He took his seat beside his father. The old bear had been bedridden for a month now and the son knew that it would not be long now. His father looked at him with his cold, dark eyes. It reminded the son of how a deep sea fish might be. His father hissed sharply in through his mouth a, forming a kind of choked sound.
He assumed that he was attempting to annunciate, “Mordred.”
“Yes,” said Mordred. “I’m here, it’s alright. Bors and Percival have left the sword in the lady’s care.”
“Fetch it,” said his father.
Mordred was given pause, “I’m sorry, what was that?”
“If you want the throne, you need the sword my boy,” He wheezed. “Fetch the sword from the lake.”
“I…but why though?”
The dying man looked at his son in the same way a pet owner might look at a dog who’s soiled the rug, “It’s a magic sword boy, there is a ritual aspect of gaining its power. Go to the lake and get the sword back from the lady.”
Mordred was conflicted, on the one hand, he would probably get the throne anyways. But at the same time, he imagined the grim specter of his father hanging around him with a disappointed scowl on his ghost face. So with a heavy sigh, Mordred set out for the Lady of the Lake.
When he arrived, he could see her sitting on the edge of the dock with her feet in the water. Mordred approached cautiously, not wanting to anger the Lady.
“Excuse me, my Lady,” he said. “But my father has tasked me with retrieving the sword from you.”
Vivane looked at Mordred with a raised eyebrow, “And why should I give it to you?”
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“Well,” Mordred said, fumbling for an answer. “Because he’s dying and he wants me to have it so that I can be King.”
"That fucking sucks now, doesn't it?" she said. She took out a corn cob pipe and ignited the herbs contained within with a miniature bolt of lightning. "Those two knights tossed the sword into this lake. Not five hours ago, they did. Now you want it back?"
Mordred was taken aback by her words, "I...I didn't know. I'm sorry."
"I don't believe that's even slightly true, little bitch boy princeling, can't even come to get the sword back for your dying pop-pop?" she took a hit off of the pipe and leaned back. "What kind of son are you?"
Mordred was getting angry now, "I'm the kind of son who will be king soon enough! And when I am, I'll make sure you're dealt with!"
"Oh yeah, you're a real tough man aren't you? Screaming at a helpless little lady in a pond," she said, blowing smoke in his face.
Mordred took after his father in many respects. But it's important to remember he also took after his mother. So he reacted almost as she would if faced with such disrespect. He suddenly slammed his head into hers, cracking her nose with his forehead. The Lady of The Lake staggered back, clutching at her broken nose, when she looked at Mordred she only felt rage as his expression registered a stupid look of shock.
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“Spawn of Pendragon!” She growled as a miniature hurricane rose around her body, the smoke from her pipe had warped, turning into black clouds as Mordred drew his sword, internally cursing his father for this insane request.
The Lady swept at him with claws that glinted like polished brass and stared down the little knight with eyes that burned like the sun.
“Goddamn, you!” I howled back, though he wasn’t sure if he was howling at the monstrous woman that was spun from the world’s magic or his father on his deathbed.
“No!” snapped back the creature. “GOD. DAMN. YOU!”
Mordred swung his sword wildly, hoping against hope that he might scare her off or at the very least wound her. At that moment of reckless aggression and fear, Mordred was confident that he would sell every single one of his relatives, starting with his aged father and mother and ending with his stepmother in exchange for some escape from this ordeal.
Torrential rain pelted him as a sudden tidal wave washed his limp body into the lake itself. He wasn’t dead, no of course not, he didn’t have the privilege of dying. Dying would simply take the wind out of his dad’s sails. His father had the distinct nature of having to be the baby at every birth, the bride at every wedding, and the corpse at every funeral. It was no small surprise when it was revealed that his stepmother was intimate with one of his knights. But, it was his great big last performance and he would be drowned in urine before getting caught in the middle of it. His body was pulled and pushed around by hundreds of currents beneath the surface of the lake, all of them working against each other, but most importantly against him. All in the hopes of knocking the wind out of him or dashing his fragile skull against the many rocks and detritus that littered the bottom of the lake. But it was among the trash and debris of long-forgotten strongholds that he spotted it.
Within the chaos of the day sat the sword which had haunted his every waking moment. His father’s people called it, Caledfwlch, while his mother’s voice always named it Caliburnus. It was from that name, that word, that language, that Mordred drew the sword and held it above his head, accidentally catching The Lady in the ribs with it.
There is nothing more unnatural than the pained cry of something so powerful. The sound came more from within Mordred’s skull, it seemed. Flowing outwards until it rang sharply in his ears. His body was tossed from the lake and onto the sword, Caliburn in hand.
“I see now,” he said. “You wished to test me to see if I was worthy of wielding my father’s power.”
The Lady clutched the wound in her side, “What are you talking about you blithering troglodyte? No! Why on earth would I care? I only just barely care about your father. Go on, take the sword, little bastard.”
She vanished beneath the surface, leaving Mordred alone. He would lie later, neglecting to mention the Lady’s harsh insults towards his person. His journey back to his father’s deathbed was on foot as the Lady had taken his horse inside her miniature storm. His stepmother and her lover were by his father’s bedside as he swung the sword around manically.
“I’ve got it!” he shouted at his father. “I’ve got the sword, you rotten old bastard. I bet you sent me out there, hoping that I would die.”
His father smiled at him and for the first time in his life, it did not seem as though it was sarcastic or spiteful. They say that the king’s heart grew three sizes on the day of his death. Modern archeologists cannot confirm this fact, though if you were to do a google and look at pictures of the skeleton’s ribcage, it is cracked along its sternum. I choose to believe that the damned thing swelled and then popped like a water balloon.
Mordred would later go on to father a small army of daughters and in the precedence set by his father, he sent a pair of knights to toss the sword back into the lake, then his oldest daughter to go beat the living shit out of the Lady to get it back. You’d think after a few generations, she’d grow tired of it, but the Lady continues this trend to this very day. I believe it was last summer that Gwen IX was thrust into the lake with a hatchet to retrieve the sword. Say what you will, but they both copped to the task like a couple of champions.
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