Every Single Word

chapter four

A/N ~ Lancelot Du Lac to the top (mobile) or the side (laptop)!

Lancelot tries to pry the box open, not sure what's happening to Avalon. "Avalon!" He whispers desperately.

Gwaine and Elyan decide at that time to come in and look at Lancelot's crestfallen face. "What's happened?" Gwaine says, jogging across the room to Avalon's bed and trying to hold in his grief for Lancelot.

"Her-her heart. 'Tis beating too fast, look." Lancelot places her heart on the bed, and watches as the red lock which pulses red, then white, and back to red. "I haven't let anyone else touch it!"

Gwaine panics for a second, almost says 'I'll go get Merlin' but then he remembers Merlin had conveniently gone with the royals of the Enchanted Forest. Instead, he mutters a curse.

"What are we supposed to do?" Elyan murmurs.

/
Tatiana sat on her horse, riding fast through the woods, breathing air that'd somehow gotten thicker.

Merlin's horse galloped fast, but not as fast she wished it would go. She mutters encouragements in the horse's ear. It still wasn't fast enough.

She then remembered she could just appear in the room through mist and clouds. She tied the horse to the nearest post on a farmer's land-and muttering an apology to Merlin for leaving his horse there-she snaps her fingers and she was engulfed in a bright blue cloud.

She allows herself to be brought into Avalon's room by the wind.

/
Lancelot is very close to freaking out.

Avalon's heart is almost gone, he could feel it in his own heart. It burned him to be so close and yet so far.

Her fingers, though. They're giving off a white spark, like Regina's magic. He stays away from her hands and pulls her forehead up to his, repeating one line over and over again, "I'll always protect you, Avalon."

Just when he was on the cusp of crying, a blue cloud materializes in the middle of the room, causing Gwaine and Elyan to grab their swords, pointing it at whoever was in it.

Tatiana materializes, looking around wildly, trying to regain her surroundings. "Lancelot, you stupid prat," she runs across the room, her legs a bit stiff from riding the horse. "What did I say? Didn't I say 'nobody touches it except you'? Or something like that?" She leans over Lancelot's shoulder and the white sparks coming out of Avalon's fingers are definitely not a trick of the light. She gasps. "I knew it! I knew it wasn't just a trick of the light! Avalon has magic! What did you do to start it?" She looks over at Lancelot, grinning.

"Avalon... magic? Ha! Definitely did not come from her dad's side, I can tell you that." Gwaine rolls his eyes.

"I... I kissed her forehead?"

"Why does it sound like a question and not a statement?"

Lancelot hands Avalon's heart back to Tatiana and sits on the chair next to her bed. "I don't know. We were... complicated when we were together. We didn't know what we wanted."

Tatiana lifts an eyebrow and opens the box, noticing the finger marks when he'd tried to open it. She frowns at him and grabs ahold of Avalon's heart, inspecting it. "She's still fighting. Our strong Avalon,"

Regina and Merlin show up in the next six seconds in Regina's white cloud, Merlin holding her tightly.

"Took you two long enough!" Tatiana says roughly, trying to remember the whole riddle of Zelena's.

"Is she okay? She'll be okay, right?" Merlin says from where he's doubled over, probably his first cloud transportation.

"I hope. Do you have the riddle? It needs to be solved in the next fifteen to twenty minutes." Tatiana says, lifting her hand with Avalon's heart in it. There's a small section of red, and half of it is white, the other half dark green and black.