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3 June 1995, Hogwarts
And that meant returning to the place where it had been left to rest, undisturbed for centuries. A place even he had not dared to set foot in since he was a much younger man. A place steeped in legend, in myth, in power so ancient it defied comprehension. Merlin's tomb. For humanity. For the Greater Good.
In the dead of night, as the castle slept soundly, Albus Dumbledore left his quarters, ready to start his quest to perform one of the most blasphemous acts in his life, destroying Excalibur. It had been one of the greatest, if not, the greatest achievements a Light Champion had ever managed, which made Merlin a true household name.
Albus had no idea how he managed to do it, but the effect was very simple. It was in the name. Excalibur was the sword of promised victory. It was a promise, or more accurately, a prophecy. Merlin managed to, somehow, bind a prophecy to the sword and make it the prophesized weapon that would destroy the Dark once and for all, and somehow, Fate bent to his will. Destiny accepted its command, and he gave the sword to Arthur Pendragon, hoping for Ragnarök to occur in Camlann, hoping that the Light and Dark would fight and that the once and future king, with the backing of Fate and Destiny, would kill Morgana and Mordred, and with them, somehow give the edge for the Light to finally conquer its nemesis.
Sure, a lot of that was guesswork on Albus' part, but Excalibur was very real, its connection to Fate was very real, and its prophecy was very real. He had been planning on using it during Ragnarök. The former headmaster didn't delude himself that Grindelwald wouldn't betray him the moment they achieved their purpose. He knew that they would fight. They would fight for their dreams, for their hopes, for their vision of the future, and this time, there would be no place for mercy. One of them would die, alongside their patron, and the other would rule supreme, finally free to shape the world to their vision. Albus would have his utopia, where mages would not know hardship, only kindness and understanding, or Gellert would have his dream, a world where power ruled supreme, and mages ruled over muggles, stopping them from rebelling and evolving to destroy them.
And Albus wanted Excalibur to put the odds in his favour, especially after he lost the Elder Wand, but it seemed like he had no other choice, no other recourse, than to sacrifice even that for the greater good.
There was a bitter irony to it all. How much more would he have to sacrifice? Why did it have to be him that kept losing over and over again, just because he wished to do his duty, something that no one else seemed to want to do? Humanity came first, but Albus wished he could be selfish for once. Oh, how many things have changed in such a short time? A year prior, he was Hogwarts' headmaster, a respected member of Britain's political sphere, and a very well-known and admired figure. He had been so close to his dream, and yet it was all shattered because the End of Days decided to rear its head.
Deciding not to wallow in these thoughts, he disappeared in a burst of Light and appeared on a cliff, right before an island. He remembered finding this place when he kept searching for Light artefacts all over the country, hoping to gather them and stop someone from misusing them. It happened after some idiots destroyed the Holy Grail, one of the most potent healing artefacts in history, hoping to use it to find the root of all magic, something that made no sense, given the artefact's nature. Of course, all it did was cause was gigantic explosion of Light, which almost set the entirety of Lisbon on fire. Albus had been able to contain the fire but had been furious for the lost lives, and the destruction of such a powerful artefact by idiots. He made sure to find any Light-based artefacts all over the world to avoid such a mess. It was how he found Ascalon in the first place.
He had been shocked to find Merlin's resting place instead. The powerful protections should have clued him in that there was more to this place than some artefact. Weirdly enough, the wards let him through without any issues, and that was when he saw it.
Over the man's grave, impaled through its gravestone, like some parody of its legend, the sword of promised victory lay there. He recognized what it was before he even read the runes or the name on the tomb. The Light, rigid, unbending, caring, unyielding in its purpose, radiated from the blade in waves, filling the air with an overwhelming sense of authority. Unlike the soothing, guiding presence of the Light that Albus had always known, this felt unyielding, absolute, like a decree carved into the fabric of existence itself.
Albus had foolishly let it go, not taken the sword back. There was no need to. Grindelwald was defeated, and the Light reigned supreme. He found no reason to jeopardize it. And he also hadn't had it in him to kill his old friend outside of battle.
A part of him hoped that Gellert would die from natural causes and that Albus would inevitably use it on his successor. He was glad to have waited, that he hadn't been as rash. Albus didn't think he could do all of this alone, deal with Ragnarök without his oldest friends' help, even if it was very likely that one of them would die at the hands of the other soon.
As he stepped into the island, Albus noticed his connection to the Light diminished greatly. Albus had no idea why Merlin would rest in a place like this, outside of his patron's influence, and the former headmaster did feel very uncomfortable, in a very weak way, as he walked towards where he remembered the sword being.
Now that he thought about it, it was very similar to how the Potter brat managed to seal his connection to the Light. Did the boy find a copy of the spell or something? It was probably his crest. The Peverell family was very old and very powerful. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for one of them to have discovered this place and made a bastardized copy of it.
Nevertheless, Albus was now at his weakest, away from the supervision of the Light. In a way, it wasn't exactly a bad thing. What he was about to do could be considered a betrayal of even the Light. After all, he was planning on destroying its greatest weapon, one forged in Fate itself.
Even feeling uncomfortable, the former headmaster stepped forward. He was still one of the most powerful beings on this planet, even without the Light supporting him. He had mastered fields of magic that many people didn't even know existed, after all. Very few things could threaten him, and it wasn't like he couldn't just overpower the wards and break the seal on the Light. It just wasn't advantageous to do that.
Albus enjoyed his surroundings as he walked forward and froze as he arrived near Merlin's tomb. Everything looked exactly as it had been, the small pieces of moss growing on the gravestone, the oak tree, whose leaves swayed with the wind… Everything was the same, except for the sword which just wasn't there.
It wasn't possible.
Did someone steal it?
Albus had personally warded the area even beyond the protections on the island, using it to mask any traces of Light, it might have had. No one should have been able to even get to the inner wards, let alone bypass them and take the sword.
What had happened?
Albus kept casting one detection spell after another, each more esoteric than the previous one and got nothing. He even tried a form of scrying the past, but the thick magic on the island muddled everything.
Panic started to set in again. The sword was the only way forward, humanity's last chance at survival, and now it was gone. He wouldn't be able to find another prophecy in time. He needed the Light's help. It would know what to do, how to guide him, even if it wouldn't like its possible betrayal. He would deal with that later.
He was about to release a pulse of power to shatter the wards, to let the Light through, only to freeze as a voice spoke up, "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
The voice had a melodic tune to it. The former headmaster turned towards its source and saw a young man with white hair and amused purple eyes. He raised his wand in retaliation, "Who are you?"
"Come on, you come to my tomb, my island, and almost destroy the wards, and you're asking who I am. Oh, how manners have fallen over the years, Champion of Light."
And just like that, everything fell into place and Albus did his best not to gape at the man before him, "Merlin?"
The white-haired man grinned mischievously, "In a way, I suppose I am."
"But you're dead," Albus stammered, "Your mantle as the Champion of Light passed on."
"Merlin Ambrosius, the Champion of Light is dead. He is buried in this tomb, alone, his dream in ruins, his kingdom becoming nothing more than a legend. I am what remains."
Albus finally shook off his disbelief and started to think analytically. With the surprise out of the way, it was surprisingly easy to connect the dots and make a few conclusions, "You're not a human, are you?"
"You're right. I am not. When Merlin was imprisoned here, the real Merlin that is, he devised a ritual hoping to make himself invisible to the enchantments binding his magic and his connection to the Light. Camlann, which should have been his greatest triumph, ended in nothing but disaster. He was tricked into coming here, bound by the cursed fae to not leave this island, unable to leave or use any of his might. The only thing he could do was watch as Arthur Pendragon died without any support, thinking that Merlin betrayed him. He died by Mordred's hand, the boy he had dismissed as nothing more than Morgan Le Fey's pawn, but who ended up betraying the two of them, collaborating with the fae of all things, to bind them both. The only upside was that the Fey didn't come unscathed from the battle, the rest having either perished or moved on from the material realm."
Albus rolled his eyes, "I am familiar with the battle of Camlann."
"What you probably don't know was that what happened broke Merlin in ways that you cannot possibly comprehend. He had an ideal, a dream, of the Light unyielding, protecting the world, with Camelot at its centre. He wanted to wipe out the Dark, to stop all wars magical or non-magical, he sought out Ragnarök, hoping that it would be the answer he sought, that Excalibur, his final weapon against the Dark would balance the scales to be in his favour. In the end, it didn't work, a third party wiped out his plans as well as Morgan's, almost binding them for an eternity, each one with a different prison, hoping that it would keep away the powers for an eternity."
It made sense, in a weird way. This place was tailor-made to keep in a Champion of the Light, and even now, it was probably far weaker than it used to be before. If he had to guess, the prisoner would have needed to power the prison itself, or something like that.
"Then why are there still Champions of Light and Dark, if the fae supposedly bound them to this place?"
"I don't know what Morgan did, but Merlin found a workaround. He wanted to evolve into a being of energy, one that would be able to bypass the wards. It wasn't exactly a good plan. It was completely reckless, but it was something that might have helped him escape and that was enough for him, and if he died, well, at least the fae's sacrifice would have been in vain. He could be spiteful like that. As you might expect, he died. But his spell partially succeeded. It created me."
Albus very quickly verified the man's words and saw no lies. With enough context, he recognized the apparition as something akin to a poltergeist, one with a sliver of Merlin's knowledge, which made it extremely dangerous, "You weren't here last time."
"I was. I had just decided against revealing myself. You were a lot younger back then."
"Where is Excalibur?" the former headmaster asked, deciding that he'd have enough of riddles and stories for the day.
"Ah, Merlin's masterpiece, a sword forged in destiny itself, a sword of promised victory. There's some irony to it. It was supposed to be unbeatable, but it didn't help him, did it? Did you know that it used to belong to the Fae? It was called Caliburn, back then, the sword of selection. They used it to select their Kings and Queens. It was a very important artefact on their side. The Light guided Merlin to steal it, hoping to use its properties to forge an unbeatable weapon against the Dark. He earned himself the enmity of an entire species with that stunt, which contributed to his fate, dying alone in an island, powerless and half-mad."
"Where is the sword?" Albus repeated, with some heat in his voice.
"Lost," the thing answered, in Merlin's voice.
"It was there during my last visit."
"My dear successor, while Excalibur is a weapon unlike any other, its core still remains to be Caliburn. The sword chose you, once, but now it finds you unworthy."
"Unworthy? How can I be unworthy? I am the Champion of Light. I have sacrificed countless things for the greater good of this planet and its inhabitants, with no help from anyone, and now that I need some aid, now that Ragnarök is so close, you find me unworthy…"
He was practically snarling near the end, but the Merlin apparition's smile disappeared, "You are unworthy, Albus Dumbledore. The boy I met, so long ago, right after his fight with his nemesis, which he spared, not because of some stupid idea of 'stopping another champion from being born' but because he did not have the heart to kill him, he was worthy. He fought to the ends of the Earth to stop the injustice that Gellert Grindelwald sought to bring. He was a good man, a noble man. But look at you, now. You killed children for the sake of opportunity, you destabilize governments for some vague plans. You brought wars into your nation to kill off old families and relished the obstacles that disappeared from the cursed utopia you sought to create. Is it any wonder that something like Caliburn would not wish to be wielded by you? How the mighty have fallen. Decades with nothing but the Light whispering in your ears, have turned you into this monster. Is it any wonder that you are not worthy?"
"Enough!"
Albus' voice was ice, sharp and unwavering. His patience had run its course. His hands clenched at his sides, his magic crackling around him in dangerous waves. He didn't like to admit it but Merlin's words made him unreasonably angry.
"You think yourself my judge?" he sneered. "You, a whisper of a dead man, a failed champion whose dreams crumbled into dust? You call me unworthy when it was you who let your kingdom burn, let your people fall, let your prophecy rot? And now, when the world stands on the edge of oblivion when Ragnarök is upon us, you deny me the very weapon meant to turn the tide?"
The island trembled.
"If the sword will not come to me," he whispered, voice laced with wrath, "then I will tear this island apart. I will burn every inch of this forsaken place to ash. I will rip apart its foundations until not a single stone of Merlin's tomb remains. Excalibur is a weapon of Light and I am its Champion. It will obey me."
Albus lifted his wand and raised it at the apparition, whose expression remained impassive, "You have fallen far, Albus Dumbledore, far indeed. But there is no need to needlessly destroy the island. The sword did not present itself to you, not as it did once, but lucky for you, my predecessor made sure that a Champion of Light would be able to find the sword once more. Excalibur might find you unworthy, but perhaps Merlin's last act could save you. You only need to pass his trials after all."
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AN: This chapter was surprisingly hard to write. I'm not sure it came out like I wanted it to, especially the ending, so, as usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.