The Once and Future King Returns

By Olivia Gratehouse

SUBJECT: ARTHUR PENDRAGON

STATUS: ACTIVE

[INITIATING RELEASE]

Pale light pierces the darkness, tearing me from slumber. Every fiber in my body ignites with freezing fire.

Coughing, I wake with my face in the dirt, cold and damp beneath me as I struggle to lift my head. The light fades and I’m left blinking away afterimages that merge with large, dark shapes looming above my head. The last remnants of sleep still muddle my thoughts, yet my mind is a whirlwind of words and images I don’t understand.

“Welcome back, Wart,” says a voice in my ear, foreign yet familiar. “Take deep breaths. You’ve been asleep for a long time, and the data is still uploading.”

I sputter against the frozen air lingering in my lungs. “Wh-Where…” I gasp, teeth chattering. “Where am I? What happened?”

Even as the words leave my mouth, memories spring to the forefront of my mind.

Charging into battle and fighting alongside the Knights.

A blade in my chest. Sir Gawain’s tear-stained face as he held me close.

Pain, endless pain, followed by darkness.

Then a single name, murmured in reverence.

“Avalon,” I whisper.

“Yes,” agrees the voice. “The people of Avalon owed me a great debt, so they agreed to care for you. And let me tell you Wart, it has not been easy, preserving your consciousness these long years.”

I push up and sit back on my heels. My head is still spinning, but I finally recognize the voice—and that infernal nickname.

“M-Merlin?” I gasp. “Is that you?”

“In the flesh,” says the wizard. “Or rather, in the neuro-matrix. Not all of us had the luxury of sleeping in cryogenic stasis for millennia.”

His words… In some painful, desperate way, I understand them, as if thoughts and ideas not my own had been downloaded into my brain. I wince. Even that word, download, is new, yet somehow, I know what it means.

Rising to my feet, I look around, but find no sign of the wizard.

“Where are you?”

“Ah, and that’s where things get complicated. I’m still on the ship that brought you here, roughly four hundred meters above you.”

The words “ship” and “above” shouldn’t go together, yet I look to the sky, searching. The stars are strange and misaligned—very different from the ones I admired when I was a boy.

“How can I hear you?” I ask.

“I am a germ.” The old man chuckles. “Ah, no, the truth is much simpler: we are communicating over a neural interface.”

I shake my head and rub my hands over my face. I understand what the words mean, yet none of it makes sense. Memories and images burn behind my eyes, too much for me to process.

I drop my arms by my sides. “Please Merlin, just tell me what’s going on.”

The wizard sighs. “The time has come, Wart. The year is 2532, and Britain—indeed, the entire world—is in peril, and has need of you again.”

I take a deep breath. That, at least, I understand. “I’m needed? What has happened? Did the Saxons invade?”

Merlin lets out a huff. “Something far worse than the Saxons, I’m afraid. No, these invaders came from the sky.”

As he speaks, a strange sensation trickles into my thoughts, a weariness I have never known before. I catch a glimpse of many lonely years spent watching over the land, watching over me, biding time and waiting through war after war.

Waiting until now, when no other hope remains.

“Ah, forgive me,” says the wizard. “This connection is a new one, and I’m afraid our strong emotions will bleed into one another. The situation is not ideal, but it’s all I could manage in so short a time. It took a great deal out of me to bring you back here so quickly.”

As my eyes finally adjust to the darkness, I realize I’m standing in the very center of a stone circle. My eyes widen. “Are these—”

“Yes, yes,” Merlin says. “The very same henge of stones I placed here, oh, six thousand years or so ago? Give or take a few centuries.” He sighs. “It’s one of the few places left in the world that still carries magic, though I used up most of it to bring you here.”

I marvel at the great pillars, resting my hand against the stone and feeling the energy deep within. “And here they still stand.”

“Not for long. The sky invaders have wrought destruction on these ancient lands, and there’s nothing our people can do to stop them. For all humanity’s new weapons and technologies, their efforts have been for naught.”

I frown. “If they can do nothing, what do you hope to accomplish by bringing me here?”

Through our connection I can feel fear, determination, and a desperate hope—the very hope that compelled my old mentor to stand vigil for so long, even after the world moved on and forgot about me.

“You are the last of a dying breed,” the wizard finally answers. “The only human alive with traces of the old magic. And at this point in time, magic is the only option we have left.”

I close my eyes, relishing the cold stone against my palm, feeling the life return to my waking body. If what Merlin says is true, then I have been asleep for thousands of years. A great deal will have changed, and there’s so much I still don’t fully understand. What I do know is this: if my country is in danger, I must do everything in my power to protect it.

“All right,” I close my hand into a fist. “Tell me what to do.”

The wizard chuckles in my ear. “That’s good to hear, though I must warn you, there are a great many things that need doing. But I can tell you where to start. First, you’re going to need a sword.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Olivia Gratehouse was a homeschooler who read too many stories. Now she’s a homeschool art teacher with too many stories to tell. Her love for robots and monsters led her to prefer stories that challenge stereotypes and offer unique perspectives. When she isn’t writing, Olivia can be found gaming or creating art with too much color. She lives in Oklahoma with her family.

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