A warm breeze made Arthur's cheek tingle. Everything felt surreal. The apple green grass beneath his feet felt real.

And he was dead.

The meadow in which he sat was thrumming with life. He closed his eyes as he recalled a memory of him and Merlin sitting the forest, alone, deciding upon the fate of Camelot.

They sat around a campfire; it crackled loudly in the silence of the forest. They had just been to visit the Disir and now the weight of his decision to allow magic back into Camelot grew even heavier at every passing moment. Arthur had sent Merlin off to fetch some more firewood so he could have some time to reflect on his thoughts. Yet he couldn't of anything but one thing. What had struck him as uncanny was not the fact that the Disir wanted him to embrace the Old Religion but the fact that Merlin knew that they were standing on sacred ground.

"How did you know this ground was sacred?" Arthur asked to Merlin as he came back into the clearing with a pile of wood under his arms.

"That's because it is," Merlin replied back. Arthur rolled his eyes as Merlin added the extra wood to the fire. Merlin was avoiding his question, but Arthur didn't know why that was.

But now he does know. Yet his former self had not been happy with this answer and had decided to delve further into the matter.

"Pretend it isn't," Arthur stated out loud, simply gazing up into the canopy of the trees. Merlin turned to look at Arthur, Arthur could feel Merlin's eyes upon him.

"Everything here, is so full of life." Merlin's tone was full of sincerity and respect for the forest around him. "Every tree, every insect," Arthur looked up at Merlin who was smiling gently with a calm expression on his face "It is as if the world is vibrating. It is everything is moving all around us."

"You feel all of that?" he had asked ignorantly.

And ignorant Arthur was because here in Avalon he could feel the whole around him thrumming with life.

"Don't you?" Merlin had asked, still with the sincere and respective tone, still looking at Arthur as if to say 'look at all the beauty and magic in the forest' and Arthur had misread the sign.

Thinking back to it, Arthur realised that all along Merlin had been giving him signs that he had magic, yet he was too oblivious to even notice them. Here Merlin had been trying to prove that magic was a force for good, for connecting with nature and attuning himself with the world.

Here Arthur realised that Merlin had been so close to revealing his magic, yet in the heat of the moment Merlin had decided against it, because now he realised that his own judgement would have still be clouded by the attack on Mordred from the Disir. It would have just worsened the situation.

Arthur looked over to see Gwaine and the woman sitting cross legged, the woman gently tracing the lines on Gwaine's palm.

"Um excuse me?" he began to ask, not sure how to phrase his question, "but is there, um, any chance we can see what has happened in Camelot, since, er we left?"

The woman stood up and walked around to the other side of the apple tree. Arthur and Gwaine stood up and followed her where a large clear pool of water seeped out from underneath the tree.

"Here is the Scrying Pool where you can watch what is happening in the mortal world." She said, gesturing for them to look into it. Arthur looked down and saw an image of Camelot materialise in the water, an image of its town bustling with activity. Everything seemed to be the same as normal except-

His eye strayed to a girl sitting in the street outside her house. She wasn't much older than twelve but what she did was on beyond Arthur's belief. The girl knelt down to the mud in front of her, taking a stick and drew a circle and inscribed a couple of basic runes inside of it. She then muttered several incoherent spells and Arthur watched with disbelief as her brown eyes flashed gold as a small clay fox was transmuted from the mud circle in front of her.

Granted it wasn't very good, but it was still magic. Magic inside his kingdom! People had passed her without even turning their heads at the magic that had been performed under their eyes. The girl grinned as she scooped up her model and ran inside of the house, calling for her mother.

"What just happened?" asked Arthur bemused, pointing to where the girl had just been sitting.

"Magic." The woman simply replied still gazing into the reflection of the water.

"But surely somebody would have noticed that?" Gwaine said confused.

"It has been a year since the death of the King. The ban of magic has been lifted with there being no radical threat to the kingdom anymore. Since the lifting of the ban, Camelot has flourished in both wealth, crops, livestock and the other kingdoms have slowly been brought together under the watchful eye of the young Queen. They are now working together with co-operation and this has brought about the new age of peaceful prosperity."

"A year?" Gwaine blurted out.

"Yes," the woman replied, "time passes quite differently in Avalon than it does in Camelot."

"Would it be possible if I could see Guinevere?" asked Arthur, a tugging guilt inside of chest which made him realise how much he had missed her. They hadn't even had time to say goodbye properly during the late hours of that fateful night.

The pool then morphed into the image of the Great Hall, where a council meeting was in session. Gwen had seated herself near the top of the Round Table, with Leon to her right and Gaius to her left. Arthur could recognise several of the Knights including Percival listening to the Queen talking. As well as the Knights, there were several lords and dotted around the edge of the room were numerous servants. Gwaine breathed out a sigh of relief upon seeing the rest of his fellow Knights safe and sound, and Arthur felt a great weight being lifted off his chest seeing how magnificently Gwen had been running the kingdom. However there was still one thing that was niggling him.

"Where's Merlin?" Arthur saw the woman's smile falter slightly for a moment, her hazel eyes showed a brief moment of concern before returning back to their normal gaze. The woman dipped her fingers into the water and swirled them around, muttering a few words under her breath until an image of Merlin came up in the water.

Merlin was in a place Arthur had never seen before, a forest that was unbeknown to him. A change had come over Merlin, he seemed older and more hardened, moving in a much more swift and graceful way to his typical clumsy steps. Merlin was still wearing his usual scarf and leather jacket, but he was wearing a dark brown travelling cloak on top and his hair was much longer and messier than what it used to be. Merlin had changed.

Arthur felt a pang of pain in his gut, remembering the bright blue eyes that had been the very last thing he had seen, the sensation of being gently cradled in his best friends arms.

"What is he doing?" Gwaine said, noticing the odd behaviour that Merlin was displaying.

It was most indeed odd, as Merlin was moving silently, almost tiptoeing, his eyes gazing intently on the ground as he made quick progress through the forest.

"He looks like… he's tracking?" said Arthur in disbelief. Of all the things he guessed Merlin would be doing, tracking was what he wasn't expecting.

"But Merlin hates hunting!" Gwaine grinned, remembering the times Merlin had moaned whenever there was a Royal Hunt on.

"I don't understand either," Arthur was perplexed by Merlin's unusual behaviour. He could remember every single argument that Merlin had put forward when had been dragged along to these things, stating how it was unfair for the pray was fighting for its life against a dozen or so crossbows. And here he was, tracking something.

"The question is not why he's tracking," the woman slowly said, "but what the thing is that Merlin is tracking…."

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It had been ten long months since Merlin had first sensed the unusual presence in his cave. He had worried him for a bit so he had scouted his magic around in his area and the area surrounding Camelot, but the dark presence was nowhere to be located. Curious, but not curious enough, Merlin had forgotten about the dark presence and had simply gone back to meditating in his hidden cave, ignoring the presence because it wasn't a threat to Camelot at that precise moment in time.

Merlin hadn't returned to Camelot since Arthur's death, but wasn't about to either. He couldn't face the thought of seeing the disappointment on Gaius and Gwen's faces. Merlin couldn't cope with the fact he would be going to the place where everywhere would absolutely be overflowing with Arthur's missing presence. It would be too much for him. Not to mention the immense burden of doom he felt weighing down on his shoulders.

Instead he had gone as far as he could from Camelot on his own self-imposed exile, not wanting to even connect with the normal townsfolk of the local villages. Merlin had gone deep into the forest and decided to slowly attune himself with the nature around him, which had a more soothing effect on his magic, calming him and helping him slowly regain focus.

And it had worked.

Until the dark presence had come back under his radar again.

For the first time in ten months, something deep had stirred inside of Merlin and once more he felt of a spark of motivation to get up and follow the dark presence. This time however he wasn't going to lose it.

And he hadn't. Merlin had been silently tracking it for nearly a month now, there had been days where had been almost so close to him finding out what it was, for it to then divert off into the far distance in a different direction. Frustrated, Merlin had been spurred onto his efforts to find out what it was that had been troubling the flow of the air around him.

On the thirtieth day of following it, Merlin had been so close to finding out what it was. However when it was almost within a mere and painful touching distance, it had suddenly vanished into thin air without a trace. Annoyed, Merlin hadn't realised how far he had come, or where he had been brought to until he looked up into the skyline. There, protruding from the horizon, were the tips of the towers of Camelot.

The last place he wanted to be right now.

Merlin felt a frantic stab of panic in his stomach as he realised how far his futile search had taken it and was about to take flight back in the direction he had come from, when there came this almighty clap of thunder and a huge surge of magic came rippling through the air, sending Merlin flying backwards into the tree knocking him out. Merlin sprawled out across the leafy bed beneath him, a pulsing headache leaving him unable to move and wake up.

Things were finally being set into motion, as a shadow swept across Merlin's limp body.

This was the day that everything was going to change.

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DUN DUN DUN WHAT DO YOU THINK?

I'm so sorry about the really late update! To make up for it, I've made it slightly longer than the previous ones! My January exams are now over so I can hopefully concentrate about updating this fanfic once a week so it's more regular and that means I will actually begin to write more as well, if I have a deadline! Once again, thank you for the amazing reviews, they have been really great to read as they make me feel all happy and mushy inside (yes I know, cheesy right?).

In other news, me and my friend entered the Merlin Superfan competition and we were one of the ten winners who made it onto the Merlin DVD boxset LAKSJDF;LAKSJDF;LAKSJDF;ALKSJDF;LAKSJ! IT'S SO EXCITING AND I JUST CANNOT CONTAIN MY FEELS! IT'S SO GR88888888888888888888

But yeah, that's been the highlight of my week (except for the snow) so I hope you enjoyed this chapter and hopefully a new chapter should be on your way soon!