The battle below was a storm of light and shadow, and Darlington was its unwilling eye.
His head throbbed constantly now, that strange, electric pressure behind his eyes never fully fading. But he had learned to live with it, to use it. His gaze swept across the desert battlefield like a living thing, picking apart the chaos into individual threads.
King Arthur's golden army had crashed into the shadow tide like a wave against rock. For every dark soldier cut down, two more seemed to rise from the spreading gloom. The Knights of the Round Table fought like the legends they were, each a blazing sun of martial prowess, pushing deep into enemy lines.
Darlington watched them all, cataloguing, analyzing.
Sir Gawain fought near the center, his strength growing with the sun's position, his great sword Gala carving through shadow creatures like they were paper. His power was raw, overwhelming the kind of strength that didn't need strategy.
Sir Percival held the left flank, his spear moving in elegant arcs, each thrust finding a dark heart. Holy light clung to his weapon, burning the shadows it pierced. Clean. Precise. Beautiful.
Sir Bors fought like a man possessed, twin axes spinning, his war cries mixing with the crash of steel. He was a wall, immovable, protecting the soldiers behind him.
Sir Gareth, Sir Geraint, Sir Gaheris each fought with distinction, their legendary skills on full display. They were exactly what stories said they should be: perfect knights, flawless warriors.
But Darlington's eyes kept drifting to one figure.
Lancelot.
He fought apart from the others, deeper in the shadow tide than any should have dared. His movements weren't flashy or powerful they were efficient. Every step, every cut, every dodge flowed into the next like water finding its level. He didn't waste motion. He didn't waste energy. He simply… existed in the battle, a constant, moving presence that the shadows couldn't touch.
He's different, Darlington thought, squinting. The others fight with power. He fights with understanding.
Lancelot's sword, Aronde, was a blur of silver light. But it was his eyes that caught Darlington's attention calm, focused, seeing in a way the others didn't. He read the battlefield like Darlington read equations.
He's the weakest of them physically, Darlington realized. Less raw power than Gawain, less holy light than Percival. But he's more skilled. So much more. He has to be, just to survive.
A group of shadow soldiers charged Lancelot six, seven, eight of them. Most knights would have braced, would have met them with brute force. Lancelot moved. A step left, a twist, a cut that took one shadow's head. A pivot, his sword catching a second in the throat. He flowed through them like they weren't there, leaving dissolving darkness in his wake.
Beautiful, Darlington thought, genuinely impressed. He's not fighting the army. He's fighting each moment as it comes. No attachment to outcome. Just… presence.
Then one of the shadows did something strange.
It stopped. Its form wavered, then split. Where one had been, suddenly there were three. Then nine. Then more, multiplying like a nightmare, crawling over each other, merging into something larger. A monster took shape. tangled limbs, too many eyes, a mouth that opened sideways to reveal endless darkness.
Lancelot didn't retreat. He stepped forward.
Aronde sang. The first cut separated three limbs. The second took an eye. The monster screamed and lunged, but Lancelot was already somewhere else, his sword finding joints, weaknesses, places where shadow was thin. He dismantled the creature piece by piece, a sculptor of violence, each cut precise and purposeful.
But Darlington saw it. The slight tremor in Lancelot's sword hand. The way his breathing had changed, becoming sharper, more desperate. The monster kept multiplying, kept reforming. For every piece Lancelot cut away, two more grew back.
He's weakening, Darlington realized. He can't keep this up. The others have their power, their light, their blessings. He just has skill. And skill has limits.
He leaned forward, his enhanced vision zooming in on Lancelot's face. Sweat mixed with shadow-blood. Eyes still calm, but something underneath exhaustion, maybe, or the first whisper of despair.
He's good, Darlington murmured, more to himself than anyone. Really good. But goodness isn't enough here.
Down on the battlefield, Lancelot's head twitched.
Just slightly. A fraction of an inch. As if he'd heard something. As if someone had whispered in his ear.
What
Darlington's eyes widened. No.
Lancelot's concentration broke for half a second. Half a second where he wasn't fully present, wasn't fully in the flow. His sword arm hesitated mid-cut, his eyes unfocused, searching for a voice that shouldn't exist.
The shadow monster didn't hesitate.
One of its limbs transformed, elongating, sharpening into a spear of pure darkness that shot forward faster than thought. Lancelot saw it coming his reflexes were too sharp not to but his body, weakened and distracted, couldn't move fast enough.
The spear punched through his guard.
Through the space beside him.
Darlington's breath caught. He dodged
But no. Lancelot had moved, but not enough. The spear hadn't hit him. It had hit the man behind him.
Sir Beloberis.
Lancelot's cousin. The knight who had been fighting at his back, covering the approaches Lancelot couldn't see. The spear of shadow took him in the chest, punched through his armor like it was paper, and erupted from his back in a spray of darkness and blood.
Beloberis looked down at the wound. Then up at Lancelot. His mouth opened, but no sound came out just a wet, choking gurgle. His eyes, wide with shock, found his cousin's face.
Lance
He crumpled.
The blood—real blood, red and shocking—splashed across Lancelot's face. Across his armor. Across the sand. For a moment, everything stopped. The battle noise faded. The world narrowed to that single image: Lancelot on his knees, his cousin's body in his arms, his face a mask of utter, complete disbelief.
"No," Lancelot whispered. Then louder, a raw, tearing scream. "NO! "
Darlington watched from above, and something inside him cracked.
Again.
Another death.
Another person gone because of
He didn't finish the thought. Couldn't. The rage that had been building since the park, since the pops, since the white void, surged up like magma. His hands gripped the railing of his walkway so hard the metal groaned.
Why do they get to die? Why do they get to fight? Why am I the only one forced to watch?
Across the battlefield, King Arthur felt it too.
He was locked in combat with a towering shadow general, Excalibur blazing with holy fire. But when Beloberis fell, when that splash of red stained the golden sand, Arthur stopped. His head turned. His eyes found the body of his knight. The body of a man who had followed him through a hundred battles, who had believed in Camelot, who had trusted his king.
Something in Arthur's face changed.
The weary king vanished. The calculating commander vanished. What remained was something older, more primal a father who had lost a son, a brother who had lost family, a man who had reached the end of his endurance.
He raised Excalibur. But this time, the sword didn't just glow. It ignited.
"EXCALIBUR! " Arthur's voice wasn't a command it was a prayer, a demand, a plea. "GIVE ME YOUR STRENGTH! "
The sword blazed. Light erupted from it like a second sun, so bright that shadows everywhere screamed. Soldiers on both sides threw up their arms. The darkness recoiled, writhing, burning at the edges. Even Darlington had to shield his eyes.
Arthur held the blazing sword above his head, and when he spoke, his voice carried across the entire battlefield, across all of Valhalla, across the void itself.
"CRUEL SUN. "
He brought the sword down.
The world became light.
It wasn't an attack. It was a judgment. A wave of pure, annihilating radiance swept across the battlefield, and everywhere it touched, shadow simply ceased. Not died. Not dissolved. Ceased to exist, as if it had never been. Thousands of dark soldiers vanished in an instant, their screams swallowed by the light.
When Darlington's vision cleared, the battlefield was transformed. Where the shadow army had been, there was only empty sand, smoking and glassed. The tide of darkness was broken, scattered remnants fleeing into the distant gloom.
Arthur stood in the center of it all, Excalibur still blazing, his chest heaving. His face was not triumphant. It was grieved.
In the sudden quiet, one sound remained.
Lancelot's sobs.
He knelt in the sand, Beloberis's body cradled against his chest. The light of Excalibur's final strike had passed over them, leaving them untouched—or perhaps Arthur had made sure it would. Lancelot's shoulders shook. His tears fell on his cousin's face, mixing with the blood.
"The sun," Lancelot whispered, his voice broken. He looked up at the fading light, at Arthur standing victorious in the distance. "The sun of Excalibur… it shouldn't have shone so late."
From above, Darlington's voice came again. Quiet. Cold. For Lancelot's ears alone.
"Arthur is unworthy to wield that blade."
Lancelot's head snapped up. His eyes, red and wet, scanned the sky. He couldn't see Darlington, couldn't place the voice. But he heard. They all heard, now, when the witness spoke.
"Perhaps," Darlington continued, each word a blade, "if you had held Excalibur, your cousin wouldn't have died such an awful death."
Lancelot's face twisted. Grief. Rage. Something deeper—a truth he'd carried for years, buried under loyalty and duty.
"If only," he breathed, "I had Excalibur."
He looked across the battlefield at Arthur. At the king who stood in glory, surrounded by light, while Lancelot knelt in blood.
"Arthur," Lancelot whispered, and his voice held years of devotion turning to ash. "You betrayed the promise we made on that mountain."
And in his mind, a memory rose
A mountain peak, windswept and bare. Two men stood facing each other, swords drawn. The younger Arthur, beard still brown, crown not yet forged. The younger Lancelot, untested by time, unbroken by grief.
Their blades crossed. Clang. Neither moved to strike.
"Whatever comes," Arthur said, his young voice fierce with conviction, "whatever happens to Camelot, to the kingdom, to the world we remain brothers. You and me. Always."
Lancelot met his eyes. "Always."
They held the pose for a moment longer, then lowered their swords. Arthur laughed, clapping Lancelot on the shoulder. "Come on. Guinevere will have food ready. She'll kill us both if we're late."
They walked down the mountain together, brothers in arms, brothers in heart.
The present. Lancelot knelt in blood-soaked sand, his cousin's body cooling in his arms, and looked at the king who had just burned an army to ash.
We remain brothers.
His hand tightened on Aronde's hilt.
Always.