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There were many things Merlin expected when summoning an ancient, fire-breathing dragon: ominous gusts of wind, cryptic warnings, occasional attempts to incinerate his person. What he did not expect was to be side-swiped by something dangerously close to… emotional vulnerability.
Camelot's intelligence network, which largely consisted of Arthur staring intently through windows, had received reports of a horned creature roaming the lower town which they deemed "concerning." Hence: Merlin, calling a very large, very dramatic dragon who, for reasons no one had ever fully explained, had decided Merlin was the only person worth talking to. Merlin had stopped being flattered by this long ago. Now he mostly just found it to be exhausting.
He was just considering turning round and calling it a night, when the sky split open with the usual fanfare of wind, thunder, and the faint screaming of atmospheric pressure that heralded the Great Dragon’s arrival. Kilgharrah descended out of the tumultuous clouds, landing with the kind of bone-rattling force that implied he didn’t believe in subtle entrances. Merlin took a cautious step back, mostly to avoid getting singed, crushed, or accidentally swatted by an errant tail.
"Ah, young warlock," Kilgharrah intoned, his eyes glowing in that vaguely condescending way that made Merlin's blood pressure tick up a notch.
“Kilgharrah,” Merlin said, trying not to sound as impatient as he felt, “there’s something stalking the lower town. People say it glows at night and eats chickens in a clockwise pattern. I was hoping you could tell me whether it’s another enchanted fox or something that might require magical fire.”
A low rumble began deep in Kilgharrah's chest, like a theatre curtain rising just before an incredibly vague one-dragon show. “Beware the shadow that feeds beneath the waning moon,” he chanted, voice echoing with capital letters. “For the hunger of the forgotten is never sated, and what once slumbered now stirs in the hollows of—”
“Oh for the love of—” Merlin rubbed his forehead like he could massage the metaphors out of it. “Just once could you start with something like, ‘It’s a troll, you’ll need toast, socks and a moderately sharp stick’?”
“One must first look within to understand what the outside reflects.” Kilgharrah said cryptically.
There was a long silence, broken only by a very confused sheep bleating somewhere in the distance.
“I’m sorry,” Merlin said, his head tilting to one side as if trying to physically recalibrate his perception of reality. “Did you just tell me to look inside myself to find out what’s attacking Camelot?”
Kilgharrah shifted his considerable weight. “The creature you fear is but a mirror to the turbulence of the soul. Ask yourself: what are you running from?”
Merlin stared at him. “Currently? The thing that’s been leaving scorch marks, killing birds and howling aggressively at the night sky. So if you wouldn’t mind, perhaps a helpful hint?”
Kilgharrah let out a sigh so deep it could have caused a minor atmospheric disturbance across three kingdoms. “Your fixation on clarity is understandable,” he said, with a trace of apology. “I am earnestly trying to speak plainly. But perhaps you could respond—mindfully. I invite you to explore the space between action and reaction.”
“Oh for—” Merlin rubbed his face with both hands, which was the universal sign for I am about to lose it. “Just answer the question Kilgharrah!” He snapped. “What is it? Is it going to eat someone or not?”
The dragon closed his eyes, presumably to locate some mystical inner lantern of wisdom, or maybe he was just tired. “A wendigo,” he said finally.
Merlin’s jaw dropped. “Wait. Really? That’s actually helpful! Thank you—”
“But it is not merely a wendigo,” Kilgharrah continued, sounding less like a dragon and more like a very old, very tired poet that couldn't quite help himself. “It is the echo of a long-buried hunger, born of betrayal and bone. Only the pure of heart may pass it unscathed, and even then, they must wear breeches of—”
“Stop!” Merlin shouted. He threw his hands in the air, which didn’t accomplish anything, but did make him feel briefly taller. “Why? Why are you like this? You almost gave me a normal answer!”
Kilgharrah snorted, as if offended by the suggestion that his rambling wasn’t both clear and actionable. “You do not listen, young warlock.”
“Oh, I listen,” Merlin snapped, gesturing wildly toward the dragon like he was trying to summon clarity by sheer force of exasperation. “I listen all the time. I listen when you tell me someone will betray Arthur and then refuse to say who. I listen when you warn me of doom and then vanish like a dramatic lizard-skin handbag. I even listened when you said I should kill the druid boy because he might possibly destroy Camelot in ten years!”
“That child bore the mark of—”
“He had dimples.”
Kilgharrah exhaled through his nostrils, sending up two modest pillars of smoke that suggested disappointment with a touch of martyrdom. “Yet you do not act. There is much you do not understand.”
“There’s much you refuse to explain!” Merlin was pacing now, his neckerchief billowing dramatically. “You say you want to help Camelot, and then you talk in riddles like you’re trying to win a poetry contest hosted by a rock.”
Kilgharrah shifted slightly, tail curling and uncurling in the grass. It was not a threatening movement, but it clearly betrayed the dragon's valiant attempts not to be offended by the tiny yelling human with big feelings. “I sense resistance in you,” he said gently.
“No, what you’re sensing is rage,” Merlin growled, fixing the dragon with a stare that contained the suppressed fury of a thousand unsaid retorts.
The dragon smiled—or at least made the vague lip-and-teeth arrangement that counted for smiling in draconian expressionism. “Ah, young warlock,” he said, his voice shifting into a slower, more... soothing tone. “There is a lot of tension in your spirit.”
Merlin stared at him, a single eyebrow slowly ascending his forehead in appalled incredulity. “Have you been hit on the head?”
“Perhaps, you might benefit from mindful breathing.” Kilgharrah continued undaunted. “Try inhaling to the count of four—”
“What?”
“—holding for four—”
“No!”
“—and exhaling—”
“No! No breathing. No stillness. You are a dragon, not a… midwife.” Merlin gestured wildly. “Just say words. Useful words. Like ‘danger’ or ‘run’ or ‘moss man summoning eldritch horror.’ Honestly anything with nouns and without metaphor would do.”
Kilgharrah sat back slightly, wings folding neatly against his sides like an overly large chicken in a confessional booth. “There is no shame in breath-work.”
Merlin closed his eyes and rubbed both temples in an attempt to physically hold his patience in place. “Oh my gods. You have been hit on the head. Was it a particularly large rock? Or did you fly headfirst into a tree?”
Kilgharrah looked vaguely affronted. "It was just a suggestion, young warlock. You always complain about my 'riddles', yet when I offer a different approach to your emotional distress, you become… resistant. It’s almost as if you enjoy your frustration, perhaps you are clinging to it as a familiar comfort."
Merlin stared, utterly bewildered and quite sure he’d never enjoyed being frustrated. “I miss when you tried to kill me,” he muttered.
“I hear your emotional anguish. You lash out, Merlin, but it is not I who troubles you.” Kilgharrah continued solemnly bowing his head. “It is your fear of not being heard. The dragon’s voice may be ancient, but it does not override your truth. Speak it.”
“My truth,” Merlin said flatly.
“Yes.”
“I’m cold, I’m tired, and I’m two smug riddles away from magically tying your tail into a very complicated knot.”
“You are clearly not ready to receive the message,” Kilgharrah said gravely. “But I honour your journey.” Then, as if this were in any way a normal part of their interactions, the dragon turned, and with a majestic, utterly over-the-top flap of his wings lifted into the sky, disappearing into the clouds in a whirlwind of grass and confusion.
Left standing in the suddenly quiet field, Merlin was fairly certain he'd just had the most unhelpful and utterly bizarre conversation of his entire life. Which was saying something given his daily interactions with Arthur. He ran a hand through his hair, a feeling of unease settling in his stomach. He had the distinct impression that something truly fundamental, and frankly, deeply concerning, had gone wrong with the Great Dragon.
Over the following weeks, that impression blossomed into a full-grown, festering certainty. Not all at once, of course—Kilgharrah didn’t do dramatic descents into madness. He was far too ancient and self-important for that. No, this was a slow, creeping sort of decline, like rot in a very large, very cryptic apple.
At first he became increasingly difficult to summon. Where once he’d arrived promptly with a majestic fanfare and a low, ominous rumble like destiny clearing its throat, now he sometimes didn’t show up at all. Or he’d show up late, looking mildly panicked, and surrounded by the distracted air of someone who had been halfway through something vaguely mystical involving lavender, incense and candles.
Merlin, who had quite enough to deal with without scheduling around dragon mood swings, found himself increasingly irritated. That irritation turned into suspicion when he caught Kilgharrah in a cave, not brooding over ancient lore or prophecy as one might expect. But seated awkwardly cross-legged, inasmuch as a creature the size of a barn could sit cross-legged, on a pile of moss, eyes closed and muttering, “Breathe in the light... exhale the labels... I am not my narrative.”
Merlin had stood at the edge of the cavern, uncertain whether to intervene or simply turn around and pretend he had never seen any of it.
From there things only got worse. Kilgharrah started asking questions. Not the usual, vaguely insulting kind—Are you truly ready, young warlock? Will you finally fulfil your destiny, or just stand there like a startled ferret?—but the sort of questions normally heard from particularly earnest monks or those strange people who handed out pamphlets in the market square.
“Do you… do you feel seen, young warlock?” the dragon asked one evening, his voice almost gentle, eyes imploring. “Do your efforts feel validated?”
Merlin stared at him for several long seconds before replying, “I'm constantly saving everyone's lives while pretending to be an idiot. Last month I practically had to bring myself back from the dead to save Camelot and all I got was a stale apple pie and a mild head cold.” He narrowed his eyes. “So what do you think?”
Kilgharrah nodded slowly, as though Merlin had said something wise instead of vaguely threatening to scream into a pillow. “Mmm. Perhaps that is worth exploring.”
Worse still, the dragon had developed a sort of allergic reaction to his own riddles. Every time one slipped out, as they inevitably did, he would wince, groan like a guilty thunderstorm, and mutter, “Ugh, not again,” under his breath, as though prophecy were an embarrassing tic he was trying to outgrow. Merlin once watched him attempt to deliver a vision of doom while simultaneously batting himself in the snout, as though trying to physically dislodge the prophetic metaphor from his own mouth.
It was, quite possibly, the strangest time of Merlin’s already deeply bizarre life.
And it all came to a head one particularly rainy Thursday evening. Merlin had attempted to summon the Great Dragon—not for anything critical, just to double-check whether a newly active river spirit was actually dangerous or just a particularly aggressive fish. He’d expected the normal dramatic arrival, snarky remark, and perhaps some ominous sky-burning. What he got instead was a delay, a puff of displaced wind, and Kilgharrah’s voice echoing from somewhere unseen to his left.
“Ah, I’m unavailable on Thursday evenings, young warlock,” he intoned, with what Merlin could only describe as deeply apologetic gravitas. “That is a night dedicated to... personal growth and self-reflection.”
“You’re booked?” Merlin asked, tone teetering between disbelief and insult.
“Yes I have boundaries, Merlin,” Kilgharrah replied, as though that settled the matter entirely.
Merlin stood in the dragon-summoning field, utterly flummoxed and vaguely offended. A dragon—his dragon, the last of its kind, ancient and mighty and presumably unaffected by anything less than cataclysmic events—was skipping a monster-of-the-week consultation for what sounded suspiciously like a self-care evening.
This could only mean one thing.
He was enchanted, or brainwashed, or indoctrinated by a sinister, emotionally manipulative cult. Merlin knew the type. Smiles that didn’t quite reach the eyes. Cloaks. Tea and biscuits—probably Custard Creams.
Whatever it was, Merlin was going to get to the bottom of it.
Merlin knew that, in theory, he could simply order Kilgharrah to tell him the truth. But in practice, dragons didn't take well to commands. Especially not from a warlock they insisted on calling "young," despite his Dragonlord status and the fact he'd singlehandedly saved the kingdom more times than Arthur had changed his socks. And since Kilgharrah clearly wasn't going to be directly helpful, Merlin figured the next best thing was to catch him in the act. That was how proper investigations worked, after all.
Which is why, when Thursday evening rolled back around, he found himself cloaked in magic trailing the Great Dragon through the forest. Merlin had experience following all sorts of people: evil sorcerers, Arthur and the knights, once even Gaius to determine where he was hiding the good cheese. But none of this prepared him for the experience of pursuing a dragon who appeared to be sneaking.
Kilgharrah was tiptoeing through the dark forest with the awkward determination of an especially large and self-conscious squirrel that had recently read a pamphlet titled How to Be Unseen in Six Easy Steps (Tail Edition) and taken it far too literally. Merlin shook his head but kept his gaze fixed on the dragon's silhouette as it boisterously crept toward the northern peaks—rugged, windswept cliffs known primarily for echoing loudly and murdering hikers.
Eventually, they arrived at a cave. It emitted a faint hum of enchantments designed to deter curious eyes and nosy warlocks, and since Merlin was a master of nosy warlockery, he didn’t even hesitate before following Kilgharrah inside. He crept deeper into the space, pressing his back to the damp rock wall with all the stealth of a man who people regularly failed to notice even when he was standing directly in front of them.
He peeked cautiously around a stalagmite and the scene that met his eyes made him briefly consider the possibility that his sanity had finally snapped. Not dramatically—just a tiny crack down the side of the mind, a little light madness.
The cave had been arranged into what looked like a support group that had accidentally been summoned to Hell and decided to make the best of it. The floor was swept. The stalagmites sported yarn tassels, apparently in a misguided attempt at cosiness . There was a sign propped up near the entrance that proudly read: "BEASTS: Becoming Emotionally Aware, Safe, Transcendent, Seen." Merlin found himself staring at it, desperately hoping the letters might rearrange themselves into something more sane.
Awkwardly seated around the cave was a peculiar mixture of some of the most powerful magical creatures in all Albion. Merlin's gaze swept over the assembly: a troll with what looked like a travel-sized loofah strapped to its belt; a unicorn aggressively flattening its mane over its horn and sighing; a griffin wearing what might have been a support sash. And Kilgharrah, of course, curled up at one side, displaying a level of discomfort unique to a fifty-foot death lizard attempting to respect personal space in a surprisingly cramped cave.
The surreal tableau was accompanied by a faint herbal smell, which mingled with the scent of biscuits from a foldable wooden table where an enchanted teapot was filling itself with quiet dignity. Merlin narrowed his eyes in a manner usually reserved for deciphering Gaius’ more questionable cough-syrup ingredients. There were Custard Creams. The universe, it seemed, had decided to prove him right about the tea and biscuits with a specificity that bordered on passive aggression.
“And remember, everyone,” came a soothing voice from the opposite side of the circle, “in this space, your scales don’t define your soul, and your roar is simply a form of self-expression.”
Merlin stared, his internal reality calibrator spinning wildly. The speaker was Taliesin—yes, that Taliesin, the not-dead, possibly-timeless, and definitely annoying seer, who possessed all the personality of a foggy morning and the fashion sense of a tapestry. He was sat cross-legged on a cushion, hands folded serenely, eyes twinkling with the dangerous calm of someone who genuinely believed feelings were meant to be shared.
A slow, creeping certainty, far more terrifying than any dragon attack, began to settle upon Merlin. Surely this was an elaborate prank? A spirit realm hallucination, perhaps, brought on by dodgy mushrooms. Or a fever dream, induced by a tragic overexposure to Gwaine’s socks. Anything, in fact, but this bafflingly sincere scene of tea-fuelled, dragon-attended self-betterment.
“Let’s begin with our check-ins,” Taliesin continued warmly, as though they weren’t in a cave that looked like it usually echoed with the screams of the damned. “Just your name, what you’re working on, and remember—no judgement in the circle. Who would like to start?”
There was a shuffling, a few snorts, and the faint sound of hooves tapping nervously. Then Kilgharrah, looking as sheepish as a fifty-foot winged lizard could, raised one claw.
"Go ahead, Kilgharrah," Taliesin said, drawing forth a stack of parchment from his voluminous robes with the grave precision of a sorcerer about to summon a demon, rather than simply take notes.
The dragon cleared his throat, producing a sound reminiscent of mountains settling down for a long nap. “Hello. I am Kilgharrah. And I... I speak exclusively in prophetic riddles.”
A warm chorus of “Hello, Kilgharrah” echoed around the cave.
“I don’t want to,” the dragon continued, “but the metaphors… they just come out. I tried a direct sentence last week. ‘The danger comes at dawn.’ Just... just like that. Plain. Clear. And then I immediately followed it with, ‘When shadows flee the feast of stars and sorrow awakens beneath the dew.’”
A ripple of sympathetic understanding passed through the assembled creatures, a sight so profoundly bizarre it made Merlin's teeth itch with the particular discomfort of witnessing something fundamentally wrong with the universe.
Kilgharrah buried his snout in his claws. “I just want to say things plainly, but the moment I open my mouth, it’s all ‘beware the shadow beneath the flame’ this and ‘destiny walks with crooked feet’ that. I can’t stop it.”
Taliesin smiled kindly. “Progress is a journey, not a destination, Great One. Thank you for sharing. That took courage. Now, let’s move clockwise. Skitch?”
A goblin, who had been trying to flatten its own ears, perked up. “Hi everyone, I’m Skitch, I’m here because I, uh… compulsively steal gold. And silver. And buttons. Honestly, if it glints, I take it.” He shrugged glumly. “I just... I don’t want to do it. I’m trying to… you know. Not. But I see something shiny and it’s like—pow—next thing I know, I’m hiding six silver spoons in my ears.” He glanced nervously around the circle. “But I’ve been hoarding less. I only took five gold teeth from a knight last week. Just the teeth. Left the purse. And his boots. And his—”
“Thank you, Skitch,” Taliesin interjected, his voice a soothing balm over a sudden, almost synchronised, wave of supportive nods. “We truly celebrate your admirable, and frankly quite unexpected, restraint.”
Next came the unicorn, it tossed its mane, glowing faintly with the sort of magic that made flowers bloom and men write terrible poetry. “Hi. I’m Aurelia, and I want to be a horse.”
“Neigh your truth,” Taliesin intoned, with the kind of profound serenity usually reserved for monks contemplating the vastness of the cosmos.
Merlin, still crouched in the shadows, silently mouthed the words “Neigh your truth?” with the expression of someone whose brain had just encountered a previously uncatalogued category of absurdity.
“I’m tired of being a symbol of purity,” Aurelia stated flatly. “I want to be a normal, muddy-footed, oat-eating, nobody-stares-at-me horse. No more ‘oh mystical unicorn, bless my baby’ nonsense. I just want to roll in a muddy puddle without it being a spiritual metaphor.”
Merlin tried to process this while the griffin introduced himself. “Name’s Gryph and I struggle with... commitment. I join quests and then I quit halfway. I stop responding to the hero's messages. I know it’s wrong. I just panic when they start talking about long-term destiny. I abandoned a mission midair once, just dropped the knight and flew away.”
“Hi. I’m Orla.” The troll waved awkwardly, her massive hand moving with the hesitant, slightly confused grace of an iceberg attempting a dainty curtsy. “I’m trying to be… clean. Like… physically.” She pulled out a small, murky flask of what appeared to be soap and vigorously scrubbed her hands. “I stopped rolling in dung piles. I’ve started to bathe in water now. Not... frequently, but... sometimes. It's a journey.”
Then the Questing Beast piped up from the corner, where it was dramatically sprawled on three throw pillows.“Hi! I’m on a quest to stop seeing everything as a quest! Which is, technically, a quest. So, progress?” It beamed and then tried to eat its own tail in what Merlin suspected was either a nervous tic or a metaphor no one had the courage to unpack.
A ripple of applause, surprisingly polite and entirely unexpected from a collection of mythical beings, swept through the cavern. "Thank you all," Taliesin said, beaming with the unshakeable conviction of someone who truly believed this was progress. "This space is stronger for your honesty."
Merlin slumped down behind his stalagmite, unsure whether to laugh, cry or simply lie down and wait for the world to end in a more conventional manner. He had seen a lot in his time: sorcerers exploding, Arthur attempting diplomacy, Gaius in a dressing gown. But this—this polished, polite absurdity—fractured his understanding of reality in the most civilised way imaginable.
Concealed behind a helpful outcrop of rock that seemed to be questioning its life choices right alongside him, Merlin spent the next hour observing. He watched with a growing, horrified fascination as Taliesin guided the assembled magical menagerie through exercises designed to promote self-confidence, inner harmony, and, quite possibly, utter chaos.
They began with ‘trust falls.’ First Skitch plummeted backward with the twitchy grace of a goblin who didn’t trust anyone. Next Aurelia the unicorn fell into the waiting Questing Beast, who caught her with a flourish, and then dramatically declared the moment “a symbolic victory over internalised mythicism.” Merlin wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but it made the troll cry and the griffin mutter “Oh, for pity’s sake” into his wings.
Then it was Kilgharrah’s turn. There was a long pause.
Even Taliesin looked like he might be regretting his life choices. “Perhaps we could… adjust the exercise,” he said delicately, as though suggesting the rearrangement of a boulder that might explode.
But Kilgharrah was determined. “I deserve to be held,” he said, with the kind of spiritual gravitas usually reserved for deathbed confessions or high-stakes jousting tournaments.
The group hastily assembled a safety net made from enchanted cushions, the griffin’s wingspan, and what Merlin hoped was just a very durable picnic blanket. Kilgharrah closed his eyes, murmured something about “surrendering to the present,” and fell backwards with all the grace of a collapsing castle. The resulting shock-wave knocked over half the tea table and flattened Skitch against a stalagmite.
There was a period of “symbolic sand painting,” which involved the troll arranging crushed gemstones into the shape of a balanced emotional state, which apparently looked like a duck. And a brief guided meditation during which Kilgharrah tried very hard not to rhyme and only partially succeeded.
At the striking of small gong Taliesin announced it was time for “Safe Touch With Safe Beings,” which apparently involved the introduction of an emotional support manticore named Trevor. Trevor was, to the untrained and indeed the trained eye, simply a manticore. He sat in the circle wearing what appeared to be a poorly knitted jumper and growled gently whenever someone tried to stroke his spine, which had all the calming presence of hugging a hedge made of knives.
Throughout this Merlin remained crouched in the shadows, torn between the urge to scream and the unshakeable fascination of someone watching a slow-motion cart crash made entirely of fluff and feelings. “This is madness,” he muttered under his breath as Trevor the Emotional Support Deathcat let out a yawn that revealed no fewer than eight rows of teeth.
And then, just as Taliesin began transitioning them into the final stage—“inner child reconnection via puppet theatre”—Merlin felt a sharp tap on his shoulder. His thoughts, already held together by string and poor judgement, scattered. He turned slowly, prepared for an ominously cloaked figure, a monster, or even a misplaced broom wielding an axe. What he got instead was Freya, beaming at him like a sunrise made of mild chaos.
“Merlin!” she chirped, all warmth and far-too-much enthusiasm. “I didn’t know you were coming to these sessions too! Isn’t it wonderful? There’s tea!”
Merlin blinked at her, thrown off not only by her sudden presence but also by the fact that she was very much not in a lake. “I... didn’t know you could leave the lake.”
Freya waved a hand dismissively, as if escaping the mystical bounds of an ancient watery tomb was on par with misplacing your shoes. “You just have to ask the right water spirits to cover your shift.” She said cheerfully, her eyes sparkling with misguided purpose. “But never mind that. You’re here!”
“I was just leaving, actually,” Merlin attempted, weakly, gesturing vaguely at the cave mouth as if to imply he had pressing engagements with the concept of sensible decision-making, or perhaps an urgent meeting regarding royal sock-mending.
“Nonsense!” she declared, with breezy certainty. Then like a well-meaning hurricane, she seized his wrist with surprising strength and yanked him into the circle. “Come on, there’s a spare cushion, and Custard Creams!”
Before he could mount a second, less dignified escape attempt, Merlin found himself forced onto a cushion and handed a Rich Tea biscuit. The worst of the biscuits, the betrayal was complete.
"I'm so sorry I was late," Freya announced to the group, gracefully flopping down on the next cushion with the precise aim of a seasoned professional cushion-flopper. "I had to do a bit of lake-of-Avalon-y business—long story—but look who I found loitering behind a stalagmite." She gestured towards him. "Merlin!" she cried with all the air of someone unveiling a particularly well-aged cheese, or perhaps a slightly confused prophet.
Kilgharrah looked down his snout at him with a pointed lack of surprise. “Are you here due to a chronic disregard for personal boundaries,” the dragon asked dryly, “or a compulsive need to be nosey and insert yourself into things that have nothing to do with you?”
“Now, now,” Taliesin said gently, as if he were wrangling toddlers and not dangerous apex magical predators. “We are a judgment-free zone. All emotional wounds are welcome here, even nosy ones.” He turned to Merlin and offered a serene smile that immediately made Merlin nervous. “Welcome. Would you like to share?”
There was an expectant silence that felt slightly cult-like.
Internally, Merlin was screaming. Outwardly, he smiled the way people did when they were about to bolt for the door or fake an aneurysm. “Oh no, I’m good, thank you. I’m... I don’t have anything to share. I’m very well-adjusted. I… I'm just your average, mentally stable servant.”
Taliesin tilted his head. “Even the most average of servants carry unseen weights.”
“Nope,” Merlin said brightly. “Mine are all very visible. Big, heavy buckets. Literal weight. Nothing metaphorical to unpack.”
“The burden of destiny,” Kilgharrah rumbled, “weighs heavily upon you, young warlock. It is time to let go.”
Merlin glanced around the circle, hunting for an escape route, a trapdoor, or the sweet release of unconsciousness. But the others were all staring at him, even Trevor the emotional support manticore was eyeing him like he’d better get on with it or be eaten politely.
“My name is Merlin,” he said, slowly, voice cracking with the effort of forced calm. “And I’m... a warlock. And I’m exhausted.”
He sighed, a sound that conveyed a weariness far beyond his years and looked down at the Rich Tea biscuit in his hand, a humble, unassuming thing that now felt like a fragile dam holding back the cosmic ocean of his repressed emotions. And then, with a faint, almost imperceptible ping of surrender, that dam gave way.
"And I don’t mean ‘oh, I’ve had a long day’ exhausted," Merlin began, his voice starting calmly but already gathering the ominous momentum of a small, forgotten avalanche. "I mean cosmically exhausted. I have not had an uninterrupted night of sleep since Arthur first tried to ride a wild boar because he thought it looked ‘a bit like a challenge.’”
Merlin’s hands flailed wildly, causing biscuit crumbs to rain down in a localised, unwanted sprinkling of edible regret. "I’ve been living a double life for years! Hiding my magic, cleaning up after Arthur, solving crises with a burnt book and a sarcastic remark—you know it’s surprisingly difficult to discreetly banish a soul-sucking wraith while being screamed at for not polishing boots properly!"
"Such unacknowledged trauma." Kilgharrah nodded sagely, with the air of a venerable scholar pondering an abstract concept, entirely innocent of the fact that he was the primary architect of at least half of it.
Skitch the goblin, clearly bored, started sidling closer to Merlin, fingers twitching toward his neckerchief with the subtlety of a ferret in a jewellery shop.
Merlin didn’t notice. He was on a roll now, the words tumbling out with the irresistible force of a minor landslide. "I literally am magic! I am the most powerful sorcerer in Albion and I have to pretend I don’t know which end of a broom sweeps the floor! I save Arthur’s life weekly. Daily, some weeks! I saved him from a cursed sword, a cursed ring, a cursed blanket—and last Tuesday, a cursed sausage! And does he thank me? No! He just blames me because his breakfast is late and missing the sausages!"
The unicorn gasped and dabbed delicately at her eyes with a hoof. "Oh, my poor darling! So much pressure!”
"Gaius thinks I sleep—I don’t sleep! I brew tonics until 3 a.m. and then lie awake wondering which one of my friends is going to accidentally try and marry a cursed relic next!" Merlin’s voice climbed into what could only be described as heroic exasperation, a note only previously achieved by the dying gasp of a very old, very disappointed kettle. "I haven’t had a day off from everything in months and even then I got turned into an old man!"
The griffin, now meticulously preening a feather with the focus of a master craftsman, yawned dramatically and inspected a talon.
"And the worst part? No one knows. No one. Not Gwen. Not Arthur, definitely not Arthur. He thinks ‘feelings’ are a type of plague!" Merlin’s free hand flapped in a dramatic reenactment of Arthur trying to swat away the concept of emotional intimacy. "I have no one to confide in. I’m carrying a secret so massive it has its own gravity and I’m expected to smile and hand out towels! I haven’t had a real conversation in years! Sometimes I talk to the chamber pots just so I can say something true out loud!"
Freya, now hugging the emotional support manticore like it was a particularly soft stuffed toy and not a creature with claws the size of soup ladles, murmured, "Let it out, Merls. Let it out."
"Everyone just assumes I’m an idiot! I don’t get to be anything, least of all myself! I just fix things. Quietly. Badly. Constantly! Last week I reattached a man’s soul and then got yelled at for forgetting to polish a helmet!"
Taliesin was scribbling in his notebook with quiet, reverent intensity, his pen scratching with the urgency of a historian documenting the fall of an empire, or at least a very messy tea party.
"And then, and then, there’s the constant fear of being burned alive! Pyres! Pyres are a real threat! Every time someone lights a candle I flinch!" Merlin’s shoulders jerked involuntarily, as if preparing for an unseen, fiery embrace.
The Questing Beast started questing in small distracted circles around the group, clearly overwhelmed by Merlin’s rant energy and now convinced there was some hidden clue under the biscuit plate.
"And the worst part?" Merlin’s voice hit a new high note of tragedy. "I just want to be thanked. Just once! For not letting everyone die horribly. Instead I get told to scrub something that’s already clean and listen to Arthur whine about breeches. Breeches! There’s a necromancer in the dungeons and he’s upset about breeches!"
He slowed down a bit as his rant ran out of steam, the last few words emerging with the deflated wheeze of a balloon that had given its all. "I just want—one day—just one—where nothing catches fire or bleeds on me or turns out to be an enchanted turnip!"
The circle stared at him in various shades of concern, pity, and mild emotional indigestion. Freya clapped first. Then the unicorn joined in with a tearful little stomp. Even Trevor, the emotional support manticore, offered a reluctant growl that might have been applause or mild heartburn.
Merlin looked down, slightly breathless, hands still clenched around a now-crushed biscuit. He cleared his throat awkwardly, suddenly overcome by the quiet panic of a man who’d just emotionally undressed in a room full of strangers. He briefly considered faking a magical emergency. Or death. Whichever came quicker. "Sorry. I—er. I think I might’ve gone on a bit."
Taliesin beamed like the sunrise over a meadow of earnest feelings. “Thank you for your brave sharing, Merlin. That was very honest.” He packed up his parchment with ceremonial satisfaction. “That’s all we have time for tonight, everyone. Remember your affirmations. And Skitch, please return the young warlock’s neckerchief.”
With that final announcement the creatures began to drift out in ones, twos, and confusing sideways slinks. Skitch sulkily dropped the neckerchief into Merlin’s waiting hand. Taliesin, humming something suspiciously upbeat, stuffed Trevor back into a large, magically-reinforced crate labelled “Do Not Cuddle Without Supervision” and vanished down a side passage. Freya smiled warmly at Merlin, gave his arm a fond squeeze, and then—without ceremony—sank into a nearby puddle with the faintest ploop, leaving behind a slight smell of lakeweed.
Which left Merlin and Kilgharrah, standing in that unique awkwardness reserved for two people who have just shared a deeply personal moment and are now desperately trying to pretend it never happened. They both shuffled toward the mouth of the cave.
Merlin rubbed his temples with the air of a man who had just confronted his soul. “Alright,” he muttered. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… I actually feel a bit better.”
Kilgharrah’s eyes glittered with amusement. “Shall we call it... a cleansing of the spirit?”
“No,” Merlin said flatly. “We shall call it never to be spoken of again. If I hear so much as a whiff of this from anyone—anyone—I will enchant your cave to echo nothing but knock-knock jokes for eternity.”
The dragon chuckled—a strange sound, lighter than usual, almost like it had shed some of its ancient doom and picked up a mild sense of whimsy. “You wound me, young warlock. Can we not simply revel in the freedom of expressing our truths?”
“Let’s revel discreetly, shall we?” Merlin muttered.
They walked on in companionable silence until finding a stream that snaked along the hillside. Kilgharrah paused, reached down with one claw, and flicked a flat stone across the water. It sank immediately with a sullen glunk . He tried again, only to produce another underwhelming plummet.
“Are you… are you trying to skip stones?” Merlin asked, baffled.
“I’m processing,” Kilgharrah replied with dignified sulkiness.
Merlin watched him for a long moment, then sighed and sat down on a convenient log. “Look… I’m sorry I followed you. It was perhaps a bit much.”
Kilgharrah raised a brow ridge, which was as close as a dragon could come to raising an eyebrow. “A bit?”
“Fine, entirely inappropriate and invasive… Possibly bordering on stalker behaviour.”
“Better.”
Merlin snorted. “Still, I support your whole… no-more-prophecy-riddles thing. Honestly, it’s long overdue.”
The dragon hummed, clearly satisfied, and attempted another skip. It flipped once, then smacked into a mossy rock with a kind of damp finality.
“You’re still going to do the occasional riddle, though, aren’t you?”
“Almost certainly.”
Merlin rolled his eyes. “Right. Just please try not to rhyme them.”
Kilgharrah nodded, attempting to skip another stone. This one ricocheted off a rock and landed squarely in a nearby bush with a surprised squawk. Possibly hitting a pheasant. “Will you come again?” he asked.
Merlin hesitated. Then, with the air of a man making a deeply reluctant appointment with his own emotional well-being, he said, “...I suppose I might drop by next Thursday. If nothing comes up… like an apocalypse or Arthur deciding to duel a bush… again.”
He didn’t say it out loud, but privately, he decided: And so long as no one makes me catch you in a trust fall, or cuddle that blasted manticore.
As they ambled slowly back through the woods, another, more hopeful, idea surfaced: And maybe, just maybe, next time there'll be Hobnobs as well as Custard Creams. After all, if he was going to bare his soul, he might as well get some decent biscuits out of it.
And with that absurd thought, the most powerful sorcerer to ever walk the earth strolled off into the night beside a rock-skipping dragon, toward the next inevitable crisis that was, if nothing else, now marginally more likely to be explained in plain English.