Title: Stone of the Sun
Author: Jewels
Fandom: Merlin
Disclaimer: BBC's != Mine
Summary: The Great Dragon had once had a name. It no longer had one.
Word Count: 2,643

The Great Dragon had once had a name. It no longer had one. What was the point, after all, when you were the last of your kind known to exist in this land?

Occasionally, the Dragon slept, and when he slept, he dreamt. He remembered soaring on updrafts that carried the faint taste of magic on them. Those were the nights when the folk of Camelot swore they could hear the desperate crying of all the land's old ghosts.

**

The land had been embroiled in chaos. Warfare was rife, conflict the norm rather than the exception. Factions rose and fell, and individuals with enough power to carve their own path sought glory. The Dragon had always thought that it was the taking of magic by Humans that must have been at fault. Magic was an earthy, natural thing. It was a part of the air and the ground and the water, and could not, and should not, be tamed by Humans, binding power into words and gestures and things.

It had been a dark time, and the Dragon had decided to wait it out, retreating to his caves beneath the mountains, content to count his hoard and occasionally leave the confines for the freedom of flight, and the possibility of a sheep or two for a light snack. He had no interest in the petty affairs of mortals, he told himself, though his heart ached when he thought of the brethren who were dying, of the dryads who would no longer sing, or the fire elementals that would not dance.

He hadn't even realised that anyone knew where he was, until the day when a Human, so tiny, so insignificant with his small bits of finery that Humans liked to use to make themselves look important. They came with their small pointed bits of metal and wood and tried to look intimidating. It was all the Dragon could do not to laugh outright at the sheer pomposity on display.

Then one of them stepped forward and said, "I am Uther Pendragon."

The Dragon's attention was piqued, to say the least. "What an auspicious name," he said, dryly, "I suppose that means I will eat you quickly, rather than slowly, out of respect."

The men with the upstart Man quailed and stepped back, but the Man himself, Uther, remained unmoved. "I will bring order to chaos. I will drive sorcerers from the land. And I want your help."

And the Dragon, against his better instincts, said, "Go on."

**

With the dragon's aid, Uther's fight against the worst of the magic users was quick and bloody. The chaos of the magical wars was put to rest, and the Dragon was looking forward to a peaceful few decades. But he was deceived. He awoke, one day, in his cave, with a feeling of sluggishness and the impression that his body was solid lead. He could barely raise his eyelids. The way out of the cave was sealed, he could tell that from the lack of a breeze, and above him was a small ledge, upon which Uther stood, and beside him was a sorcerer, wrapped in dark robes, who at least had the grace to look ashamed.

The Dragon tried to roar, tried to breathe fire, tried to do something to voice his displeasure. But when he tried to lunge at the Man, he realised that his leg was shackled, bound in cold iron that burned his hide, and that he was a prisoner.

"We had a pact, Uther Pendragon!" he seethed, "Betrayer!"

"I do not make pacts with beasts," Uther said, smoothly, "I know I cannot kill you, dragon. But here you will remain, entombed, forever. The most dangerous magic of all, imprisoned beneath my feet. Just rewards, I feel, for all the magic has taken from me."

"And yet you would use magic to capture me," the Dragon said, bitterly. "You will rue this day, Uther Pendragon. I swear this to you."

"I would like to see you try," Uther said, cruelly jovial, and then he left the Dragon's cave for the last time.

**

The Dragon screamed, and kept on screaming. A year passed, and the citizens of Camelot couldn't help but hear the unearthly wail that came from the rocks beneath their feet. It came and went with intensity, but none dared comment on it, fearful of bringing the King's wrath by talking about something that was clearly magical.

After a year, the screaming stopped. Instead, in his cave, the Dragon bowed his head and wept, great tears falling that would have drowned most men. He was trapped inside solid rock, the iron so well bound to the cave wall that it had to be magic that had fixed it there. Nothing the Dragon could do could break it. To capture a Dragon, he knew that the traitorous sorcerer who had ensnared him must have paid with all of his magic, and would never know its song again. It was small comfort.

His hoard was gone. No doubt it stuffed the coffers of Uther, a wealth beyond his dreams. It would set up his kingship nicely. The Dragon thought of the pearl necklace that had been the first item he had ever acquired, a gift from a naiad when he was still a hatchling, and wept again.

After three months of tears, the Dragon found he had none left to shed. He was entombed, with no chance of escape. He had spent a year screaming and beating at the rock to no avail, and now a curious numb acceptance set in. He explored every crevasse of the cave. It was not totally blocked off from the outside, he found. There were small cracks where air and light entered, and a tiny stream of water he had previously disregarded trickled along the south side, but it was wholly empty, apart from bits of broken rock.

The Dragon combed his claws through rubble, turning over rocks here and there. A glint in the light caught his eye, and he brought one chunk closer to his eye. There was a dirty white crystal clinging to the rock. The Dragon sniffed at it, turned it this way and that. Grian cloch, stone of the sun, a common dirty mineral, but against the dirty grey stone, it suddenly seemed brighter than anything.

The Dragon took it back to the empty spot where his hoard had once sat, and set it down neatly in the centre, turning it this way and that so that it caught the light in the best possible fashion.

The Dragon spent his days in shifting through the bits of rubble and discarded rock that he had previously ignored. Where there was one crystal, surely there was more. Eventually, he found bits and pieces, and fragments that were barely larger than a Man's finger, but the Dragon carefully sought them out with a practiced eye, taking them back to his hoard-spot and setting them beside the crystal he had found that first year.

For eight years, the Dragon went through every inch of the cave. No nook was ignored, no loose stone was left alone. The Dragon went through the entire cave, scouring it for crystals and, at the end of eight years, when he finally had no more of the cave to explore, he sat back and looked at his new hoard.

It was tiny. Piled together, it would barely be the size of his fore-paw. It just looked like a small pile of rocks. A small pile of dirty rocks.

With a roar of rage and bitterness, the Dragon swept aside the hoard with his tail, sending rocks flying hither and thither, rattling the very Earth about him with the force of his rage. There was nothing left in the hoard-spot but a couple of pebbles. The Dragon stared at it in horror and, sobbing apologies, feeling more pathetic than he ever had in his existence, he scrambled about the cave, retrieving the rocks from where he'd scattered them. He managed to recover them, all of them but one.

The first rock, the first crystal to catch his eye, had fallen to wedge between two outcroppings. The Dragon reached for it, but found, to his horror, that it was just out of his reach. The chains that bound him wouldn't let him get too close to the small rocky ledge that Uther had stood on, all those years ago. And it was near there that the stone had fallen. The Dragon strained and stretched, but all it earned him was pain in his leg from straining against the iron shackles.

Despondent, the Dragon settled on an outcropping in sight of the stone, coiled his body, and set to watching it.

**

"Arthur, we shouldn't be down here..."

The Dragon had been asleep, dreaming dreams of flight and freedom, as he so often did, when the small voices reached his ears. The voices of Men.

His first instinct was to roar, to scare whoever it was away, but the Dragon found that his desperate loneliness, without so much as a bird's song to break the silence of his cave, stopped him from doing so. He crept down from his outcropping, crawling out of sight of any Men that might appear on the ledge, while allowing him to keep an eye on what was going on. Two small figures emerged from the stairwell, stepping out onto the ledge, their voices echoing as they spoke.

"Morgana, don't be such a baby."

"I am NOT a baby!"

There were two Men, one male, one female, and they were tiny. Only Hatchlings, the Dragon realised. Tiny children, unwittingly entering the monster's lair.

The girl, dark haired, looking around the cave, unimpressed. "There's nothing here," she said, primly. "It's cold and damp and I'm going back to bed! I'll tell your father, and you're going to be in trouble!"

It was night? The Dragon hadn't realised. Yes, he supposed it was dimmer than usual. The girl, in a flounce of hair and skirts, turned and started heading back up the stone stairs.

The boy, fair haired and carrying a burning torch, yelled, "Morgana!" but there was no answer. He snorted, muttering, "Stupid girls."

The boy didn't seem to find the cave as immediately uninteresting as the girl, and he stepped closer to the edge, peering downward.

"And who," the Dragon said, unable to bear the intrusion in silence any longer, "Might you be?"

The boy gave a small yelp and jumped backwards but did not, to his credit, run in terror. The Dragon hauled himself back onto his outcropping, and peered closely at the child, who was apparently speechless. "Well?" he prompted.

The boy seemed to regain his wits. "I am Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, Prince of Camelot." He declared this with all the confidence and brashness of the young, and was never aware as to how close he came to being incinerated right there and then.

The Dragon had found flame welling up, his reflex to kill something, anything that Uther might treasure briefly becoming overpowering him. He restrained himself in time, reminding himself that it would not help him escape.

Although Uther's suffering might have been worth it... the Dragon mused.

"Arthur Pendragon," the Dragon repeated, "Perhaps I should introduce myself, I am the Dragon, though I doubt your father has mentioned me."

The boy, Arthur, shook his head, eyes wide. "I... I heard stories. I didn't think they were true."

"All the best stories are true," the Dragon informed him, "That's what makes them so much fun. Of course, it's not so much fun being on this side of the prison cell, but I suppose you don't know that either."

Arthur was clearly not used to being spoken to in such a manner. "You can't talk to me that way," he blustered, "I'm a Prince."

"Good for you," the Dragon said, tiredly.

He looked at the Prince, and then his eyes dropped to the small outcropping only a few feet below the ledge. An idea occurred to him. "My Prince," the Dragon began, contritely, "You must forgive your humble captive. I have been alone for so very long that the niceties of conversation are unaccustomed to me."

Arthur seemed mollified by that. "Well, I suppose you can't help it," he said, magnanimously, "You're only a beast."

The Dragon fought the urge to smite the child where he stood out of sheer annoyance. "I would, however, request a boon from your highness." He extended a claw, pointing at his crystal, "That rock. It is out of my reach and I would like it. Your Highness is a strong-looking lad, and it would be no small trial to retrieve it for such a pathetic creature as I."

Arthur looked down uncertainly, but the Dragon had apparently gauged the right amount of flattery needed. "Well, alright then," he said, haltingly, and set down the torch, scrambling down over the side of the ledge and climbing down the few feet needed to reach the stone. The crystal was the size of the boy's head, but he made a makeshift sling out of his nightshirt, and hauled it back up. There Arthur looked at it skeptically.

"Why do you want this?" he asked, running his hands over the crystal, "It's only a rock."

The Dragon ignored the sting at the words. "I think it is a pretty rock," he said, trying not to sound like he was begging. "Please, may I have it?"

Arthur looked at the rock, shrugged to himself, and, hauling it up, threw it just far enough that the Dragon could reach out with a cupped fore-paw and snatch it out of the air. "Why, thank you, young Pendragon," he said, and leaned forward, exhaling warm breath and magic over the boy, "Of course, this is all just a dream."

Arthur swayed under the influence of the subtle spell. "A dream?" he mumbled.

"A dream," the Dragon repeated, "You were never here, you never saw a dragon. You are asleep in bed. You should go there now so you can wake up."

"Dream," Arthur said vaguely, and stumbled back towards the stairs, forgetting even the torch, which he left back on the ledge.

The Dragon chuckled at how easy it was to manipulate the minds of Men, and clutched his crystal to his chest. Finally, it was his again, and could retake its place in the centre of his hoard. He raised it to his head, and sniffed delicately. The boy had left his scent all over it, and it was a scent that caused the Dragon to pause, startled.

It was the scent of destiny.

The Dragon had never cared to explore the possibilities of time and fate. He was a creature of magic, sustained through it, not needing to eat or drink but would still live forever if he was not slain by another's hand. There was nothing to stop him looking, to stop him gazing into the future. It wasn't even hard. He just had never tried.

The Dragon rolled the rock around in his claws, breaking away the useless bits of grey rock, leaving only the whitish crystal. Onto that he breathed magic, fixing it with intent and marking it with determination. He gazed into the crystal, searching along the paths of time, following Arthur Pendragon's future...

And he laughed. The Dragon, for the first time in a decade, laughed aloud, delighted. With Arthur's ascension to Kingship, so would magic return, so would the Dragon be free. The Dragon saw worlds, possibilities, saw Arthur and, at his side, the most powerful magician who would ever walk the Earth, who would outstrip even the Dragon.

The Dragon saw Uther's ruin, and laughed.