closed starter for @hrtbrkprinces
Arthur Pendragon should be dead. It had been foretold - his death for Camelot, his blood at the hands of his son, a son he never knew had been conceived, nor with whom, until it was too late. The lad was already toddling by the time Arthur had been given the chance to recognize him, fair of face like his mother but something lingering about the eyes, like too much weight on shoulders too small to hold it up.
That weight had been prophecy, and prophecy had chased them both like dogs all their lives.
Arthur Pendragon should be dead and, yet, he was not.
Instead, he languished in a field tent, wounds soaked with healing herbs and the edges drawn together by the Merlin's gnarled, branch-like hands, sinew keeping his insides where they belonged. He had requested no visitors, once he was lucid, and none had come to see him. They were all too busy mourning their dead, a country so innumerable it turned the king's heart to stone, his life like ashes in his mouth, now.
A snarl curled the edge of his mouth, head snapping upward, when the tent flap opened, exposing the wounded king to the flickering lights of torches. Camlann had fallen on a night dark as pitch; they would not have survived, if not for that and the old wizard's trickery.
"Who dares to enter here?" An figure, swathed in shadow, stood at the entrance of the tent, features obscured, and Arthur's fingers inched closer to the dagger set beside the cot on which he rest. "Brother? Galahad?"
