Roughly fourteen hundred years ago.

As she stomped through the ankle-deep water of the wetlands several miles from where her brother, the mighty King Arthur Pendragon, had set up his camp alongside the rest of his hunting party, Morgan Le Fey muttered angrily under her breath. Her thoughts lay not on what was in front of her as she walked, but on the men who were, at that moment, being held inside iron cages in the middle of the camp. Men who had butchered and tortured so many people. They deserved to be given their just punishment so that the souls of those they had killed, and the minds of those left behind, could be equally put at ease. Their lives should have been forfeit.

Yet some of the men maintained their innocence, claiming they had not been part of those particular attacks, and were simple thieves who had no idea what their companions were up to. So Arthur had agreed to grant them a trial. And not just the few who first claimed not to have been there, but all of them. Which meant carting them all the way back to Camelot.

Morgan had seen the look on some of their faces. They were amused to have gotten one over on the king. They were mocking him, and Camelot itself, behind his back. She could see it so plainly, so why couldn't Arthur? They thought they were going to get away with their crimes. And if they walked away, if they went free somehow after everything they had done… The thought made the woman snarl to herself. No, she would not allow that to happen. She would give those victims the justice they deserved. Their murderers and rapists would not live to see the sunrise in a few hours. This travesty would not stand for one more day. Not one more night.

Not one more hour.

Pivoting, the woman reached down to touch a symbol on her leather boots. With a muttered word, she activated the longstride enchantment on them. Then she took a step, and watched as the world around her bent and twisted to make that single step move her one hundred feet. With the spell active, it would only take a brief time for her to get back to the camp, where she would arrive under the cover of total darkness. Already, plans were rising within the woman's mind about what she was going to do. What she had to do. Arthur--she didn’t hate him. But he was wrong. He was wrong and her anger toward those men for what they had done was twisting itself toward anger at her brother for his naivety in not cutting them down where they stood. He was showing everyone that he would hold the rights and lives of murderers above the innocent folk. And with every passing moment as she thought about that, her disgust and outrage grew more pointed toward the man himsef. Despite her conscious attempts not to blame him for his beliefs, that seed of anger continued to grow. Attempts she had made in these past few hours to bury the feelings were cast aside, bowled over by the rising anger.

Because she had to be angry. She had to be, or she would recognize the terrible betrayal she was planning. If she allowed herself to stop for even a moment and calm down, she might have changed her mind. And the thought of that, the thought that she would betray those victims the way Arthur was with his obsession with giving monsters a ‘fair trial,’ drove her anger even more. She was trapped in a spiral of rage with only two possible outcomes. Either she would be talked down and her anger vented in some safe way. Or she would let it out on those she hated so much at that moment.

And if she let it out, if she embraced that rage and put those men in the ground where they belonged… there would be no coming back. A part of Morgan knew that. The voice in the back of her head cried out that this would be too far, that this was not about the men, but about her brother. If she went against his word, if she murdered those men despite Arthur promising them and their families that they would be given safe passage and a trial… he would not forgive her. After all the time that they had spent apart, after everything they had been through before finding one another again, she was about to throw that away.

But hadn’t he thrown her away, all those years ago? Hadn’t he stormed off on a fool’s errand back into the village when that dragon attacked even as she pleaded-- no, begged him to stay with her? Hadn’t he promised to be back, that he would meet her in those woods? She had stayed. She had waited for him, even after he ignored her pleadings. She had waited for the brother who abandoned her to play hero. And what had she received for her trouble? He never came back. Not in time, anyway. Not before she had been abducted by evil men, imprisoned, tortured, enslaved and turned into a servant for a monster. It was not even her last time being taken and imprisoned by evil, selfish creatures who wished to use her in one way or another.

And even before then, her own mother had forced the then-named Morgana to dye her hair, to cover her natural red locks with dirty, ugly black. Why? To avoid throwing her affair in the face of her husband. The child Morgana was made to change herself, to hide who she was, to avoid offending a grown man. She was taught that the person she was had to be hidden, just so that a man who already knew the truth would not be further upset.

All of that resentment, all of that anger about being abandoned and treated as though she was not good enough, had been suppressed for so long. But now it was rising up, triggered by this single moment where she had surrendered to her outrage about Arthur’s treatment of these prisoners. Or rather, about his abandonment of the people who truly needed his protection.

That was it. That was why she was so angry. When she was a child, when they were both children, Arthur had abandoned her to storm off into the burning village. He had left a person who needed him right then in order to try to save those who were probably already dead. And right now, he was abandoning the victims of the monsters in that cage in some attempt to save… the monsters themselves.

That was why she was so angry right now, why it was so easy to let herself fall to this outrage. She was subconsciously linking the two events. No, she was linking every injustice in her life, both to herself and to others she had seen, to this single event. She saw Arthur as putting the rights and lives of rapists and murderers over those of the victims. Over her. She saw him, this version of him, putting the life of the monster who had taken her as a child over her. Yes, he had never met that man. But that logic didn’t matter, not at this moment. She looked at the choices Arthur made in granting these men mercy they did not deserve, and saw him doing the same for the beast who had enslaved her when she was so young.

Soon, she had made it back to the camp. Too soon, by some measurements. If Morgan had been forced to take as long as it should have to walk back, she might have cooled down in that time. But magic meant that she arrived at the peak of her growing rage. Striding past the sentry on duty at the edge of the encampment with barely a word, she focused her gaze on the four high lanterns in a square which indicated where the cages were. Yet she didn't move straight that way. Instead, Morgan took a short detour through a maze of tan and green tents, where men and women snored heavily, until she reached a particular wagon. Within that wagon were a dozen heavy barrels of lantern oil. Too heavy for one woman like her to even hope to budge, until she touched the bracelet on her right arm and activated the mind-movement spell there. With that, she flicked her finger and one of the barrels rose into the air. It proceeded to float along behind her as she pivoted and strode purposefully toward the cages. The guard on duty there looked up as she approached, before passing out as she touched her ring to his forehead and invoked one of the sleeping spells attached to it. The cages were just ahead, assembled in a rough circle. Six cages, each containing three men. Eighteen men in total, who were all bound and determined to escape their rightful punishment. But no. Not this time. She would put an end to these men the way Arthur should have. They would die screaming, as their victims had.

In another life, Morgan would have walked into that circle of cages, tipped out the barrel of oil to soak all of them, and then let the lanterns drop. She would have burned them alive, trapped in those iron cages, and stood there while they screamed and died. That was how Arthur and his other knights would have found her, as they ran to check on the horrific sounds. They would have seen Morgan Le Fey standing amongst the flames while the men Arthur had offered safe passage and a fair trial to died horribly. Which would have sparked the true conflict between them, making Arthur’s own sister his greatest enemy for some time.

In another life, that's what would have happened. Yet in this one… a surprise awaited Morgan as she stalked into the clearing where the cages were. A voice, unexpectedly young, spoke up from the left.

“But, Papa, what if they kill you?”

Gaze snapping that way, Morgan found herself staring in the direction of the furthest cage. A small girl, a child really, knelt on the outside of the cage. She had a hood up that covered most of her face, but some of her long, dark blonde hair escaped. One of the men in the cage, face caked in dirt and dried blood from their recent battle, held his own hand out of the cage through the narrow gap in the bars. The girl was clinging to it with both of her own hands. Her voice was weak, plaintive, desperate. “They think you did those bad things.”

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The man, who appeared to be the only prisoner still awake, spoke in a hushed tone. “Now you listen to me, Bozhena. This Arthur is a good king. He’s gonna give us a fair trial, you understand? He'll sort out the truth. He cares about the truth. That's why we're all sitting here. Tomorrow we'll go to the castle and he’ll let us tell our story.”

“And then he’ll let you go?” the girl, Bozhena, pleaded while clutching her father’s hand even tighter. “He has to let you go.”

There was a brief pause before the man spoke again. “It’s not that easy, girl. I still did bad things, even if they weren’t as bad as… as they say now. Still have to pay for that, have to serve my time. But you’ll be okay. You and your brothers, you take care of each other. Make sure they eat and tend to those crops. Get Uncle Martin to come over, take the beer from him and tell him he has to be sober until I come back, okay?”

“But Papa,” the girl started to plead.

“Uh uh, you look at me, Bozehna.” The man’s voice was firm in a way that made it clear that if he wasn't trying so hard to make it that way, it would have broken down entirely. “Look here. I did bad things and I'm going to pay for it. Then I'll be back. You and your brothers have to take care of the farm. You can do it, I trust you. Keep it going. Keep each other safe. When I get home, I’ll have some new songs for you.”

The girl started to say something to that, then she turned slightly and noticed Morgan standing in the shadows, gasping out loud. “Oh! Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I know I shouldn’t be here.” She picked herself up, stammering while holding her father’s hand for one more moment before reluctantly releasing it. “I just wanted to talk to my papa. Please, please don’t be angry with him. It wasn’t his idea. He told me to leave, but I had to talk to him. I--I…” She trailed off, staring at Morgan. She had seen something on the woman’s face and shrank back a bit.

Magic had meant that Morgan had no time for her temper to cool down before she made it to the camp. Yet in those few moments, standing there listening to the girl speak with her father, something had shifted. The few sentences she had listened to did not take long, but even that brief moment, as it turned out, was crucial. The time, and the words she listened to, changed the course of… many things. And Morgan found herself allowing the barrel behind her to lower back to the ground. Her voice was somewhat brittle. “No… apologies necessary. You… are safe.” She straightened a bit, gesturing. “Take a moment… take a moment and say goodnight.” Another brief pause followed, an internal conflict raging within the woman, before she found herself adding (as much to herself as to the child), “Come back after sunrise, when breakfast is near-finished, and you can see him before we leave.”

Turning away from them then, she pushed their voices out of her mind and focused on stepping over to where the guard had fallen. Reaching down, she used the counter-spell on her ring to wake him. As the man gasped and jerked a bit, she caught his hand and pulled him to his feet. Her voice was low. “You are safe.”

“Wha--is there--Lady Morgan?” The guard stared at her, dumbfounded. “Should I sound the alarm? Should we wake the king?”

After a brief pause, Morgan shook her head. “No, there is no need to wake him. Not now. I need to speak to him, but it can wait until tomorrow.”

“Are you alright, Lady Morgan?” the man asked carefully, still confused about what had happened.

“I am… better than I was,” came the response.

“And much better, I believe, than I would have become.”

*******

Modern Day… Camelot

Two figures, brother and sister, stood at the top of a towering skyscraper that overlooked a sprawling metropolis below. The city of New Camelot was built where London would have stood in another world. Yet its borders far surpassed those of its counterpart, stretching forty miles to the east past what would have been Southend-on-Sea and to the waters beyond, as well as eighty miles to the southern beaches of the English island. Its southern borders stretched all the way from what would have been Portsmouth in the west, to what would have been Eastbourne on the far other side. It was a city well-over five times larger in area than its sister-reality London would have been, with a population of nearly thirty-two million. Thirty-two million humans and Alters. For all lived together within the walls of New Camelot, a city of no Bystander Effect.

The city itself was a mix of high technology and magic, as skyscrapers within the heart of its extensive business district stood alongside several once-starfaring ships that had been brought to ground and became a part of the local scenery centuries earlier, during the battle the Seosten had launched in their bid to kill Arthur and destroy his reign.

Yet he had survived. For he had not been alone that day. Morgan had accompanied him and was left to tear their high technology ships from the sky and turn them on one another, while Arthur handled the remaining threats. The one called Puriel had been gravely wounded that day, allowing Arthur and Morgan to return to the original Camelot in time to aid them against their own attackers.

That was what had truly turned the tide, in a large way. Morgan had, up to that point, been quite limited in how much her Heretic-given powers could affect. They granted her control over technology, of which there was a limited amount available. Which had meant she largely relied on magic. Until that day. With the completion of that battle, Morgan was in control of a small fleet’s worth of advanced Seosten ships, and all the technology they held within. Which gave Camelot as a people the biggest boost and advantage they had ever had, next to the presence of Arthur himself.

The Seosten had reacted quickly, of course. They launched a full-scale assault, determined to wipe Camelot away before they could take advantage of their new gifts. But it was still too late. Using the technology found on the ships along with their own powers, Arthur, Morgan, and the Knights were able to erect a shield around a large portion of the English island. A shield which had entirely protected them from all attacks, and still stood to the present day. The area the shield covered comprised the entirety of what was now New Camelot.

Unfortunately, the area beyond the shield had not fared so well. Many miles of land stretching from the River Blackwater in the east, through what would have been Chelmsford, Harlow, Hoddesdon, Hatfield, St Albans, Hemel Hempstead, and Oxford, then south to what would have been Southampton, had been vaporized in the attack. The result was a ten-mile-wide ocean channel between Camelot’s lands and the new southern edge of England, turning the once-landlocked cities of Luton, Stevenage, and Aylesbury into ocean-front locations. The roughly eighty miles by sixty miles stretch of land that comprised New Camelot was entirely cut off from both the rest of England, and the entire outside world.

Unable to penetrate the shield surrounding Camelot, and unwilling to risk allowing them to ‘infect’ the rest of the population, the Seosten had taken steps to entirely erase all memory of the now cut-off lands. They created a superstition of an impassable channel in that area, backed up by various spells which doomed any vessels attempting to enter it. As far as the Bystander world was concerned, that area had always been deadly ocean which no one entered. To those of the modern day, unknown radioactive and magnetic effects played havoc with all instruments and made attempting to enter the area a deadly idea. Satellites and other forms of attempting to view the location would see only empty ocean. The area was one of the greatest mysteries of the modern world. Yet people mostly ignored it. Again, thanks to Seosten influence tying a nearly-species-wide avoidance of that area of the ocean into the Bystander Effect itself.

So yes, Camelot was cut off from the outside world. At least, as far as the outside world was concerned. Yet its people made frequent raids on Seosten holdings, and those of the group of Heretics known, ironically, as Truthwalkers. Those people believed Arthur and his people were putting all of humanity at risk. The Seosten were behind them, of course, infecting the entire leadership. For fourteen hundred years, Camelot and the Truthwalkers had been at varying stages of war. The Seosten had created their so-called Heretical Edge, allowing them to turn all of their people into artificial Reaper-Heretics, in an attempt to make them strong enough to break Camelot. All while Arthur and his people had attempted to find ways to break the Bystander Effect itself and free the planet.

Thus far, neither side had been successful. They were at what amounted to a stalemate, as the Heretics and Seosten were incapable of breaking through the shield (and dealing with Arthur, Morgan, and everyone else they would find on the other side). They couldn’t destroy New Camelot. But New Camelot equally could not drive the Seosten from the world, destroy the Bystander Effect, or do much more than stand as a free land for all to live within. For now, at least. Someday, that balance would shift, one way or the other.

Standing side-by-side with her brother, as she had for all these years, Morgan surveyed the sprawling, massive megacity below. “I visited the farms today.”

The farms was a term for the areas beneath the metropolis, deep underground, where crops were grown and animals were raised for food. The artificial caverns, created by Seosten technology and maintained by artificial sunlight that provided as much growth as the real thing, stretched for many miles. As they had to, given the amount of people they were required to feed.

“Is everything okay down there?” Arthur asked, his gaze continuing to scan the city, literally watching over the millions of inhabitants who depended on him. “How’s Bedivere doing?”

“Still complaining about needing more soldiers to watch the tunnels,” Morgan replied. “They’ve had a few incursions from goblin raiders and the like.”

“We’ll let him recruit from the newest graduating class,” Arthur murmured thoughtfully before glancing to his sister. He was about to say more, but stopped and simply looked at her for a moment. His voice turned soft. “I am as lucky to have you at my side, as I am to have Gwen.”

For a moment, Morgan was silent. Finally, she turned to meet his gaze. “It could have gone a very different way, Arthur.”

“Yes, it could have,” he agreed. “But it did not. And whatever the faults of our current situation, I am grateful for that.

“I truly do not know what would have happened, if I didn’t have you.”