Excalibur's Seven - Chapter 10: Chapter 10

KIT COULD REMEMBER HIS mother's death as clear as day. She was pregnant with her third child, five months along. She got sick so suddenly, no one knew how to help her. She thought it was the baby, that it wasn't viable, but the experimental surgery they performed to get rid of it just killed her quicker.
Kit had never seen as much blood as he did that day. He wasn't supposed to be there, but he wanted to say goodbye to his mother. He watched her die in a pool of her own blood. He was twenty years old then, but he felt like a child again that day.
So many things about that spectacle was cruel, too cruel for him to fathom. The infant at her feet was alive only hours ago, but someone left it alone to starve, to freeze, to die at the feet of a late Queen's corpse. All for what? To threaten him? He didn't know what else it could be.
Giselle was now tending to an unconscious Selene in the chapel, pressing a wet cloth to her forehead. Kit sat alone at the front pew, blurry eyes staring at the altar before him. He could hardly think of anything else but that haunting sight.
To his surprise, the one that came to his side was Morgana.
"Tell me about her," he said, nudging Kit's leg with his cane.
He looked down at his hands. "Why do you care?"
"Just do it, Kit. If you're going to be a stubborn ass whenever people come to help you, don't be surprised when they stop trying."
"Sorry. You're right," he breathed. "My mother... she was stubborn too, but in a good way. Not like me. She didn't ever care what people thought of her, and when she was still alive... I tried to be like that, too. When she died, I—"
Morgana's icy palm sat against his knee. "Just tell me about her. Don't think about her death, tell me about who she was."
Kit forced his mind back. "Right. Well, she was playful. She liked to steal pastries from the baker and give some to me, but if I ever stole from the baker she'd put me in time out." He smiled down at his lap. "She was smart, too. God was she smart. She should've been a Knight with how clever she was, she came up with half of our winning strategies."
Morgana squeezed his leg when he started choking up, urging him to continue.
"She was proud, too. Not in an annoying way, but she knew she was the Queen, she knew she was beautiful, she knew she was smart. She had nothing to be insecure about and she knew it, but she knew she wasn't perfect, either. She was always trying to be better, and the kicker is that it actually worked."
He swiped his cheeks before tears got a chance to fall. "I wish I could be like her. I wish I didn't care what people thought. I wish I could be proud of myself, and I—I wish I knew how to be someone worth all the love I'm given."
When he looked over, Morgana was studying him with careful brows. "You're definitely insufferable," he said, but something about it was oddly comforting. "But I think maybe if you tried really, really hard, you might be able to be just a little bit like her."
Kit couldn't help a laugh, and he nudged Morgana playfully with his shoulder. "You're not great at comforting people."
"Who said that what I was doing?"
"Isn't it?"
He could swear he saw Morgana smile. "Nah, I was just trying to uncover your deepest insecurities so maybe I could exploit them one day. Take you down from the inside."
"I thought you said faeries couldn't lie."
Morgana blinked.
"Ah. You're telling the truth. Well, I'm really not that scared of you anymore, so you'll have to try harder than that."
Morgana's eyes flickered and he lifted up one hand, flashing the claws at the ends of his fingers. "I could kill you right now, you know."
"But you don't want to." He nudged him again. "Tell me about yours."
"My what?"
"Your mother." He caught himself. "Of course, only if you want to."
Morgana sighed and leaned back against the pew, tapping his fingers against his cane. "Right. Well, which one do you want to know about?"
"Oh. Um. Both, I guess."
It was strange, properly sitting down and getting along with Morgana. Kit listened as he told him about his mothers, about his life back in Faerie. He was adopted by a healer and a seamstress, but the seamstress died when he was younger and he missed her dearly. Kit suddenly understood why Morgana gravitated to him. They were both bastards who'd lost a mother, it was almost ironic how much they had in common.
Their conversation ended when Selene woke up, and Morgana was right back to giving him the cold shoulder. Kit couldn't bring himself to care anymore, though. In fact, he smiled at the Unseelie's back as he walked away from him, back to Giselle's side.
As soon as Selene was awake again and everyone felt like they could move on, they left the church. They were almost desperate to leave, desperate enough that Kit and Morgana willingly shared Kit's horse, after Giselle insisted on riding with Selene. Chalice had Eurion with them, hands clutching their shirt to keep steady.
Kit and Selene were the most shaken of everyone, but somehow Morgana managed to keep Kit's mind off of it, and Chalice had to wonder how in God's name he managed that. When they first saw Kit with Giselle, trembling and in tears, gasping for air, they thought they'd have to calm him down with magic before he did something stupid.
They didn't see what Morgana did to distract him, as they were busy with Eurion returning the Queen to her grave and respectfully burying the child as well. The sight was disturbing to them, but they'd seen death enough to handle it. They were glad the faeries had the compassion to help the two.
They were back in the thick of the woods again, but this time they had a direction. It was one of the only villages they knew of that wasn't crawling with royal guards or people loyal enough to the crown to turn them in. It also had an old library, one where they could search for a clue about Camelot.
After the horrendous sight, Kit finally agreed to begin the journey. The sight seemed to convince him that it was real now, that the darkness the Gods warned him of was a genuine danger to the people of Avalon.
The quant village of Fells was dishonored by the King himself, started from a feud against the King's church and the druids who lived there, impoverished and exiled, forced to fight for their own survival. And it was Chalice's home.
No one was fond of the idea at first, but if Chalice knew one thing for sure, it was that there was no village that would welcome them the way Fells would. No one would understand their struggles like a town full of scorned druids.
The sun was creeping up over the horizon again when they got there. Eurion was now in front of Chalice, so they could hold onto her while she slept soundly against their chest. The trees were getting darker now, swampier, the soil now rich and damp. They were approaching Fells.
They felt a grin forming over their face when the first house showed between the trees, giving way to the whole village, which rested at the side of a glistening lake. The village was quiet as always, but they could see a few people at the shoreline for early morning fishing.
The fishermen noticed them as they cut through the village to reach the shore, but only one stopped what he was doing the moment he saw Chalice's bright red hair.
Eurion was awake now, so they were able to slide off of their horse, landing softly on the ground and running towards the man.
"Cian, I missed you," they breathed as they wrapped him in their arms, resting their chin on his head. He was a stout man with curly gray hair and a bushy beard and rosy cheeks meant to smile. He was one of their many father figures, they'd been raised by the whole village.
"How did the Trials go?" he asked, examining their face and hands. "How was the city?"
Chalice bit their lip, looking back at their companions. "Well, Cian, there's been a problem. It's a long story, but I don't think the Trials are our biggest concern anymore. Can we visit the library?"
Cian nodded, motioning to his men as he led the group up the hill and back to the buildings.
"Everyone, this is my dear friend Cian," Chalice introduced. "You can leave your horses here, we're going inside."
They gestured towards the library before them. It wasn't a large building, but it had what they would need.
Chalice opened the door and led everyone in, lighting up the candles throughout the library. There was a stairway which led up to a loft, but they would mostly stick to the main floor, where most of the books were.
"What are we looking for?" Selene asked, looking around at the building. Chalice guessed it was one of the poorest buildings the Lady had ever been inside, but the druid hardly noticed.
"We're looking for anything about Camelot. Just start looking, we've mostly got books about history and folklore and religion. It can't be hard to find."
For the next few hours, the six of them scanned all the books on the shelf. Some of them mentioned Camelot, but there wasn't anything yet that told about what happened to it after the sword was destroyed.
It was Eurion who finally found a lead.
"This one is an account of the battle of Camlann," she said. "It doesn't say whose account, but it seems like a personal one."
Eurion began to read, describing the dark horrors of the battle. It was a truly deadly battle, if this account had any validity. But Fells didn't much like to keep unreliable sources in its library, so it must've had something to it.
"It says here that Arthur destroyed the sword Excalibur to keep anyone from ever using its power again. And the magic of Camelot was embued into the sword, so Camelot vanished with Excalibur." Eurion squinted, looking closer at the text.
Chalice pondered. "So if we wanted to bring Camelot back, we would need the sword back. But how do we do that?"
"We could make one," Kit suggested.
"But then it wouldn't have the magic," Selene interjected. "Excalibur was forged in the magical lakes of Camelot. It's the key to the kingdom, we need the real one."
Eurion closed her book. "So let's look for anything about Excalibur. How we might be able to get it back."
Chalice looked out the window that showed the glistening lake stretched out before them.
They searched more, until they only had one shelf. Morality was low then, they were starting to lose hope. But Chalice was determined. If any library in the kingdom had the answer, it was Fells. They'd have to look until they'd searched the very last book.
And then finally, Kit found it. A book titled, "The Seven Shards."
The story told of the seven shards of Excalibur, and named the Knights who'd hidden them. It sounded like a children's tale, but it was the only answer they'd gotten so far.
"So all we've got is a children's tale to go off of," Selene sighed. "Wonderful."
"If we have any chance of bringing Excalibur back, it's this," Kit insisted. "If anyone else has a better idea, I'm all ears."
No one said a thing.
"Great," he concluded, closing the book and slipping it into his satchel. "Well in that case, we need to get some rest. We've got quite an adventure ahead of us."