CAMELOT FANTASIES

Lady of the Lake

Poised warriors give dawn's early morning dew anticipation of something more to come
Drawing breath as lightly as quietly as drawing blade and bow
Steely gazed on quarry far off into the distance

Another quiet breath offers words for her brothers and sisters in blessing
Frosty utterances from demure lips giving quiet elocutions
breath to prayers at the edge of God's lake the lady receives no words in reply
but a vision
she sees a blade made bluish green in hue before her mind's eye
Why?!
She asks in her mind's eye
Why?!
why does this have to happen, why does this war have to occur?

They leap from their pitted post and ruffle the dew free from its contemplation
Treading further and further to the goal silently as fawn
All training and execution running with them up to this day
but what would be their reward but blood
leaping and Yelling visceral cries at their striking distance guards and soldiers falling all at once
they had been rewarded in so much blood already
it was all in their training now to live or to die
and thus they live

The Lady brings her father report from the lake
God's Lake
she tells him with tears streaming from her eyes she saw a sword with lattice streaming down its inward spine
that this sword would bring them to victory
Her father the blacksmith saw more her eyes than the lattice he would create, but he would create it all the same

Two weeks later, lo, the black flag rises with an orange dawn
skulls and death are what it portends
it is the Christian's ancient enemy
Rome
A few stationed forces had finally given way to 10,000 Legionnaires
And this entire kingdom would be RAZED

Death and fire ravaged the village
Burned death no respite smoked and choked all things up to the edge of a lake
God's Lake
Then the last fawn of the village lept into the lake tightly gripping something wrapped in her arms
A blue glowing sword held by the lady chased by Centurions she throwing the sword and letting her light body be pulled deeper and deeper
the frigid water embracing her giving her the last love she would see in this world
all she remembered was the words passed between her and him, the boy
and finally she becomes a weight with the blade and closes her eyes and forgets everything

The Boy
Now blood soaked and turning into a man
running back to the village he was raised in
Picking up his blade again facing tyrants another day
Now it had all come back to haunt him
But he remembered the words between them
the words she left him before all the battles
And he ran
He ran to be by her side he ran through the smoke and the embers
he ran through the death and the horror
he ran to the Lake
God's Lake
And he ran and only found two centurions straining their cloaks of water
Young rage he meted upon them blade upon blood-soaked bone one strike after another down down down
And the last words of the dying centurion, "she is The Lady in the Lake"
And he pointed and he spit his last blood and breath

Below, deep, where they had played for years as children at the bottom of the lake, the boy found her and carried her and something wrapped up to the surface
this would be his reward
This!
She was lost and Why?! was all he could think
so he gritted his teeth and choked back tears and opened the wrapping to find
Excalibur, the Blue Blade, born of Fire and Water, Death and Tears