Arthur and the Pornbats 1/? - The Caves of Yargh
Fandom: Merlin
Title: Arthur and the Pornbats
Pairings: Arthur/Merlin (duh)
Rating: Starts at PG-13 and gets steadily worse from there. Eventually will be NC-17, but I have no idea when that'll happen.
Spoilers: Some. There's Moment of Truth references in there, and will probably be others when I think of them
Summary: Um...there's a cave, and there's something in it that has a venomous bite with interesting results, and Merlin and Arthur get bitten
Disclaimer: Suing me is useless because I have no money. I know full well that the show and all of its characters belong to the BBC and the writers of the show. I'm just playing and making absolutely no money at this at all.
A/N: This is largely inspired by credulesque and her pornbats. I'm not completely sure what a pornbat is, though I have an idea. Either way, an idea occurred to me while I was thinking of Merlin and I just had to write it. This is the result. Or some of it, anyway. Enjoy!
Merlin and Arthur were about to explore the Caves of Yargh, which were a five days ride south southeast from Camelot, near the Cliffs of Ewe (some people said it was because they were chalk cliffs, and white like a sheep, but no one who’d ever met a sheep would ever believe that). They were looking for a rare moss that only grew on the northern edge of igneous inclusions buried at a depth of five inches in loose chalk in the darkest part of the mines, and they needed this moss because it was the only known cure for a particularly nasty kind of rash that Morgana had picked up and refused to say from where.
Gaius was certain that the rash was deadly, though, and because Morgana refused to say where she’d gotten it from, and because the rest of the kingdom could very well be in danger because of it, Arthur and his manservant had ridden to the Caves of Yargh with all due haste.
They’d brought other knights with them, but they’d all been eaten by a basilisk on the way over.
“Do you ever wonder how Gaius finds out about these rare and wonderful plants?” Arthur asked as he wound and lit the torches they would need in the cave, and checked his weapons.
“I think he reads about them in books,” Merlin said uncertainly.
“Yes, but who writes these books?” Arthur insisted. “If no one’s ever come out of the Caves of Yargh alive, how the hell does anyone know where to get that moss?”
“Clearly someone must have made it out alive,” Merlin said with a shrug. “Probably in the days when they were allowed to use magic to defend themselves from magical creatures.”
“Trifle bitter, are we?”
Merlin shrugged self-consciously.
“I wouldn’t have turned Will in, you know,” Arthur said, a trifle defensively “Magic is dangerous, but he did save us all. Including me.”
Merlin said nothing, and Arthur, mistaking his servant’s silence for sadness for his lost friend, shrugged uncomfortably and looked away.
“Shall we go in?” the prince said, his cheeks slightly red.
Merlin forced a smile and shouldered his pack. “Let’s go.”
They went.
They didn’t know they were being watched, however, though if either of them had thought of their previous adventures, one of them would have figured it out.
It wasn’t an evil enchantress/sorceress/witch that watched them in a conveniently placed bowl of water. Nor was it an evil wizard/magical creature that watched them from the shadows of the cave they were going into, or a heathen goddess about to blow a gasket because they were trespassing on hallowed ground. It was something far more sinister than that.
As Merlin and Arthur crossed the threshold into the Caves of Yargh, all they heard was the high-pitched chittering of bats receding into the darkness.
They seemed to walk for hours, though it was really hard to tell that far underground. Everything - including them - was coated with fine white dust. Chalky white stalactites and stalagmites grew up (and down) in spiky majesty around them. The caves were filled with a steady dripping noise, somewhere beyond the edge of their torchlight.
“Are you getting hungry?” Merlin asked loudly, startling Arthur.
Arthur shot Merlin a dirty look. “No,” he said quietly when the echoes died down. “And we’d better hope that none of the dangerous creatures that could inhabit these caves are either.”
“Why’s that?” Merlin asked innocently.
“I’m suspecting they wouldn’t mind having prince for their supper,” Arthur said, clapping Merlin ‘round the ear. “They might not want idiot, though. I hear they’re tough to chew.”
“Okay, okay…point taken,” Merlin muttered embarrassedly while he rubbed at the spot where Arthur had clouted him. “We should eat soon, though.”
“We haven’t been down here that long,” Arthur said, moving on again. “It’s only been twenty minutes.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
They walked for another few feet before Merlin couldn’t resist any longer. “How do you know -”
“Merlin,” Arthur said warningly.
“No, really. It’s darker than pitch down here, and it’s not as though we have any way of -”
“Merlin.”
“What?”
“Shut up.”
Merlin peered past Arthur into the darkness to see what had stopped him.
There was a woman standing there. No, three women. Pale, with wide luminous eyes and dresses that were inexplicably fine and made out of velvet (who wears velvet in a cave?) they had long dark hair and feral grins and had apparently come out of nowhere.
“Who trespasses in our realm?” The one in the middle asked. Her voice, low and melodious, echoed off the interior walls of the cavern they were walking through.
“I am Arthur Pendragon,” Arthur said, “of Camelot. This is my companion and manservant, Merlin. Who are you?”
“What are you looking for in our caves?” another of the three women asked, completely ignoring Arthur’s question.
“We’re seeking the Ivegoth Erpes moss, which is said to grow here.”
“We know this moss,” the third woman said. “We will take you to it. But there is a price.”
“We will pay it gladly,” Arthur said confidently despite the fact that Merlin was desperately trying to get his attention. “A friend of ours is gravely ill, and this moss will cure her.”
The three women shared looks, and then smiled. Their teeth seemed especially long and pointy in the light from the torches.
“Come this way,” the first one said again. “We will keep our promise.”
They turned around and walked off into the shadows beyond the torchlight. Arthur shrugged and followed.
“What are you doing?” Merlin demanded in an angry whisper. “You don’t agree to pay the price when you don’t know what it is!”
“You speak as though you have experience,” Arthur said sarcastically.
Merlin only gave him a Look, but Arthur missed it in the shadows and because he wasn’t looking.
“Anyway,” Arthur continued, “we need to get that moss. Morgana’s life depends on it.”
“That’s just it!” Merlin hissed. “What if the price is your life? Or the life of your first born? Or my life? Will you be prepared to pay it then?”
“I would do anything for Morgana,” Arthur replied stiffly. “Just as I would do anything for you.”
“Don’t say that in their hearing,” Merlin muttered with a jerk in the direction of their three inexplicably well dressed guides. “They don’t need any more encouragement than that.”
Arthur snorted, and they continued to walk further into the labyrinthine caverns.
A small eternity later - or another twenty minutes, depending on how you looked at it - they arrived at a massive underground cavern. It was ringed with ledges and terraces, both natural and artificial, and filled completely with women like the three they had already encountered.
It was ridiculously bright, too. Torches and candles and lanterns; the cavern looked like a patch of the havens had been brought underground for the occasion. Arthur and Merlin gasped.
Their three guides led them down a smooth ramp to the bottom of the cavern, the shape of which formed a natural amphitheater. There was something that looked remarkably like an altar in the middle of the basin floor, on which rested a knife made of flint and leather.
Merlin started to get really nervous. This didn’t look good.
“Sisters!” one of their guides spoke, her voice amplified by the cavern. Bats chattered somewhere near the ceiling, but neither Arthur or Merlin could see them when they looked. The cavern roof was lost in shadows and smoke from the lanterns and torches and candles. “We bring you Arthur of Camelot and his manservant!”
There was general cheering to this.
“They seek the Ivegoth Erpes moss!”
The whole crowed gasped at once, and the noise of it was very unsettling.
“They have agreed to pay the price!”
The crowed roared with delight. Merlin really didn’t like the looks of this. Arthur, in his damnably calm and confident way, didn’t appear worried at all.
“What is this price?” Merlin demanded. Their guides turned to look at him.
“Hold out your hands,” one of them said.
Merlin and Arthur shared a look, and then did so.
The other two women came forward. One went to Arthur, one went to Merlin. They each took a hand in theirs, and then bent as if to kiss their wrists.
“Ouch!” Arthur and Merlin cried out in unison. The women had bitten them, sharp teeth piercing the skin like the prick of a needle - or thirty.
Merlin tried to swipe at the one on his wrist with his torch, but he was suddenly dizzy and ill. The cavern and its many lights spun around him. Bats shrieked and whirled, Merlin was certain that their three guides - and indeed all of the women in the cavern - had turned into bats and were now flying around them, buffeting them with leathery wings and screeches and the wind of their passages.
“Arthur…” he moaned as he fell to his knees. Arthur fared no better than him.
“Merlin…”
They fell into darkness, and knew no more.
When they awoke, the cave was empty of everything but the odd lantern. Not a creature was stirring, female or otherwise.
Merlin’s head was spinning, and he was very nearly sick on the cavern floor. He managed to stand and find Arthur, however, who was slumped unceremoniously against the altar in the middle of the cavern.
“Arthur,” Merlin called, trying to talk around the fuzziness in his mouth. “Arthur, wake up.”
“Muh?” Arthur replied. “Ow. Merlin, what did you let me drink?”
“Nothing. We got bitten, remember?”
“Oh yeah.” Arthur tried to stand, and then apparently thought better of it. “My mouth tastes like a sock,” he added.
“A what?” Merlin asked, because 'sock' was not what he’d heard.
“A sock,” Arthur insisted as though it pained him to speak.
“Really? A sock?”
“Yes, really. Yours doesn’t?”
“I thought…I heard…it was nothing,” Merlin said slowly, wondering just why he couldn’t concentrate, why he was hearing words that weren’t actually there. He was still dizzy, he decided. Then something caught his eye, and he gave an impulsive cry that Arthur didn’t seem to think was good for his headache. “The moss!”
On the altar, piled high, was all the moss they could ever hope to carry. Merlin pulled out the bag he’d brought for it, and filled it completely. He didn’t know how much Gaius needed, after all.
“We should get out of here,” Merlin said, hauling a wincing Arthur to his feet. “There’s no telling how long we’ve been down here. We might be too late.”
“Yeah,” Arthur said, nearly incoherently. “Late.”
He’d gone stiff in Merlin’s arms, but Merlin wasn’t particularly worried as he helped his friend out of the cavern and into the tunnels that they’d (hopefully) come from. It was just a side effect of the fact that they’d been somehow drugged by crazy subterranean women in velvet dresses. He was feeling the same way himself. If it didn’t wear off by the time they got back to Gaius, then they’d know they were really in trouble.
By the time they reached where they’d left the horses, it was night time, and chilly. Merlin lit a fire and set about making some supper. They could have been down there for days, though Arthur seemed particularly insistent about the fact that it was only a few hours.
“How can you know?” Merlin asked when they were finished eating their rehydrated beef strips and stale bread and cheese.
Arthur shrugged. “It’s a prince thing.”
“You know what I think?” Merlin asked, mildly annoyed.
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” Arthur replied, as cocksure as ever.
“I think you’re full of it.”
“No, but you could fill me with it,” Arthur said, and then stopped and went a peculiar shade of red. “Was that last bit out loud?”
“Yes,” Merlin said. “Was it supposed to be in your head?”
“Rather,” Arthur said, and he sounded a little shaken, “it should have been in someone else’s head.”
“We must still be ill,” Merlin said quickly, because Arthur was looking at him oddly. “Get some rest.”
For once, Arthur seemed disinclined to argue. He settled down into his bedroll, and very quickly was fast asleep.
Merlin managed to stay awake for a while longer, but very soon exhaustion claimed him. He crawled under blankets himself, tried to mutter some protective spells in case those creepy women from the cave came back, and then fell gratefully into dreams.
And what dreams they were.
A/N: Sooooooooo...like?
Title: Arthur and the Pornbats
Pairings: Arthur/Merlin (duh)
Rating: Starts at PG-13 and gets steadily worse from there. Eventually will be NC-17, but I have no idea when that'll happen.
Spoilers: Some. There's Moment of Truth references in there, and will probably be others when I think of them
Summary: Um...there's a cave, and there's something in it that has a venomous bite with interesting results, and Merlin and Arthur get bitten
Disclaimer: Suing me is useless because I have no money. I know full well that the show and all of its characters belong to the BBC and the writers of the show. I'm just playing and making absolutely no money at this at all.
A/N: This is largely inspired by credulesque and her pornbats. I'm not completely sure what a pornbat is, though I have an idea. Either way, an idea occurred to me while I was thinking of Merlin and I just had to write it. This is the result. Or some of it, anyway. Enjoy!
Merlin and Arthur were about to explore the Caves of Yargh, which were a five days ride south southeast from Camelot, near the Cliffs of Ewe (some people said it was because they were chalk cliffs, and white like a sheep, but no one who’d ever met a sheep would ever believe that). They were looking for a rare moss that only grew on the northern edge of igneous inclusions buried at a depth of five inches in loose chalk in the darkest part of the mines, and they needed this moss because it was the only known cure for a particularly nasty kind of rash that Morgana had picked up and refused to say from where.
Gaius was certain that the rash was deadly, though, and because Morgana refused to say where she’d gotten it from, and because the rest of the kingdom could very well be in danger because of it, Arthur and his manservant had ridden to the Caves of Yargh with all due haste.
They’d brought other knights with them, but they’d all been eaten by a basilisk on the way over.
“Do you ever wonder how Gaius finds out about these rare and wonderful plants?” Arthur asked as he wound and lit the torches they would need in the cave, and checked his weapons.
“I think he reads about them in books,” Merlin said uncertainly.
“Yes, but who writes these books?” Arthur insisted. “If no one’s ever come out of the Caves of Yargh alive, how the hell does anyone know where to get that moss?”
“Clearly someone must have made it out alive,” Merlin said with a shrug. “Probably in the days when they were allowed to use magic to defend themselves from magical creatures.”
“Trifle bitter, are we?”
Merlin shrugged self-consciously.
“I wouldn’t have turned Will in, you know,” Arthur said, a trifle defensively “Magic is dangerous, but he did save us all. Including me.”
Merlin said nothing, and Arthur, mistaking his servant’s silence for sadness for his lost friend, shrugged uncomfortably and looked away.
“Shall we go in?” the prince said, his cheeks slightly red.
Merlin forced a smile and shouldered his pack. “Let’s go.”
They went.
They didn’t know they were being watched, however, though if either of them had thought of their previous adventures, one of them would have figured it out.
It wasn’t an evil enchantress/sorceress/witch that watched them in a conveniently placed bowl of water. Nor was it an evil wizard/magical creature that watched them from the shadows of the cave they were going into, or a heathen goddess about to blow a gasket because they were trespassing on hallowed ground. It was something far more sinister than that.
As Merlin and Arthur crossed the threshold into the Caves of Yargh, all they heard was the high-pitched chittering of bats receding into the darkness.
They seemed to walk for hours, though it was really hard to tell that far underground. Everything - including them - was coated with fine white dust. Chalky white stalactites and stalagmites grew up (and down) in spiky majesty around them. The caves were filled with a steady dripping noise, somewhere beyond the edge of their torchlight.
“Are you getting hungry?” Merlin asked loudly, startling Arthur.
Arthur shot Merlin a dirty look. “No,” he said quietly when the echoes died down. “And we’d better hope that none of the dangerous creatures that could inhabit these caves are either.”
“Why’s that?” Merlin asked innocently.
“I’m suspecting they wouldn’t mind having prince for their supper,” Arthur said, clapping Merlin ‘round the ear. “They might not want idiot, though. I hear they’re tough to chew.”
“Okay, okay…point taken,” Merlin muttered embarrassedly while he rubbed at the spot where Arthur had clouted him. “We should eat soon, though.”
“We haven’t been down here that long,” Arthur said, moving on again. “It’s only been twenty minutes.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
They walked for another few feet before Merlin couldn’t resist any longer. “How do you know -”
“Merlin,” Arthur said warningly.
“No, really. It’s darker than pitch down here, and it’s not as though we have any way of -”
“Merlin.”
“What?”
“Shut up.”
Merlin peered past Arthur into the darkness to see what had stopped him.
There was a woman standing there. No, three women. Pale, with wide luminous eyes and dresses that were inexplicably fine and made out of velvet (who wears velvet in a cave?) they had long dark hair and feral grins and had apparently come out of nowhere.
“Who trespasses in our realm?” The one in the middle asked. Her voice, low and melodious, echoed off the interior walls of the cavern they were walking through.
“I am Arthur Pendragon,” Arthur said, “of Camelot. This is my companion and manservant, Merlin. Who are you?”
“What are you looking for in our caves?” another of the three women asked, completely ignoring Arthur’s question.
“We’re seeking the Ivegoth Erpes moss, which is said to grow here.”
“We know this moss,” the third woman said. “We will take you to it. But there is a price.”
“We will pay it gladly,” Arthur said confidently despite the fact that Merlin was desperately trying to get his attention. “A friend of ours is gravely ill, and this moss will cure her.”
The three women shared looks, and then smiled. Their teeth seemed especially long and pointy in the light from the torches.
“Come this way,” the first one said again. “We will keep our promise.”
They turned around and walked off into the shadows beyond the torchlight. Arthur shrugged and followed.
“What are you doing?” Merlin demanded in an angry whisper. “You don’t agree to pay the price when you don’t know what it is!”
“You speak as though you have experience,” Arthur said sarcastically.
Merlin only gave him a Look, but Arthur missed it in the shadows and because he wasn’t looking.
“Anyway,” Arthur continued, “we need to get that moss. Morgana’s life depends on it.”
“That’s just it!” Merlin hissed. “What if the price is your life? Or the life of your first born? Or my life? Will you be prepared to pay it then?”
“I would do anything for Morgana,” Arthur replied stiffly. “Just as I would do anything for you.”
“Don’t say that in their hearing,” Merlin muttered with a jerk in the direction of their three inexplicably well dressed guides. “They don’t need any more encouragement than that.”
Arthur snorted, and they continued to walk further into the labyrinthine caverns.
A small eternity later - or another twenty minutes, depending on how you looked at it - they arrived at a massive underground cavern. It was ringed with ledges and terraces, both natural and artificial, and filled completely with women like the three they had already encountered.
It was ridiculously bright, too. Torches and candles and lanterns; the cavern looked like a patch of the havens had been brought underground for the occasion. Arthur and Merlin gasped.
Their three guides led them down a smooth ramp to the bottom of the cavern, the shape of which formed a natural amphitheater. There was something that looked remarkably like an altar in the middle of the basin floor, on which rested a knife made of flint and leather.
Merlin started to get really nervous. This didn’t look good.
“Sisters!” one of their guides spoke, her voice amplified by the cavern. Bats chattered somewhere near the ceiling, but neither Arthur or Merlin could see them when they looked. The cavern roof was lost in shadows and smoke from the lanterns and torches and candles. “We bring you Arthur of Camelot and his manservant!”
There was general cheering to this.
“They seek the Ivegoth Erpes moss!”
The whole crowed gasped at once, and the noise of it was very unsettling.
“They have agreed to pay the price!”
The crowed roared with delight. Merlin really didn’t like the looks of this. Arthur, in his damnably calm and confident way, didn’t appear worried at all.
“What is this price?” Merlin demanded. Their guides turned to look at him.
“Hold out your hands,” one of them said.
Merlin and Arthur shared a look, and then did so.
The other two women came forward. One went to Arthur, one went to Merlin. They each took a hand in theirs, and then bent as if to kiss their wrists.
“Ouch!” Arthur and Merlin cried out in unison. The women had bitten them, sharp teeth piercing the skin like the prick of a needle - or thirty.
Merlin tried to swipe at the one on his wrist with his torch, but he was suddenly dizzy and ill. The cavern and its many lights spun around him. Bats shrieked and whirled, Merlin was certain that their three guides - and indeed all of the women in the cavern - had turned into bats and were now flying around them, buffeting them with leathery wings and screeches and the wind of their passages.
“Arthur…” he moaned as he fell to his knees. Arthur fared no better than him.
“Merlin…”
They fell into darkness, and knew no more.
When they awoke, the cave was empty of everything but the odd lantern. Not a creature was stirring, female or otherwise.
Merlin’s head was spinning, and he was very nearly sick on the cavern floor. He managed to stand and find Arthur, however, who was slumped unceremoniously against the altar in the middle of the cavern.
“Arthur,” Merlin called, trying to talk around the fuzziness in his mouth. “Arthur, wake up.”
“Muh?” Arthur replied. “Ow. Merlin, what did you let me drink?”
“Nothing. We got bitten, remember?”
“Oh yeah.” Arthur tried to stand, and then apparently thought better of it. “My mouth tastes like a sock,” he added.
“A what?” Merlin asked, because 'sock' was not what he’d heard.
“A sock,” Arthur insisted as though it pained him to speak.
“Really? A sock?”
“Yes, really. Yours doesn’t?”
“I thought…I heard…it was nothing,” Merlin said slowly, wondering just why he couldn’t concentrate, why he was hearing words that weren’t actually there. He was still dizzy, he decided. Then something caught his eye, and he gave an impulsive cry that Arthur didn’t seem to think was good for his headache. “The moss!”
On the altar, piled high, was all the moss they could ever hope to carry. Merlin pulled out the bag he’d brought for it, and filled it completely. He didn’t know how much Gaius needed, after all.
“We should get out of here,” Merlin said, hauling a wincing Arthur to his feet. “There’s no telling how long we’ve been down here. We might be too late.”
“Yeah,” Arthur said, nearly incoherently. “Late.”
He’d gone stiff in Merlin’s arms, but Merlin wasn’t particularly worried as he helped his friend out of the cavern and into the tunnels that they’d (hopefully) come from. It was just a side effect of the fact that they’d been somehow drugged by crazy subterranean women in velvet dresses. He was feeling the same way himself. If it didn’t wear off by the time they got back to Gaius, then they’d know they were really in trouble.
By the time they reached where they’d left the horses, it was night time, and chilly. Merlin lit a fire and set about making some supper. They could have been down there for days, though Arthur seemed particularly insistent about the fact that it was only a few hours.
“How can you know?” Merlin asked when they were finished eating their rehydrated beef strips and stale bread and cheese.
Arthur shrugged. “It’s a prince thing.”
“You know what I think?” Merlin asked, mildly annoyed.
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” Arthur replied, as cocksure as ever.
“I think you’re full of it.”
“No, but you could fill me with it,” Arthur said, and then stopped and went a peculiar shade of red. “Was that last bit out loud?”
“Yes,” Merlin said. “Was it supposed to be in your head?”
“Rather,” Arthur said, and he sounded a little shaken, “it should have been in someone else’s head.”
“We must still be ill,” Merlin said quickly, because Arthur was looking at him oddly. “Get some rest.”
For once, Arthur seemed disinclined to argue. He settled down into his bedroll, and very quickly was fast asleep.
Merlin managed to stay awake for a while longer, but very soon exhaustion claimed him. He crawled under blankets himself, tried to mutter some protective spells in case those creepy women from the cave came back, and then fell gratefully into dreams.
And what dreams they were.
A/N: Sooooooooo...like?