Chapter seven

     Morgana woke up the next morning unaware of the changes that her body had undergone, all she knew was that she felt sore all over her body and that all the pain from the previous night had vanished. She quickly dressed in the dress she had discarded the previous night and rushed to the only person she believed would make her feel like the world made sense again.

     She was in such a hurry to get back to the man she loved that she didn't even notice the strange looks that the people in the castle were giving her as she passed them in the hallways. She ran all the way to Merlin's tower in the palace leaving a wake of shocked faces and whispers behind her but she didn't care , she had finally gotten to her husband and he would make everything right again.

      When she barged into the tower she saw Merlin sitting at a table with Arthur , he appeared to be sharing what  looked like a roast chicken with him. 

      Arthur had beat her to Merlin, at first he only wanted to tell Merlin about what happened and beg for his forgiveness but once he saw Morgana a new plan hatched in his mind,

       Before Morgana could say anything he stood up and pointed at her,"Look Merlin, it is the fay that took your wife! Last night I was going through the forest when I saw this creature try to kill your wife and take her place. I tried to intervene but I was too late to save Morgana but I was able to wound the creature before it could finish transforming into your wife. No doubt this creature has come to sow lies and discord among us, I suggest that we kill it quickly before it opens its mouth and tries to turn us on each other."

      And to Morgana's surprise Merlin raised his staff and sent lightning shooting at her face.

       Arthur's plan was very cunning, when Morgana's fay blood had awakened it had changed her appearance, she looked even younger than before, her beauty had increased even further but most telling of all her hair had turned purple, a color unheard of in humans and her ears had become pointed like her father's.

       Now Arthur was accusing her of killing 'the real Morgana' and attempting to take her place as a changeling, a trick that the fay were notorious for. To make things worse Merlin had lost his father and one of his uncles in the first great war between the fay and the humans so that he was deeply prejudiced against the fay. 

       The result of this was that Merlin believed Arthur's story and attempted to eradicate Morgana with a lightning bolt. If Morgana had been the same helpless woman from before she would have been struck by the lightning which would have resulted in her immediate death but she was no longer Morgana, a normal human girl. No, she was now truly one of the mighty

Tuatha Dé Danann , she was now Morgan le Fay.

       As the lightning zig zagged through the air towards her face something deep inside her stirred , like a muscle she never knew she had it flexed and the shadows around her responded to it. Her own shadow that was flat on the ground only a few seconds ago,  shot up from the ground and stood between her and the lightning. The lightning went into the dark shadow and was swallowed until nothing was left. 

      Then the shadows behind Merlin and Arthur also stood up and grabbed them so they couldn't move,

      Morgana tried to speak to Merlin but she saw the condemnation and hatred in his eyes. It broke her heart as she saw the poisonous look that the man she loved was giving her. She turned her head towards Arthur. The shadows around him suddenly thickened and turned into sharp swords pointing towards him.

     She was going to kill the treacherous bastard that had ruined her life when she heard a desperate shout. She turned to see Merlin trying to break free of the shadows and get to Arthur. She saw the despair in his eyes as the million shadow swords that she had conjured approached Arthur and she hesitated. She really wanted to kill Arthur but she could see that Merlin thought that Arthur was the last person he had left that he loved. He was never really close to his family after he had decided to marry Morgana and the only people he really had any contact with were her, Arthur and Guinevere.

       With Guinevere running away and him believing that Morgana was dead Merlin only had one person left, Arthur. Morgana saw the truth of this fact in Merlin's eyes and she just couldn't take the last thing that Merlin truly cared about away from him. He might not have loved her anymore but she still loved him deeply. So she made the shadow swords surrounding Arthur dissolve and fled from the castle with tears running down her cheeks.

        She ran and she ran, she didn't even care where her journey took her, she just ran deeper and deeper into the woods.

        Meanwhile Morgana's father, Lugh had been having an interesting time in the courts. After Oberon had died from an 'accidental' knife in the back Lugh had been able to grab the throne for himself. On this particular day he was 'visiting' a couple of Naiads under some pretext or other when he felt something familiar in the forest, he felt the essence of a human woman which he had once seduced mixed with his own essence. He knew that this meant that this was his child but what shocked him even more was the fact that she was radiating so much power. He had assumed that as a half human his child would at best inherit half of his power but what he was feeling right now was as powerful as he was if not even more powerful.

        He left the naked naiads and hurried towards the power that was calling out to him like a beacon. When he got to the clearing where the power was coming from he saw that he wasn't the only one who had noticed the power flux, in fact half of the light court and even some of the dark court had arrived before him.

        And all of them were staring at a girl sitting in the middle of the glade, her knees held in her hands as she sobbed into them. Lugh also joined this gathering crowd and looked at this heartbreaking sight until he noticed that the girl was the source of magic and Lugh realized that he was looking at his daughter for the first time.

       He hurried towards the crying girl and collected her into his arms, he might have been an absentee father and not have known his daughter but that had not been because he chose to abandon her. The only reason he had stayed away from his daughter was that he and her mother had agreed that it was the safest option for her but seeing her like this, heart broken and miserable he couldn't help but try to comfort his child.

      He carried the almost catatonic Morgana back to his home where he took care of her, he could have had one his many servants take care of her but even though he had never known her for all these years he still loved his daughter deeply and decided to personally make sure that she was okay.

      Slowly Morgana recovered from her heartbreak as one type of love was replaced by another, she now had a loving father and for a few months she was actually happy. But then tragedy struck again this time in the form of her half-brother's greed.

      Lugh had a son born from one of his many liaisons with the dryads, a strapping lad named Reece. Reece was strong , handsome, and powerful but unfortunately he was also narcissistic, self centered and selfish. He was an ambitious bastard who didn't like the prospect of being a prince with little power but relished the prospect of being the king a great deal. The fay were immortal unless they were killed and fay monarchs tended to live for hundreds of years , the vain prince didn't want to wait that long so when Morgana came along he saw it as an opportunity to strike his father down.

      He rallied the court against Lugh by saying that he had broken one of the fay's largest taboos. He secretly turned the light court against his father but even then Lugh was too powerful to simply depose so he enlisted the help of Andais, queen of the dark court of fay. Andais jumped at the chance to destroy a strong rival and replace him with a weaker person she could dominate. She made a very special poison that could kill any fey and gave it to Reece who used the fact that his father loved and trusted him to get close to his father and kill him.

        Now that Lugh was dead all that was left was to do for Andais and Rees was to kill the half-breed abomination Lugh had spawned. They went to Lugh's home together to kill Morgana but instead of quickly and quietly killing Morgana they broke into the house and foolishly announced that they would kill her just like they had just killed her father. Morgana knew of her brother and never really liked him and seeing the grotesque smile on her face left her with little doubt that he was telling the truth when he said that he had killed their father. Instantly that thing inside of her started to flex.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

       Andais felt the massive flood of power coming from Morgana and tried to use the darkness around her to shield herself and attack Morgana but for the first time in her life the shadows wouldn't respond to her command. Andais and Reese could only watch staring wide eyed as the shadows around them detached themselves from the ground and the walls to surround them. They just gawped stupidly and uncomprehendingly as the shadows shifted and turned into a mass of jagged edges and dangerous looking points.

       In the last moments of their lives they felt excruciating pain as they were shredded into small pieces by the tornado of sharp edges that Morgana had summoned. 

        With both Reece and Andais dead, Morgana became something that she that had never been seen before. As the only living direct descendant of Lugh she became the Queen of the light court of fay, because she had defeated Andais in direct combat she also became the queen of the dark court of fay. For the first time in history a single person held both posts at the same time.

        Several rebellious and ambitious people tried to kill her but thanks to her overwhelming power she was able to easily stamp out these elements. In the end she was able to create the first unified court of fay and become the very first overall leader of the fay.

        She had lost her father but as a tribute to the man she had come to love and respect a great deal she dedicated her time to the thing that Lugh had loved , his people. She was a strict but fair monarch, beloved by most of the fay. She truly cared about the fay and tried to help them instead of just using them like most of the Tuatha Dé Danann did and they loved her for it.

       Five months after Lugh's death and nine month's after Arthur had raped her, Morgana gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. Even though little Mordred was the son of her worst enemy and the product of rape she didn't love him any less for it. She raised him with all of the care and affection that she could muster.

       Mordred grew up to be a charismatic prince. The fay would hang on every word he said because something about him screamed leader and people felt compelled to follow him. He didn't abuse this power though, his mother had taught him to love his people and he was always respectful to them.

       Mordred loved his mother but he had always sensed a shadow of pain in her heart that she had hidden from him and he had a suspicion that it had something to do with his unknown father. One day he went to one of the ancient fay who was a soothe sayer and asked her about his mother's past.

       The fay, one of the oldest dryads whose spirit resided in an ancient willow tree tried to warn the prince off the path he was on but he was very stubborn and chose to ignore her warning. Unable to say no to her prince the ancient dryad used her powers to reveal the truth to Mordred, the fog that seemed to cling to the limbs of her willow tree suddenly swirled and coalesced, turning into images that revealed Morgana's life with the humans.

        After he saw everything that had happened to his mother Mordred felt uncontrollable rage grip his heart. He saw what Arthur did to his mother and how he was never punished for what he had done so he decided that he would be the one to punish him.

        Thanks to his power he was easily able to rally a giant army of fay then without even telling his mother he marched on the humans. He used his army to siege the castle and break into it in short order, such things are not very difficult when you had treants which are basically giant walking trees on your side.

        When he got inside he found Arthur being protected by an old wizard. The old wizard was able to protect Arthur for a long time but Mordred was finally able to get to him and slay him. As his sword cleaved through what he believed was his father Mordred felt a lightning bolt strike him from behind, blasting him off his feet.

          As he lay on the ground dying he didn't feel regret, he only felt happy that he had been able to get some measure of justice for his mother. Unfortunately for Mordred although he had indeed killed Arthur it wasn't his father that he had killed but his half-brother King Arthur the second.

          Time might have meant little for the fay but it was very important to humans, Mordred was only a quarter fay but even then he was immortal so he had forgotten this fact. It had been thirty years since he had been born but to Mordred that was nothing but a pointless number. Thirty years might have been trivial for Mordred but during those thirty years Arthur had died, entrusting his youngest child and only son to Merlin. Merlin had raised this child like he was his own son and groomed him to be the perfect king. He had succeeded and King Arthur the second was an even greater king than the his father.

          But it was all for nothing, the boy he had raised to be a man, his son that he had come to love was slayed in front of him by the very things that had taken his wife away from him. As Merlin knelt beside Arthur's broken body , his old and wrinkled face twisted into an expression of sadness and rage , he promised to kill every fay that he could get his hands on. He promised that this senseless act of violence would not go unanswered.

          Meanwhile Morgana had just received word of what had happened , some of the fay had managed to get the charred remains of her son at great personal risk. When she saw Mordred's dead body she fell to her knees and let out a loud wail. For the next few days the whole forest was filled with wails and sobs as the entire fay community grieved with their queen.

          For a week straight Morgana grieved and so she didn't notice that there were fay disappearing from the forest. At first it was just a pixie here and there, maybe a fairy. Then brownies and their ilk started to vanish then dryads and naiads started to disappear too. By the time Morgana noticed something was wrong it was already too late.

          Merlin had been hunting the fay and then sacrificing them in dark rituals to increase his power. He knew that his foe was the queen of the fay, the same fay that he thought took his wife's face and name to taunt him. He remembered how she had brushed off his power thirty years ago so he hoarded power using forbidden techniques that he had found hidden in his former master's library. With every fay he killed he grew stronger and stronger until he grew so strong that he felt something big and undeniable pull him away from his world. He struggled against this undeniable force and used his now massive power to connect himself to Morgana so that she would be dragged along with him.

        His spell succeeded but what he didn't put into consideration was that she was the fay monarch and all of her people are connected to her through a magical bond. When he was dragged into a higher plane thanks to his spell Morgana was dragged along with him and thanks to her connection to her people so were the rest of the fay.

        Once in the higher plane Merlin was powerful enough to claim a piece of it for himself as his own kingdom but Morgana was able to get a piece of his kingdom and turned it into a forest for her people. He attempted to kill her many times with his newly found power but she had the backing of her people and he was unable to do so because even though he had far more personal power , Morgana as the Monarch of the fay was able to channel all of their collective power which was more than enough to match Merlin. But even as she defeated him time and time again she didn't have the heart to finish him off.

         Instead she had to see the man she loved go insane as his repeated failures to kill her turned the once brilliant man into a delusional madman who surrounded himself with fake people and pretended that it all meant something.

          And the saddest part of all was that even after all that had transpired a part of her still loved her former husband.