❝ The future was yet to be written, uncertain in every way except one: there will be fire.
When the dawn closed her eyes, she awoke in flames-a hellfire inferno burning as leaves on briar-thicket trees. A forest of thorns alight. A vision of the fut...
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a poisoned chalice
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IT WAS AS IF the mouth of hell itself had opened up beneath his feet to swallow him whole. The abysmal chasms looming below painted his world in ebon shades that rivaled the darkest nights, and it was a darkness he didn't have the power to escape. It was as if his nightmares had come to life, bleeding into reality as his severely aching arms clung to the small ledge for dear life, simply wasting away as he awaited the dangerous presence of those vile arachnids to return again from the prison of shadow. He was trapped in an endless expanse of oblivion, both helpless as Merlin's fate hung in the delicate balance between life and death and overcome by a sweltering panic as the uncertainty of Aurora's own all but devoured him alive.
The ledge served as his salvation from endless oblivion, from the onyx death which surely awaited, and yet he knew that lifeline was one that certainly could not last forever. Despite the superiority complex he often showcased, Arthur knew well enough that he wasn't forged of invincibility and immortality, that eventually the strength that kept him one with the ledge would blink away and he would fall to the death his father had so vehemently cautioned him about before he'd walked away from Camelot the night before and the land he loved would indeed be left with a future unknown. Like dead weight, failure hung upon his shoulders with brutal force and the death of hope began to echo within his bones.
But hope wasn't through with him just yet, and it came to him in the form of a glowing orb of light, giving him vision to chase away the darkness he'd been so lost in. Though he couldn't determine whether the unidentified, inexplicable force was that of a malevolent or benevolent nature at first glance, it soon became apparent that it was meant to guide him from the chasm of certain death. Grasping ahold of whatever strength he still attained, Arthur pulled himself up from the ledge and let the spectral light carry him away from the caliginous hollow and the beasts which lurked within, but not before he plucked one of the many Mortaeus flowers away from its place of growth upon the cavern walls. A near-death experience would be anything but well worth it had he not been granted what he risked himself for in the first place, and so there was no way in heaven's name he'd abandon the caves without it.
