I don't like old stories.
If I had to go into more detail, I'd say I don't have a soft spot for anything other than my own past. What's the fun in listening to other people brag? I'd rather be swimming with salmon if I had time for that. No, I'm not saying I like salmon. If I have to swim, it really should be with a woman, and better be a good-looking woman at that. If all you want is to listen to me talk and tell a story though, I will bear with it a bit. I'll just imitate a poet. With practice, it would be of use when wooing a woman who's easy to deceive.
Five years; that's when we became family.
Not my age, hers. At first sight, I knew immediately that she'd become a beauty in the future, but then my old man told me to
guide her as if she were my brother, and that's how I decided to see her.
I didn't think there was any chance in hell it could be kept a secret though.
King Uther was a man above other men, but still a human in the end. He probably knew that he would fall to the Picts in the North and in the coming battle against Vortigern, to say nothing of the Saxons.
So, he came up with the idea of making the next king, not one who was merely above other men, but something that was NO man. A hybrid between man and dragon. The incarnation of the king, born in the mold of a human body.
Merlin was delighted with the idea. He must have been running throughout the castle with his hands up in the air with approval.What, don't add fuel to the fire if you didn't see it?? I'm not guessing. I'm certain that's what happened. You magus and your lot love the new, the chaotic, the unimaginable.
Continuing on, the raw material of the king was made in this way without letting others know. The blood of King Uther, the blood of
the dragon, and the blood of a noblewoman who's the most suitable to fuse the two. There wasn't a trace of romance in it. No exchange of letters, no secret meetings at night; just an act for leaving behind results. What? You ask if there was love in that? You seriously think there was love in it? It's because you don't even know that kind of thing that you are inhuman.
And that was how Arto — King Arthur was born.
They call it conceptual fertilization in the magecraft world or so I hear. I'm sure you heard of it. Not making a dragon a man, but
giving a man the functions of a dragon. She may have been a human being at first, but there's something unnatural mixed inside.
"The King is not the incarnation of the dragon; his heart is a single dragon. His magical power is of a level beyond ours. I ask you not to seek the same values as ours from one possessing magic like the gods."
That's what Agravain would regularly say to the knights, but I concur, not as much as he may have meant of course.
No one under those conditions would grow up into being a normal human being. You wouldn't expect it normally. Yet, that's what wasn't normal about her. Everything else about her was normal when she was a runt except that one thing was weird. It might feel hard to believe now, but she had been no
different from the other girls in town. She'd been disciplined to be polite by the old man and etiquette drilled into her bones, but once in town, she blended in, became just like her surroundings. She was a town girl, a simple town girl.
But her being a sore loser was a trait she was born with. Her standard for winning and losing was not that she was disappointed to lose to someone else, but that she was pathetic, sore at being so useless.
Whenever she falls down, she would immediately stand face up.
She wasted no time consoling herself. There should be a limit to the spirit of moving forward. And yet, she's easily hurt. She must have been too honest to brush things off.
The knights outside of the castle talk as if she has a heart of iron but she was reed, not iron. She was shocked and battered, but not once has her heart broken. A girl like that was raised for ten years under the strict watch of my old man. So of course, she would become an ideal king. It was nothing but trouble from me, however.
I wasn't there to see her pulling the sword. A part of me thought 'just let her do whatever she pleases'.
After all, why should I have to warn a cheater who had everything since she was born? I had no reason to stop her. She can do whatever she wants for all I care.
You should know more than me about what happened next. And you won't have me talking of the days when we were training and adventuring countries after she took out the sword. I might find myself swinging a blade at you from years of pent-up grudges if I remember all of the trouble you and her dragged me into and made a fool out of me.
When she finished her training and mastered Caliburn, she finally announced herself the rightful king. She had humble beginnings.
First, she started with saving a tribe and establishing a base of operations. The old man did teach her that laying groundwork
was critical.
If we were to defeat Vortigern, it was ideal to raise an army to match his while being as low profile as possible in order to remain
unnoticed.
To date, there have been eleven pitched battles against the Saxons, but the Round Table at the very first of them consisted of
only you and me I believe.
From there, everything took off.
She reorganized the lost cataphract and literally raced across the battlefield freely, crushing Saxon infantry and breaking through several city walls.
Really, it's a tactic that none could've imagined that girl who loved taking care of horses would use. What? You're saying that
people were dying too? It's fine if soldiers die. They were fighting to protect their families and their land. It's an act of survival. But
horses are different. They have nothing to do with human conflicts. They don't care what they are running for or what they are dying for. That is a different sin from the death of humans. At least that's what that girl thought.
It was when she emerged victorious from one of those battles that the name of King Arthur became known throughout the island.
Ah, but somewhere along the way, someone's womanizing led her to Morgan's trap and sword of the selection(Caliburn) was lost. What!? You must go through that ritual to obtain the
golden sword (Excalibur)? Who cares? I can only remember how ridiculous she looked as she marched with us trying to
conceal from everyone that she had lost her holy sword. Her face was paler than pale can be.
Because of that, I ended up once again having to make a wood carving of a bird catching a salmon. And, Morgan was there too. How did such a fine lady become such a frightening thing? Just when it seemed as if she had the
innocence of a fairy, she became as magnificent as a warrior maiden, and then suddenly possessed the brutality of a witch.
If you ask me, it's as if there were three women inside of that single woman.
Still, she was the proper daughter of King Uther. Morgan may have had similar circumstances as she had.
Ever since the establishment of Camelot, she never let go of her hatred for King Arthur.
Come to think of it, I've not heard much of her lately.
But yes, let me get back to where I was.
Vortigern finally lifted his heavy hand and started to fight a decisive battle against King Arthur. That was when she took back the citadel that was Vortigern's base. Though in this battle, the only one other than King Arthur who was of any use was Sir Gawain ,who had a holy sword just like her.
And so King Arthur defeated Vortigern the Usurper and reclaimed the citadel. That would be this chalk castle, Camelot of the Round Table. Camelot Castle was completed, and the reign of King Arthur began at last.
Since then, ten years have gone by. There'd never been a moment to breathe, for both you and me. You fooled around with women while calling yourself the aid of the king, and I'd chase after women's asses in leisure while performing my duties as one of the Round Table. And King Arthur, she would bring and bind together a group of bickering lords while accomplishing great results against the war against the Saxons.
So, just like Uther the previous King had wished for, the ideal king was born.
Meanwhile, my worries have amounted to nothing. I thought there would be at least one of us who would voice his thoughts, but "at
this point" there was not a single knight who would press further into what a lie that was. The joke of "A knight of innocence who
serves the chalk castle" is not even funny a story nowadays.
After all, no one truly approved of King Arthur. Because, you know... The power of the holy sword has made her stop aging. The king looks like a fifteen-year-old just like when he drew the sword. Although many knights feared it as creepy, most of them hailed the immortality of their lord as a mystery.
Deep down inside, they mocked the notion of a young boy being a king for much longer and readied themselves for the power struggles that would come when the king falls. King Arthur was not a king universally acknowledged. She was a temporary king who was only recognized when her reign was going well.
As long as she could function as a king, some "incompatibility" could be ignored. Even if there were ones who discovered what the king truly was, they stayed quiet while she still proved to be a capable king.
They praised her as an ideal king, but as soon as they realised that her ideals that they so praised would not save absolutely everyone, they pushed all the blame on her. And look where it led us.
I imagine Mordred will raise troops against us when King Arthur returns from Rome.
I've had enough of this foolish infighting. I'll think of some reason to excuse myself from it all. Perhaps join up with that other fellow
womanizer, Lancelot — I, no. That is the one thing I will never do. It's fine, I'll set off sail for some other land and spend my days relaxing there. With all that fortune I've amassed, I have no need to fight anymore.
And you, you will be fleeing to some fairyland, won't you? Best to end this idle talk lest you have your head chopped off for being an opportunist.
What? You want to hear what I think of King Arthur?
…Yeah, there is one thing I wanted to ask you. Since she had been aware, and she's spent most of her day learning to be a king. And the sole free time she had, the time she should be sleeping, she spent taking care of the needs of the horses and patrolling the village. In her life, she had no room for herself, never personally experienced what it was she trying to protect. Is there anything more heartbreaking than that?
I am a man who will cut off the head of a giant if asked, but even I frowned not being able to look at this.
When we were still living with my father, I couldn't help but having to speak my mind, because I was so disgusted:
"Hey you! when are you sleeping?"
"Don't worry, big brother. I am asleep
from dawn until the sun rises."
She actually smiled when she said that.
Dawn until the rise of the sun. That's not even three hours. I was dismayed, but it served as a good opportunity for me to learn that a mundane person like I will never get anything good coming from being involved with this overly-serious fool. But then some days later, I met you and learned a truth I did not want to know. That a magus, one who was an incubus, was teaching her how to be a king in even her dreams.
"What a joke. In other words, she hadn't even been truly
sleeping."
No one else knew though.
Because of that, now that I see the country on the edge of falling I find myself thinking
"Absurd. What was it that she wanted to do so much to
go that far?"