The Unseen Servant
Despite the peace that had settled over Camelot, the air in the council chambers remained thick with suspicion. To knights like Sir Leon, the sight of the High Lord of the Druids—the man who had commanded the dead—standing at the King’s side was a constant threat. They did not see a friend; they saw a puppet master who would eventually pull Arthur’s strings.
“He will control you, Arthur,” Sir Leon argued during a private gathering. “A man with such power does not submit. He only waits for us to lower our shields.”
Emrys stepped forward, his golden eyes calm. “I serve the King of Albion,” he stated simply.
“Then prove it,” one of the younger knights challenged. “Our King has knelt in the mud; he has scrubbed the feet of those he once hunted. He has carried burdens until his hands bled. If you truly serve him, then serve us—just as Arthur served the Druids.”
To Arthur’s silent concern, Emrys accepted. He removed his fine indigo robes—the garments that hummed with terrifying pressure—and replaced them with the coarse, gray wool of a lowly servant.
The Shadow in the Halls
For two months, the High Lord of the Druids became a phantom within the Citadel. At first, every eye followed him, waiting for a slip of magic or a sign of pride. They watched him haul water, scrub the stone floors, and stand in the corners of the hall during long meetings.
But as the weeks bled into one another, the knights’ vigilance turned into indifference. Emrys became a shadow. He grew so quiet, so efficient, and so unassuming that the people of the court began to look right through him. He became just another face in the blur of servants that kept the castle running.
Only Arthur noticed. Every time Emrys entered a room, the King felt the shift in the air—the subtle warmth of a presence he had come to rely on.
The Private Supper
After two months had passed, Arthur called his inner circle of knights to a private dinner. They ate in a relaxed atmosphere, laughing and discussing the rebuilding of the kingdom. When the meal was finished and the wine had been poured, Arthur leaned back, his expression turning serious.
“Tell me,” Arthur began, his voice echoing in the quiet room. “Are you finally convinced? Do you still believe Emrys is steering my hand from the shadows?”
The knights froze. Alarmed looks were exchanged around the table. They realized with a jolt of guilt that they hadn’t even thought about the sorcerer in weeks. They had been so preoccupied with their own comfort that they had forgotten their “enemy.”
Arthur watched them in a heavy, knowing silence. When all their eyes finally settled on him, waiting for an explanation, Arthur turned his gaze toward one of the servants who had been standing by the sideboard, refilling their cups throughout the evening.
“You may go,” Arthur said to the servants.
The other servants bowed and hurried out, but the one Arthur had looked at did not move. He remained standing perfectly still in the shadows.
The knights’ blood ran cold as the figure stepped into the light. Clad in the same stained, rough tunic he had worn for sixty days, his hair dusty and his hands calloused from labor, stood Emrys.
Arthur beckoned him forward. Without a word, Emrys took a seat directly at the King’s right hand—still dressed as a beggar, yet possessing the unmistakable aura of the High Lord.
Arthur looked at his stunned knights and asked the final, cutting question:
“Tell me, which Emrys is more dangerous? The one sitting at my side where you can see him? Or the Emrys who became invisible because your arrogance made you stop noticing the people who serve you?”
The silence that followed Arthur’s question was suffocating. It was a heavy, physical thing that seemed to press the air out of the knights’ lungs. Sir Leon, who had been the loudest voice of suspicion, stared at the man sitting to Arthur’s right. The transformation was haunting; Emrys sat with a lowered gaze, his shoulders slightly stooped, his hands—once symbols of world-shaking power—now stained with the grime of the kitchens and scarred by the friction of hemp ropes.
“Sire…” Sir Percival finally stammered, his voice barely a rasp. “We did not know… we did not see him.”
“That is the point,” Arthur replied, his voice as sharp as Excalibur. “You did not see him because to you, he was merely a tool. A ghost that refilled your wine and swept away your filth. You were so terrified he would lead me like a puppet, yet you were the ones blinded by your own pride.”
Emrys slowly lifted his head. His eyes did not flare with the terrifying gold the knights feared; they were calm, reflecting a profound, ancient patience.
“Power is not always a storm or a consuming fire,” Emrys said softly, his words hanging in the still air. “The greatest power often lies in silence. In the ability to step back and listen. You watched me for two months, and yet you learned nothing of the man who serves you.”
Sir Leon pushed his chair back, the wood scraping harshly against the stone floor. He stood slowly, his face flushed—not with anger, but with a deep, stinging shame. He looked at the rough tunic Emrys wore, then at the king who had risked everything to teach them this lesson.
“We have failed you, My Lord,” Leon said, bowing his head deeply toward both Arthur and Emrys. “And we have failed the people we claim to protect by choosing to be blind to those who stand right in front of us.”
One by one, the other knights followed suit, standing and bowing in a silent admission of their arrogance. The tension in the room began to dissolve, replaced by a new, humbler understanding.
Arthur looked at Emrys and offered a small, tired smile. The High Lord reached out and placed a calloused hand over Arthur’s on the table. The test was over. The shadow had stepped into the light, and for the first time, the Round Table was truly whole.
The next morning, the sun broke over the white walls of Camelot, but the atmosphere in the Great Hall was stifling. Emrys had finally shed the coarse, gray wool of the servant and appeared once more in his robes of deep indigo. As he walked through the corridors, the air seemed to hum with that familiar, terrifying pressure.
The Return of the High Lord
The change was instantaneous. The knights, who had spent weeks ignoring the man cleaning their boots, now snapped to attention. As Emrys passed, they instinctively shrank back, their hands hovering near the hilts of their swords. The invisibility he had cultivated as a servant had vanished; in its place was the formidable presence of the High Lord of the Druids, his arms etched with silver runes.
They watched him with wide, anxious eyes, tracking every movement of his hands as if expecting a sudden strike of golden light. Their faces were masks of fear and suspicion, a stark contrast to the casual indifference of the previous months.
Arthur’s Disappointment
Arthur stood on the dais, watching the scene unfold with a tightening in his chest. He saw Sir Leon step behind a pillar as Emrys approached, and he saw the younger knights whispering with pale faces. A wave of exhaustion washed over the King.
“After everything,” Arthur murmured, his voice laced with bitterness as Emrys reached his side. “After two months of serving them, of washing their filth and carrying their burdens… we are back where we started. They have learned nothing. They see only the sorcerer, and they fear the leash they think you hold over me.”
A Different Kind of Trust
Emrys looked out at the gathered knights. His golden eyes did not flash with anger; instead, they held a quiet, observant wisdom.
“You are wrong, Arthur,” Emrys said softly, his voice a steady anchor. “Look closer.”
Arthur followed his gaze. He saw the knights’ fear, but he also noticed something new: they were no longer looking at Arthur with pity or doubt. They were no longer questioning his decrees or searching his face for signs of enchantment.
“Before I served, they feared you were a puppet—a hollow King whose soul had been stolen,” Emrys explained, his tone devoid of its former mockery. “They doubted your strength and your right to lead. But now, that doubt is gone. They saw you command me to step forward. They saw me obey you for sixty days without a single word of protest.”
Emrys turned to Arthur, a small, knowing smile touching his lips. “They do not mistrust your crown anymore, Arthur. They know now, beyond any doubt, that you are their rightful King. They do not fear that I am steering you. They simply fear me—and that is a burden I am happy to carry if it means they finally believe in you.”
The Chalice of Sorrows
The creeping rot had reached the Citadel. The air tasted of wet ash, and the shadows in the corners of the hall seemed to move with a life of their own. It was a “Soul-Eater” curse—an ancient Druidic blight that didn’t just kill; it consumed the spirit, leaving the body a hollow shell of weeping sores.
In the center of the throne room, the knights stood in a jagged circle, their swords drawn. They weren’t pointing them at the darkness, but at Emrys.
“Fix it, Warlock!” Sir Leon shouted, his voice cracking with a mixture of terror and fury. “You claim to be Albion’s protector! Use your devilry and stop this before the city falls!”
Emrys stood unnervingly still. His indigo robes stood out against the gray haze of the room. “The curse cannot be simply unmade,” he said, his voice a low, melodic chime that set their teeth on edge. “Energy cannot vanish. It must be contained. To save Camelot, I need a vessel. A living host to draw the darkness out of the air and into a single point.”
The reaction was instantaneous. A collective gasp of horror rippled through the knights. They recoiled, their blades trembling.
“A vessel?” Sir Percival roared, his face contorting. “You mean a sacrifice! Who are you going to choose, Emrys? One of the stable boys? One of us? Or will you reach into the cradle and steal a child’s life to fuel your ‘miracle’?”
“You’re a monster!” another knight spat, his knuckles white on his sword hilt. “We knew it. You waited until we were desperate just so you could demand a blood price. You don’t serve Arthur—you’re feeding on us!”
Arthur stepped between his knights and Emrys, his eyes searching the sorcerer’s face. “Is there no other way?”
“None,” Emrys replied, his golden eyes glowing with a sudden, fierce intensity. “The rot is spreading. If it is not contained within the next hour, there will be no one left to save. I need the vessel now.”
“We won’t let you!” Leon screamed, stepping forward, his sword tip inches from Emrys’s throat. “I’ll kill you myself before I let you murder an innocent in the name of your ‘service’!”
The knights began to close in, their fear turning into a violent, panicked heat. They hurled insults, calling him a leach, a puppeteer, and a murderer. They were convinced he was looking for a victim, scanning their ranks to see who was the most expendable.
Emrys didn’t flinch at the steel at his throat. He didn’t even look at Leon. He looked only at Arthur, a sad, knowing smile touching his lips.
“I have already chosen the vessel,” Emrys whispered.
He reached out—not toward a knight, and not toward the King—but toward the center of his own chest. His fingers curled as if grasping an invisible thread.
With a guttural shout of command in the Old Tongue, the gray haze in the room began to swirl violently. The knights watched, paralyzed, as the black, oily smoke of the curse was physically ripped from the lungs of the dying people in the lower town, flying through the windows like a swarm of angry hornets.
But the smoke didn’t head for the knights. It dove straight into Emrys.
The impact threw him backward. He hit the stone floor with a sickening thud, his body arching in agony. The knights watched in stunned, horrified silence as the “High Lord” became a cage for death itself. Black veins erupted across his neck and face. His eyes turned a clouded, sightless gray as the curse began to eat him from the inside out.
He wasn’t sacrificing them. He was the vessel.
“He’s taking it all,” Arthur whispered, dropping to his knees beside the convulsing sorcerer. “Every bit of it.”
Emrys’s fingers clawed at the stone, his breath a bloody rattle. He had taken the rot of an entire city into a single human frame. The knights, who seconds ago had been screaming for his blood, stood frozen. Their swords felt heavy and useless in their hands. They had accused him of looking for a victim, only to realize he had been looking for the strength to endure being the victim himself.
As the last of the black smoke vanished into Emrys’s skin, the air in the room became suddenly, hauntingly pure. The silence was absolute, broken only by the sound of the man they hated, choking on the death he had invited in to save them.
The Price of the High Lord
The Great Hall remained locked in a terrifying stasis. Emrys lay on the cold stone, his body wracked by tremors as the black veins of the curse pulsed like living shadows beneath his skin. Arthur held him, his hands stained with the dark, magical blood leaking from Emrys’s eyes and pores.
The knights stood in a jagged circle, their swords finally lowered, their faces pale with a sickening realization. The silence was suddenly broken by the sound of the great doors creaking open.
A dozen figures cloaked in white and earthy brown moved into the hall. They moved with a synchronized grace that made the knights instinctively reach for their hilts, but the newcomers ignored the steel. They were Druids, their eyes fixed solely on the fallen man in Arthur’s arms.
One of the Elders, a woman with silver hair and eyes that seemed to hold centuries of grief, knelt beside them. She placed a hand on Emrys’s forehead, and a soft, green light flickered, momentarily dulling the harsh black of the curse.
“He has taken it all,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “The rot of a thousand souls.”
Sir Leon stepped forward, his voice choked with shame. “Why? He said he needed a vessel. We thought… we thought he would take one of us. Why did he choose himself?”
The Elder looked up, her gaze piercing Leon’s soul. “Because he is the only one who could survive it. Had he placed this burden into any of you, your bodies would have turned to ash in seconds. Even so, the price is not death—it is suffering. He will feel the agony of every soul he saved, burning through his veins for days. It is a pain no mortal man could endure without losing his mind.”
“But he is the High Lord!” Sir Percival exclaimed, his brow furrowed in confusion. “He has the power of the Old Religion at his fingertips! Why didn’t he just… command the magic to dissipate? Why subject himself to this?”
The Druid Elder turned back to Emrys, wiping the dark blood from his temple with a cloth. She looked at the knights with a mixture of pity and pride.
“You still do not understand what it means to be the High Lord,” she said softly. “You see the title and you think of crowns and commands. You see the magic and you think of weapons. But that is not who he is.”
She stood up, signaling the other Druids to bring a litter.
“You ask why he didn’t find another sacrifice? Why he didn’t use his power to protect himself?” She looked at Arthur, then back at the shamed knights. “Because Emrys does not use his power to rule. He uses it to shield. To him, there was never a choice. He is the servant who carries the weight so the master may walk upright. He is the High Lord because he is willing to descend into the deepest hell to keep his people in the light.”
As the Druids gently lifted the semi-conscious Emrys, his head fell back, and for a moment, his gold-flecked eyes met Leon’s. There was no judgment in them, only a profound, weary kindness.
The knights watched them carry him away. They looked at their clean hands, then at the black stains on the floor where Emrys had bled for them. They realized that while they had been busy guarding the King against a ghost of their own making, the “ghost” had been busy dying for them—over and over again.
The Fragile Return
Two weeks had passed since the night the Druids carried a broken Emrys from the Citadel. For fourteen days, a strange, respectful silence had fallen over Camelot. The knights moved through the halls with softened footsteps, and the usual boisterous laughter of the Round Table was replaced by a somber, reflective quiet.
When Emrys finally appeared, it was not with a flash of light or a display of grandeur.
The heavy oak doors of the Great Hall creaked open, and the knights, who were gathered for the morning council, turned as one. A collective intake of breath swept through the room.
Emrys stood in the doorway, but he was not the imposing High Lord they remembered. He was leaning heavily on a staff of rowan wood, his knuckles white as he gripped the grain. His indigo robes seemed too large for him now, hanging loosely off his narrowed shoulders. His face was unnervingly pale, the skin beneath his eyes bruised with the purple shadows of exhaustion.
Every step he took toward Arthur was a visible struggle. He moved with a fragile, glass-like grace, as if a strong gust of wind might shatter him.
The knights reacted instinctively. Sir Leon and Sir Percival, the very men who had hurled insults and drawn their steel against him, moved forward. They didn’t reach for their swords this time; they reached out to steady him.
“High Lord,” Leon whispered, his voice thick with a mixture of reverence and guilt, as he offered his arm.
Emrys looked at Leon, his blue eyes clear but dimmed by lingering pain. He offered a small, trembling smile and shook his head gently, continuing his slow trek to the King’s side on his own strength.
Arthur stood from his throne, his eyes bright with relief and sorrow. He didn’t wait for Emrys to reach the dais; he met him halfway, catching the sorcerer by the elbows to support him.
“You should be resting,” Arthur said, his voice a stern mask for his concern.
“I have rested enough, Arthur,” Emrys replied, his voice a mere shadow of its former resonance, thin and rasping. “There is work to be done. A kingdom doesn’t rebuild itself while its servants sleep.”
He turned his head slightly to look at the knights who were standing in a wide circle around them. The suspicion that had defined their relationship for months was gone, replaced by a haunting debt.
“You look at me with pity,” Emrys said, his gaze landing on Sir Percival. “Do not. The marks on my skin will fade. The pain will pass. But the city lives. That is the only thing that matters.”
Sir Percival stepped forward, dropping to one knee—an honor usually reserved only for the King. “We called you a puppet master,” he said, his head bowed. “We accused you of seeking a victim among the innocent. We stood by while you took a hell into your own soul that would have leveled this castle.”
Leon joined him, kneeling on the cold stone. “We were blind. We thought service was a mask you wore to hide your power. We didn’t realize that for you, the power is the service.”
One by one, the knights of Camelot knelt before the trembling, fragile man in the center of the room. They no longer feared what he might do to them; they were humbled by what he had done for them.
Emrys looked down at the bowed heads of the greatest warriors in Albion. He leaned a little more into Arthur’s support, his strength flagging, but his spirit remained unshaken.
“Rise, knights of Camelot,” Emrys whispered. “I did not endure the darkness so you would kneel in the shadows. I did it so you could stand in the light. Now… let us see to the people.”
The Shared Burden
The sky over Camelot had turned a bruised, sickly purple. A new malice had crept from the ancient forests—the Breath of the Void—a curse that didn’t just rot the flesh but froze the very heart. Everywhere it touched, people fell into a catatonic sleep, their skin turning as cold as mountain ice.
In the center of the citadel, the mist was thickest. Emrys stood before the fountain, his face grave. The silver runes on his sleeves seemed to glow with a frantic, warning light.
“Back!” Emrys commanded, his voice echoing with the authority of the Old Religion. “The mist is hungry. To stop it, I must draw it into a single point. I need a vessel, and only magic of my depth can contain such a void.”
He stepped forward, his hands already beginning to glow, ready to take the killing frost into his own veins.
“No.”
Sir Leon stepped forward. He didn’t draw his sword. Instead, he unbuckled his gauntlets and dropped them to the stone. He walked past the invisible line Emrys had drawn between safety and sacrifice.
“The Druid Elders spoke to us while you were recovering, Emrys,” Leon said, his breath visible in the freezing air. “They told us that the weight of a curse can be shared. They said that a burden divided is a burden diminished.” He looked Emrys in the eye, no longer with fear, but with a fierce, stubborn loyalty. “I will be your vessel. I will take a share of this frost.”
Emrys paused, his golden eyes flickering with sorrow. “Leon, your heart is noble, but your body is mortal. Even a shared portion of this curse would be too much. If I divide the void in two, the half that enters you will freeze your blood in an instant. You would die so that I might suffer less. I cannot allow it.”
“Then what if it is divided by three?” Sir Percival stepped forward, his massive frame looming in the mist. He stood at Leon’s side, his hand resting on the other knight’s shoulder. “I have strength enough to spare. Divide the weight between the three of us.”
“Make it four,” Sir Gwaine added, stepping out of the shadows with a grim smile, his usual bravado replaced by a quiet intensity.
One by one, the knights of the Round Table moved. Sir Elyan, Sir Enid, and the others formed a semicircle around the High Lord. They were no longer guarding the King against a sorcerer; they were offering their lives to shield their friend.
“The Druids said the High Lord carries the world because no one else will,” Leon whispered, reaching out his bare hand toward the swirling black mist. “But you aren’t alone anymore. We are the Knights of Camelot. We are your shield, just as you are ours.”
Emrys looked at the circle of men. For the first time since Arthur had known him, the High Lord looked truly overwhelmed. Tears pricked the corners of his golden eyes. He realized that the two months of service, the weeks of silence, and the agony of the previous curse had finally forged a bond that magic could not create.
“It will hurt,” Emrys warned, his voice trembling. “It will feel like a thousand winters screaming in your marrow.”
“Then let us scream together,” Gwaine replied.
Emrys took a deep breath. He didn’t just draw the curse into himself this time. He reached out and wove a web of golden light that connected every knight in the circle. As the black void rushed toward them, it didn’t strike a single man; it shattered against the collective will of the brotherhood.
The knights gasped as the frost hit them. Their skin turned pale, and their teeth chattered with a bone-deep cold, but no one fell. The weight was shared. The agony that would have broken Emrys was distributed across the strength of the realm’s finest warriors.
When the mist finally cleared and the sun broke through the clouds, the knights remained standing. They were shivering, their breaths coming in ragged gasps, but they were alive.
Emrys stood in the center, his power stabilized by their support. He looked at each of them—at Leon, Percival, Gwaine, and the rest. He didn’t see subjects or suspicious soldiers. He saw brothers.
Arthur stepped into the circle, placing his hands on the shoulders of the two men closest to him.
“You see, Emrys?” Arthur said softly. “You taught them how to serve. And in doing so, you taught them how to lead. Camelot is no longer a kingdom protected by one man’s magic. It is a kingdom protected by the love of its people.”
Emrys leaned against the fountain, no longer the untouchable High Lord, but a man among friends. For the first time in an eternity, the burden of Albion felt light.
The End of Isolation
The square was quiet now, the frost retreating into the earth like a bad dream. The knights remained in their positions, their armor dusted with white rime, their breaths pluming in the air. For the first time in his long, immortal life, Emrys did not immediately stand up and brush off the dust of battle as if it were nothing. He stayed on one knee, his hand trembling on his rowan staff, feeling the heavy, thrumming presence of the men around him.
Since the moment he had come into his magic, Emrys had been a man apart. His power was a tidal wave, a force of nature that resembled a god more than a man. To the Druids, he was a living prophecy to be worshipped; to his enemies, he was a nightmare to be feared. In every crisis, the pattern had been the same: a threat would arise, the people would recoil in terror, and Emrys would step into the breach alone. He had grown used to the hollow space behind him—the vacuum created by people stepping back to let the “Great One” handle the burden.
He had carried the world on his shoulders because he believed he was the only one with shoulders strong enough to bear it.
But today, the pattern had shattered.
Emrys looked at Sir Leon, who was rubbing his numbing hands, and at Gwaine, who was leaning against a wall, shivering but grinning. He looked at Percival, whose steady gaze held no fear, only a quiet, resolute brotherhood. They hadn’t stepped back. They hadn’t waited for the god to save them. They had stepped forward—into the freezing mist, into the pain, into the very mouth of the void.
For the first time, the vast, insurmountable gulf of his power didn’t feel like a canyon separating him from humanity. The crushing weight of his destiny didn’t feel like a solitary sentence.
He realized that the knights didn’t just see the High Lord anymore. They saw the man who had scrubbed their floors. They saw the friend who had bled for their city. And because they saw the man, they knew that even a man with the power of a god could break.
Arthur walked over and offered a hand, not to pull a King’s advisor to his feet, but to help a brother. As Emrys took it, he felt a profound, aching warmth spread through his chest—a magic far older and more potent than any spell he knew.
He looked at the circle of knights and finally understood. He no longer had to ask for help. He no longer had to hide his exhaustion or mask his pain. If he stumbled, there were hands to catch him. If he was in danger, there were shields to surround him. If he was weak, there was a collective strength ready to carry him without a single word being uttered.
They were the Knights of Camelot, and Arthur was their King. But Emrys… Emrys was no longer a lonely legend. For the first time since the world began, the High Lord of the Druids was not alone.