Fighting the Storm

"Let me see him", he adamantly stood in front of the door that had just been shut on him.

"You better leave him, Lancelot", Tristan patted his shoulder, with a solemn look on his face.

"Sir Tristan, I-"

"Lancelot", Tristan tightened his grip on his shoulder.

He needn't say anymore. Looks were telling enough stories in the court. Lancelot knew what everyone was thinking. He couldn't care less if anyone else understood it. But he couldn't bear the thought of having hurt his King's trust. But King Arthur had refused to see him ever since the news got out.

Lancelot could see everything deteriorating and he couldn't do anything about it. He knew he needed to see King Arthur though and he'd been trying his utmost to get to him somehow. It came on the morning when all hell broke lose. 

The news of an attack came in that morning. All out warfare was inevitable now. And then Lancelot finally heard from the King. He had been summoned.

It was all a haze to him. He didn't remember how he'd gotten there to see him. He didn't remember what words he'd spoken or what he'd said at all. As he was kneeling before the King, he just knew he'd told him everything. 

"For the sake of the country, the lineage must continue", had been the gist of what he said,

Since Arthur refused to have children until he'd seen the war to an end, the royal house had no heir. Lancelot had been seduced. And his morals had been broken with the noble cause of "protecting the future of the country and the royal house".

Lancelot let it all spill out, not hiding anything from the King. Arthur had his back turned to Lancelot. In the morning light that peeked in through the windows, Arthur stood motionless. Lancelot's heartbeat seemed to be filling the room. He kneeled before Arthur, with his head down, not having enough courage to even catch a glimpse of Arthur's figure. 

"I understand, Lancelot. I forgive you", were the only words that left Arthur's lips before he left Lancelot alone in the hall. 

Lancelot was frozen. What he'd heard were words of goodbye, of giving up, and he felt all alone all of a sudden. He'd been abandoned by the one he revered the most. If only he'd been punished so severely, he could never get up...any infliction would do. But this forgiveness was much too heavy. Lancelot couldn't move an inch. He felt his life draining and his breath slowing down until it had almost vanished. The world had come to a halt then and there. 

Arthur died in the battle that day. And all was lost to Lancelot. 

  **********************

I wonder if all those knights that had been turned to snow were alive.

We were in the middle of a tornado, everything in that garden was getting swept up by the storm. Sight was protecting me and Grey. Silver was somewhere in that storm too but we hadn't spotted her yet. The storm was closing in on us. It wasn't any ordinary tornado either. We'd have been shredded if it touched any of us. 

Sight tried to prevent it closing on us with his barrier but his barrier didn't hold. 

"Curses", he muttered.

He then deployed his dismantling field to one part of the storm to cut right throw it. But it was futile. The storm was too fast, all the dismantled elements only just got swept up and fed to the storm. 

"He's somewhere in the storm", Grey told Sight, "Take him out first."

Grey was talking about Arthur. Sight nodded and deployed another dismantling field. He was just shooting those dismantling fields at the storm now. We had spotted Silver in the storm thanks to all those fields. But Sight hadn't managed to catch her. 

"Enough from you", Silver appeared out of thin air and whispered to Sight, while levitating off the ground. 

She disappeared just as quickly while Sight was left baffled trying to figure what had happened. The storm picked up pace and became even faster. 

"The air", Grey was alarmed, "It's freezing. We'll suffocate."

Sight stood still, trying to see the best course of action.

"Sight", I said, having gained some of my strength back.

"Boy", Sight turned to me.

"I'll help you", I said, pulling myself up. 

The wound was barely holding up but I thought I could squeeze in an attack. Sight couldn't fight with that curse but I had something that could. Sight nodded, deploying a series of strengthening barriers on me as a protection. 

"Whenever you're ready, boy", Sight said, taking off his blindfold. 

But he looked away, I couldn't catch a glimpse of his eyes or the scar running through them. He was blind now but with his blindfold off, perhaps he was reminding himself of the feeling of seeing. 

I tapped into my own core too, where I found Nasty II. With his cloak on me, I could reach much greater distances. 

"This place might fall down, boy", Sight said, looking overhead.

"Don't worry about that", Grey joined us, "Whenever you're ready, Seraph."

Seeing that we barely had anymore space to move anymore, I donned the cloak and summoned every bit of strength I could find in me. 

There was a heavy energy engulfing me and flowing around me. It alarmed Sight and Grey but they chose to trust the process for now. I breathed in and let out a dark cloud of smoke before concentrating all the strength into my fist. I then smashed the ground right below us and stuffed all that heavy energy below ground. It shot up into the storm in the form of blood trails and mixed in with the icy storm. 

Sight then deployed a dismantling barrier that covered that entire garden and perhaps even beyond. While I was pumping the blood to counter the curse in the storm, Sight was breaking the storm to pieces. What we realized when we were dismantling the storm this way was that the curse was nearly a thousand years old. And to completely undo it, we needed to fight every part of it. We had to undo this storm by undoing the curse of every user Excalibur had ever had. Sight was making it look easy so I needed to hold out too. 

Meanwhile Silver made her appearance. She dare not close in on us, so she sent her icy puppets at us. Grey dealt with them though. And every projectile she threw at us was rendered ineffective by him too. As long as Grey was with us, Silver's magic wasn't going to work.

Seeing that, she took out Excalibur. She swung the sword around, looking at us, threateningly. 

"I'm going to stop him", Grey stepped up and leaving us behind to take care of the storm, went after Silver. 

Sight found time to deploy some series of protections on him too. It was surprising that Sight was able to do this much. He wasn't just deploying those protections, he was holding them up too. I never noticed this before but Sight was surprisingly cautious. 

Where I was concerned, I thought there was a better way to end this. For now, I just needed to get rid of the storm. And soon, it would all be over.