Chapter 666

"So let me get this straight. My future apprentice got run off with by her warlock boyfriend?"

In the end, the Ancient One had admitted that Clea and Evenson had stood them up.

Zahaheid, however, didn’t look angry in the slightest.

He folded his arms across his chest, fingers twitching idly as though he were already entertaining himself.

"Excellent. If her warlock boyfriend cares about her that much, then I think we’re going to have a lot of fun together."

"I see."

The Ancient One narrowed her eyes.

"You’re planning to teach Clea even more power? Power that even I haven’t been able to touch?"

"Don’t be jealous. You know I only taught you as much as I did for your own good."

Zahaheid turned around, amusement creeping into his voice.

"After all, back when we first met, you crossed the line by just a little and look what happened."

"Could you stop dragging up the past every time we meet?"

The Ancient One rolled her eyes.

Nobody was perfect. Even someone who had eventually become the foremost mage of her age had once been a reckless teenager.

Back then, she had only been a sixteen-year-old Celtic girl living in the British Isles. One day, she’d gone swimming in a lake and nearly drowned.

Then a strange man covered in bandages had rescued her.

He’d looked her over and declared that she possessed exceptional talent and extraordinary magical potential, before offering to teach her secret techniques.

At sixteen, who was supposed to recognize a scam like that?

She had believed every word.

Fortunately, unlike most dubious mentors, Zahaheid had actually been telling the truth.

The problem was that she had still been sixteen.

She had been exposed to the limitless darkness of the Void, given the responsibility of defending Earth from extradimensional threats, and eventually gained a little success of her own.

Then she got arrogant.

Maybe one more sip.

Just a little.

Surely one more won’t hurt.

And that tiny step over the line had been enough to cause trouble.

Nothing catastrophic, but enough to leave her with a lesson she had never forgotten.

Unfortunately, neither had her mentor.

Almost every time they met, he dug up that particular piece of her history and waved it in her face all over again.

"Ha..."

Zahaheid gave two thoroughly unrepentant chuckles.

"If you were willing to do it, you’d better be willing to hear about it, Morgan..."

"Don’t call me that."

The Ancient One’s expression darkened instantly, a trace of anger surfacing in her eyes.

"I told you. I hate that name."

"Really?"

Zahaheid spun in place, then bent dramatically at the waist in an exaggerated bow.

"As you command, Your Majesty. In that case, allow me to use another name."

He straightened.

"Arthur."

"Ha!"

Zahaheid was clearly having the time of his life. He completely ignored the Ancient One’s expression, which had become dark enough to rain.

"The whole world still doesn’t know, does it? The legendary King Arthur and the wicked enchantress Morgana are actually the same person!"

"Of course they don’t."

The Ancient One tugged at the corner of her mouth, producing something that technically qualified as a smile.

"Just like they don’t know that the legendary Archmage Merlin is actually a cloud of smoke that needs bandages to keep himself in one piece."

"Ghk..."

Zahaheid froze for half a second.

That little jab about being insubstantial had clearly landed.

He recovered almost immediately.

"Some of their guesses were right, though. King Arthur didn’t die. He went to that eternally isolated paradise, Avalon..."

"Yes. And if R’lyeh counts as Avalon, then they were absolutely correct."

The Ancient One still felt irritated whenever she thought about how that legend had come into existence.

When she first began drawing power from the Void and took on the grand mission of protecting Earth from incursions from other dimensions, she had decided that she needed an organization.

At the time, there were really only two options.

She could gather a secretive order of mages who lived apart from the world.

Or she could create a famous order of knights who walked openly among the people.

She had chosen the latter.

She became a king, founded the Knights of the Round Table, and began building her grand new order.

Unfortunately, the timing could not have been worse.

Her mentor, Zahaheid, suddenly had to return to R’lyeh because something had happened there. Apparently, a gigantic Deep One named Dagon had wandered off on a little recreational excursion, which had required Zahaheid’s personal attention.

And thus was born the legendary farewell between Merlin and King Arthur, as well as the tale of Arthur retreating to Avalon.

There was just one problem.

At the time, the Ancient One was still a novice.

Her temperament, experience, and judgment were nowhere near what they were now.

So when the Void offered her power...

Just one more.

One tiny sip.

She crossed the line.

Her personality began to change.

The darkness inside her continued to grow until it was almost as though two different people were fighting for control of the same body.

Sometimes she appeared as the righteous and glorious King Arthur.

Other times she became calculating, deceptive, and vicious.

Sometimes she wore armor, dressed as a man, and spoke like a king.

Other times she dressed as a woman and presented herself as a seductive noblewoman.

And since the concept of psychiatry was somewhat lacking in the era, the people around her arrived at what they considered the most reasonable explanation.

Their glorious King Arthur had a secret twin sister hidden away in the palace.

Morgana, the wicked enchantress.

There was just one small problem with that arrangement.

A kingdom run by a ruler with what amounted to magical identity fragmentation was not exactly built for long-term stability.

By the time Zahaheid finished turning Dagon into sashimi and returned home, he discovered that the first organization he had ever invested in was already on the verge of collapse.

"I bring these things up because I want you to remember the lesson."

Zahaheid casually tapped the bandages around his chin.

"You only crossed the line a little, which is why all you got was your little split-personality problem."

His tone became more serious.

"But do you know what would have happened if you kept going?"

The Ancient One’s expression tightened.

"Morgana would have stopped being the dark side of your mind. She would have developed a life of her own, becoming a real person. Someone physically identical to you, except completely evil."

He paused.

"And that evil version of you would also know how to draw power from the Void."

"Morgana would have grown incredibly quickly. Before long, she would have become something you could never hope to defeat."

Zahaheid tugged lightly at the bandages around his wrist.

"And if she made one mistake and opened a proper connection between the Void and this world..."

He looked at her.

"...you might all have needed to learn how to wrap yourselves in bandages."

"But judging by how you handled the situation, I’d hardly call it urgent."

The Ancient One’s irritation flared as she remembered it.

"You came back and still didn’t reveal yourself! Instead, you secretly pulled part of my shadow out of me, gave her armor, named her Mordred, and sent her into the Knights of the Round Table with a letter of introduction from you!"

Her voice rose.

"You have no idea how horrible the rumors became."

She stared at him.

"The bastard child born from my own incestuous relationship with my sister!"

She spread her hands in exasperation.

"Seriously, how was I supposed to have an incestuous relationship with myself?"

Then she suddenly folded her arms and glared at him.

"Oh."

Her eyes narrowed.

"You started that rumor too, didn’t you?"

"Why would you do that?"

"Obviously, because it was fun..."

Zahaheid caught himself.

"...I mean, because I wanted to make sure you never forgot the lesson."

Unlike the Ancient One, Zahaheid remembered the whole affair with considerable fondness.

"If Morgana really had split away from you, become an independent being, and grown into something you couldn’t defeat, I could still have handled her."

"So nothing was actually going to go wrong."

He spread his hands.

"That got me thinking about how to give my foolish apprentice a lesson she would remember for the rest of her life."

"Oh, I remember."

The Ancient One gritted her teeth.

"Half a lifetime of work was destroyed at the Battle of Camlann."

"When my shadow finally told me what had actually happened, I genuinely wanted to kill someone."

"Don’t be so bitter."

Zahaheid waved a dismissive hand.

"At least we left the world with a wonderful legend."

"Yes."

The Ancient One sighed.

"King Arthur was defeated at Camlann, but did not die. Instead, he entered Avalon and waited there. One day, when the world faces a great crisis, the King will return, lead humanity against its enemies, and become the King of the future."

She gave him a flat look.

"The truth was much less impressive. You dragged me back to R’lyeh and locked me up to reflect on my mistakes."

"Then, when you finally released me, I founded the secretive order of mages and went back to fighting multidimensional invasions."

She spread her hands.

"So technically, when people said Arthur would return in the future..."

Her expression hardened.

"...it was the future, because you had literally imprisoned me until then."

"You must have had a wonderful time fooling the entire world like that."

"Heh."

Zahaheid gave two quiet chuckles.

"Ever since I ended up like this, I can’t enjoy most of the pleasures the world has to offer."

"So I have to make do with the few hobbies I still have."

The Ancient One took a slow breath.

"That brings us back to Clea."

Her expression sobered.

"You’re not planning to put her through the same ordeal you put me through, are you?"

"That depends on the value of her warlock boyfriend."

Zahaheid settled into a chair.

A strange glow shifted beneath the layers of bandages covering his body.

"Under normal circumstances, she would probably only be able to reach roughly the same level you have."

"I could teach her ways of drawing more power from the Void."

"But I can’t guarantee she’d still be herself afterward."

"That’s the limiting factor."

He shrugged.

A barrel, after all, could only hold as much water as its shortest plank allowed.

"It’s like sneaking out of school to spend the afternoon at an internet café."

The Ancient One stared at him.

"How long can you stay?"

"Not as long as you want. Not as long as you can physically endure."

Zahaheid raised a finger.

"Until school lets out."

"If you don’t get home on time, your parents will make sure your reckless little adventure ends in personal tragedy."

The Ancient One sighed.

Unfortunately, the analogy was accurate.

Whether it was her or Clea, the amount of power they could draw from the Void was not limited by how much their bodies could physically endure.

It was limited by how much power they could wield while still remaining themselves.

And the amount of power the Ancient One possessed now was already the absolute limit Zahaheid had guaranteed she could safely maintain.

"But the warlock changes things."

Zahaheid raised one finger, his tone turning thoughtful.

"Warlocks, like us, make a living by playing with extremely dangerous powers."

"Which means warlocks also develop their own methods for preventing those powers from destroying them."

"If that little girl matters to him as much as it appears she does, then we can compare our techniques and learn from each other."

"Perhaps we can use his methods alongside mine and shore up her weakness."

He smiled beneath the bandages.

"That could let her surpass even you."

The Ancient One nodded slowly.

"Two different paths may fill each other’s gaps."

Then she looked at him again.

"Provided his methods don’t overlap too heavily with yours."

"Exactly."

He leaned back.

The Ancient One was silent for a moment before another thought occurred to her.

"So you trust Evenson now?"

A faint smile touched her lips.

"Then I assume the information I asked you to investigate has finally come back."

"It has."

Zahaheid’s tone became more serious.

"Most of what that warlock told you was true."