977Mordred let out a sigh of annoyance. Without a proper focus attuned to her magic, she was unable to cast a majority of the spells she remembered from her past life. Worse, her core was twisted in some way, likely due to Morgana's manipulations.
While she still had magic, it was incredibly restricted.
That left her very little options in how to tweak things so that when the Battle of Camlann happened, she could disappear into the ether. She could care less about winning the king's approval, and she had long since started distancing herself from her mother for obvious reasons.
After the mess with the village with the Dead Apostles, Arthur had started to trust her more with the more combat-heavy missions that the older knights were leery about dealing with because of their previous injuries. Most of them considered the young knight as the 'weakest' of the Round due to her age and small stature.
Mordred let them. It wasn't like she had anything to prove to a bunch of hidebound idiots who would likely become very uncomfortable the second her true gender was brought up. It was the same bullshit that had lead to her 'father' being stuck in a prepubescent state after pulling out Caliburn.
She sighed. This was a damn mess, and without a proper focus her ability to do anything major was pretty much thrown out the window. That left two options...Runes, which she was only passably familiar with, and potions.
She could speak several modern languages, but her ability to read and cast runes was still beginner level. Which left potions.
Mordred was lucky in that regard, mostly in that she was a potionsmistress before this entire debacle happened and had a near eidetic memory for potions considering how often she had to act as her own healer.
As she began running through her knowledge of potions, a thought occurred to her.
She knew about the events leading to the battle of Camlann, loosely anyway.
Lancelot fell for Guinevere, they got busted, and it opened a rift between the king and the knights.
Arturia really wasn't helping matters with that stoic act they kept up all the damn time, and it was hard to relate to someone who acted like a stone. Yes, they were the king but nothing said that they had to act so stiff all the bloody time.
Mordred at some point learned of their heritage, tried to approach their father and was soundly and rather firmly rejected by the king, causing the rift to become far worse. Arthur went to Rome for some reason, and when they came back Mordred had begun a rebellion while acting as the figurehead of the knight's general distrust towards their king.
Mordred confronted the king in Camlann, where they mortally wounded each other.
The thing was, she honestly couldn't care less about Camelot, the throne or any of it. Learning the true nature of her birth had soured the idea of ruling this particular domain considering the taint Morgana's actions had left.
And things like that would come out eventually. It always did.
Which left very few options. Worse, she knew the battle of Camlann was a major historical point and that trying to alter it too much would cause entirely too many ripples down the line. It had to happen as close to the original legend as possible so that the finer details could become distorted enough to work with.
Hearing the sound of a familiar bell toll, Mordred looked outside briefly to see the peasants carrying one of their dead to the communal graves. Seeing the covered corpse, a thought occurred.
Arthur's death was predetermined. She knew roughly how it would happen, though not when.
But...nothing said Arthur had to die. They just had to be mistaken as dead.
And Mordred knew something that would fit the bit rather nicely...and best of all, she could brew it within a reasonable time frame.
The headache would be obtaining the ingredients. She couldn't exactly go out and buy them like in her own time.
She had time at least.
An undetermined time later...
Mordred didn't bother to hold back her frustration. Damn those two idiots. Thanks to the fact Lancelot and Guinevere couldn't keep it in their damn pants, the loyalty of the knights had been thrown into question.
Which had only sparked an entire clusterfuck. One that was inevitable, but she had to slow it down long enough for her plan to work. The potion was almost ready, and her own preparations to get out of town once the news spread.
Arthur's group would be back soon. The second potion was already done and waiting, and she had managed to create a crude focus to perform the spell she would need to pull this off. It was a good thing the Ministry didn't exist yet, because she would be in a lot of hot water for what she planned to do.
The second the potions were done, Mordred went to work setting everything up. Morgana was busy with her own schemes...from what she recalled, Merlin had become trapped in Avalon which was why he wasn't there at the final battle. She would also steal the sheathe that kept Arthur perpetually trapped as an early teenager, hence why Mordred was able to mortally wound them.
It wouldn't be long now.
In a nondescript tavern...
Mordred was pissed. Once again her blade had broken, unable to handle the strain of her full strength. She knew quality blades were expensive for a reason, but why did the metallurgy knowledge of this time period suck so bad?
So you could imagine her suspicion seeing Morgana in the same town as her, smirking. After the mess with Lancelot, her mother had been pressuring her to tell Arthur the truth about her paternity.
Mordred absolutely did not want to open that can of worms, which had given her a justifiable drinking habit.
The knights of the Round had learned pretty damn fast not to bring up her mother or the subject of who her father possibly was around Mordred, because they would immediately make a beeline for the strongest fermented liquid they could get their hands on. After the last time had resulted in Gawain getting a spectacular black eye and a broken jaw trying to pry the tankard from Mordred's grasp, they had learned to leave the subject alone.
The sword her mother had in her hands was definitely quality. So much so that Mordred was on high alert because that sort of thing should be incredibly hard for someone to casually get their hands on...even for her.
But. It was the best sword she had seen and despite her extremely questionable actions, Morgana did want to keep her child alive. If only to use as a puppet for her bid to the throne.
So Mordred accepted it...only to regret the decision later when Sir Kay threw one hell of a bitchfit over it because it was supposed to be in the royal treasury.
The name of the sword Morgana had apparently stolen (which had Mordred openly swearing while drunk) was Clarent.
As in the same sword Mordred supposedly stole and later used to kill Arthur.
She knew she shouldn't have trusted that damn woman.
A hand lashed out, grabbing the drunken knight from behind. He had little chance before he was knocked out cold.
Mordred looked at the patsy. No one would miss this fool, and he wasn't a very good knight to begin with. Anyone who thought it acceptable to hit women while drunk didn't deserve to live in her honest opinion.
Arthur's men were waiting and the battle would happen tomorrow. Mordred felt no remorse for the fast one she was about to pull, and she was sure the Marauders would appreciate such an epic prank.
She fought against her fellow knights, then managed to slip away during the worst of it. The potion would only last an hour, and that was more than enough if she timed this right.
She forced it down the throat of the patsy, and grimaced as the polyjuice did it's job in turning the man into herself.
The noxious potion caused the drunk to wake up long enough for the next part of her plan. She took out her crude focus, made sure he was looking her dead in the eye as she said "Imperio."
Seeing the knight begin acting more like the image she presented to everyone else was incredibly disturbing. But the sight of Arthur nearby quashed that.
Mordred tossed her hood up, made sure to maintain the crude focus in her hands to insure the patsy did what she needed.
It hurt like hell, watching "Mordred" fight Arthur who was openly frowning. They could clearly tell something was 'off' but couldn't figure out what.
Worse was seeing Arthur use Rhongomyniad to stab a knight who had served them loyally until this mess without any hesitation.
She pulled her hood down further, as the patsy's job was done since he had mortally wounded the king.
Now for the second part of the plan.
Near the lake...
Mordred saw her other parent bleeding out. The idiots hadn't even tried to stop the bleeding properly.
Without a second thought, she stalked up to the body and shoved a potion down the king's throat. She also covered Arturia's mouth so she couldn't spit it out right away. Very few potions tasted nice after all.
The potion took effect very quickly, and the king fell into a death-like state of suspended animation.
Sensing the return of Sir Bedivere, who had never looked upon Mordred favorably, she hid as quickly and quietly as she could.
The keening wail Sir Bedivere made was heart-breaking, but she kept her cool. The king wasn't truly dead after all.
She still had another dose of polyjuice in her possession, and mimicking the state of the king's body was easier than using her own patsy to fake her death.
It was a good thing she was so strong, as the king was heavier than most people would suspect. Then again, she was still wearing full armor.
Here is the part that would make things tricky. Faeries were notoriously devious and not afraid to screw over humans. However, Mordred knew for a fact that certain faeries favored King Arthur. Case in point the Lady of the Lake, and the faerie runes on Excalibur.
To that end, Mordred was going to make a gamble.
She knew her lifespan was limited...while Morgana had been preoccupied with sealing Merlin away, Mordred had broken into her workshop and finally tracked down the notes her 'mother' had made regarding her conception.
While she preferred to avoid the subject entirely, she had noticed something was off about her magic for a while now and wanted to know why.
She was King Arthur's child...that much had been true. However Morgana had gone so far as to alter her child's DNA to the point she wasn't fully human anymore. No, she could safely classify herself as a homunculus at this point, which royally pissed her off even more. Something she hadn't thought was even possible.
Mordred was just done with Morgana at this point. Any ties she might have tentatively had were effectively dead as far as she was concerned. Arturia wasn't much better, but there was no way in hell Mordred was going to attempt it before the now former king had some damn therapy.
Something that wouldn't be available for several centuries at the least.
Entering the faerie realms was easy...too easy, considering she had spent years with a Lovegood and had learned the little tricks to bypassing the ways the fair folk had to divert unwary travelers.
The real trick was making a deal that wouldn't bite her in the ass later. She knew homunculi had a limited lifespan, and that Morgana likely hadn't planned farther than obtaining the throne by force from her sibling. She highly doubted her 'mother' ever intended to keep her alive beyond living long enough to sire an heir, if she even planned that far.
The problem was that the memory of Camelot was too fresh in people's memories. If word got out that someone resembling the king was wandering around, it would likely draw Morgana out of whatever cave she had crawled into.
To that end, Mordred needed to disappear. Preferably for a century at least.
The catch? There was no way her physical body would survive that long.
However...there were other ways to survive, even if it wasn't what someone would call living.
Besides...she was used to being hunted, and this would allow her to work off a lot of frustration without having any alcohol involved.
The faeries were more than happy to hide the king in exchange for Mordred talking part in the wild hunt for a time.