in his tone.
"At what cost?" she simply asked.
Merlin's shoulders sagged. "Everything!"
Ector cleared his throat loudly to break the tension. "Uh. For what it's worth, Lady…good to see you again."
She glanced at him. "…Ser Ector," she said slowly. "You look like hell."
"Been a rough few centuries."
Her attention returned to Merlin. "Explain," she simply said.
Merlin leaned heavily on his staff. "When Vortigern rose," he began, "when Camelot burned and the King fell, Arthur's life was in danger so I had to do what I must. Every future I saw ended with his death or worse."
Nimue folded her arms. "So you cheated."
"I intervened."
"You always do," she shook her head.
Merlin met her gaze now, eyes bright with stubborn defiance and ancient regret. "I cast a spell which totally removed him from causality. Slipped him out of the timeline and reinserted him when the conditions were right."
"And erased his memory," she said.
"That was not intended."
Nimue closed her eyes. "You were always a poor student," she said softly.
Merlin smiled faintly. "Well you taught me. So the blame lays with the master."
"And you never listened." She exhaled, long and slow. "I will prepare the pools," Nimue said at last. "Make yourselves comfortable." She turned, her form dissolving into flowing light as she walked across the lake, each step rippling outward into infinity.
Left alone, Arthur wandered. The court was alive around him. Spirits drifted close, curious but gentle. Some bowed. Some whispered his name, others just watched from off the sideline.
He stopped at one of the islands, a small patch of pale grass that shimmered as if each blade held a fragment of starlight. There, sitting cross-legged and picking at something invisible in the air, was another child. A girl. About his age, her hair was dark and fell around her shoulders like a night sky without stars, and her eyes were sharp, piercing, almost laughing at something only she understood.
Arthur froze, unsure what to do. She seemed so familiar. An ache blossomed in his heart as if he met someone he had been looking for his whole life.
The girl's eyes widened with recognition when she saw him. She stood and called out, voice clear and melodic, " Arthur, it's really you?"
"I think so…" he answered.
The girl studied him seriously. "You don't remember me," she said.
"I don't remember a lot," Arthur admitted.
"That's alright," she said softly. "I remember you. Come let's play!"
The spirits around them stirred, circling like tiny sparks, their whispers rising and falling in harmonized tones. Arthur hesitated only a heartbeat before stepping forward. Her hand was warm, grounding him in this impossible place.
They wandered together across the floating islands, discovering bridges of liquid light that arched between glowing stones, chasing the drifting motes that darted like fireflies. The girl laughed as she twirled, catching fragments of light in her palms and tossing them into the air, where they bloomed into new stars.
They skipped stones of condensed starlight that exploded into tiny supernovas. They laughed at nothing and everything. At one point, Arthur had to ask, "Who are you?"
She hesitated, pain flicking briefly in her eyes then answered. "Morgan."
Something stirred. A warmth. A sense of rightness. They sat together in companionable silence until Nimue returned.
When Nimue returned, she watched them from a distance. "They always find each other," Nimue smiled. "No matter how many times the cosmos rearranges itself."
"It never ends well," Merlin who stood beside her muttered. His staff was planted firmly and expression unreadable as he asked. "How has she been?"
"She has taken well to my tutelage. I believe one day you might have competition," the Lady of the Lake answered before she stepped into their gathering. Morgan noticed first. She straightened and bowed her head, instinctively respectful.
"Arthur." He turned to face her. "It's time," she said gently. "You'll be alright soon." She held out her hand and Arthur hesitated only a heartbeat before taking it.